Dateline>City of Angels

This week’s choice for the most interesting, offbeat and/or entertaining web video sharing key words or themes with this blog…

Source: YouTube!

Search Criteria: “Los Angeles + Haunted”

The Result: A poignant film noir reenactment of Peg Entwistle’s legendary suicide by writer, director and producer Hope Anderson, creator of the documentary Under the Hollywood Sign. Unfortunately, the video embed is disabled for this clip, so I can’t show it here. To view it, you’ll have to click over to this link.

The Backstory…

For many, the Hollywood sign spells fame, but for Peg Entwistle, it became the ultimate suicide note. Erected in 1923 as a real estate gimmick, the sign originally read “Hollywoodland” and was fitted with thousands of glitzy lights to lure dreamers to the new town…

The seduction worked on Entwistle, a young Broadway actress hit hard by the Depression. Setting her hopes on filmdom, she moved to L.A. and joined her uncle in a small Beachwood Canyon apartment below the sign, whose billboard temptations must have loomed brighter than ever.

But months of auditions went nowhere. Finally, after much struggle, Entwistle landed a bit part in RKO’s Thirteen Women. She called it her big break. Critics called it a bomb. The studio’s calls stopped altogether.

Devastated, Entwistle trekked up the canyon the night of Sept. 18, 1932, scaled the 50-foot “H” and jumped. Legend has it that, ironically, a few days after the star-crossed actress’ body was found, a letter arrived offering her the lead in a picture about a suicidal woman.

Over time, the Hollywoodland sign fell into decay. Eventually, the city lopped off the last four letters and rehabilitated the landmark. Public access has been restricted for years, yet neighbors and city workers say they’ve sometimes spotted a ghostly blonde in 1930s attire wandering its footings, still apparently drawn by the sign’s cruel promise of immortality.

Imagine reading lots of other people’s stuff each week, writing up sly observations about what you read, and getting paid enough for it that you can eventually retire.

Yes, friends, before the citizen-journalism craze known as blogging, newspapers actually offered such jobs, and the people who held them were called columnists.

For more than a decade Peter Carlson had such a career at the Washington Post, reviewing all the pop culture and hype served up by our nation’s magazines. This week he retired, but not without a few parting shots. As a former magazine editor myself, I found his farewell summary of the bizarre trends he witnessed in my (now-troubled) industry well worth reading.

Wish your house were haunted? Need to attract tourists to your creepy old hotel, museum or otherwise spiritless landmark?

Even if your place didn’t come with spooks of its own, you can remedy the situation with Ghosts in a Bottle. That’s right: For a nominal fee, ghost-hunter Jon Deese will capture someone else’s phantasm, bottle it and ship it right to your door. Complete with certificate of authenticity and warning booklet, no less.

Deese won’t disclose his “secret” method for coaxing the spirits out of the ether and into the containers, let alone how he “mysteriously” keeps them from popping their corks. Nor does his website say anything about refrigeration requirements or expiration dates.

Still, you’ve got to hand it to Deese. He’s stumbled on a devilishly clever small-business angle to paranormal investigation, which up to now has mainly been the enterprising domain of celebrity psychics and TV ghost busters.

Rifles used in a 21-gun salute lie at rest in Rosemead’s Savannah Pioneer Cemetery. Situated at the end of the Old Spanish Trail that carried the Yankee wagon trains to Southern California, Savannah is among our region’s most historic graveyards — and unfortunately among the most threatened.

Today I attended a moving tribute to the many veterans buried there, some whose service hails back to the War of 1812. Later this week I’ll have a full update on the history and plight of Savannah. For now, I simply want to take time to honor those whose many sacrifices nurtured and preserved the freedoms we enjoy today.

I don’t normally gush with patriotism. But hearing the speeches of current and former soldiers, along with the jarring 21-gun salute and the mournful bugling of Taps, I couldn’t help but brush away a stray tear or two. It wasn’t so much a stirring of grief, but of great pride. There we were, standing together, people of every race, creed and background — descendants of pioneering families together with recent immigrants — all paying our shared gratitude to the fallen of history. Only the truly cynical could fail to appreciate such a moment.

In the end, there are really no words to capture the experience, except to say it was all so wondrously and uniquely…”American.”

This Week’s Source for the most interesting, offbeat and/or entertaining web video sharing key words or themes with this blog: YouTube!

Search Criteria: Los Angeles + Angel’s Flight.

The Result: A January 2007 KTLA-5 report on the scheduled summer reopening of the historic Angel’s Flight funicular depicted in this blog’s banner, featuring of all people, Star Trek’s George Takei. (Not to be impatient or anything, George, but here we are coming up on Summer 2008, and still no 25-cent ride up Bunker Hill in sight.)

Some Added History… Read more

Like so many boys growing up, I loved model trains. While my dad’s generation fixated on the famous Lionel O scales, my brothers and I built our miniature tunnels, trestles and crossing gates around the Tyco HO train sets of the 1960s and ’70s.

Those hobby adventure days may be long gone, but it’s good to know that whenever I wax nostalgic for my childhood toys, there are bigger and better versions still close at hand.

I’m speaking, of course, of Griffith Park’s Travel Town, established in December 1952 to showcase the real, full-sized train sets that grown-ups eventually grew tired of and discarded. First envisioned as a sort of “railroad petting zoo” where kids could freely roam, climb and explore the locomotives, Travel Town took a more serious track in the 1980s, adopting a Master Plan emphasizing growth, restoration and preservation. Since then, the museum has been busy fine-tuning its train and railroad memorabilia collections and expanding its educational programs for young and old alike.

According to the museum’s website, the present muster of historical engines and cars dates as far back as 1864 and includes 16 locomotives, four interurbans, nine freight cars and cabooses, and nine passenger cars. Located at 5200 Zoo Drive, the museum is open M-F., 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and weekends, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. All aboard!

I’m horrible at remembering birthdays. Even my own blog’s.

Looking at my calendar, I suddenly realized that Dateline>City of Angels celebrated its one-year anniversary earlier this week on May 18.

To paraphrase that ol’ L.A. television icon, Sheriff John, put another candle on the birthday cake, ’cause it’s a milestone worth noting. Mimlay.com actually began several years back as a static website to advertise my freelance PR and writing business. Around 2005, I transformed it into a Radio Userland blog. The goal was to create a platform that I could update easily and quickly with news and information about my business. Instead I found myself bitten by the blogging bug and posting and commenting on a variety of topics.

Then, suddenly, a year ago, my Userland software crashed. Unable to get the proper tech support from the Radio people, I switched to WordPress. About that same time, I took on a regular editorial gig with an automotive publication, rendering my professional freelance website obsolete. I retitled it Dateline>City of Angels and focused my sporadic ramblings on my favorite past-times: Los Angeles history, ghosts and other urban legends, and Angeleno pop-culture.

So here we are a year later. It’s taken a while for this blog to find its voice, and the postings remain admittedly less frequent than I’d like. Still, I wish to thank my readership for bearing with me. I’m glad you find what I share here interesting enough to keep coming back.

My goal is to continue growing this blog in the coming year. Steady readers have probably sensed a few changes. I’m adding new features to the mix, including more notes and observations about current happenings around town. While historical posts will always be the mainstay of Dateline>City of Angels, I hope to convey more of the city’s contemporary “sense of place” as well. My desire is to tie the present to the past, exploring who Angelenos are, where we’ve come from, and where we’re headed — all with a humorous wink toward our notoriously offbeat roots.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, I’m also honing this website’s infrastructure. For the past month or so, I’ve been updating code, locking out hackers, optimizing the blog for search engines, and making several format tweaks in preparation for a major redesign by end of summer. Not wanting to remain stuck in the past myself, the strategy for the coming 360 days will be an entry into the 21st Century with multi-media, “360-Degree Content” (the popular buzz-phrase among media professionals today).

Yeah, I know. Promises, promises. But that’s the plan, nevertheless.

So enough with the obligatory, self-indulgent birthday stuff. Let’s get on with the show…

Welcome again to Friday Flix, Dateline>City of Angel’s weekly feature showcasing my pick for the most interesting, offbeat and/or entertaining web videos sharing key words or themes with this blog. (Sure, you could sift through the vast online wasteland yourself, but why bother when I’m more than happy to do it for you?)

This Week’s Search: YouTube! Keywords: Los Angeles + History

The Result: An incredible exploration of the mythic stature that Hollywood has bestowed on numerous Southern California landmarks, created and posted a year ago by Blair Erickson. Inspired by a California Geography class, Erickson and company managed to create a video so compelling that it even caught the attention of CNN. Whether or not you’re seeing it for the first time, I’m sure you’ll agree the flick is still as captivating today as it was in April 2007. Roll ‘em!

How green does your garden grow? That’s the question asked by my Atlanta writer pal Hilda Brucker in her Greener Good piece, appearing in this month’s Continental Airlines inflight magazine.

Based on interviews with experienced botanical and landscape experts, Hilda notes the growing recognition that the average home’s lawn and garden have a greater impact on the environment than most people realize. Excessive irrigation, chemical treatments, fertilizers and pesticides from an estimated 30 million acres of lawns in the U.S. can contribute significantly to contaminated storm runoff, which the EPA has flagged as a “major source of water pollution nationwide.”

Hilda’s piece makes a strong case for an “ideal yard” sporting “a sustainable landscape of plants that thrive under local conditions without requiring copious amounts of chemicals, coddling, or irrigation.”

Now this is one “green cause” I can get behind… Read more

Google up web videos with the keyword Los Angeles and what do you get? Mostly a lot of junk. But search hard enough and you’ll also find a few gems. Welcome to Dateline>City of Angel’s new Friday Flix feature, where I offer my picks for some of the most interesting (or unusual) web videos referencing key words or themes shared with this blog.

This week: A well-produced historical-cultural tour of Echo Park by the Echo Park Film Center entitled Echo Park Then and Now — an especially fitting debut clip for Friday Flix, since Echo Park happens to be my hood. Roll ‘em!

Ready for another brief tour of L.A.’s haunting past?

Off the beaten track, in the City of Industry, you’ll find a small but significant cemetery, known simply as El Campo Santo. Part of the six-acre Workman Temple Homestead Historical Park, the graveyard dates to 1855, and is the L.A. area’s first private burial ground. Originally, it was meant to hold the Workman, Rowland and Temple families along with their ranch workers, but through a twist of fate also became the final resting place of Pio Pico, California’s last Mexican governor, and his wife Maria Ygnacia.

As if visiting the graves of these notable Californios isn’t thrilling enough for die-hard history buffs, the site also boasts the last remaining example of decorative cast-iron fencing common to this region’s 19th Century bone yards — and perhaps a few other buried mysteries as well. Read more

What’s five times dirtier than a toilet seat? Your computer keyboard, says one British microbiologist who, for whatever reason, was sufficiently curious about the issue to study it.

According to the Daily Mail, he found the average keyboard to be a veritable petri dish of harmful bacteria ranging from e.coli to the even scarier-sounding staphylococcus aureus. I’ve linked to the story, but germaphobes and hypochondriacs beware: the details can literally turn your stomach.

OK, true confession time: Crazy as it sounds, I’ve always compulsively swabbed mine down each week with a Q-tip and rubbing alcohol. Not because I’m afraid of the heebie-jeebies, but simply because I’m such a neat-knick that I can’t stand the sight of greasy fingerprints on all those little designer-white Mac keys.

Who would’ve guessed I was on the leading edge of the next emerging health craze?

For Cinco de Mayo happy houring, there’s nothing more satisfying than an icy Margarita complete with salt! But where can you find the best? Certainly everyone has an opinion, but the following are my personal Top 3 Favorite L.A. Margarita Establishments, today and all year round…

No. 1: El Conquistador Restaurant, Silver Lake. Don’t let the heavy syrup fool you. These Margaritas have a bite. Even better, the place is pure Silver Lake the way it used to be before the hipster invasion: Offbeat, casual and neighborhoody, straight, gay and Latino, where singles and families, young and old, bohemians and urban professionals happily mingle. (Yes, there’s even a few celebrity sightings every now and then…) Read more

Am I paranoid? Is it my suspicious nature? A twinge of guilt for favoring the SoCal car culture over alternative locomotion? Or is it all just a bizarre coincidence?

I could swear a “rival guerrilla faction” is surreptitiously chiding my recent post on the trials and tribulations of taking public transportation to the Central Library. You be the judge… Here’s the post about my MTA jaunt. Now here’s his.

Hmmmn. If I’m right, it’s nice to know that occasional covert recons of this website are still among the Militant’s guilty pleasures. If on the other hand I’m wrong… Well… It’s a pity. Strange as it sounds, I’d miss the nagging feeling that he’s lurking here between Dodger games.

Up to now, most local bloggers have approached the draining of Silver Lake from two predictable angles:

(1) The ugly, gaping asphalt crater left behind now that the water’s gone, and

(2) The ongoing controversy between water officials and Silver Lake residents over whether or not the lake should be permanently covered.

Donna Barstow at Griffith Park Interrupted, however, asks a more cogent question: What if the area has another fire like the recent Griffith Park Blaze? Or worse, a major earthquake that knocks out city hydrants?

The answers to her ongoing investigations are definite causes for concern. Read them here and here.