Story 38 of 52

By M. Snarky

One hot July night in 1976, we pulled up to the locked Griffith Park gate on Crystal Springs Drive near the Wilson & Harding golf course. It was after 10:00 PM. We were in Mark Flaata’s mom’s massive, dark green, fake wood paneled 1972 Chrysler Town & Country station wagon, the same car I wrote about here. Mark turned off the radio and we were given instructions to “Be quiet.” Actually, his instructions were to “Shut the hell up!” Just to the left side of the gate was an equestrian trail that was barely wide enough to allow the humongous station wagon to squeeze through. Mark turned off the lights and drove along the dirt equestrian trail slowly until we got past the ranger station, and then turned back onto Crystal Springs Drive, flicked the lights back on, and drove to the first parking lot near the merry-go-round. There were maybe a half-dozen other cars parked there too.

Although, from a purely technical legal standpoint, we were definitely trespassing into the park after hours, however, the cars that were already inside the park after hours could drive out of the south entrance at Crystal Springs Drive and Los Feliz Boulevard without being harassed by the park rangers. But, if the rangers caught you hiking or walking around inside the park after hours, they would warn you that you could be cited and strongly encourage you to leave RIGHT NOW, or they would radio in for law enforcement which meant the LAPD. I know this from personal experience. Back then the park rangers were not sworn peace officers and were unarmed, so they were basically LAPD-light.

For us, we just didn’t care whether or not we were technically trespassing with our single-minded purpose of going to the Old Zoo to get high and have some fun. Back in those days, the exuberance of our wasted youth was boundless, and we weren’t going to let any legal technicalities prevent us from achieving our mission.

The passengers were Mark Flaata and his girlfriend Eve Anton, Tom Armstrong, Van Cognata, and yours truly. We brought a couple joints of good weed – well, good weed for the era anyway – and two six packs of Bud tall boys in a brown paper bag that we had to pigeon for over at Circus Liquor at the corner of Burbank Boulevard and Vineland Avenue in North Hollywood (NoHo), famous for its landmark giant clown neon sign and popularized in movies like Blue Thunder and Clueless. I should explain that to pigeon for beer meant hanging around the parking lot of a liquor store where the store clerk couldn’t see you and asking guys that looked like they were old enough to buy beer to buy some Bud tall boys for us, which was about $2.50 back then. It was also a 50/50 proposition at best. I personally hated doing it, but even so, I did it anyway mostly because I liked drinking beer, but also to not get hazed by the guys if I didn’t do it.

We hopped out of the station wagon and slinked across the road over to the Lower Old Zoo Trail, hiked up the trail about three-quarters of a mile to the dilapidated chain link fence on the boundary of the Old Zoo property which was, um, open? Someone had used some wire cutters to cut a gap in the fence just wide enough for a teenager to squeeze through. I was like going through a portal because as soon as you descended down the hill on the other side of the fence, you began to see some of the old overgrown structures looming in the darkness and it felt like you were transported into some dystopian Planet of the Apes future. It was the coolest thing that I had ever seen.

The local story of the Old Zoo (est. 1912) was that when the new L.A. zoo was finished being built in 1966, they simply transferred the animals over from the old to the new and then abandoned it as it was, tucked away in a canyon near Bee Rock. It was already 65-years old when I first saw it.

We walked over to a partially burned concession stand, put the six packs on what remained of the old counter, and we all cracked one open and started chugging them down while Tom fired up a joint and passed it around. It seemed as if we were the only people left on the planet.

Before this first visit to The Old Zoo, a.k.a., The Bear Caves, it was already a local legend in NoHo. There were dark, disturbing stories of people disappearing, rape, murders, dismembered bodies in trash bags, ghost sightings, and people dropping too much acid and going stark raving mad. There were also lighter stories of young people going there just to meet up and party and have a good time wandering around the abandoned administration buildings, concession stands, animal barns, aviary, monkey cages, and bear caves. Obviously, we were in the latter group, but that did not prevent talk of the scary stories which started freaking Eve out a little bit, so much so that every little noise in the periphery made her jump which, naturally, made all of us guys laugh.

We eventually found our way over to the back access road for the bear cave entrances. At the entrances, there were a series of levers and pulleys and cables and sliding metal doors that were used to manage the animals, and surprisingly some of them still worked.

We descended down a couple of steep flights of concrete steps into what could only be described as a black hole. The first flight was to the dark main bear den on the left that reeked like piss. The second flight of steps went to the open viewing area out in front. For the moment, you could say that we were the ones that were on display, Adolescens Americanus, if you will. We drank the remaining beers that, by then, were barely below ambient temperature, and smoked the remaining joint.

We talked about all sorts of things, you know, the sorts of things that factually naïve yet miraculously all-knowing teenagers talk about, like how out-of-touch our parents were, books, movies, music, love, God, Jesus, the meaning of life, what we’ll do after graduation, who’ll go to college and who’ll go to trade school and who will get married first, how many children we wanted to have, where we wanted to live and work, and so on and so forth, all compressed into a lively ninety-minute or so ebb and flow conversation with completely inappropriate jokes being cracked all along the way because no topic was off-limits – not even God.

Suddenly, Tom shushed us with his index finger over his pursed lips and said in a low voice, “I hear something!” We collectively listened and heard a vehicle driving on the access road behind us. We immediately understood that it must be the park ranger and we went into Ranger Danger dead-silent mode. They stopped at the back entrance of the bear cave. We could hear some chatter coming over the ranger’s radio. They got out of their truck, flicked their bright flashlights on and pointed them down the steep steps with a sweeping motion and said, “The park is closed; come out of there NOW!” We were quiet as a mausoleum; you could have heard a pin drop. “We know you’re in there!” More hold-your-breath silence. After about a minute more, the flashlights turned off and the rangers got back in their truck, more radio chatter could be heard, and they slowly drove off. Time to go!

We slowly crept up the steps to the road and could see the taillights of the ranger pickup in the distance to our right. We went left and found our way back to the parking lot as fast as we possibly could. We were high and slightly tipsy and very paranoid about getting busted, so Mark wasted no time in getting us out of the park. It was around midnight. Van said, “Let’s drive down Hollywood Boulevard!” We turned west at  Los Feliz and drove past the magnificent homes to where Los Feliz turns south and becomes Western Avenue. We turned right onto Hollywood Boulevard and headed west again. This was a very different neighborhood. We saw bums sleeping in the doorways of the shops, hookers and John’s, drug dealers, drug addicts, and tourists, and rundown buildings in various stages of urban decay. Mark turned right at Highland Avenue, and we quietly drove back to the Valley through Cahuenga pass.

Over the following years, I would take my friends to party at the Old Zoo many more times with whatever party materials we could get our hands on. It was mostly weed and beer, sometimes tequila and limes, and occasionally some LSD to go tripping around the Old Zoo and watch the sun rise over Griffith Park. During that time period, the word got out about it, and it soon became crowded (like everything else in L.A.) and fires, trash, crime, gang activity, and graffiti took their collective toll, destroying all of the remaining buildings, leaving only the bear caves and various chain link and metal barred cages intact but all covered with the various rival L.A. street gang tags, and some stupid token suburban white boy tags like, “Greg Was Here,” or, “I Love Laurie.”

Now renamed Old Zoo Picnic Area, the city cleared out the overgrown trees and shrubs, cleaned up the trash, back-filled the bear cave pit area in front, and welded the metal doors either open or closed, providing limited access to our old familiar haunt, you know, all in the name of public safety.

Nowadays, the Los Angeles Haunted Hayride takes over the Old Zoo area in the fall, hinting at the haunted notoriety of the past.

More Information:

Hadley Meares from PBS SoCal wrote a good article about it here.

Wikipedia link to Griffith Park Zoo is here.

Los Angeles Haunted Hayride is here.

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