Exclusive | Post walks LAs once-iconic Van Nuys Blvd. for a week heres disturbing scene we found

The historic LA street that was once the iconic epicenter of Valley youth culture is now nothing more than a boulevard of broken dreams — featuring drug-riddled homeless encampments and boarded-up stores.Van Nuys Boulevard — where teens used to famously cruise through the middle of San Fernando Valley, showing off their hot rods and gathering at hamburger stands — has become home to hordes of out-of-control druggies and threatening vagrants who leave behind so much garbage that local workers have to use leaf blowers to disperse it.One of the few businesses still operating in the now-decrepit area was even forced to move its customer entrance — because the bums’ camps blocked the original one.“It’s so sad, so sad.  We are in California, the best state in the United States, right?” said George Barak, who is originally from Syria and was working his second day as a cashier at the 99-cent store when he talked to the California Post.Aziz Saxenian, a Los Angeles native and dental assistant who works at another local company struggling against the troubling tide in the onetime beloved quirky heart of the Valley, said, “They settle in front of our businesses.“Customers say, ‘Oh, can’t you get rid of them?’ ”The Post walked a stretch of the dilapidated boulevard between Sherman Way and Victory Boulevard on a recent morning and found a wasteland of crack pipes, needles and empty bottles of whiskey in front of makeshift tents.Trash, clothes and even jars of open mayonnaise covered the sidewalks, while broken metal spoons and lighters — tell-tale signs of heroin and crack addicts — were strewn around local bus stops.Most of the stores along the famed blocks are boarded up, but the businesses brave enough to open such as the ones Barak and Saxenian work at said they never know what to expect one day to the next. Saxenian said her boss bought the dental office six months ago and that he’s hoping the boulevard turns around.But she said that doe...