Before LA became Tinseltown, it was an oil town | Hacker News Reader

Before LA became Tinseltown, it was an oil town

noemamag.com

57 pointsecliptik48 comments

Even in Beverly Hills. Here's a street view of Beverly Hills High School's athletic field a couple of years ago. The oil derrick has been removed since then, but they are still extracting oil there.

https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0597113,-118.4099141,3a,75y,...

Baldwin Hills is my favorite part of LA. Historically rich African American neighborhood. Tons of great views, really good location overall in LA. Nice access to LAX, the water and downtown isn't too far. And of course tons of oil derricks near Kenneth Hahn. Highly recommend.

Culver City Stairs (aka Baldwin Hills Scenic Outlook) is an amazing outdoor workout destination as well.

Definitely, I would have done it more often if I didn't have asthma.

Baldwin Hills over Griffith?

The only thing missing from Griffith is the ocean. On a super clear day you can see the ocean but 9/10 times you see can only see a little past downtown. It is definitely the most iconic and can't miss view, but Baldwin Hills is less crowded and more 360 views

Many/most of Raymond Chandler’s works are set in the time period when LA was gradually shifting from oil to film as its predominant industry. I believe oil executives were in a few of the stories as villains too.

Great reads if you’re interested in the era.

Upton Sinclair's Oil! is pretty good too.

Absolutely. Chandler was in fact employed by an oil company before he tapped a richer vein (sorry) with his fiction.

Incidentally, while re-reading Chandler's "The Lady in the Lake," I realized that the scene in which Marlowe meets his employer, dozing off in a "high-backed chair" in his club's library, was a description of the library at the Los Angeles Athletic Club. Today, if you're a member (or know one), you can pop up to the third floor, still preserved in all of its interwar ersatz-Gilded-Age splendor, and doze off in one of those distinctive high-backed chairs after a drink and schvitz.

It turns out that Chandler had worked across the street when employed by Dabney Oil, and visited the L.A. Athletic Club frequently.

Ah you’re right, I’ve read a few biographies of Chandler but somehow totally forgot he worked for an oil company. IIRC it was a job he got through his father in law.

Great trivia about the club - will definitely have to visit that if I make it to LA again.

There was a Rockford Files episode where he distracted a crooked businessman in LA by buying the mineral rights under his house and sending a drilling crew to his front yard.

Huntington Beach located in Orange County, south of Los Angeles used to have oil wash up on the beach due to it seeping from the ocean bottoms. Signal Hill located near Long Beach California used to be completely covered with oil pumping rigs. Even in Long Beach close to PCH and 2nd street there are still active oil wells.

Tar on the beach was a mainstay of my childhood, and now almost completely gone. No more pressure pushing oil naturally on to the beach. Turpentine on my feet post beach was never fun.

I walked my dog on manhattan beach last year and he got tar everywhere. Never again.

Long beach also has those oil well islands.

https://la.curbed.com/2018/9/28/17858248/history-long-beach-...

Oil Wells are hidden around LA: https://lamag.com/lahistory/hidden-oil-wells

My dad was transferred to LA when I was in 9th grade in 1967. I was excited at the thought of living in warmth amid enormous palm trees. Alas, I was shocked to see so many oil rigs yards from the land side of the coast highway.

PS: I absolutely loved living in LA. Alas, we only stayed 2 years.

I heard the movie business started there to get out of reach of enforcement of movie camera patents back east. If true that’s pretty ironic since the whole industry is built on IP rights.

Win by any means necessary and then lock it down to prevent upstarts and competition. A time tested strategy

And in part because of the diversity of landscapes to film in. Westerns and such were never going to be filmed in the east.

And then the TMZ came into limit those landscapes. For good reason though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_zone

The weather and diverse geography played a role too. Many sunny days needed for filming.. Locations not far from L.A. that can represent many different climates and landscapes in film.

There are tons of reasons why it was all built. Many explain why other places are starting to compete more with Hollywood. Even the Disney style Unreal Engine scenery is a threat to advantages Hollywood had.

In addition to other sibling comments - often this “enforcement” heavily involved the mafia, which had less of a foothold on the west coast.

Interesting, I always heard it was started by Jews looking to get away from racism back east.

I might have to do a little reading myself to clear this up

Here’s some info https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/51722/thomas-edison-drov...

Like many victims of bullying, they learned the wrong lesson: that it's better to be on the other side of the bullying.

> but that was over 20 years ago. We’ve made scant progress.

Ugh.

At this moment, 74.2% of California’s electricity is coming from renewables, overwhelmingly solar. Nearly 8% of new cars sold in the US are electric, a similar number of total cars on the road are electric. In ten years it will be nearly 100%.

> At this moment, 74.2% of California’s electricity is coming from renewables, overwhelmingly solar.

It's even better than that! The rest is mostly nuclear and hydro so at this moment only 12% of California's power supply produces significant amounts of CO2 [1].

[1] https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/supply

Unless I'm missing something this is the instantaneous generation, ie it needs to be averaged over 24hr (actually over the year) to get a real picture of CA's energy mix.

(Also, I wouldn't put hydro in the clean energy in CA)

It's a bit misleading to say Hydro doesn't tackle climate change, though it is environmentally unfriendly.

One particular political party loves to make jokes about "clean" energy, by conflating different definitions of clean. Generally, I think it's fair to say climate change is the biggest concern, so I am comfortable when "clean" or "green" refers to CO2 free.

My concern with California hydro is the water wastage. Nothing excuses the amount of water California wastes.

Are you sure?

This link from 2021 says the net power consumed in CA was less than 34% renewables, and the in-state generated renewables are about the same.

https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...

EDIT: pedantic physics moment. When I say "power" consumed I actually mean the time integral of power over the course of a year, i.e. energy, expressed as GWh

I wrote "at this moment", which meant instantaneously, not overall, or for 2021 as there has been very fast buildout.

Data can be found here: https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/supply

It has gone up a couple of points since I posted.

Missed that in your comment, sorry.

That being said I find the avg to be the only interesting metric (unless you build power lines)

Perhaps that means that there's hope for Houston when oil inevitably declines.

It really shouldn't be a point of pride for any kind of "researcher" to have the revelation as an adult that oil has been important in the history of the California economy. I could understand this level of naive astonishment and bitter demonization if all your education came from an elementary school textbook, but this author is supposed to be some kind of public intellectual.

From the tone of this article, you would think that oil is some kind of purely toxic, useless substance that fiendish villains decided to dig up for fun and hate, "boosterish paper[s] smirk[ing]" all along. I imagine the state of the world if the oilfields in LA and elsewhere had been "left fallow" as the author's misapplied metaphor desires. It is not good: starvation, deprivation, no modern materials or planes, extremely restricted technology development. On the other hand, those of us who still managed to be born likely wouldn't have computers and we'd be spared from having to read this.

The difference between medicine and poison is the dose.

I agree with the first part of what you said, I mean, every native angelino has at one point made a field trip to the tar pits. What did he think the tar was?

People like the writer of TFA that lament the historical and ongoing production of oil really show just how ignorant people are of how our insanely high standard of living came to be. Oil production is a net benefit for the world in ways that can’t be overstated.

*net benefit to humans, certainly not the world

Without humans, who cares about the world? Serious question.

Those who come next

If you can believe it, there are people that don’t give a shit what happens to the world after their kids die.

I was referring to whatever intelligence evolves after this fifth great mass extinction event finishes.

I don't think everyone subscribes to sentiocentrism

He doesn't say he's unaware of the history, he says that despite the visible infrastructure he didn't realise it was still an oil town:

> But before LA became Tinseltown, it was an oil town. And though the oil wells that loom even today atop the nearby Baldwin Hills should have been a clue, it never really dawned on me that LA still is

I have lived in LA my whole life and it pushes my suspension of disbelief a lot to hear a native say they didn’t realize that oil was still being extracted - the derricks are everywhere, not just on-shore either.

Right? It’s like where do people think Doheny (Greystone Mansion) and Getty got all their money?

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