Boxing? In the valley? I grew up in Burbank in the 1950s and I well recall driving past the red, wooden Jeffries Barn, reputed to have been owned by former (heavyweight?) champ Jim Jeffries and long used for prizefights. If memory serves, it was on the southeast corner of Victory Blvd. and Hollywood Way.

It's been gone for 40+ years, of course, replaced by a strip mall and a big grocery store -- Ralphs, I think. This is called progress, I suppose.

Yeah, Jeffries Barn was owned by heavyweight champ Jim Jeffries, who retired to Burbank after losing in 1910 to the black Texan, Jack Johnson, in one of the most controversial fights ever. Jeffries had been implored by Jack London and others to put on the gloves one last time as the "Great White Hope" to stop Johnson, who had pissed off white America by humiliating his opponents and marrying a white woman. California officials banned the fight so it went to Reno, and it's said that 30,000 people waited in New York's Times Square on July 4 for news. After Johnson beat Jeffries bad, and the footage was shown in theaters, anti-black riots erupted around the country and at least ten people died. Jeffries was gracious enough, admitting on the train ride back home that even on his best day he couldn't have beaten Johnson.

In 1931 Jeffries converted his dairy barn at 2500 Victory Boulevard into a gym. The Thursday night fights at Jeffries Barn were a Valley institution until after World War II. Jeffries himself became something of a hero to the anti-civil rights crowd, so after his death Knotts Berry Farm dismantled the barn and re-built it in the park as a kind of monument. May still be there for all I know - it was there not too many years ago.

The story is included, more or less, in my book on the Valley.

As long as I'm tossing out trivia...the Valley tried once before to build a concert venue, the Valley Music Theater on Ventura in Woodland Hills. It was backed by Bob Hope and had a gimmick -- theater in the round -- but it failed miserably, despite a memorable 1967 show where the Doors, Buffalo Springfield and the Byrds appeared together. Boxing was tried there too in a desperate move to save the place, but it closed in I think the early 1970s. It's now a Jehovah's Witness assembly hall.

I lived within a mile of that Jehovah's Witnesses hall for most of 1972-1994 - it was so ridiculously large, but it had never occured to me that it had been orginally built for entertainment.

Other concerts at the Valley Music Theater, ca. 1972: Badfinger and B.B. King. (I think B.B. King was actually the opening act for some pop band, maybe Three Dog Night?)