Treeless in Santa Monica

Just before the turn of the century – the previous century – a large white house was constructed, “Queen Anne” style, on the corner of Third and Marine in Ocean Park at the southern end of Santa Monica, Calif. You can actually see a photograph of it on the back wall of the Omelet Parlor on Main Street not far from here. Taken from the once-upon-a-time OP Pier sticking into the Pacific, people with 1890’s parasols are seen on wooden slabs and behind them is nothing but a dirt hill with three houses in view – one of them ours at 241 Marine Street.

Well, this old house is not ours; I rent, like twelve others do. But seventeen years inside and it feels like home: This once majestic single-family home now split into studios and one-bedrooms. More ramshackle than royal, today it tilts westward, a peeling picket fence framing it crookedly as tree-lined Marine drops down to Second, then Main, and eventually to the sea.

But now three men just came and blared and blazed away with axes and blades, stealing our shade as they chopped down our forty-foot avocado tree. For years it stood flush against the house, keeping us cool and yielding fruit twice a year, as was its nature.

 

How could the landlord do this? How could we let this happen? And where are the “Tree People” when you really need them?

Instead of crying about it, why didn’t we tie ourselves to the gnarly black bark base? We’d seen a documentary on PBS called “If A Tree Falls,” about people who chained themselves to trees in Oregon in the 1990’s, and they got tear-gassed and pepper-sprayed, which led to them to becoming activists, and arsonists too (One of them got life, plus 250 years.).

Of the thirteen people living here, perhaps two would have gone that far. And the battle cry “Occupy 241!” seemed a bit redundant. But the least we could do was counter the owner’s argument for slicing it down. His argument went something like this: “It was pushing up the cement. And the avocadoes were no good.”

Once we had a peach tree too, in back of the house. Laura the ophthalmologist who lives upstairs, made Peach Melba for everyone one summer. And daiquiris, too, as I recall (We’re very communal here, at times).

The peach tree was chopped down a few years ago.

Arturo, who’s lived here the longest, planted both the peach and the avocado and can tell you stories: his mother picked avocados out in in Chavez Ravine way back before the LA Dodgers took that land. Art is always cooking up tamales or carnitas on one of the grills strewn out back here. He always keeps an open door. He takes care of all of us. (Although Art just broke his hip again so we try to look out for him, too.)

Nanni is my best friend in the house. He’s a masseur – bonus for 241 dwellers! — He used to work on “Buffy The Vampire Slayer.” We also have a teacher and a nurse and a web guy and a comedian who of course thinks this place is a sitcom waiting to be bought.

Big old funky ol’ 241 Marine has been seen on TV you know. And film, too: Debra Winger went up the stairs in “Mike’s Murder.” Charles Bronson – “He’s planning to clean up the city. His way!” — and Jill Ireland did “Death Wish II” out in front. On “Knot’s Landing” we were a house of ill repute. There have been ping-pong tourneys and political gatherings for Ralph Nader. A photographer from Miami moved in for a while, shooting newly landed Russian models on my back deck.

The ophthalmologist’s darling little daughter walks from here with her father to John Muir Elementary every morning. The actor Joe Murphy lived in the smallest front studio before dying of AIDS – and I inherited his beach beater. One apartment was carved from the 1904 hallway so it’s called “the pimento.”

Me? Since I moved here from New York in ‘94, I’ve dated a stream of Feng Shui experts who’ve taken one look at my place and then they’re outta here. And in the last few years, we’ve played host/refuge for homeless people too – I guess that means we’re typical Santa Monicans.

In the 1970s, I lived on a cooperative communal farm in Israel, working in the avocado fields. I did everything from picking fruit to clearing paths for irrigation pipes, to tending young tiny “codders” by softly dabbing zinc on their exposed bark to keep them from burning in the desert sun. In nature working with friends I learned that when you are with people you love, you can do anything. Just moving rocks out of the dirt so tractors can get through…

Back here in Ocean Park, new developments, what they call “Artists Lofts,” have been going for $1.4 million. My housemate Art says he wonders how an artist can afford such a place. He also just asked: “Where will the possums from under the house go now to get away from the cats who always chased them up the avocado tree?”

There’s a play I saw at the Mark Taper in downtown LA called “The Cherry Orchard.” Anton Chekhov wrote it in 1904 and his characters argue the end of the bourgeois estate, using groves of trees as a metaphor.

“You can hear them falling,” a character says. “The trees are falling.”

Nanni upstairs says when landlords used to burn peasant dwellings they called it class warfare. He says he don’t know what to call chopping down a tree except murder.

“Well,” another housemate said. “We all have to die some day, right?”

That was me, the one who was going to tie himself to an avocado tree.

 

P.S. Art Lopez passed in January 2024 and everyone living at the big old yellow 1904 house on Marine Street misses him…

 

Avocados in a rainbow: http://www.panoramio.com/photo/49299626