From the Stacks – 'Portraits of Crime' (1977)

Two years after writing about  LAPD Det. Ector Garcia, I finally located a copy of his book, “Portraits of Crime,” which arrived in the mail from the U.K. while I was on vacation. No one will ever mistake this book for great literature. The editing is weak (as in “Leo” LaBianca) but the rough, raw writing gives “Portraits” a freshness and immediacy that might be missing in a more polished work. Written by LAPD artist Garcia (d. 1987) and Charles E. Pike, “Portraits” consists of composite sketches and brief summaries of  29 cases from the 1950s to the 1970s. Aside from the Tate-LaBianca and Son of Sam murders, most of the subjects are obscure killings, kidnappings and rapes that could easily be the raw material for several seasons of TV crime shows.

Chicken Boy

Photograph by Bruce Cox/Los Angeles Times

Feb. 5, 1970: Behold the wonder of Chicken Boy on the roof of a restaurant on Broadway near 5th Street in downtown Los Angeles. In 1977, Art Seidenbaum looked at oversized signs as part of Los Angeles’ vernacular architecture, which he called “litertecture” as in “literal architecture.”  Chicken Boy’s oversized playmates included a turbaned swordsman over Ali Baba’s Restaurant on Sunset Boulevard, the Carpeteria Giant, the supersized mechanic for Hal’s Tires in West Hollywood and the Colossus of Hickory Burger.  There are several more plastic giants to be found in Los Angeles, according to a website that tracks them.