My San Fernando Valley in the 1980s


I was recently invited to join a Facebook group for the San Fernando Valley, and while I don't join Facebook groups anymore, I read the questions to enter the group, one of which was simply what my connection was to that place. I lived there for two years, from 1987 to 1989, so I'm not sure that it qualifies me as an expert. But I was there, and there are a few things I can tell you about it, if you want to see it from my point of view.

First of all, and let's get this clear from the start, the San Fernando Valley is simply "the Valley". Yes, I know that there are a lot of valleys in California, but there's only one "the valley". It's said the way that people in San Francisco just say "the city", as if nowhere else really mattered. And for the valley, no other valley really mattered. If you live in the greater Los Angeles area, you know that.

Speaking of which, something that surprised me, and even my neighbors in the valley, is that it was, legally, City of Los Angeles. No one called it Los Angeles, of course, you always described it by the name of the area, such as Canoga Park (which is where my apartment was), or Woodland Hills, where I worked. But it was all City of Los Angeles - if you looked at the police cars, they were all LAPD. And that's what we called the police: El-Ay-Pee-Dee. Yes, there were Burbank police, and Burbank is in the San Fernando Valley, but not in my San Fernando Valley. I had a friend who disliked the police in Burbank and would call them "LAPD rejects". That sounds harsh, but it was the feeling a lot of people had. LA cops were as tough as nails, and if you weren't LA, you weren't nothin'. The best example of a movie that expresses the distaste for non-LA police is "Beverly Hills Cop".

My San Fernando Valley spilled out into the Thousand Oaks area, which is actually the Conejo Valley, where my gf lived. It really was all the same to me - I moved easily between Santa Barbara and the 405, which was pretty much my cut-off. Angelinos tend to do that, they draw a line on a map, and beyond that "there be dragons" - they really don't pay attention. I knew my area the way a kid knows his neighborhood on a bike, but if I ventured beyond what I knew, I carried a Thomas Guide.

I've been back to the valley several times, and it really looks the same. As far as I can tell, most of it instantly appeared in the 1960s and '70s, and it's stayed that way. The air, by the way, is considerably cleaner than it was in the '80s. Don Henley wasn't just being poetic in his song "Sunset Grill" when he described the sky as auburn. It was.

Things didn't work out for me in the valley. I got a great job, but a couple years afterwards the department was shut down. I moped around the valley for a few months, then I moved back to Phoenix. It gets hot in Phoenix, but at least you can find a parking spot!
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