Game 43: Miki and Bill Holiver - New England Clam Chowder

Game 43’s New England Clam Chowder was contributed by Miki and Bill Holiver. Bill listed himself as the store manager at Sears Roebuck & Company, “an original sponsor of the Lakers beginning in 1961, their first year in Los Angeles (The Lakers first season was 1960-1961, so they jumped on board halfway through the season -- bandwagoners!). Sears in 2020 is less of a business and more of a symbol for both 20th century consumerism and its 21st century counterpart that financially ravaged brick and mortar behemoths like Sears. In my home neighborhood of East Hollywood, the Sears on the corner of Santa Monica and Saint Andrews has been literally left in the dust since 2008, when it closed at the devastating peak of The Great Recession.

That Sears has a pre-war history going back to its 1928 opening. Located a block from Western in the heart of what would become East Hollywood, the venerable department store served Hollywood residents and people driving down historic Route 66 (AKA Santa Monica Blvd) for decades. More recently, it was the epicenter -- along with Vermont and Santa Monica -- for some of the most northern looting during the 1992 L.A. Riots, stopping just before the tony mansions of Los Feliz. My school bus from John Burroughs Middle School in Hancock Park would drive past this Sears every day to make its final drop-off of East Hollywood, Los Feliz, and Silver Lake kids. By those days in the early 2000s, the building looked like a shell of its former self, with fading paint and street-level retail space occupied by a liquor store. Corporate didn’t even bother to update the orange-red logo out front to the modern SEGA-esque font that the company adopted in 1994.

Shortly before The Great Recession, a development firm called Continental Development Group bought the 5.3 acre property encompassing the Sears building and its vast parking lot stretching to Wilton with plans to turn it into a $275 mixed-use retail and housing  project called Paseo Plaza.. But they faced push back in the form of the infamous La Mirada Neighborhood Association, a fake neighborhood organization headed by lawyer Robert Silverstein. To my knowledge, he is the organization and was the sole person responsible for the Zombie Target on Sunset and Western that was held up mid-construction for six years. He was also responsible for the newly-built Sunset Gordon Tower (built on the ancient burial grounds of The Old Spaghetti Factory) evicting all of its tenants in 2015. Why does Silverstein hold up these construction sites over building height regulations? Well, after a few years, CDG came to a fat settlement with Mr. Silverstein. It’s called “greenmail.” Silverstein chokes these big developers of money under the auspices of environmental regulations. There are many people in this world who are not good.

Unfortunately for CDG, by the time the city approved their settlement with Silverstein, The Great Recession hit. That Sears went out of business in 2008 and funding for the project dried up. So in 2015, a Mid-Wilshire based firm called CIM Group (who also own Sunset Gordon) picked up the property for a cool $53.3 million. Their plans are more or less the same as CDG: They plan to build a massive “urban power center” of mixed retail and housing while keeping the Sears building intact. Construction has finally begun on the parking lot area which will be turned into a 5 story underground garage. The city council even diverted $190,000 of taxpayer money to conduct a traffic study of the area. You’ll be shocked to learn that a 370,000 sq ft. retail/housing project in an already-congested part of Hollywood, just a few blocks from both of the 101’s Santa Monica Blvd entrances will increase traffic in the area.

So what’s next for East Hollywood? What will my home neighborhood, the place I still live in, “The Next There” as CIM Group’s PowerPoint presentation calls it, look like 10 years in the future? Look towards Hollywood proper for a sneak peak. The revitalization/gentrification of Hollywood jump started by then-Councilman Eric Garcetti has led the way to a dense urbanization that still seems foreign in sprawling Los Angeles. Drivers crawling past Hollywood on the 101 have been inundated with cranes, alien to Angelenos used to a Hollywood skyline comprised of moderately sized buildings like the Capitol Records building or the Knickerbocker, which most people don’t know is a retirement home. They’re building upwards, but for who? The housing crisis will not be solved by these massive condo towers, even though the city forces developers to set aside a tiny fraction of the units for lower-income renters. Besides, if you have money in Los Angeles, you’re not going to spend it to live 30 stories up in the air. That defeats the point of having money in Los Angeles.

If you have a rent-protected apartment, hold onto for dear life. Rent increased 65% in L.A. over the last decade, a number that will be topped when the Olympics come to town. So make sure your landlord is eating right and seeing a doctor. Because when they pass away, the company taking over will find any loophole they can to evict you. They might even make a call to Robert Silverstein.

——————————

New England Clam Chowder

¼ cup butter

2 medium size onions, chopped

4 cups julienne potato strips, about 1 ½ lbs potatoes cut into ¼ inch strips

1 quart boiling water

2 teaspoons salt

1 quart fresh clams, coarsely chopped

1 quart milk

Dash of tabasco

Sherry (optional)

Finely chopped parsley

Paprika

Melt butter in a chowder kettle or dutch oven; add onion and cook over moderate heat until soft and slightly yellow. Add potatoes, boiling water and salt, bring to boil and simmer 20 minutes or until potatoes are just tender. Add clams with liquid, milk, and Tabasco; heat but do not boil. If desired, put a tablespoon of sherry into each warm chowder bowl before pouring in chowder. Garnish with parsley and paprika. Makes about 3 ½ quarts, or 8 servings.

Sometimes I do a little Cost-Benefit Analysis while I’m shopping for Goldstein and Gasol. Is that the right term? I’m talking about the money I spend on things for this project that I know I’m not going to like. The only time I’ve tried clam chowder was a can of Chunky Soup when I was 10. I know it doesn’t compare to an authentic bowl of chowder I could get from Boston or San Francisco, but sometimes quality doesn’t matter. I don’t like the taste. It’s a barrier to any pleasure I could get from eating it.

So I thought about going to Fish King, the Glendale fish market that’s been around for nearly 75 years, to pick up some fresh clams. But while I was in Albertsons picking up a julienne peeler (the one I ordered on Amazon was delivered to my neighbor’s steps and promptly stolen), I saw cans of minced clams going for $2.50 and thought about not just literal price, but the price of time. Did I want to spend an hour cooking the clams and then mincing them, only to make a giant pot of clam chowder I would not like? I did not spend much time pondering that question.

According to my girlfriend and our friend visiting from out of town, my clam chowder was pretty good. I couldn’t tell. I had half a bowl with some toast. It tasted like watery milk with chunks of clam floating in it… which is what clam chowder is. I won’t be making any trips to Boston anytime soon.