Gentle reader,
We write in haste, with a rare second daily video newsletter post, because there isn’t much time left and we need you to make a wish with us.
Barring a miracle, Boney Island—the beloved, quirky, spooky Hallowe’en treehouse attraction in the front yard of Simpsons’ producer Rick Polizzi’s Sherman Oaks home—will be demolished tomorrow.
And like so many rotten things that happen in Los Angeles, it is the City’s fault.
After a neighbor who hated crowds frolicking on the block ratted Polizzi out to Building and Safety, he began a years long slog through the dysfunction of City government, successfully navigating a Zoning Administrator hearing—which is amazing!—yet unable to get LADBS to sign off on plans to legalize the treehouse.
Now, City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto intends to try Polizzi in criminal court—over a treehouse. He’s spent a fortune already trying to make the thing legit, and faces a massive liability should he lose the case and be slapped with the City’s legal costs.
So last month, he told Clara Harter of the Los Angeles Times that he was done.
And while the trials of Boney Island have been widely reported in the media and blogosphere, and more than 6700 people have signed a Change.org petition, it was the physical copy of this newspaper that roused Cultural Heritage Commissioner Diane Kanner to announce, during yesterday’s regular meeting, that she was “outraged” by what was happening to Boney Island, and believed the CHC should immediately take it under consideration as a protected landmark. Yay!
Or is it? The soonest the CHC could get the matter onto an agenda is March 20. With a March 12 court date, the only way Polizzi could call off the City’s dogs was by providing evidence that he had torn the treehouse down over the weekend.
Or the City could honor the wishes of the Cultural Heritage Commission—even if they don’t care a hoot for Polizzi or for thousands of heartbroken Boney Island fans—and ask the judge to continue the case, or drop the case entirely.
If that’s going to happen, a decision will need to be made, and conveyed to Polizzi’s attorney, within the next few hours.
The demolition crew is coming on Saturday, with instructions to rip down a manifestation of all that is good and cool in Los Angeles.
This is wrong, and the bullies and sadists who have been using the power of government to squash creativity and joy need to be stopped. We are all paying for it, not just in taxes, but in the loss of the collaborative sparks that used to flare up between the dreamers who came out West to imagine new worlds and bring us all along for the ride.
We don’t want to live in a Los Angeles where bureaucrats trump geniuses. And we don’t want lovely people like Rick Polizzi to feel like all there’s left to do now is to pack up his animatronic skeletons and vintage board game collection and leave town.
So light a candle or raise a glass to Boney Island, and join us in hoping that a miracle might yet manifest before the claw machine reaches up into the branches to destroy not just a beloved treehouse, but another large slice of our communal Angeleno heart. It’s a mighty big heart, and tonight it hurts.
Long Live Boney Island!
Come explore Los Angeles in good company: this Saturday’s tour is Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice, a true crime and weird social history walk through some of the most beautiful and peculiar landmarks in Downtown Los Angeles, telling strange tales of freak shows, ghouls, nuts, mummies and a slumming Rolling Stone or two. Join us for a time travel trip you won’t soon forget!
Yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
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Our work—leading tours and historic preservation and cultural landmark advocacy—is about building a bridge between Los Angeles' past and its future, and not allowing the corrupt, greedy, inept and misguided players who hold present power to destroy the city's soul and body. If you’d like to support our efforts to be the voice of places worth preserving, we have a tip jar, vintage Los Angeles webinars available to stream, in-person tours and a souvenir shop you can browse in. We’ve also got recommended reading bookshelves on Amazon and the Bookshop indie bookstore site. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.
UPCOMING WALKING TOURS
• Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice Downtown L.A. (Sat. 3/8) • Bunker Hill, Dead and Alive (Sat. 3/15) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown Los Angeles (Sat. 3/22) • Franklin Village Old Hollywood (Sun. 3/30) • John Fante’s Downtown L.A. (Sat. 4/5) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (Sat. 4/12) • Elmer McCurdy’s Main Street Revival (4/15) • Leo Politi Loves Los Angeles (Sat. 4/19) • Downtown Los Angeles is for Book Lovers (Sat. 4/26) • Human Sacrifice: The Black Dahlia, Elisa Lam, Heidi Planck & Skid Row Slasher Cases (5/3) • Charles Bukowski’s Westlake (5/10) • Highland Park Arroyo Time Travel Trip (5/17) • The Run: Gay Downtown History (5/24) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (5/31) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (6/7) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown Los Angeles (6/14) • Miracle Mile Marvels & Madness (6/22) • Westlake Park Time Travel Trip (6/28) • Film Noir / Real Noir (7/12) • The Real Black Dahlia (7/19) • Broadway (7/26)
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