One of the more frustrating fabulists to ever cross my path, Brady Westwater (born Ross Shockley) has died, reportedly after a lingering illness. He helped me out a few times in the 1990s, bought advertisements for friends in Coagula Art Journal as a way of lending me money and being “the good guy” in his sphere. I will always remember those kindnesses, but it is tough to recall the angelic side of his nature when the fog of his instinctual prevarications and exaggerations failed to ever completely lift.
The first time Brady Westwater ever visited a residence in downtown Los Angeles (besides court appearances as he cracked) was to the Coagula office – which was also my pad at the American Hotel in 1994. A confirmed Westsider, at the time he incessantly mocked that I was publishing my magazine in the then-hinterlands. The cultural divide in Los Angeles a mere three decades ago mimicked the population divide-Downtown was almost empty, bereft of any population besides derelicts and a few hundred artists; if you lived west of Alvarado Street, Downtown L.A. may as well have been one of Saturn’s moons. The region was particularly absent in the consciousness of 99% of Southern Californians, even diehard Angelenos, well into the new millennium.
Through a mix of fact and self-promoting fiction a quirky legend was born. Brady would go on to move downtown after a disastrous end to his career as a realtor, reinventing himself as “the guy to know” downtown who put property owners/managers – especially retail storefronts – together with prospective tenants. When Brady said he had done this sort of introduction for two-hundred businesses I was confident it was no more than two dozen… but, hey, that was two dozen deals he helped happen and contributed to creating (never say “revitalizing”, downtown was dead when Brady – among many others – took a chance on it) the Downtown Los Angeles we know today.
Another story of impact… In the mid-1990s I was shocked and excited when Brady pitched me an idea to publish in Coagula. He, whose self-obsessed hypochondria – a convenient/unique form of dyslexia among them – was a subject upon which he would wax to people whose eyes would glaze over as his monologues went on and on, was suddenly proposing a complex research project. Up to that point his output for the magazine was an occasional commentary piece on the state of the art world. This piece would be different. It would be difficult to describe to someone who wasn’t there back then the universal acclaim to which author Mike Davis had achieved for his book City of Quartz. It dominated every conversation among “smart people”. The tome was a doom and glom sneer at anyone enjoying their life, liberty and/or pursuit of happiness in the City of Angels. Brady told me he was going to debunk it. He was going to refute almost all of Mike Davis’s research. Going after the then-biggest dog in the dogpark was the hemoglobin of my publishing blood so I asked him what he needed from me.
“Nothing” he said, “just be ready for it.” He said. Brady had contributed a few casual opinion pieces to the magazine in its early days but I wasn’t ready for what he delivered. The article he wrote was astounding in its attention to detail and its thorough gutting of Davis. I published it within a few weeks of an epic Lewis McAdams profile of Mike Davis in the LA Weekly (back when the Weekly was an impactful weekly-must-read and not the pay-to-play scam website it is today) in which McAdams discussed that Davis was an admitted liar, a bard of half-truths at best and a sociopath with a silver-tongued agenda at worst. Despite an otherwise glowing discussion of the impact of Davis and his Quartz tome, McAdams had publicly, though unintentionally, wounded the rise of Davis.
My publication of Brady’s piece sealed the tomb. Brady then took his manuscript to other publications, with persistence and a breakdown of the absolute facts he had researched that were in consistent disagreement with the Davis assertions in the pages of Quartz. The LA Times even wrote an extensive analysis of Brady’s claims and found his piece quite accurate in how slipshod Mike Davis was in fact-checking anything that got in the way of his agenda. While Davis ended up with a cush life in the pretend land of academia, his career never recovered, never saw the heights of influence again. His follow up to Quartz was another doom and gloom tome of urban planning dread. It was panned by the same cultural forces who had only so recently raved about Quartz. It, along with he for all intents and purposes, disappeared.
During all this drama it became more and more implausible to me that Brady had written this brilliant hit piece. Doubting anything that came out of Brady’s mouth was pretty damn easy for me by then. Every encounter with him was a tall freaking tale with him as a central hero. Once in a while these verbal cinemascopes of his had a grain of truth at their core but often they were just the hot air of an evasive, yet likable weirdo.
There was a confrontation between us. I told Brady then as I tell you now that after publishing and re-reading his Anti-Davis opus I had come to feel, in my gut, and then think in my brain, that Brady was not the author. He was too sloppy for such a precise piece of research. I needled him for years, “Who really wrote it, Brady?” He would act taken aback. He never published a majestic piece of research before or since. My assumption is that he had commissioned someone to write it based on his political opposition to what the micromanaging Davis represented. The truth of its authorship has now passed on with him. I was happy to be a small part of taking down the lying windbag Davis – eviscerated by the one two punch of the earnest but honest McAdams and the fatally-footnoted piece attributed to Westwater; and yet it is a dicey feeling for a publisher to have these authorship doubts creep in and I just didn’t trust Brady to really come clean. He went his way and I went mine. We were always friendly, though, whenever we’d see each other later on, downtown of course, but when I needed to make the occasional real estate deal for a pop-up or a gallery space, I just steered clear, there were other options besides “Mister Downtown”.
But before all that he did something that was a kindness, one of many but one that stands out. At the 1998 book release party in Santa Monica for my Most Art Sucks anthology of Coagula’s first five years, he bought a copy of the book and spent the evening steering through the crowd explaining that he had Mat’s copy of the book and had everyone sign my book to me, high school yearbook style. I smiled and thanked him then. One of his essays about local museums was included in the book. About a year ago I was moving my storage locker and going through boxes and found my copy of my book that Brady had given me with so many signatures and well-wishes. I immediately checked FaceBook that night to see if Brady was still alive. That copy of the book was on my desk and the memories of him were fond. He was still with us then.
I happened to check Facebook on Friday and saw the news of his passing. When you dislike someone who was loose with the truth you call them a liar. When the good memories outweigh the bad and you see the good work they did in the world you say Rest In Peace. And so it is with a smirking fondness that I say Rest In Peace Brady Westwater, whatever was real, whatever was fabricated, you had an impact in the world that thousands who will never know your name will enjoy.