This being New Year’s Eve, whenever anyone at City Hall hearkens back to the wonderful moments of this year, I hope the names of Cool Harry, the Saez brothers, Patrick Vorceak, Les Surfas and Marc Chiat will spring to the fore first.
Three of them lost their bought-and-paid-for businesses in the last 12 months. With a foot to the tush, the Saez brothers were kicked out of town. By comparison, Mr. Surfas got off relatively easily. “All” that he lost was his warehouse.
Hey, baby. You can’t impede progress. Right?
The train is coming through, they say.
Right where Cool Harry, Mr. Chiat, the Seaz brothers, Mr. Surfas and Mr. Vorceak did business every day for years.
Odious Situation
If you can imagine approaching your brother-in-law, who doesn’t like you, for a loan, you have a whiff of how Cool Harry, Mr. Vorceak, the Seaz brothers, Mr. Surfas and Mr. Chiat feel.
The year should not end without one brief retrospective.
In a conversation this morning with a person of stature at City Hall, he said all of them had been fairly compensated, and there would be no further discussion. End of case.
I walked over to Exposition Boulevard this morning. For a moment, I thought I was looking at Berlin at the end of World War II. Resembles the remains of either a frat party or a war.
A Horror Show
At the mouth of Exposition and Washington Boulevard, where The Jungle conducted its terribly popular nursery business for a decade, the corner looks like a hollowed-out Frankenstein.
The barest framework is left from The Jungle’s happier days. With not a piece of greenery — for which the Saez brothers were famous — in sight, the rest of the grounds looked as if they belonged in one of those long-deserted Western tumbleweed towns you used to see in the movies.
The Saez brothers have made a smart recovery, thank you very much, in the heart of nursery-land, at 1900 Sawtelle Blvd., in West L.A.
Three Left Dangling
Cool Harry, Mr. Vorceak and Mr. Chiat, sadly, are unable to say the same.
The artistic and internationally noted Cool Harry is the knocked-down merchant I worry most about.
Mr. Chiat and Mr. Vorceak are family men — around themselves, they are fortunate to have supporting casts.
Cool Harry is alone. He is in his 60s. His arty business did all right for the five years or so he operated on National, diagonally from Les Surfas’s store.
In evicting Cool Harry from his store, City Hall handed him a few dollars. I don’t know how much. But you can make book that he was not the party walking away from the agreement wreathed in a smile.
What Do You Do with Money?
Is he going to make love to the dollars the city — can we say bribed? — him with? Can he spend weekdays and weekends, between late morning and early evening, sitting on his surely colorful couch at home, staring at the greenbacks?
You say he has his health? Don’t be certain. Last time I saw him, he was in slippage.
Mr. Vorceak, nearly 60 years old, was not quite 40 when he opened his modest enterprise on Exposition.
It was a living for him and his son. He drives a van more modest than what most people own.
Haven’t talked to him for months. He just vanished.
The ‘Luckiest’?
In his upper 40s, Mr. Chiat is the baby of the group.
He probably is in the best position of any of his wretched colleagues to get even with life in the foreseeable future.
A footnote: As of this morning, Mr. Vorceak’s desperate chalkboard sign, in the patio area of his former property, remains , months along, as silent testimony to his grittiness:
“Keep Out,” it reads.
“All Dogs, Thieves, Redevelopment Personnel.”
