The Better of Bob Pool: An L.A. storytelling unique

It’s a dangerous proposition to create a “better of listing” for Bob Pool tales in the Los Angeles Occasions.

Not solely are there too many to select from — greater than 4,000 — however there are few shortcuts for locating the true gems. That’s as a result of Pool hated writing for Web page 1. He favored financial system over size. And the headlines hardly ever did justice to tales he might weave means inside the previous Occasions Valley Version, say, on a web page subsequent to GE fridge advertisements.

Readers might chuckle at one story Pool wrote for contained in the Metro part in 1984, then discover that was certainly one of three bylines he had on the web page and that the true winner was on the backside. On this case, the story of a Canoga Park home-owner named Jeanette Kohane, whose discovery of chocolate cake smeared on her residence (she assumed it was vandalism) led police to a hoop that was stealing meals from the native college’s cafeteria.

Pool, who died Sunday, was a legend in The Occasions newsroom for 3 a long time. Most of that point, he didn’t have an outlined task. His beat was “the Bob Pool story,” an ideal slice of the Los Angeles human situation that many days made studying a newspaper chronicling wars, sleazy politicians, financial misery and surroundings degradation considerably bearable.

He had an eye fixed for tales you’ll wish to learn. He discovered folks you needed to know. He revered your time. And he knew methods to make you smile (throughout his early days on the Thousand Oaks Information-Chronicle, he knew methods to get you interested by a municipal authorities piece: “Though they’re already as much as their knees in sewage effluent, Las Virgenes Municipal Water District leaders agreed Monday evening to contemplate increasing their sewer system to Topanga Canyon.”)

Bob had a desk within the newsroom, however he was most possible out within the area, discovering the sudden, the stunning and the marginally absurd. In West L.A., he caught up with the top of the Early Typewriter Collectors Assn. — a person in possession of greater than 70 machines. However Bob didn’t write it as a nostalgia piece. It turned out he produced the group’s e-newsletter on a Mac.

“A pc is so a lot better,” mentioned the Typewriter King.

As Occasions columnist Steve Lopez wrote of Pool on his 2014 retirement: He’s the final word reminder to reporters that “good issues occur while you blow off information conferences, set hearth to press releases, get out of the workplace and rejoice the every day drama on what is perhaps the world’s biggest stage.”

Los Angeles Occasions reporter Bob Pool

(Jay L. Clendenin/Los Angeles Occasions)

Bob, meet Bob. And one other Bob

Pool had a knack for orchestrating a narrative into one thing extra magical. So in 1991, he had an concept when David Rensin and Invoice Zehme printed the “The Bob Ebook,” which Pool described as a paperback that aimed to discover the “title Bob from side to side.”

He organized to have Occasions photographer Bob Chamberlin take the images and editor Bob Welkos edited the story.

As for the title, Pool discovered advantage.

There has by no means been a President named Bob or a King Bob or a Pope Bob, in fact. However Rensin and Zehme have determined that males named Bob are males who get issues achieved.

True, Bobs do “take pleasure in a stable sense of sameness.” However they’re respectable, reliable varieties who instinctively take advantage of a nasty state of affairs, in accordance with the e book. Bobs are smart, approachable, likable and dependable. To not point out predictable.

No person named Bob might have ever written “The Bob Ebook,” mentioned Rensin, 41, of Sherman Oaks. That’s as a result of Bobs are too pragmatic and unpretentious. Bobs don’t put on berets or quote Nietzsche or hang around at Renaissance festivals, he mentioned. “They don’t take themselves severely.”

Pool used to inform colleagues he was grateful for being named “Bob.”

What would have occurred if his mother and father named him Seth, he joked.

The bellman from Bell who grew to become a bellwether in Bel-Air

Pool at all times most well-liked the little man over the massive title. That’s the reason he was drawn to the story of Tony Marquez:

As soon as the packages went within the field, Tony Marquez’s award was within the bag.

That’s the brief model of how a Los Angeles bellhop has received the title of finest lodge employee in America.

Marquez is bell captain on the Resort Bel-Air. It’s the sprawling hideaway in Stone Canyon north of Westwood the place cottage-like suites can go for $3,000 an evening — and superstar company can include a truckload of baggage.

However schlepping heavy suitcases and trunks across the Bel-Air’s 12-acre grounds isn’t what earned Marquez a nationwide hotel-rating service’s solely particular person five-star rating.

Pool ended the 2004 piece with certainly one of his extra beloved kickers: “So says the bellman from Bell who grew to become a bellwether in Bel-Air.”

Santa Pool

In 1990, Pool spent weeks undercover as a retail Santa Claus, reporting a collection of tales that will grow to be Occasions Christmas classics:

By final weekend, I’d spent three weeks portraying Santa in procuring facilities and elsewhere round city. I figured I had the slow-gaited Santa stroll down pat. Ditto the Santa speak — the patter about what youngsters need for Christmas, the milk and cookies they plan to depart out for me and the significance of brushing tooth and going to mattress on time.

“Santas at all times marvel about it, however I don’t assume you must have any fears about being acknowledged,” mentioned Jenny Zink, head of the Santa Division for Western Momentary Providers, who has employed 3,500 St. Nicks throughout the nation this month. Costumed Santas even go unrecognized by their very own youngsters, she mentioned.

However Mrs. Claus was not a believer. “Rachel will know who you’re,” she fretted. “You’ll destroy her.”

I used to be undeterred. To make the check full, I organized for a number of of my nieces and nephews from Valencia to additionally go to with Santa. Mrs. Claus threw up her fingers when she heard that.

Pool closed one other within the collection this fashion: “On the finish of my shift, I took my aching again residence for a protracted, steaming bathe. My beard went for a soak in a shower of lukewarm water and Woolite.”

The visitor who by no means checked out

It’s no shock Pool was drawn to Thelma Becker, who as he reported in 1988, checked into downtown L.A.’s Biltmore Resort “on Jan. 7, 1940, and by no means checked out.”

Lately, lodge employees members take care of the 5-foot-tall Becker as if she was each’s mom. She is a visitor on the lodge’s annual worker Christmas get together. She has her personal mail field on the worker mail middle.

She was invited right into a closely guarded ballroom for a peek on the silver desk settings earlier than the Duke and Duchess of York arrived for a current formal dinner.

“She is aware of the whole lot concerning the lodge,” mentioned Evelyne Gibert, supervisor of the Biltmore’s pastry store. “If we do the pastry incorrect, she’s not afraid to tell us. She is aware of the substances I put within the pastry. She even is aware of my husband.”

Becker remembers workers’ birthdays with presents or, within the case of Biltmore public relations director Victoria King, with a shock get together on Tuesday evening at a Mexican restaurant.

“She offers me the funnies from her paper each Sunday,” mentioned entrance desk clerk Teina Tahauri.