Last year I rented an apartment in Long Beach for the summer. My short-term lease expired in August 2005 but I still drive by that amazing apartment building about once a month just to stare at it. An architect named Claude Beelman designed it in the Roaring Twenties and it was very luxurious by the standards of the day. The building fell on hard times when the Great Depression hit in the thirties and in later decades it became roughly the equivalent of a transient hotel. The unit I rented had never been updated. It still had a murphy bed, a safe in the wall, glass doorknobs, hexagonal floor tiles, original mirrors, a dry ice closet, and the original tiles and marble in the bathroom. The plumbing and electrical were about what you would expect from that era too.

Usually I live with my cats on the upstairs floor of a warehouse which one of my friends uses for his business. The living quarters are comfortable here, but I always consider renting that same apartment in Long Beach again. I never do. Sometimes I feel that there are spirits inside the place that I'm not ready to contend with right now. The building is named for the investors who funded its construction. I have the same last name as they did. That probably has no significance, but it surprised me nonetheless. I had fallen in love with the building and moved into it before I even knew it had a name.

After leaving there last summer I got on the Internet and started reading up on its history. As noted, Claude Beelman was the main architect. He is recognized for creating numerous other structures in the city of Los Angeles. The building that houses my former apartment is not in the actual city of Los Angeles and is a bit older than the work for which he is primarily known. I'd never heard of Beelman before last summer, but since then I have spent hours on the Net searching for information about his works of art. One of them, a former Elk's Lodge near Macarthur Park, sounded especially interesting. I was unable to find a photo of it. In recent years it has become known as the Park Plaza Hotel, but it has endured many ownership and name changes prior to its current incarnation. Its spiral downward began during the depression of the thirties and gradually another of Beelman's Roaring Twenties creations was relegated to transient hotel status. It now stands across the street from the local welfare office in one direction, and across from Macarthur Park in another. Macarthur Park is a gritty and notorious venue for illicit sales of all kinds, mostly drugs and sex. Presumably you could purchase a fake ID there too if you happened to need one.

I drove out that way early one morning to go look at the Park Plaza Hotel. My hope was that it was still a transient hotel and that I could possibly check in and get a room. It would be an opportunity to explore the place and I really wanted to see it. Unfortunately I was a few years too late and it is now closed to the public. I spent about an hour walking around the building and admiring it. In addition to its glorious architecture it had an alluring feel about it. Debauchery draws me like a magnet and there was no mistaking the sense of depravity which still lingered around the empty property. I could barely force myself to leave.

The day after my visit I was depressed and did not feel like working. I went to eReader.com and picked out a selection which I could spend the day reading. Somewhat randomly I chose an autobiography of a career criminal who had gone on to author numerous books and screenplays. I downloaded Education of a Felon: A Memoir by Eddie Bunker and settled into my couch to immerse myself in his life story. Towards the beginning of the book Mr. Bunker describes arriving at a hotel next to Macarthur Park. It was the 1930s and he was in the company of a black pimp and the pimp's gorgeous blonde girlfriend. From his description of the building I knew it was the Park Plaza Hotel where I'd been just the day before. Chills ran up my spine and my eyes bugged out. How weird. I'd just been standing outside that place envisioning who the former inhabitants might have been and sensing the licentiousness of their old antics.

The author recalls receiving his frst fix of heroin inside one of the upstairs rooms and watching hookers manipulate their johns and watching the pimps manipulate their hookers. He mentions that many of the rooms were bathed in a green light that helped hide the hookers' physical flaws and somehow contributed to the lascivious, underworld mood of the place. At the time he was there the building was called the Park Wilshire Hotel.

Strangely, it turns out that I know someone who was supposed to help renovate the building in the 1990s. For months he had keys to the entire property and explored every inch of the place. He is a friend of my roommate but I did not know him back when he had been hired to work on the Park Plaza. Someday I will find a way inside there. I already know that a green light is still glowing on the upstairs floors.

The pic above was shot on the premises long before I ever knew the building existed. The situation in question degenerated into a very tawdry example of street-level need and satisfaction. Everybody on the streets of L.A. has something that somebody else wants..


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- XXOO Tanya