Dateline>City of Angels

I’d like to say it was a desire to live to be 100 that drove me to spend more time in the garden, but really it was a nasty case of writer’s block.

After gleefully telling the world I’ve finally entered the drafting stage of my book on the Feliz Curse, I got exactly 3,225 words into the prologue, when the real curse — the dreaded Blank Page Syndrome — suddenly struck.

There’s nothing more common (or more insidious) for a writer than those painful periods when the muses fall silent. Go to any writer’s blog, chat group or forum, and you’ll find us idling for hours on the topic as we commiserate and offer each other tips for restarting our engines, all the while ironically avoiding doing just that.

My surefire solution has always been to force myself to jot a single phrase — any phrase, no matter how nonsensical. Most writers find that once they put something down on paper, they can’t stop tinkering with it, and soon one sentence sparks a second, then a third, and so on. (We’re fairly compulsive that way.)

This time the strategy failed. Hitting a difficult transition in the chapter, I just found myself editing and re-editing the same few pages I’d already spewed out and feeling about as productive as a hamster on a wheel… [READ MORE...]

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

Search: YouTube!
Keywords: “California Missions”

The Result: This time I thought we’d go beyond city limits in search of something with statewide recognition — and few historical sites are more synonymous with the Californian landscape than its chain of 21 missions. While sifting through dozens of the usual YouTube visual tours, I discovered this… A kid obviously very proud of his class Mission Project.

If you’re a California native like me, chances are you also had to build a clay or sugar-cube model like this in grammar school. So let’s all take a trip together down memory lane and admire the effort this little guy put into his assignment…

Amid all the usual tips for weekend getaways, this season’s hottest succulents and making your cramped living spaces look bigger, the latest issue of Sunset Magazine includes a curiously uncharacteristic fluff piece on “How to Live to 100.”

Announcing that “One hundred is the new 70,” the article purports to “uncover the secret to why people are living longer in the West, particularly in California, which has more centenarians that any other state.” Then, employing a rather unscientific methodology to answer this weighty question, the “Magazine of Western Living” interviews three Extreme Senior women, ages 99-102, about their lifestyles and interests. (Apparently no coherent men in that age bracket could be found.)

The conclusion? Westerners live longer, healthier lives because we enjoy the sun and relaxation, eat fresh-picked fruits and vegetables, do a lot of hiking and visiting day spas, and quaff plenty of Pinot Noir.

Oh yeah… and we garden, too.

Really.

This just in… There’s oil in these here hills. Black gold. Texas tea. Possibly billions of gallons of it, says a CNN Situation Room report observed by Metblog L.A.’s Dave Markland.

Geez, you think?

Astounding as the news may be to Wolf and the rest of the outside world, it won’t come as a surprise to native Angelenos schooled in the region’s geology. As any old sabertooth or mastodon who ever waded into the La Brea Tar Pits could tell you, that bubbling crude has been shaping the area’s natural history since the Paleogene Era.

In more recent times, Native Americans collected the primordial goo’s byproducts to waterproof their baskets and canoes, while the town’s early pobladores used the brea (tar) to create asphalt roofing for their adobes and even as an alternative fuel for lamps and cooking.

In fact, legend has it that these uses indirectly led to the famous 1892 oil discovery that made one particular Angeleno, Edward L. Doheny, a very wealthy man.

One Astute Businessman

Doheny had come to California as a prospector, but experienced little luck in mining. One day he observed a man wheeling a cart of the tarry substance downtown. Stopping to ask where the man had been, he learned of nearby asphalt deposits in present-day Echo Park. Figuring where there’s tar, there’s crude, he prevailed on Charles Canfield to help him lease several acres of land in the area and immediately set about digging and drilling. After several mishaps, the pair struck black gold a mere 150 feet below what is now the intersection of Colton Street and Glendale Blvd.

Soon there were “hundreds of greasy derricks and puffing engines” dotting the area and encroaching as far as the southern edge of Echo Park Lake. As Norman Klein observes in his book, The History of Forgetting:

“At one time (c. 1905) there were over a thousand working wells in the area from downtown to Vermont Avenue, and even special tours for a nickel. Oil companies had to pay for stains left on clothing during laundry days. Legend has it that Echo Park Lake at its northern edge went on fire at least once (1907).”

Oil’s Well That Ends Well

Of course, those rigs have long since vanished from the lake shore and vicinity. (So much for the notion that oil drilling forever mars an area’s scenery.) But later strikes from Compton to Signal Hill would further secure Southern California a proud place among the world’s great oil fields. In their almanac, Los Angeles A-Z, historians Dale and Leonard Pitt cite production figures of 1,000 wells pumping an estimated 375 million barrels between the 1950s-1980s alone. And, as CNN reports, experts believe we’re far from tapped out.

Even casual lookers can still spot the evidence of our area’s hidden wealth oozing up naturally through sidewalk cracks along Miracle Mile as well as the sands of local beaches. And yes, there are numerous cleverly disguised derricks still pumping, pumping, pumping throughout the city. But like cell phone towers masquerading as palm trees, the oil rigs are never fully hidden from discerning eyes — whether they’re located along Pico Blvd., off the Golden State Freeway, or on a tiny artificial island in the Long Beach channel.

It’s always amusing to try and profile the personalities of your home’s former residents based on the mail they continue to get long after they’ve moved.

Since buying my house three years ago, I’ve learned the previous tenant was a photographer/artist with interests in compost gardening, summer dinner parties, fine wines, delicious but decadent desserts, community activism, and a variety of green friendly causes.

Yeah. No big surprises — until yesterday when this piece showed up from an Indianapolis antique dealer who apparently specializes in “full-bodied” taxidermy. More puzzling yet, it was obviously no random delivery. Based on the information on the backside, the former resident was a registered list member.

So now I’m left scratching my head trying to fit this bizarre little factoid into the overall profiling game I’ve played with a stranger I thought I knew, but never really did — and telling myself there’s gotta be a really good story behind this one.

For this week’s most interesting, offbeat and/or entertaining web video sharing themes with this blog, I thought I’d Google up a little more background on the William S. Hart Regional Park to accompany the previous post…

Source: YouTube!
Search Criteria: “William S. Hart”

The Result: How can we ever resist a video by Huell Howser, the PBS host enjoying what has to be television’s greatest job? Imagine wandering here, there and everywhere armed only with curiosity, a microphone and a folksy drawl — and getting paid for it, to boot! Anyone else’s simplistic interview style and repetitive banter would probably insult our intelligence, but somehow Howser manages to pull it off, continually fascinating us with each new place he visits.

Honorable Mention: For another interesting perspective, after catching Howser’s visit to the park, see how a student project tackled the same topic.

Caution: The object depicted here may appear smaller in real life.

Seriously, this has got to be the world’s littlest red school house. Hardly bigger than a garden shed from Home Depot, it has room for a teacher and lectern, chalkboard, and two students. (Maybe four with classroom overcrowding.)

But don’t be fooled. This little school house didn’t actually sit on the prairie — at least not originally.

In 1927, when promoter Robert E. Callahan built the 3.5-acre Mission Village auto court in Culver City, he included the school house as one of his many tiny-town tourist attractions. When the Santa Monica Freeway plowed through the area in 1963, Callahan relocated the structure to Mint Canyon, where it did finally serve as a classroom.

The school house is now part of the Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society’s “Heritage Junction” collection at the William S. Hart Regional Park. The society makes no pretenses about the structure, noting that while not “architecturally significant, it does however represent small schools used in mining camps and frontier settlements during the late 19th Century in the American West.”

Since 1975, SCVHS has managed to also save a number of full-sized, historically significant buildings by moving them to its leased section of Hart’s former ranch. These include the old Saugus Train Depot (pictured left, now serving as the society’s headquarters), a company bungalow built by Edison in 1919 to house workers, and the Henry M. Newhall ranch house, which dates to the mid-1800s.

Heritage Junction is open Saturday and Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m., with additional tours by appointment. For more info, visit the SCVHS website.

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As the Big Orange Landmarks blog recently reminded us, L.A.’s 1928 Parkinson-designed City Hall is an architectural icon worth exploring inside and out. But if you ever do find yourself touring its hallowed halls, be on the lookout for a restless spirit said to be making his own ghostly rounds of the place.

For years paranormal websites like The Shadowlands have insisted that a well-tailored “aristocrat” from the 1700-1800s haunts the third-floor vestibule area, accosting people on city business and generally making a nuisance of himself. The unattributed reports also claim that security cameras have captured additional spooky activities on the upper floors late at night after everything’s locked up.

The problem? I’ve been checking here and there into this juicy piece of ghostlore for some time now. Civic officials, their staffs, city archivists, building engineers, public information officers, docents, security guards — no one at City Hall that I’ve contacted (either on or off the record) has ever heard of the phantasm, let alone seen it.

Near as I can tell, the Internet stories are merely embellished versions of a short blurb found in Dennis William Hauck’s Haunted Places, The National Directory, the first edition of which appeared in 1994. His entry reads… [READ MORE...]

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

Yesterday Dateline>City of Angels explored the forgotten history of Griffith Park’s Crystal Springs adobe, along with its possible link to the legendary Feliz Curse. I also took the opportunity to announce I’m writing a book on the curse. Today, on a lark, I decided to search for any related web videos on the topic.

Source: YouTube!
Search Criteria: “Griffith Park + Curse”

The Result: A trailer for a cheesy (so say the reviewers) 2007 horror flick based on the “true story” of the Feliz Curse. If you’re squeamish or easily offended by cinematic blood, gore and bad acting, you may want to skip this clip…

The Backstory

Created by Julian Higgins, son of rocker Bertie, and recently released in the U.S., The Wrath takes some curious creative license with the already fanciful tale, adding a lost treasure and a vengeful beast who dines on trespassers. The film’s plot and other details can be viewed here. Especially brave souls can order/download the full movie from Amazon. Finally, there’s also this Inmag interview, in which Bertie Higgins discloses:

“Julian and I did a short film in L.A.’s Griffith Park in early 2005 and we became very interested in the history of the park. After a great deal of research, we discovered the back story about the haunting of the old Feliz estate (which is now Griffith Park) and the screenplay began to take shape. We felt that the story was very compelling and that it had to be told.”

No offense to the two, but considering how the film seems to mostly parrot the popular urban legend, you have to wonder what passes for “a great deal of research” in Hollywood these days. The Tale of the Feliz Curse is indeed compelling, but the real story behind the myth is even more so. Too bad the research team didn’t dig a little deeper.

Lately, I’ve been working to improve my amateur photography, especially with more challenging night shots. In fact, ever since shooting the Vista Theater at dusk last week, it seems I’ve been in a neon mood.

This image was taken last night about 11 p.m., outside Paradise, a stark-white no-tell motel trimmed in fetishy purple neon, that overlooks Sunset Blvd. along Echo Park’s eastern fringes.

My skills definitely need honing: I failed to do justice to the sign’s intense purple lettering, but did manage to pull some interesting hues from other objects in the scene. (I’m a big fan of cartoonish color saturation, if only to fool Firefox browsers into rendering some sort of vibrancy…)

For other amateur shutterbugs who care about these things, this was shot in raw with a Nikon D70s, ISO 320, 3 sec. @ f3.7, 24mm focal length, and processed in Capture One Pro.

[Paradise Lost, 2008, Michael Imlay]

As they say, looks are often deceiving. Take for example the Crystal Springs Ranger Headquarters at Griffith Park, pictured above.

At first glance it appears to be just another of L.A.’s ubiquitous 1930s Spanish Colonial bungalows. Beneath the whitewash and plaster, however, hides a landmark with a much more storied past — and perhaps even a long-lost secret or two…

The Official Story

Southern California’s historical community has long referred to the structure as the Paco Feliz Adobe, presumably built by its namesake Francisco “Paco” Feliz circa 1853. Now used as a film office and meeting center, park historians note that the Crystal Springs adobe is “the only surviving structure from the Rancho Los Feliz Era,” although it was substantially altered in the 1920s-’30s. In fact, sources at the park’s archives indicate that it’s difficult to discern exactly how much of the old adobe was preserved within the newer walls, which adhere closely to the home’s original three-room floorplan, complete with fireplace.

Ironically, this little adobe has seen some major intrigue over the decades. People often confuse it with the Feliz hacienda, which supposedly dated to the 1830s, if not earlier. However, park historians say this house served not as the main family dwelling, but as one of several outbuildings for ranch hands. The actual Feliz manor comprised two stories and stood near the present zoo parking lot. It was demolished by park authorities in 1921 to make room for the Wilson Golf Course — a brazen desecration that sparked an uproar among that era’s preservationists… [READ MORE...]

According to Italian officials, one of the mythical creatures is presently wandering about a nature preserve just outside Rome. Well, actually, it’s more of a Bambicorn, but you get the idea. It certainly makes more sense that a forest mammal like this may have inspired the legend, as opposed to the sea-dwelling narwhal.

In search of lost architecture? Metblog L.A.’s Jason Burns serves up a quick retrospective on the once stately Philharmonic Auditorium that formerly stood at 5th and Hill, a site that’s now… you guessed it… a parking lot.

With so much of the area’s past lost to development over the years, it’s nice to see a few architectural wonders rediscovered every now and then. Over on 6th Street, workers removing a rather non-historic 1960s facade from the Hayward Hotel have revealed a timely reminder of the building’s glory days. Blogdowntown’s Eric Richardson has the scoop.

Meanwhile, just north of downtown, Echo Park residents are concerned about the future of their historic lake, which is about to be drained and refilled to improve water quality. (Silver Lake and the Elysian reservoir had their turns first.) Jenny Burman reports on an upcoming meeting for locals to address the issues of the rehabilitation and its effects on wildlife, not to mention the lake’s famous Lotus plants, which are mysteriously dying.

Finally, a housekeeping note: Reviewing this blog’s RSS feed, I see that YouTube embeds are making it through to feed readers, but LiveVideos aren’t. If you’re a Dateline>City of Angels RSS subscriber, my apologies. Until I figure out a fix, you’ll have to click over to the actual blog posts to see the video clips.

We may not always be consistent about much else here at Dateline>City of Angels, but the one regular feature you can count on is Friday Flix. And now, without further adieu: This week’s choice for the most interesting, offbeat and/or entertaining web video sharing key words or themes with this blog…

Source: LiveVideo
Search Criteria: “Los Angeles + Cemeteries”

The Result: A musical photo montage of many of the city’s more interesting grave markers, courtesy Beneath L.A. and local author/grave hunter Steve Goldstein. The roster of dearly departed includes famous and infamous alike, with epitaphs ranging from understated to over-the-top funny.