Langer's Deli owner is starving for L.A. to clean up MacArthur Park, and thinking of closing

When he was a boy of 12 or so, and his parents were busy running the family restaurant, Norm Langer spent hours across the street in MacArthur Park. It was, at the time, an elegant urban oasis, with lollipop palms standing over a lake fed by natural springs.

“I grew up in the park,” Langer said, seated in a booth at the famous deli he now owns at 7th and Alvarado streets. “I’d play in the park, go for boat rides, take naps. There was this whole area on the 7th Street side where older people played shuffleboard, backgammon, gin, all kinds of card games.”

Today, that carefree boy of yesteryear is 79.

Langer’s Deli is 77, with the number in bold yellow on the backs of employee uniforms.

And the park of Langer’s childhood, which dates to the 1880s, no longer exists. It hasn’t for decades, and residents and police told me the long-festering urban nightmares — crime, extortion of local merchants by gangs, encampments, sales of stolen goods by street vendors, and rampant, out-in-the-open drug activity — have reached new levels in the impoverished neighborhood of mostly Latino immigrants.

Not long ago I came upon a zombie-like scene of contorted people gathered in the northwest corner of the park, their bodies rigid from overdoses of fentanyl or other killer drugs. That’s two blocks away from Langer’s Deli, and I thought about him, and how disorienting it can be to grow old in a world unlike the one we remember or the one we imagined.

“I’m considering closing,” Langer told me, even though he considers his customers and employees “100% safe,” perhaps in part because uniformed cops frequent his deli and the southeast corner of the park is relatively calm.

Langer's, closing? That would be a hole-in-your-soul development.

Los Angeles is constantly reworking itself, but maybe that's why the age-defiant, resilient establishments hold a special place in our hearts. Philippe, Guelaguetza, Pink's, El Cholo, Musso & Frank, and Langer's — the Hall of Famers. It's hard to imagine MacArthur Park — and the city — without one of its most iconic anchors.

“It’s a strong consideration,” Langer insisted, saying he’s exhausted by City Hall's face-plant when it comes to answering the basic needs of nearby residents and merchants.

Restaurants come and go, but this wouldn’t be just any business going dark. Langer’s has been in L.A. longer than the Dodgers and the Lakers. It’s an anchor, an institution, a touchstone. You open the door and get hit with that familiar, piquant draft of deli indulgence, and customers happily volunteer to tell you about their first visits, decades ago, with parents or grandparents. The restaurant still makes "best of" lists.

But Langer told me he’s “tired of pushing the cart up the hill,” of cajoling city officials to clean the streets, restore public safety and make MacArthur Park a destination again, rather than a place to avoid.

“That park is very important for the people who live in this area,” Langer said. “We have to give it back to them.”

The 35-acre park still does have its safer, less troubled areas. And it still hosts youth sports and live music. But Rosario Argueta, who serves on the MacArthur Park Neighborhood Council, told me she won’t let her three kids use the park. And Ivonnenanette Machado, who sits on the same council, told me her daughter got a husky for protection.

Everyone knows the Westlake/MacArthur Park subway station, so vital a link for students and commuters, is a dicey proposition because of crime and drugs. Andrew Wolff, president of the neighborhood council, said the police presence has diminished over the last two years. (Langer agrees, and bristles about it, noting that Eunisses Hernandez, the City Council rep for the area, had called for the defunding of police).

Wolff said drug activity is particularly brazen in neighborhood alleys. In one, he said, “you’ll see bodies on top of each other, completely passed out, with the stench of fentanyl everywhere, and as you look up the alley, there’s a fog from everyone smoking, and people are walking around like zombies. It’s a disgrace that it exists.”

One day, I checked it out, and Wolff was right. Later, I bumped into a couple of Rampart Division officers outside Langer's, and they said they're beginning a crackdown.

City Hall does have a big change in mind for the neighborhood, but it's not one that makes sense to Wolff or Langer. In July, officials announced a proposal to close Wilshire Boulevard where it passes through MacArthur Park, and expand the open spaces. Hernandez called it “dreaming bigger and better for a community in critical need of deep investment."

But Wolff said that as an architect, he thinks the plan “is a joke,” and would simply create more space for unchecked illegal activity while impacting the surrounding area with rerouted traffic.

The top priority has to be public safety, Langer said, and he wants to see “improved lighting, increased police patrols, social services outreach and targeted clean-up efforts.”

For all that he and other merchants have contributed to local culture and commerce, and the city treasury, he says he wants a fair shake in return. And the good news, for fans of brisket and matzo ball soup, is that the more I talked to Langer, the more I got the sense that he’d rather keep his business running than walk away. He can afford to retire tomorrow, but Langer's is more than a business or a job to him.

“Do you know I’m in the train station?” he asked one day, then led me on a half block walk to the Westlake/MacArthur Park station, where there’s a mural of him and his dad on the wall above the platform, the two of them chewing the fat at a deli booth, hunched over a sandwich.

A security guard, David Portillo, was shooing away two men who appeared to be high on something. After they left, he asked if he could pose with Langer for a photo in front of the mural.

Back on the street, Langer noted how vendors crowd the sidewalk, and pointed to one spot where a produce dealer had stacked boxes of potatoes on the street.

“What does a red curb mean?” he asked me before answering his own question. “It means don’t stop, and it means don’t park.” But vendors park their vehicles at red curbs for hours every day, he said.

“What is the point of having a law if you’re not going to enforce it?”

At the restaurant, Langer’s longest-serving employee, Flaviano Naranjo, came out of the kitchen and sat with us at a booth. He’s 73, with 53 years on the job, having started as a busboy and working his way up to chef. Langer has always had his back, Naranjo said, and he’s hoping the restaurant stays open.

Langer said his 40 employees are union, with healthcare, sick leave, vacations and two free meals a day of their choosing “except for Lox and steaks.” And they are the main reason he wants to stay open.

His staff and the customers. Langer says business is down a third since before the pandemic, but it still can be tricky to get a table at lunch. One day, 65-year-old customer Robert Bihr was working on a pastrami sandwich in the booth next to us and said he's been coming in since he was 10. Yes, he said, the neighborhood can be dicey. But the food, the vibe, the tradition, the memories, keep drawing him back.

At another table, Andre Burton, 36, off-duty from his LAPD patrol job, sat with two out-of-town cousins. He was a young boy, Burton said, when his grandfather started bringing him to the deli.

More than once, Langer brought his eyes down level with mine, and in his “pay attention-to-me” voice, shared his philosophy on living a life of purpose.

“Every man needs two things. He needs a place to go when he gets up in the morning, and he needs people who are dependent on him,” Langer said.

“I’ve had lung cancer five times. I’ve had the tops of both lungs removed. I’ve had prostate cancer. I’ve had 45 radiation treatments. I’ve had both knees replaced. But I’m here... I should be laying down somewhere, but I’m not. Why? Because I have a place to go. And I have people who need me.”

Langer said he would like to continue his run, depending.

His message to City Hall: “Let them get their act together, and I won’t go anywhere. How does that sound?”

As someone who ordered a smoky, perfectly peppered pastrami on rye, with coleslaw, fries and a dill pickle with just the right snap to it, and dipped the crunchy corners of the rye bread into a smear of spicy mustard before each bite, sounds good to me.

steve.lopez@latimes.com

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times .