I'm glad that a handful of people also reviewed this Los Angeles intersection that is both…read moreenigmatic and vapid so I feel less weird for writing about it. Los Angeles as a whole has so much to see and analyze, and this intersection is yet another thing to pick apart.
As a kid, I would be sitting in the car while my parents drove across the intersection of Pico and Sepulveda many times. I didn't think anything of it. The only thing that came to mind was that Anawalt's Lumber was on this corner, and I'm glad to report that it still is, and that a Norm's coffee shop, the one at which I've eaten the most, was a few blocks east of here. Sadly, that Norm's has closed.
Upon learning of the comical song featured by radio personality Doctor Demento, going anywhere near this intersection then brought on uproarious laughter. Whoever penned this song was almost a genius in that they made a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
This intersection has recently gotten a lot of life injected into it. While Anawalt's Lumber is still there and the other two corners have small strip malls, the southwest corner now has a newer office building. Growing up, one almost forgets that Exposition Boulevard runs almost parallel to Pico and, at Pico and Sepulveda, it's but a short block south. This proved to be important because that dormant railroad track in the middle of once sleepy Exposition, with its small stucco ranch homes, is now the path that the Metro Expo line travels on from Downtown L.A. to Santa Monica. It goes over Sepulveda using a flyover, the station is elevated and provides good views of the West Side, and there is yet another massive cookie cutter "transit oriented development" type apartment complex next to it. Similar to the ones near the reborn parts of Culver City on this same line, one can only wonder who lives in these complexes and what they do. I don't want to think that most of the residents have a geeky high paying tech job and have an Uber Eats person bring them their food.
Also, being just one block south of Pico and Sepulveda, the Metro station has turned this area into a hub. There is now a large Metro parking garage nearby. Metro (L.A.) buses and those belonging to other systems, such as Culver City, now ply Sepulveda and end up at the base of the UCLA campus. On the Culver City system, which has a stop at this quirky corner, one can travel all the way to and from LAX for $1.
Even though the song was just good fun when released, the area around Pico and Sepulveda mostly continued to be taken for granted. It just sort of sat there between Westwood, Century City, and Santa Monica. While tidy, the housing stock consisted of ordinary stucco ranch homes like the ones seen all over the West Side and dingbat and Jetsonian apartment complexes built from the post-war era through the seventies. However, this more "vanilla" area around this intersection has gone from being taken for granted to being coveted. A large percentage of the houses have been extensively updated, with some featuring a "pop top," and, if not extensively updated, they look freshened up. The prices of any nearby homes are astronomical and the prices of rentals are also very high. This intersection is too close to many key areas to have been ignored much longer ... and I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner. After all, Sepulveda is probably Los Angeles's most important north-south thoroughfare, paralleling the San Diego Freeway from the "way cool" South Bay all the way to the top end of the San Fernando Valley where the city ends.
The song "Pico and Sepulveda" manages to be irritating, yet, because it's so goofy and absurd, it easily earns people's forgiveness. Its refrain will undoubtedly be stuck in your head for quite a while. I can only think of one other song that does the same via its refrain ("la da dee - la da da"), and that would be Crystal Waters's 1991 dance hit "Gypsy Woman," but that one had and has fleeting landmark status.
The intersection of Pico and Sepulveda easily gets 4 stars for being close to key areas of Los Angeles, for being in a fairly nice area with interesting stores and options, for being close enough to enjoy the breezes of the Pacific, and for making people laugh, or, at the very least, chuckle.
