Dateline>City of Angels

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…