Alan Fahey started building his home 20,000 square foot home thirty years ago in Acton, California, a ramshackle community that sits on the sandy fringe of Los Angeles County. He calls it “Phonehenge” because it’s built atop pilings made of telephone poles.
Unfortunately, the county is now demanding that Fahey tear down the home or face up to seven years in jail.
Yahoo News has the story:
A jury began hearing the county’s case against Fahey last week: He is charged with 14 criminal misdemeanor counts, including unlawful use of land. L.A. County deputy District Attorney David Campbell told the paper that Fahey repeatedly ignored city officials’ warnings that he was violating multiple municipal building safety and fire codes and thinks he is above the law.
“He has set up his own arrogant interpretation of the law,” Campbell told the paper.
Fahey’s lawyer Jerry Lennon says county officials were negligent in enforcing their own rules, leaving his client alone for two decades before deciding to crack down.
“This is an exceptional place,” an L.A.-area advocate for code reform, David Lewis, told the L.A. Times. “Most of the properties that are involved in code enforcement actions are not visually striking. It’s something the public can look at. It’s something special that shouldn’t be demolished.”
On the other hand, the city of Los Angeles honors an equally unpermitted and inelegant series of structures known as the Watts Towers. Here’s how Wikipedia describes them:
The Watts Towers … is a collection of 17 interconnected structures, two of which reach heights of over 99 feet (30 m). The Towers were built by Italian immigrant construction worker Sabato (“Sam” or “Simon”) Rodia in his spare time over a period of 33 years, from 1921 to 1954. The work is an example of non-traditional vernacular architecture and American Naïve art…
The sculptures’ armatures are constructed from steel pipes and rods, wrapped with wire mesh and coated with mortar. The main supports are embedded with pieces of porcelain, tile, and glass. They are decorated with found objects, including bed frames, bottles, ceramic tiles, scrap metal and sea shells. Rodia called the towers Nuestro Pueblo (which means “our town” in Spanish). He built them with no special equipment or predetermined design, working alone with hand tools and window-washer’s equipment. Neighborhood children brought pieces of broken glass and pottery to Rodia, some of which were added, but the majority of his material consisted of damaged pieces from the Malibu Pottery or CALCO (California Clay Products Company), located nearby. Green glass includes recognizable soft drink bottles from the 1930s through 1950s, some still bearing the former logos of 7 Up, Squirt, Bubble Up, and Canada Dry; blue glass appears to be from milk of magnesia bottles.
In other words, the Watts Towers are giant piles of junk, yet they were declared a National Historical Landmark in 1990. Perhaps Los Angeles County should follow the example of Los Angeles City and, instead of prosecuting Fahey, support a similar designation for Phonehenge.
As our reader Kimmy Queen said, “You decide: Should the government enforce safety measures or is the government out of control because it chooses to enforce NOW after 20 or 30 years of doing nothing? Hands up if you believe that they will throw the tax code book at him if he turns it in a museum and asks for donations.”
H/T: Kimmy Queen
Source: Yahoo News, Wikipedia
