[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 128 (Saturday, August 4, 2007)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1761-E1762]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    A TRIBUTE TO THE LATE JOEL BLOOM

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. LUCILLE ROYBAL-ALLARD

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, August 3, 2007

  Ms. ROYBAL-ALLARD. Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize the late 
Joel Bloom, a beloved community leader, activist and business owner in 
my district, who passed away recentry after a long battle with cancer.
  At a memorial service last month held in front of Joel's business, 
Bloom's General Store in the Arts District, more than 200 admirers, 
family members and friends gathered to celebrate his remarkable life. 
It was a happy occasion, just as Joel would have wanted.
  On a personal level, I am extremely grateful to Joel for his 
unwavering advocacy on behalf of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan 
Transportation Authority's (MTA) Edward R. Roybal Metro Gold Line 
Eastside Extension. Joel knew that the Gold Line light-rail extension 
linking Union Station to destinations that included the Arts District 
and East Los Angeles would play a critical role in the economic 
development of much-neglected communities. At many MTA meetings when 
the extension was discussed, I could always count on Joel to represent 
the transportation needs of Arts District residents with passion and 
zeal. It saddens me that Joel will not be with us to ride the trains 
when rail service begins in late 2009 that he fervently believed would 
spur economic development similar to what occurred in his Chicago 
birthplace.
  Madam Speaker, in honor of Joel's life and many accomplishments, I 
would like to submit for the record his obituary that appeared in the 
Los Angeles Times on July 14. It captures the many facets of a man who 
will be greatly missed by all who knew and loved him.

              [From the Los Angeles Times, July 14, 2007]

              Joel Bloom, 59; L.A. Arts District Activist

                         (By Valerie J. Nelson)

       Joel Bloom, a pioneering community activist who helped 
     shape the downtown Los Angeles arts district and was its 
     unofficial mayor, with his shoebox-sized general store 
     serving as the area's town hall, has died. He was 59.
       Bloom, who also was a playwright and actor, died of soft-
     tissue sarcoma Friday at the West Los Angeles VA Medical 
     Center, said his son, Randy. Bloom had fought cancer since 
     2000.
       ``He gave the arts district its personality, and he was 
     unabashed in his great love for it,'' said Councilwoman Jan 
     Perry, who represents the area sandwiched between Little 
     Tokyo and the banks of the Los Angeles River. ``Joel was 
     charismatic and ruled the roost over there for many, many 
     years.''
       In late June, the city gave him an honor rarely accorded a 
     living Angeleno--a sign was posted at East Third Street and 
     Traction Avenue that declared the area ``Joel Bloom Square.''
       The humble Bloom's General Store, founded in 1994 to give 
     the growing community a place to pick up toothpaste or rent a 
     video, stands nearby.
       ``There's a spark here--hopefully we can light it,'' Bloom 
     told The Times in 1994 before opening the store in the 
     industrial corridor.
       The downtown arts district began in the late 1970s as a 
     haven for artists who worked in the lofts and often illegally 
     lived in them.

[[Page E1762]]

       By the time Bloom moved there in 1986, the city had 
     legalized the live-work spaces, and hundreds of artists had 
     flocked to the area then known as the warehouse or lofts 
     district.
       ``I get a feeling here I haven't gotten anywhere else. It 
     may look desolate, but it's not. There's no place I'd rather 
     be,'' Bloom said in the 1994 article.
       A City Council resolution passed earlier this month 
     recognized Bloom's community activism, which encompassed 
     fighting to bring light-rail projects to downtown 
     neighborhoods, advocating for affordable housing, organizing 
     a well-regarded neighborhood watch program and leading 
     downtown neighborhood councils.
       The resolution also saluted him as a lifelong baseball fan 
     and as a member of the Second City improv group ``who raised 
     the term `grumpiness' to an art form.''
       Offstage, he was seen as equally cantankerous.
       ``He was a very gruff old man,'' said Edward Walker, a 
     longtime friend who works at Bloom's store. ``He could yell 
     at you one moment, but the next he would be your friend. 
     Still, if you needed something, he would be the first one 
     there.''
       Bloom reveled in being a character, friends said, and in 
     creating them.
       In 1987, Bloom wrote and staged a production in a downtown 
     parking lot that spoofed drive-in movies. Patrons were handed 
     2-D glasses--the wearer could see out of the left lens but 
     not the right--and watched ``Mayhem at the Mayfield Mall,'' a 
     parody of sci-fi movies.
       When the play was restaged in 1998, The Times reported, the 
     Drive-In Drama lot on Imperial Street was thought to be the 
     only venue where live theater could be enjoyed from the 
     comfort of an automobile. Audience members honked to signal 
     laughs or boos, and the national media tweaked L.A. for 
     redefining ``car culture.''
       A Bloom musical, ``Showdown at Sonoratown: The Lady Who 
     Stole Hollywood,'' satirized Los Angeles history when the 
     play was performed in 1990 on Hewitt Street at Al's Bar, 
     which turned into Al's National Theater on slow nights.
       As an actor, Bloom appeared in plays such as ``The Juke Box 
     Never Plays the Songs You Want to Hear,'' a takeoff on ``A 
     Midsummer Night's Dream'' in which the audience sat on stage 
     and the action unfolded on the floor of Al's, said TK Nagano, 
     Bloom's bookkeeper and friend.
       Away from the stage, Bloom burnished his reputation as 
     ``the godfather'' of the community of 1,500 by helping to 
     spearhead a campaign that resulted in the city officially 
     designating it in the 1990s as the arts district, Walker 
     said.
       Bloom also led the successful fight to keep the Los Angeles 
     Unified School District from building a distribution 
     warehouse in the neighborhood. In 2000, the Southern 
     California Institute of Architecture moved into the area 
     instead.
       ``Without Joel, we wouldn't have an arts district in its 
     present form,'' Walker said. ``It's kind of a Mayberry filled 
     with bohemian artists. Everyone knows everybody, and everyone 
     knows Joel.''
       The second of three children, Joel Alan Bloom was born May 
     30, 1948, in Chicago. His father worked for a paper company.
       In 1969, he graduated from Pasadena Playhouse's school of 
     theater arts.
       During the Vietnam War, Bloom served in the Air Force, 
     documenting the soldiers' daily life on film and from the 
     air.
       After leaving the service in 1974, he earned a degree in 
     psychology from the University of Illinois, then joined 
     Second City as a stage manager in Chicago.
       In the late 1970s, he moved to Los Angeles along with 
     Second City comedian George Wendt, with whom he roomed in 
     Chicago.
       Bloom bartended at Al's, joined Shakespeare Festival/LA as 
     stage manager and put down roots in what would become the 
     arts district.
       ``We've always been dismissed as that industrial area east 
     of downtown,'' Bloom told The Times in 1997. ``Well, we're 
     more than that. There's a heart here. And a soul.''
       The corner of Traction Avenue and Hewitt Street came to be 
     known as the heart of the community, the site of a scruffy 
     general store where Bloom was known to greet customers by 
     bellowing, ``Whaddaya want?''
       Bloom had been divorced since 1977. In addition to his son, 
     Randy, of Azusa, he is survived by a brother, Michael; a 
     sister, Lynn; and two grandchildren.

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