The NoHo Gateway Is Here
Last year, Jason showed us a sneak preview of the recently commissioned North Hollywood Gateway. Well, on July 9th the installation was unveiled. I’d forgotten about this and was driving along Lankershim a few days later and was taken by surprise. And then I drove around the block to get another look.
The Gateway to NoHo by Peter Shire (Photo by Jodi)
From the NoHo Arts District website:
As part of our mission to revitalize the communities we work in, the CRA/LA works to include arts and culture in our redevelopment plans. The NoHo Gateway has been created to span Lankershim Boulevard and welcome visitors to the arts district. The Gateway will complement other public improvements and visually enhance the overall street character by focusing on NoHo’s unique identity as a destination where people can experience all art forms.
The NoHo gateway is promoted as being illuminated at night, so I went back to snap a photo after dark.
NoHo Gateway at Night (Photo by Jodi)
Personally, I think the gateway is really ugly. Maybe if it wasn’t so fluorescent yellow, or whatever that color is, it wouldn’t be so bad. My bashing will end there though. I’m sure the comments will turn into another series of insults to the NoHo Arts District and how lame it is. Admittedly, it has a long way to go, but it still has a lot of potential. Already, I enjoy walking to many of the theaters and restaurants and like having the Red Line so close. While the CRA/LA is behind schedule, it continues to move forward and the area will hopefully no longer be a laughing stock one of these days.
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Fugly.
The thing that strikes me as unfortunate is that they put so many film images in it. Um…I thought NoHo was mainly live theaters and galleries? And Hollywood was about the film industry? I guess I was wrong. But Jodi, you’re right. It’s ugly.
For a welcoming gateway, it screams STAY OUT
Was this thing sponsored by Disney? I see the mouse all over this thing.
Oh, and did anyone else notice the mouse ears in the design? Thought that was Burbank.
Burns, get OUT of my brain. :-)
Looks like it belongs in a Starbucks.
Hidden Mickey’s everywhere. Oh the humanity
Is it just me, or do all of those circles look like mouse ears?
I think this thing does a complete disservice to NoHo. It looks temporary. It looks dated. It looks like a couple of welders got drunk and decided to be funny.
The joke is on us, because we paid for it.
Apparently, the thing is "decorated it with characters who work behind the scenes in the movie and television industry." Yep, Mickey Mouse. I was going to comment on that, but didn’t. It’s so obvious. And hideous.
And what’s with the houses on either side on top of the poles? An homage to Wizard of Oz?? Oh, this thing is all kinds of hideous, the more I look at it.
This is terrible, but it is an accurate representation of art nowadays. Cheap looking, bunch of abstract shapes, no consideration on how it will withstand the test of time. This is why public opinion is necessary on things like this before they happen.
Uh, wow. I’ll never disparage the big brown arc over Wilshire near the Santa Monica/LA border again.
Frightening as it is, think about how many more uses that money could have been diverted too and save us the abomination.
That is, indeed, horrible. Someone should investigate anyone who approved this and the expense it required and FIRE THEM IMMEDIATELY.
It’s hideous.
And crooked.
And when you approach it from the north heading south, "NoHo" is backwards.
I take the long way around up Vineland now just so I can avoid going under it… that’s how much I hate it. Why did Peter Shire come and take a big neon dookie on North Hollywood?
This reminds me of all the metal signage and light poles around Culver City, especially on Washington Blvd. I don’t care for either.
At least the ones in Culver City were probably installed closer to a time when that style of design might have been more current.
I usually avoid that whole stretch of Lankershim due to the killer intersection, but now I will have another reason to avoid it!
Yes, this thing is rather garish and awkward looking. Why is it that public art often seems aimed at the lowest common denominator? You’d think everyone in Noho was 8 years old by looking at this. And how was this design selected? I can’t imagine the design submission and selection process was open to very many artists. Too bad.
However, there is a solution!
Plant some vines around the base of the two supporting poles and within the structure. Then the vines will grow all over this monstrosity and make it into something pleasant. And replace that cheap looking "NoHo" with some more dignified type, that maybe even says the whole North Hollywood.
A tribute to behind-the-scenes workers in the film industry? Should have hired someone who knows how to light things. The night-time lighting is completely awful. You can hardly make out anything but the electric yellow-green superstructure – the lighting conceals more than it reveals, and glares in the eyes of the drivers below.
This really hideous.
NoHo’s 30-year-long redevelopment effort is just reaching its tipping point, starting to become something interesting, and it has great potential if the rest of the project ever gets finished. But this is a blight, a joke, an embarrassment – a sad waste of taxpayer dollars.
It looks like it belongs in a food court somewhere. So sad.
Jeez. I wish someone had an opinion on this thing.
If you want to see some other crap Peter Shire "designed," do a google image search. It’s the part of the ’80s that no one wants to bring back.
[...] Gateway is up, it’s lit, and it already has its fair share of detractors. Metblogs’ own Jodi gave her review just a few days [...]
I’ve lived here my entire life and I know the neighborhood, good and bad. It really is a neighborhood where you get to know everyone. That’s what makes it special, we got good peeps and some wackos thrown in the mix for fun. I, personally, take offense to the gateway for the aesthetic reasons stated above and on every other blog out there, but also because the artist really has no idea what our ‘hood is all about. We have about two dozen theaters here and I, along with all my actor friends, want to know where that is represented! OK, to be fair, it may be hard to have all the arts represented so why didn’t he go for something classic and simple? You all are right on, it is totally dated but it is also just a vomiting of the "artist’s" other pieces. So guys, what is our community supposed to do? Write blog entries and replies until we’re blue in the face?