MADMEN AND TINKERERS In Search of the Flux Capacitor by Joe Tyburczy Reprinted from LA WEEKLY "Does this look like a fuse
block to you?" The questioner wears a Powerpuff Girls T-shirt and
features a full set of ZZ Top whiskers. He holds up a shiny metal case from
which a nest of colored wires dangles. I shrug to indicate that I'm not sure
what it is. We're standing
in a cramped aisle of Apex Electronics, a hangar-size building stuffed to the
rafters with electronic parts, gadgets, and surplus whatnots expelled from
the bowels of the military-industrial complex. Hidden among the auto-parts
salvage yards, taco stands and freeway ramps of Sun Valley, Apex is a
not-so-well-kept secret: a technology graveyard haunted by ham-radio nuts,
backyard electricians, tinkerers, studio prop masters, artists, metal
sculptors, effects techs and other assorted spooks with an itch for cool
junk. Doc Brown and
his ilk would feel right at home here. What looks to be a fresh stock of flux
capacitors and enough components to send Marty McFly back to the future are
strewn the length of each aisle. Next to a heap of digital-logic integrated
circuits I unearth a pair of Art Deco drive-in theater speakers still in the
original manufacturer's box. Another nearby shelf yields an assortment of
similarly preserved vacuum tubes. If some of the
stuff looks as if it's been gathering dust here for years, that's because it
has. Apex took over the building in 1953 as an outlet to sell off postwar
surplus from manufacturers like Lockheed. Tons of industrial and electronic
scrap still arrive every week, get sorted and sifted through by a small army
of Spanish-speaking day workers, and eventually find a place among the acres
of debris. Checkout is
equally serendipitous. A customer approaches a tiny counter near the entrance
with an armload of goodies. Behind it, the young Russian-émigré clerk eyeballs
the odds and ends, deftly judging its value. "Mmm . . . six
dollars," he says between drags of Marlboro. Out back, it's a
scene from a post-apocalyptic yard sale: a labyrinth of small paths wind
among tall stacks of twisted metal cabinets, rusting electronic test
equipment, power transformers, oscilloscopes and other mad-scientist
gotta-have-its. Like some indie-movie prop rat's dream, a polished aluminum
radar dish sags against a group of sleek ballistic-missile bodies prickling
with pointy Flash Gordon tail fins. I crawl through one of the storage
trailers and find myself surrounded by control panels from some long-forsaken
aerospace project bearing NASA logos and a phalanx of buttons marked
"FIRE," "ARMED" and "EMERGENCY ABORT." Later, I
pass by a fellow with a camera discreetly framing shots of a fashionably
attired young woman against a glittering landscape of steel trusswork piled
at crazy angles against the sky. Just then, the man with the ZZ Top whiskers
wanders by clutching a blue airport landing light. "I don't
have a clue what I'm gonna use it for," he says, "but I know I need
it." |