GOODER AND HARDER, LA: Post walks LA’s once-iconic Van Nuys Blvd. for a week – here’s disturbing scene we found.
The historic LA street that was once the iconic epicenter of Valley youth culture is now nothing more than a boulevard of broken dreams — featuring drug-riddled homeless encampments and boarded-up stores.
Van Nuys Boulevard — where teens used to famously cruise through the middle of San Fernando Valley, showing off their hot rods and gathering at hamburger stands — has become home to hordes of out-of-control druggies and threatening vagrants who leave behind so much garbage that local workers have to use leaf blowers to disperse it.
One of the few businesses still operating in the now-decrepit area was even forced to move its customer entrance — because the bums’ camps blocked the original one.
“It’s so sad, so sad. We are in California, the best state in the United States, right?” said George Barak, who is originally from Syria and was working his second day as a cashier at the 99-cent store when he talked to the California Post.
Aziz Saxenian, a Los Angeles native and dental assistant who works at another local company struggling against the troubling tide in the onetime beloved quirky heart of the Valley, said, “They settle in front of our businesses.
“Customers say, ‘Oh, can’t you get rid of them?’ ”
The Post walked a stretch of the dilapidated boulevard between Sherman Way and Victory Boulevard on a recent morning and found a wasteland of crack pipes, needles and empty bottles of whiskey in front of makeshift tents.
As they’re driving through the sun-bleached streets of L.A. at Christmastime, Annie Hall says to Alvy Singer, “God, it’s so clean out here,” to which Alvy jokes, “It’s that they don’t throw their garbage away. They make it into television shows.” But then, Annie Hall was made a half a century ago. A very different L.A. isn’t exactly a beacon for tourists these days:
This is honestly kind of just sad
A travel influencer from the UK came to Los Angeles for the first time excited because she says everyone in the UK wants to visit Hollywood
She was completely let down, couldn’t believe what she saw and now warns everyone thinking of going to… pic.twitter.com/VQBLa3v6ca
— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) August 9, 2026
Fortunately, the DSA are on the scene to really beef up LA’s law enforcement:
Oh my God.
Watch this interview with Dr. Frances Gill of the Democratic Socialists of America's national political committee.
I'm sorry.
But putting these people in charge of the Democratic Party will usher in a century of fascist rule. pic.twitter.com/yGyip30UHP
— Joshua Reed Eakle 🗽 (@JoshEakle) August 10, 2026