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Originally Posted by LAsam
That's the unfortunate reality that we are dealing with. When you have unhoused individuals with mental illness and drug addiction issues roaming throughout the city in the quantities that we have, it's really just a roll of the dice as to what can happen. This happened just last week: https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/11/us/ki...ial/index.html. It's a real problem because if people don't perceive an area to be safe, they will avoid it. My understanding is that's what ultimately hurt Westwood Village at at some point prior to when I moved to LA.
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I think there's more to Westwood Village's "decline" as a hip place to be; it can be attributed to more than just one thing. It was *THE* spot to hang out in/go to on weekends in LA during the 1980s. There were the movie theaters, boutiques, restaurants, bookshops, Tower Records had a location there, it was a total hangout for teens and twenty-somethings, and of course the UCLA campus provided that college student demographic. Ultimately, people in LA are fickle when it comes to places to hang out at---Westwood Village just became "passé." Right around 1989 or 1990, Santa Monica took what had been a run-down pedestrianized 3rd Street from the 1960s, changed the landscaping and paving, and then rebranded it as the "Third Street Promenade." And then from that point on, "The Promenade" or "Third Street" started becoming more of the hangout place, and Westwood crowds started to diminish. Parking was easier at Third Street Promenade too compared to trying to find parking in Westwood, so that contributed to Westwood starting to become less popular. And then the news media played up the killing of Karen Toshima in Westwood, which happened in 1992 or something, who was a 20-something woman out having fun with friends but got caught in the crossfire of a gang shooting. An unfortunate and sad incident for sure. But people generally point to that incident as the "death" of Westwood as a hangout, but I think it had already started to decline before that.
Edit: Hehe reminiscing about the Westwood Village of my teen years during the 1980s, I'm remembering that there was even a nightclub there called Dillon's, and there was even a Bullock's department store. Back in the 80s on Friday nights, they'd even close down some of the streets in the village, and it'd all be people walking everywhere. They even had pedi-cabs.
And they had bookstores. I think these student-oriented businesses started going away when UCLA expanded its Student Union/bookstore. It's like why would a UCLA student living on campus go into Westwood Village when you can just go to the Student Union?