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Posted Sep 22, 2013, 4:48 AM
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Registered User
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Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 6,704
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Quote:
Originally Posted by StethJeff
By the way, I'm not sure that progress can go any slower on Clifton's. Staring at it for a few minutes today, can't say I see anything different from several months back.
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that's disappointing, but I would guess that as with the clark hotel, various businesses in dt are having to walk a fine line between meeting deadlines, paying off contractors & staffers, and balancing loans from banks or other funders. I get antsy when I think of what smaller businesses like Figaro north of clifton's or other newer, equally ambitious restaurants in dt must be having to juggle right now.
My impatience at the pace of change of projs like cliftons would be offset somewhat if I knew I'd live as long as the couple in this story I just read in the paper. Plus the recent posts about forumers moving to more convenient locations, esp to dtla, & relying more upon transit, less upon the car, & the old couple's talk about doing those exact same things made me smile.
Quote:
Morrie Markoff, 99, and his wife,
Betty, 97, will celebrate their 75th
wedding anniversary in November.
(Gary Friedman/Los Angeles Times)
I got an email from Morrie Markoff suggesting we "hang around" together, seeing as how we'd both flatlined and lived to tell the story. All right, I thought. If this guy was firing off pithy emails at his age, I wanted to meet him. Morrie suggested we have breakfast at the "Water and Power cafeteria."
The what? Morrie explained that it was the LADWP employee cafeteria, just up the street from Morrie's Bunker Hill condo, where he lives with his bride, Betty. On Nov. 4, they will celebrate their 75th wedding anniversary. On Jan. 11, Morrie will turn 100.
"I hope he makes it," said Betty, 97, who met Morrie in New York when FDR was president. "Being old hasn't been bad," said Betty. "The hardest part is when you see your kids becoming senior citizens. That's really odd."
The Markoffs lived comfortably in the lefty environs of Echo Park and Silver Lake for decades, raising a daughter (Judy), who ran the old Gorky's restaurant, and a son (Steve), who hit it big in precious metals and coins. Morrie ran an appliance shop on Melrose Avenue but always had a million and one interests, including history, photography and sculpting.
The move from Silver Lake to Bunker Hill was a trial for Morrie and Betty, who weren't in the market for major upheaval. Morrie is an incurable tinkerer who always had a project going in his workshop, and he was grumpy at the thought of dismantling it. But his driving wasn't so good, and the house was too much to manage. So they sold, bought a condo in the same building as their daughter and 80-year-old son-in-law and got a surprise.
"I think this new downtown L.A. is really, really, wonderful," said Betty, whose one regret is that physical limitations keep them from exploring as much as they'd like to. But they've done a lot of people-watching in Grand Park, and they can almost hear the music from Disney Hall on their back patio, with its impressive skyline view. Then there's the elevated pedestrian bridge that takes them from their condo to the area around the main library, by way of the Bonaventure Hotel elevators, without their having to walk any hills.
Betty misses the convenience of knocking out three errands in an hour by car. On Wednesday, they left the house at 9, ran errands by bus and didn't get back until 4 p.m. "But there are lots of people on those buses, and my wife and I talk to anybody and everybody," said Morrie.
On one bus ride they met Tracy Huston, owner of the Red Pipe Gallery in Chinatown. "We became friends," said Huston, who told me the Markoffs have visited her gallery, and she's got big plans for Morrie's 100th. Red Pipe is going to host a birthday bash and show Morrie's work.
These Markoffs, they're such urban hipsters.
On the way back home, Betty told me she likes sitting outside the nearby Colburn School cafeteria and watching shadows fall across the patio. And she insisted we stop at just the right spot near the DWP pond to catch dappled sunlight turning a bronze sculpture into a golden sail.
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^ I'm grateful that I've lived long enough to see the revival of dt & would think that goes triple for a couple nearing their 75th wedding anniversary. Or for ppl to witness what in some ways is the emergence of the hood for the first time in LA's history. The first time cuz there now are a variety of nice places for ppl to live in dtla...which wasn't true in the past when the hood was mainly a few hotels, rooming houses & some old apt bldgs for struggling pensioners.
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Subway does all the rest once i'm in the city center 
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