No plain jane, Cool Harry is renowned as an artist and supreme raconteur on the frontiers of the hippest and the most traditional corners of the art world.
Harry is a star — everywhere except at home.
City Hall, Harry says, is treating him like a “piece of rubbish” — to the point of locking him out of his business, his store, his inventory, his property. He is back in, temporarily, which is of no solace to him.
Harry is South African.
He talks fast. When the subject is pleasant, Harry’s powerful presence is a distinguished pleasure.
These days, Harry’s heart rate and his tongue are zooming down their separate highways at speeds that would qualify them for the Indianapolis 500. Harry was talking so fast this morning that it was humanly impossibly to catch and digest everything he said. Scheduled to be interviewed by this newspaper on Monday, Harry said he his message could not wait.
Harry is frantic.
He is running scared.
He will run, he said, until his swiftly pumping heart slows him up and forces him to gasp for air.
After a lifetime in the splashy orbit of the cream of the art and celebrity universes, Harry, these days, is no longer a kid.
Sixtyish is more like it.
A Title Harry Doesn’t Want
There is no danger of flirting with hyperbole to say that Cool Harry, as he is known and honored in his orbit, is the most scared man in Culver City this weekend.
By the clock on the wall of the Community Development Dept. inside City Hall, Culver City’s most colorful, most charismatic entrepreneur has one dozen days of usefulness left in Culver City.
The morning after Valentine’s Day, Cool Harry will be as well-done on the piping hot City Hall grill as one of those popular hamburgers at Ben Ford’s Filling Station a few blocks away.
Dreading the Ending
As far as the city is concerned — Cool Harry says he has no reason to doubt the words of the Development staff — he could be sitting on his celebrated tush in front of his National Boulevard business, thrown out, unceremoniously, the morning after Valentine’s. Dignity may take the day off.
“People need to know what is going on in this town,” Harry, in desperation, blurted out this morning. Over and over, the same recurring phrase.
“People need to know about the dishonesty in this town,” and he started naming names. “I am talking City Hall.
Cool Culver City? No Way
“The Los Angeles Times needs to know about this so that people across the country will hear about the shamefulness of what is going on in Culver City.
“They should tell readers across America what really is happening in Culver City.
“Even though Culver City is being written up in The New York Times as one of the coolest spots in Southern California, shenanigans are going on every day, more shenanigans than coolness.
“There is much more dishonesty than honesty here. It is not a secret, though City Hall would like it to be. People outside of Culver City need to know what is going on. Someone has to tell them.
The Losses
“People in business — creative people, good people — are afraid. Some are scared, paralyzed, paranoid about talking. The city is losing creative people, and the city absolutely does not care.”
The Harry of today is not the Harry who arrived in Culver City with a tank full of energy sufficient for 10 people to open Cool Harry’s Art Furniture on National Boulevard.
Due to emergency circumstances, his personality, his outlook, his foundational belief in right and wrong, good and bad, have been drastically altered.
Location, Location
Unfortunately for Harry, he is parked in the middle of the light rail-doomed block of National, bracketed by Washington Boulevard on the south and Venice Boulevard on the north.
Harry and his fellow creative types in the National Boulevard neighborhood have been condemned and bought out by City Hall.
Harry can’t understand why there is such a blur of bizarre events, or why City Hall is leaning on him, he says, with “unreasonable” urgency.
Where Is the Fairness?
It makes no sense to Harry that City Hall allots him only 12 more days to unload his vast inventory while Les Surfas, down the block, has a deadline of July 1. He is not mad at Mr. Surfas. But he snorts with mighty indignity that he is not being treated fairly, honestly or legally, not to mention morally.
“I am working 12 to 14 hours a day every day of the week,” Harry said. “I can’t keep up this pace. Who is going to pay if I have a heart attack? Not the city. The craziness that is going on here is not of my making. And, obviously, I am not the only one who is suffering.
‘Tell the World’
“Somebody needs to shout out — far beyond the borders of Culver City — what is going on here.
“People need to know — the newspapers, the strongest television networks. This is America. We (business/property owners) are being treated like criminals. The city does not care. They do not care if we die or if we live. They do not care whether we close up or move out of Culver City.
“People outside of Culver City need to know. Somebody has to get the word out. I am trying.”
Two Steaming Debates
Why Harry and his neighbors are being uprooted — and, apparently, not being relocated in many cases — is the subject of one of two furious debates rampaging across Culver City neighborhoods.
On the near east side of Culver City, entrepreneurs are angry at City Hall for “ruining” their businesses, condemning their locations via eminent domain, offering a sum of money, and giving them a deadline to vacate.
Along the commercial corridor of normally low-key, indistinctive South Sepulveda Boulevard, and through the Sunkist Park neighborhood to the west, many are upset by a fear that a single developer is about to be handed the keys to conduct the largest redevelopment project in city history. At least 13 long-entrenched acres, jammed with mom-and-pop stores among the 100 businesses, are at stake.
Postscript
Harry will have the last words.
“The city tells me I have two weeks left,” he says, “that I absolutely must be out by the middle of the month.
“Why?
“Why?
“Can they tell me? No! Will they tell me? No! I don’t know what I am going to do.”
