http://www.christophernoxon.com/clip/but_is_it_garbage
Another story of an endangered pop landmark, this one a crumbling roadside attraction in Simi Valley called Bottle Village. I first wrote about the place as a beat news reporter for the Daily news in the Valley but returned with friends a few times afterward – it truly is a a magical, spooky and affecting place. So far, neither the taxman nor the neighbors have managed to bulldoze it, thanks entirely to a group of artsy out-of-towners, God bless ‘em.
To the tax man, Grandma Prisbrey’s masterpiece is just a landfill waiting to happen
One mountain range and a world or two away from Los Angeles, Simi Valley is known for its sprawl of tract housing, its hilltop shrine to Ronald Reagan and the exoneration of four of LAPD’s finest for the clubbing of wayward motorist Rodney King. What Simi Valley is not generally known for is fine art. And the locals would like to keep it that way, thank you very much.
Simi Valley does, however, possess an artistic masterpiece of sorts on the east side of town, a still vaguely rural area where the mission-style minimalls are recent arrivals and front lawns are used for parking as often as gardening. In a narrow lot surrounded by bent chain link is the crumbling roadside attraction known as Bottle Village. Cobbled together over three decades by a former citrus-plant worker named Tressa “Grandma” Prisbrey, the village is a cluster of shacks, fountains and pathways made from stuff she hauled from the dump in the back of a Studebaker: kitchen utensils, doll parts, busted headlights, license plates, marbles and bottles in every conceivable shape and color. There’s a whiskey-bottle fountain, a wishing well made out of milk of magnesia bottles and a mobile constructed from 100 tiny medicine vials.
Local lore has it Prisbrey started building with the beer bottles that her second husband, a construction worker, chucked in the motor home they shared on the outskirts of town. She began the project, she once told a visitor, to shame her husband about his drinking.
Over time, she created more than a dozen buildings, from a sunken roundhouse complete with decorative fireplace to a playroom lined with old drapes and shower curtains from the ‘50s. She was motivated as much by a desire to create, believes Daniel Paul, a 25-year-old art historian and waiter who has become the de facto spokesman for the village, as by a desire to work through a difficult life. Prisbrey’s husband died in a car accident, and six of her seven children died in her lifetime. She died in 1988 at the age of 92.
Admirers think of Bottle Village as nothing less than sacred, a folk art environment of international importance. Many locals, however, see little more than a pile of junk that should have stayed in the landfill where it was dumped a generation ago. Their caustic critique has never made a dent in the edifice of refuse, but now Bottle Village faces a much more formidable enemy: the tax man.
According to the Ventura County tax collector, the preservationist group that now owns Bottle Village has not paid taxes in seven of the last nine years. County officials could eventually put the property up for auction, says Cynthia Simmons, manager of the public-service division in the tax collector’s office. For a group that enlists the help of a local Brownie troop just to maintain the property, a $9,800 tax bill is tantamount to eviction.
The only thing that would keep the tax collector away so far is a brass plaque out front marking the property as a county and state historic landmark. “This place is a sanctuary,” says Paul. “I feel a real reverence when I wander through it.”
Most locals seem dumbfounded by the fuss surrounding a run-down neighborhood curiosity. Jean Dewey, a 26-year resident, advises parents to keep kids away from Bottle Village. “It’s just gruesome to me,” she says. “I can’t believe the nonsense these people say about this place. They claim to be artists, but they’re all a bunch of phonies.” Dewey says she became particularly rankled when supporters won a grant worth half a million dollars from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to repair damage done during the Northridge earthquake.
Calling it “a big pile of junk that should have been bulldozed years ago,” city councilwoman Sandi Webb launched a petition to block the FEMA funds. She was soon joined by Congressman Elton Gallegly, a firebrand conservative and former Simi Valley mayor who called it “appalling” that FEMA would pay to restore Bottle Village when many of its neighbors couldn’t get federal assistance to repair their trailer parks.
Under pressure from Gallegly, FEMA caved in like one of Prisbrey’s shacks and rescinded the award. “We were basically chased out of town,” says Paul. “It was like the Red Scare.” The flap over Bottle Village is ironic, he says, given the modest aspirations of its creator. “Anyone can do anything with a million dollars—look at Disney,” Prisbrey once told a visitor. “But it takes more than money to make something out of nothing, and look at the fun I have doing it.”
While many residents in the surrounding neighborhood would like the whole place dumped in a curbside recycling bin, defenders say they haven’t given up on hopes to raise the money to pay the tax bill. Paul says he is currently on a lecture tour to drum up support for what he sees as “the ultimate family-values art piece.”
“This isn’t Piss Christ,” says Paul. “This little old lady built this place with her bare hands. It’s funny, it’s deep, it’s whimsical, and it gives you an idea what to do with all the bottles left over from the NBA finals.”