THE AURA OF A BRILLIANT CALIFORNIA LIFE IS GONE, DISAPPEARING IN THE CHAR

The slaughter of Pacific Palisades and other Los Angeles areas has made the world wonder about living there or even visiting, with raging wildfires bringing pause about the world’s entertainment hub

What we’ve lost extends far beyond the vicious devastation, a decay of more than 12,000 structures, a death total rising with every grotesque crunch through the debris. Our spiritual ruin involves the end of fantasia, perhaps a Disneyland word but probably not. Coming to California once involved an escape of the mind, a drug with or without the blow, a dinner beside a woman who could revive you or try to kill you.

Now, there is no free form.

The aura is gone.

Californication? Californever.

A mural of Jim Morrison, on a building where he slept on the roof, is down the ocean path from where I live. He died in Paris, and since then, Los Angeles has been missing. Call the police for an emergency and wait on hold for an hour. See a naked homeless person and watch him bother an Asian family on vacation. Sit all day on the freeway because the 405 is jammed with 26 lanes. So why wouldn’t Pacific Palisades, also near me, leave a noxious stench in the sky as a village of celebrities and high living crumbled to the ground?

The city wasn’t ready for wildfires that wiped out a gleaming gem of the Westside. Was a Palisades reservoir empty, for maintenance, when it could have held 117 million gallons of water? When fire hydrants had no water in a hillside neighborhood? “Deeply troubling,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said. “We need answers to how that happened.” How did it happen? The governor and the mayor, Karen Bass, aren’t worthy of professional work in America’s second-largest metropolis. Why would management officials send out an evacuation alert to 10 million residents — when it was a wicked error?

And why would anyone in our country, or another, view the images and want to visit L.A.? We aren’t above social crisis — see the 1992 riots, see O.J. Simpson, see Charles Manson — but the desecration of a prestigious community is not anyone’s slice of life. Many famous folks have lost homes, and if the list should be troubling, some might be giggling at the city’s movie-star arrogance. When tourists arrived, I’d instruct them to hang in Malibu or the Palisades. Never mind. Brentwood is dealing with smoke. Santa Monica has similar issues and other problems. Downtown is a mess. Calabasas and the Hidden Hills, home of the fleeing Kardashians, are fighting a fire. Pasadena is beside the finality of Altadena. Maybe Manhattan Beach, which is in the South Bay, nowhere near Los Angeles.

The Olympics arrive in 3 1/2 years. Bass went to France last summer and put on a nice outfit, but when she spoke, she seemed out of touch. Everyone wonders how the entertainment capital will match the spectacular opening ceremonies in Paris. Use the sea? Too much pollution. Use the mountains? Too many flames. A life here used to be consumed by joy and belief. These days, you go to Dodger Stadium to watch Shohei Ohtani and hope a gang member doesn’t wave a knife in the parking lot.

Living in the Palisades felt like a dream. JJ Redick broke down when he drove his wife, Chelsea, to the home they were renting. He wants to keep coaching the Lakers amid the tragedy, but will his emotions gut his poise? “I’m not sure I've wept or wailed like that in several years,” he said. “And she said to me, ‘I was very hesitant to move out here. I was very hesitant for you to go into coaching. I've never loved living somewhere more than I've loved Brooklyn, and I've never loved the community more than I love the community I've had in Brooklyn. And then, you know, it's like, we move out here and the Palisades community has really just been so good to us.’

“And ... I think that's the part for us that we're really struggling with is just the loss of community. And I recognize that people make up community, and we're going to rebuild and we want to help lead on that. But all the churches, the schools, the library, like it's all gone. The day we visited the house and decided we wanted to live in the house, we're like, let's go explore the village. And we stumbled upon the rec center and there was some summer rec league basketball games going on. One kid, Milo, was playing. I was like, ‘Oh, he's pretty good.’ He ended up being one of our neighbors; they lost their home. I mean, flag football, basketball, the playground, baseball, tennis. Like it's just … and everyone we knew was there every day.”

It’s gone.

Steve Kerr described the town as a godsend when asked a second time this week. He also doubts whether the Palisades will return from the terror. He grew up in a scenic home and never thought his mother would be evacuated. “It’s been tough. My family is fine, my mom is in good hands, but her house is gone. That’s my hometown, and all my friends who are from there, pretty much they’ve all lost their homes, their family homes, childhood homes,” said the Golden State Warriors coach. “Our whole high school is gone. The town looks like it’s just been completely wiped out. It’s hard to even fathom how Pacific Palisades rebuilds and how it becomes a thriving community again.

“It’s just shocking. I was just there two weeks ago for dinner, the night before our game. We celebrated my mom’s 90th birthday there this past summer. We had 100 guests up on that hillside and a beautiful night, great memories. It’s an idyllic place, a beautiful town, sunsets every night, just amazing memories. My dad taught at UCLA and so that drive from Pacific Palisades down Sunset Boulevard, to the campus is one I’ve made a million times. So many great memories and then to see the images of Sunset Boulevard and the Palisades is just shocking. It looks apocalyptic and devastating.”

It’s gone.

The Pacific Coast Highway is a war scene from a movie. Houses are blasted in ways Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, whose mansions were saved, couldn’t imagine. How many arsonists were in play? Will the crisis expose Donald Trump, whose attacks on Newsom are brutal? The scene is so sickly, I have a difficult time writing. How will anyone bring back the Palisades? Who would live there with more fire threats?

“For our family, we're as committed as ever to Los Angeles," Redick said. “We recognize, like it's not just our community that has been impacted by this. There's people in Malibu, there's people in Brentwood, there's people up in the Valley, there's people in Pasadena … it's all over L.A. And if there's anything we can do to help and lead, we will. And we recognize that it's going to be a long process. This has impacted so many people. I don't want people to feel sorry for me and my family. We're gonna be all right. We're gonna be all right. There's people that, um, you know, because of some political issues and some insurance issues are not going to be all right. And we're going to do everything we can to help anybody who's down and out because of this.”

Not long after he spoke, another mandatory evacuation order was issued. It expands to the 405 Freeway West and the Getty Center. What’s next?

The Hollywood sign did not burn down.

But Hollywood did.

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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.