Don't Believe Da Hype(rion)

The Militant has often said that driving in Los Angeles is like watching a movie, while walking or biking in the city is like seeing a play. The Militant might have lived in the same city all his life, but he has seen the chronological changes over the years. The people of the city are the actors in the play and the streets set the scenes. Over time, these scenes have even changed their roles, or at the very least have framed different scenes using the same props.

One such street is Hyperion Avenue, straddling the line between Silver Lake and Los Feliz. Both places today are known as hipster heaven (or hell, depending on your perspective), but in the Militant's younger years, they were known as places where older folks lived (Los Feliz was jokingly known back in the '80s as "Menopauseville"). Starting at the end of Fountain Avenue and ending where Glendale Blvd. crosses the river, at 1.5 miles, Hyperion is one of those streets that didn't have to be individually named, but since someone thought up the idea, they might as well have chosen a 19th Century poem by John Keats.

Today the Militant enjoyed his two-wheeled play for today by passing the newly-installed stoplights on the jammed and risky 3-way intersection of Hyperion and Monon St. (pictured above). Though still fresh out of the box and still fragrant with that new stoplight smell, the lights were yet to be put in operation, possibly waiting a large dedication ceremony by area councilman Tom LaBonge, who would no doubt proclaim that such a day would be "A great day for Los-Anga-les."

Pedaling north towards the AWV, the Militant approached the famous Hyperion Bridge, or so he once thought it was named so. The Militant recalled, in his high school years, the day the bridge was blocked off for some on-location filming shoot, only to see it a year later in this film which he saw at the Cinerama Dome. But before reaching the actual bridge, there stood a copper plaque on a retaining wall (pictured right). It lists the various politicos and city officials of the day when the bridge opened in 1927. The first three lines of the plaque read:

WAVERLY APPROACH
GLENDALE-HYPERION VIADUCT
GEO. E. CRYER, MAYOR

Of course no one speeding by at 40 miles per hour in their car could read the text on the plaque, much less know it even exists (the two-foot wide pedestrian-hostile excuse for a sidewalk that straddles the retaining wall isn't much help either). Mayor Cryer was best known (at least to the five of us who care about Los Angeles history - Mr. Howser, Ms. Rasmussen, Will Campbell, The City Nerd and yours truly) as the mayor who brought us today's City Hall. But other sources have linked him to an organized crime mob that ran gambling and prostitution rings in the Roaring '20s. Which got this Militant wondering, if Angelenos don't even recall a mayoral administration of 80 years ago, would the Los Angeles of 2087 even know that the mayor of 80 years past banged a television news reporter if they saw "MAYOR ANTONIO R. VILLARAIGOSA" on some heavily-oxidized and graffiti-tagged (the taggers of the future will use lasers (laser-tagged?) -- you heard it here first...) copper plaque? Would they even know what a "television" was? Or perhaps the people whose names are emblazoned on dedicational plaques are keenly aware of such things, and that the plaques are the only objective indicators of their legacy?

Perhaps, this Militant believes, that the common-knowledge ignorance and disregard of Los Angeles history is intentional.