Gold's Gym has become synonymous with the Hollywood dream. Set just a few hundred yards from the ocean in sun-kissed Venice Beach, Los Angeles, Gold's was the backdrop for "Pumping Iron," the 1977 documentary which followed a young unknown Austrian bodybuilder named Arnold Schwarzenegger as he prepared for the Mr. Universe contest...
Yet today Gold's sits amid post-apocalyptic scenes which have consumed much of LA, turning the City of Dreams into an urban nightmare from which people are fleeing in droves. A makeshift tent city made up of flapping tarpaulins and cardboard boxes surrounds the gym on all sides.
Junkies and the homeless, many of whom are clearly mentally ill, walk the palm-lined streets like zombies--all just three blocks from multi-million dollar homes. Stolen bicycles are piled high on pavements littered with broken syringes.
TV bulletins are filled with horror stories from across the city; of women being attacked during their morning job or residents returning home to find strangers defecating in their front gardens.
Today, Los Angels is a city on the brink. "For Sale" signs are seemingly dotted on every suburban street as the middle classes, particularly those with families, flee for the safer suburbs, with many leaving LA altogether...
Caroline Graham, "Hollywood's Apocalypse Now," Daily Mail. com, August 15, 2020
Yet today Gold's sits amid post-apocalyptic scenes which have consumed much of LA, turning the City of Dreams into an urban nightmare from which people are fleeing in droves. A makeshift tent city made up of flapping tarpaulins and cardboard boxes surrounds the gym on all sides.
Junkies and the homeless, many of whom are clearly mentally ill, walk the palm-lined streets like zombies--all just three blocks from multi-million dollar homes. Stolen bicycles are piled high on pavements littered with broken syringes.
TV bulletins are filled with horror stories from across the city; of women being attacked during their morning job or residents returning home to find strangers defecating in their front gardens.
Today, Los Angels is a city on the brink. "For Sale" signs are seemingly dotted on every suburban street as the middle classes, particularly those with families, flee for the safer suburbs, with many leaving LA altogether...
Caroline Graham, "Hollywood's Apocalypse Now," Daily Mail. com, August 15, 2020
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