Take a Walk to Charles Bukowski’s Childhood Home
We love walking the neighborhood in the evenings after dinner as the sun’s setting, and we’ve been taking more walks lately to escape the trapped heat in our west-facing apartment. Just south of where our neighborhood in Mid City, there is a row of motels on Washington Boulevard that seem like they’ve been there a long time. We’ve lived in this neighborhood for a few years now. We’ve taken countless night walks. But only recently did we start wondering about those motels.
Like pretty much everywhere in Los Angeles, you can bet your neighborhood has some rich history. Curious about those motels on Washington Boulevard, we did a quick Google search to see what we can find out. Our internet search didn’t exactly deliver what we were looking for, but there was one bit of Mid City history that piqued our interest.
We learned that we are a seven-minute walk from the childhood home of Charles Bukowski.
Bukowski’s Los Angeles
For those not familiar with Charles Bukowski, he was an infamous American author and poet known for his raw, gritty, and usually autobiographical writing style, and his books and poetry often explored the darker aspects of urban life, alcoholism, and the general struggles of the working class.
Born in Germany, Charles and the Bukowski family moved to California when Charles was a kid, and the family landed in Los Angeles. Charles spent most of his life in Los Angeles and lived in East Hollywood when he started publishing books later in his life. While he had been publishing poetry and short fiction all along, he did not publish his first novel, Post Office, until 1971 when he was 50 years old.
If you’ve read any of his books, then you might remember him referencing some of his favorite Los Angeles haunts like Hollywood Park Racetrack (now where SoFi Stadium is located), Downtown’s Central Library, the Pink Elephant liquor store, King Eddy’s, Musso & Frank, Phillipe’s Famous French Dip, The Normandie Club, and The Frolic Room.
Our Walk to Bukowski’s Childhood Home
As we headed down Washington, we reflected on what we remembered about Charles Bukowski. His books and writings are mostly autobiographical, and Ham On Rye might be the book that opens the door the widest in terms of revealing the trauma he encountered during his early years.
We crossed La Brea and tried to imagine what life would have been like back in the 1930s and 1940s in this part of town. Just east of La Brea are more motels. We couldn’t help but wonder how long these have been there and what purpose all of these motels served. There’s one motel in particular that sort of looks like a school. We decided we need to take a deeper dive into the motels, but that’s for another day.
We turned down Longwood and the noise from the 10 echoed up the hill. There are some super charming homes tucked away in this part of town, and with the freeway there, it feels more private because there’s no thru traffic. This would have looked a lot different back in Bukowski’s childhood days, but the road and the hill and many of the homes look like they have endured nicely.
Seven minutes later, we arrived. The home looks like so many houses in and around Los Angeles. A Spanish Colonial single-family, three-bedroom single-level home with a big front window facing the street and a driveway down one side that leads all the way to the back of the house. It looked very well maintained, and the yard was nicely kept too. When it comes down to it, we would love to live in a house like this one day.
One thing that stood out to us was that the owners placed one of those quaint “Little Free Libraries” in the front by the sidewalk. We peeked in to see if there were any Charles Bukowski books. There were not, at least not on this day.
Do you have a favorite Charles Buckoski haunt in Los Angeles? We’d love to hear from you! Send us a message and keep an eye on the blog for more great things to do in Los Angeles.
