Notes from Boom Town, USA.

This is Culver City. From way back in the past. Way before my birth, 44 years ago.

It was dumpy. It was frumpy. It was the butt of many a joke. Sort of like the Burbank by the Sea, a reference only Johnny Carson aficionados will appreciate.

Apart from the movie stars who would come to work at the old MGM Studios (now Sony) no one would willingly come to Culver City. Now it seems no one will go away.

If you're driving east through Culver City anytime from 5PM to 7PM, the 3.1 mile journey can take you well past an hour. With any luck you'll spot me walking my dog Lucy while she hunts and pecks for just the perfect place to dump her second load of the day.

The picture above, by the look of the cars, taken in the late 1950's, faces west towards the ocean. If you were to flip it, you'd see the new construction going on in every formerly quaint corner of our once fair city.

Amazon carved up the old Culver Studios (home to many a Three Stooges and Little Rascals short) and is installing a monstrously big building. I have no idea what will go on in there though I'd imagine it's going to be a huge warehouse.

You can't be the world's top seller of crap without having a place to store all those tampons, BBQ briquets, volleyballs and unsold copies of my book Mr. Siegel Writes to Washington.

Just down Washington Blvd., you'll also find a new sprawling Apple complex. Again, I don't know what they'll be doing there, perhaps working on the newest update of AirPods that will be inserted in your nostrils. Who knows?

The Tech Train has a few more stops.

Within two miles, though not technically Culver City, you'll also find Yahoo, IMAX and Google. Bringing with them busloads of bearded, tatted, ear gauged hipsters and all their disposable income and their annoying affinity for artisanal foodstuffs.

Color me thrilled.

Because one day, one of these code-writing Javascript manipulating couples will decide it's time to settle down, upgrade their lives and produce an extension package.

And when that day comes they will be looking for a house and willing to pay my wife and I ten times (maybe more) what we paid for the joint when we moved here in 1993, to once what was dumpy, frumpy Culver City.