DIDION GEM. Regarding the San Fernando Valley in the 1960s, Joan Didion wrote: “This is the California where it is easy to Dial A Devotion, but hard to buy a book.” Her article, “Lifestyles in the Golden Land,” is true crime reporting at it’s best and you can find it in a compilation of her non fiction work “We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live.” https://www.thejoandidion.com/about/
ABOUT HUGHES. He was a hermit with money which gave him “personal freedom, mobility and privacy” which is what we want. Right? Journalist Joan Didion in ’67 wrote the definitive essay on the illusive millionaire Howard Hughes, “7000 Romaine Street,” Los Angeles. Hughes “communications center” was located. It could have been the setting for a film noir with criminals lurking in every shadow. Nearby was the RKO Radio Pictures at 780 Gower that Hughes once owned and mismanaged into extinction. See her book, “We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live.” https://www.loopnet.com/Listing/7000-Romaine-St-Los-Angeles-CA/13691826/
Joan Didion in an essay on Haight-Ashbury referenced a song she heard on KFRC radio which was the “Flower Power” station in ‘67. When I lived in the Bay Area in 64-65 KFRC was MOR, playing Jack Jones and Sinatra — my favorite station. According to the Bay Area Radio Museum site: “In the mid-1960s, KFRC changed to a Top 40 rock’n’roll format, and quickly became the dominant station in the region with that format through the 1970’s, featuring the tight, carefully programmed sound developed by RKO-General’s star programmer, Bill Drake.
In 1969 I wanted to be the guy who wrote brilliant articles about urban affairs, like Joan Didion’s 1989 article “Down at City Hall” where she highlights the inconsistencies about Los Angeles residents’ attitudes. Most people in ’89 had enough of LA and would move to San Diego given the chance. Most of them supported LA Mayor Tom Bradley who was mayor when the quality of life deteriorated yet he managed to hold together his Black-Jewish coalition. By 1993 LA would be increasingly populated by LatinX and Asians, Didion predicted, and Bradley might be irrelevant.
When I lived in LA in 63-64 doing rewrite at UPI and answering the phones at NBC News, nominal Democrat Sam Yorty was the mayor and would take the air out of “news” by proceeding his remarks with “as I have said one-hundred times before.” This frustrated NBC government reporter Bill Brown no end. Reference: “We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live.”
