May 11
I’ve been meaning to check out the current condition of Hollywood Forever and the cousins Sharon and Nancy agreed to go with me.
It was certainly worth the stroll. I was wondering why there were SO many Armenians and Russians there, and not Armenian and Russian Jews either, so I asked google who sent me to the LA Curbed website:
“…by 1997 no one wanted to bury anyone at Hollywood Forever, but there were plenty of people who were willing to sleep or buy drugs or cruise for sex there.
“In 1998, a couple of brothers named Tyler and Brent Cassity bought the whole thing out of bankruptcy for $375,000. They’d grown up in the funeral business in Missouri, and a New York Times article from 2002 claims they were an inspiration for Six Feet Under. They put millions into Hollywood Forever, fixing the landscaping, tearing down walls, and installing multimedia consoles where biographies of the deceased now play on a loop forever.
“A new sales staff did quick business selling plots to Armenian and Russian families in the neighborhood.”