Dateline>City of Angels

Who doesn’t enjoy those first telltale signs of autumn returning to Southern California? Shorter days… Cool and breezy evenings… The  appearance of neighborhood Halloween superstores like this one in Silver Lake.

Yes, it seems the Witching Season is upon us again, earlier than ever.

Remember when Halloween was a minor holiday, with its merchandising confined to the seasonal aisle of the average drug or toy store? Those days are long gone. Trick-or-Treat marketing has become a full-blown niche industry in America, generating an estimated $6 billion annually from a calendar of shopping days second only to Christmas.

Thankfully, however, there are plenty of non-commercial chills and thrills to be found throughout our region.

To help Angelenos explore it all, local blogger David Markland has announced the re-materialization of CreepyLA. Similar to last year, Markland says the site’s posts will “relate to the supernatural, horror films, costumes, Day of the Dead, pumpkins, Halloween stuff, and just about anything that makes the hair stick up on the back of your neck.”

Meanwhile, here at Dateline>City of Angels, your humble citizen journalist also plans stepped-up ghost posts and assorted goodies to help celebrate what is admittedly one of his favorite holidays. Stay tuned.

You never know what — or who — you’ll run into at the local rummage shop. While out practicing night shots along La Brea, I also stumbled across Homer, Marge and Bart jailed among the shabby chic of this floodlit corner vintage yard.

Hopefully someone will spring them soon and give them a good home. Of course, the big question is the whereabouts of Maggie and Lisa. I can’t stand seeing any family split up, even the cartoon variety.

What better way to enjoy the waning summer than a late-night outing to Pink’s?

Probably the most popular hot dog spot in all Southern California, Pink’s has plied its trade near the La Brea and Melrose intersection since 1939, drawing huge crowds for its world-famous chili dogs well into the wee hours.

Of course, waiting in lines that sometimes stretch halfway down the block is all part of the adventure, with occasional celebrity sightings always helping to pass the time.

Militant Angeleno “sort of” covers this weekend’s Sunset Junction Street Fair, an event your humble blogger also stopped going to about two years ago.

There’s little I can add to the Militant’s post — his observations are dead-on. Sunset Junction used to be a fun event with an edge: An unpretentious celebration in which rag-tag bohemians, resident gang bangers, hardcore leather daddies and other diverse locals all mingled joyously and harmoniously in the dog days of summer. A true neighborhood experience, admission was free and the food, beers and booth trinkets were cheap.

Nowadays, most daddies you spot are the stroller-pushing Silver Lake Dad variety, while the “bohemians” are all hipster wannabes. (Oh for those good ol’ days….)

A few decades ago, a SoCal day at the beach often meant a trip to Santa Monica’s Pacific Ocean Park (POP), a 28-acre seaside amusement extravaganza designed to rival Disneyland. Featuring a Sea Circus, pier, funhouses, thrill rides, and even a few outer-space themed exhibits, the park opened in 1958, attracting more than a million visitors its first year.

Despite its early success, 1965 redevelopment of the surrounding area curtailed street access to the park, strangling attendance figures and forcing closure two years later. Except for some underwater pilings from its dismantled pier, no traces of POP remain today. It has completely vanished into the sands of time, leaving us nothing but childhood memories.

They say you never really appreciate what you have until it’s gone.

Moving into the neighborhood three years ago, I was at first mildly intrigued by this old shell of a gas station along Echo Park Avenue (left).

Over time, I came to view it as just another languishing eyesore and wondered when gentrification would finally rid us of its ugliness.

Only now that it’s “finally” being torn down (below) have I learned that it actually boasts a unique claim to fame: On this spot in 1956, the go-kart phenomenon was born.

According to a former property owner (who still lives and works in the neighborhood), the lot once belonged to Art Ingels, who built his prototype “little car” in a shop behind the station. A 2006 Los Angeles Times article picks up the story from there:

“Ingels invented ‘the little car,’ which he dubbed the Caretta kart, but it was Duffy Livingstone who popularized the ‘go-kart’… According to Livingstone, Ingels told him that lawn mower manufacturer McCullough had recalled many of its lawn mowers because of a patent infringement. ‘So they had piles of engines sitting around for $25 apiece,’ said Livingston, who had the machinery to shape the metal tubing to build a frame. ‘Art put one on this little car. I thought that was right up my alley.’

Livingstone then teamed with other backers to build and promote Ingels’ clever contraptions for racing at the Rose Bowl and other venues. Today it’s estimated that there are more than 125,000 competitive go-kart racers across America and a million worldwide.

The Legacy Lives On

In recent years, a new off-road variant known as the Trophy Kart has also hit the market. Replicas of fullsize dessert-racing trucks, the Trophy Karts have become a popular way of introducing kids to off-road motorsports — so much so that sanctioning bodies like SCORE International have formed a competitive class around them.

And to think that it all began right here at a humble service station just a few blocks from my house.

Nowhere near a busy intersection, this quiet residential corner is among the last places you’d even expect to find a service station. Still, when a 1953 fire burned down the first structure that occupied the lot, the current shack was brought here from Venice as a replacement. It continued to serve the Echo Park community through the 1970s.

Thankfully, while it’s about to say goodbye to Echo Park, the station is by no means disappearing forever. Workers are painstakingly labeling its bits and pieces for reassembly at the San Diego Automotive Museum, where it will be fully restored as part of a historical display.

Now that I’m aware of its past, I’m going to miss the old relic. To me it’s become a reminder that you just never know the history behind even the most mundane of structures in your neighborhood.

Don’t call ‘em a rehash. Think of ‘em as Summer Reruns — or better yet, “encore presentations.”

One of the downsides of blogging is posting an item you’re really proud of, only to watch it slowly creep down your homepage and eventually disappear into the Twilight Zone of your site’s archives, never to be seen again.

So why not resurrect a few oldies but goodies every now and then? (Especially during a busy week that makes researching and writing fresh content extra difficult?) The posts below rank among my personal all-time favorites and coincidentally all appeared a year ago this month.

If you’re a return visitor who caught them the last time around, enjoy reliving the adventure. If you’re part of a newer audience viewing them for the first time, all the better…

• Tarts and Misdemeanors — A glimpse at a deliciously sordid tidbit of history surrounding L.A.’s Hall of Justice.
• No Bull, The Ring Was Here — Uncovering a buried piece of L.A.’s Spanish-Mexican heritage in modern-day Chinatown — a post that will have you shouting Olé!
  
• Things to See and Tear Down in L.A. — Believe it or not, some readers missed the tongue-in-cheek tone of this post and thought I was really suggesting we bulldoze these landmarks.
• Parker Mystery House — Site of a particularly gruesome episode in our region’s history of sensational crime, murder and scandal.
• History, Murder and Intrigue in the 90201 — More murder and grave scandal, this time from the wood-paneled halls of Beverly Hills’ famous Greystone (aka Doheny) Mansion.

Talk about art imitating life! When Echo Park’s famous lotus flowers mysteriously vanished from the lake this year, a local photographer came up with a quaint solution: replace them with pictures. Which also promptly began (gasp!) disappearing. Honestly, neighbors, what did you think would happen?

And in Other News…

… I may have been too hasty recently in branding East Coast transplants as a bunch of whiners. Here’s one who actually has found good things to say about his newly adopted City of Angels.

… Meanwhile, the OC’s Coast magazine has been caught red-handed mimicking (perhaps parodying?) an Easterner publication. Did Coast’s editors think New York is so far away that such blatant copy-catting would go unnoticed?

… Don’t you just love celebrities continually reinforcing La La Land stereotypes? This time it’s Anne Hathaway, star of the new Get Smart movie, placing herself into the gentle, guiding hands of a “psychic masseuse.” Still, she insists she’s just your typical girl next door in every other way.

… I can’t stand Starbucks coffee. And I especially can’t stomach the chain’s snooty baristas who inevitably respond to requests for a simple “small coffee” with a smug, “We don’t have small, medium or large. We have tall, vente and grande.” Apparently I’m not not alone in my disdain. Turns out a whole lot of people are expressing glee in the company’s brewing financial woes.

… Looking for unusual summer vacation destinations that save on gas? Consider Nevada, where you can take advantage of this rather novel pump promotion, courtesy the Shady Lady Ranch, which is offering $50 toward your next fill-up.

… Of course, many are opting to stay at home, fix up the garden, and maybe even add that new deck they’ve been contemplating for summer entertaining. Not a bad idea, as long as you don’t wake the dead…

The Film: Sunset Blvd., the 1950 film noir classic co-written/directed by Billy Wilder and starring Gloria Swanson, William Holden, Erich von Stroheim and Nancy Olson.

The Scene: After leading two repo men on a high-speed car chase along a winding stretch of Sunset Blvd., down-on-his-luck screenwriter Joe Gillis (Holden) ditches them with a quick turn into an old, rundown estate. Mistaken for a “pet mortician” by the mansion’s bizarre owner (Swanson), Gillis tries to explain his intrusion into her reclusive world as her identity begins to dawn on him…

“You’re Norma Desmond… You used to be in silent pictures… You used to be big.”

“I am big! It’s the pictures that got small!”

The Question: What was the address for this legendary exchange, (a) in the film, and (b) in real life? (Again, no fair Googling up hints.) Click the Read More link to see the answer… Read more

The 4th of July holiday just isn’t the same when the Dodgers are on the road. It’s not that I enjoy taking in a good ol’ fashion American ballgame on the 4th — I never do. Rather, unlike some of my Echo Park neighbors, I can’t get enough of the stadium’s post-game aerial bombardments exploding practically right over my rooftop.

With Team Blue in San Francisco this holiday — and their 50th Birthday pyrotechnics being relegated to the Hollywood Bowl — I’m left searching for substitutes. In past years, there were some impressive illegal (I prefer the term “undocumented”) fireworks in the surrounding canyon that rivaled the official displays, but with gentrification and LAFD crackdowns, I’m not counting on any home-grown “shock and awe” to wow my backyard BBQ guests this time around.

So where to go? While living in Silver Lake, my annual tradition was to join a small but intrepid band of hikers to the Mt. Hollywood peak above the Griffith Observatory. That vista offered birds-eye views of practically every aerial display in the L.A. basin. However, since the 2007 fire (which, I should again point out had nothing to do with BBQs or fireworks), access and hours have been greatly curtailed.

Of course, there are similar sights to be had from certain stretches of Mulholland Drive, but the crowd factor can make finding the perfect vantage point tough.

And then there’s always this extensive list of official fireworks shows around the Southland.

Decisions, decisions.

One thing I do know… You won’t be finding me anywhere near a display like this.

Happy 4th!

According to Angelenic and other downtown blogs, the denizens at the heart of L.A. are growing restless. They want Hail-a-Cab, and they want it now.

The plan, which would allow taxis to pull over and pick up fares outside of currently specified zones, sounds like a good idea on paper — and downtowners are probably justified in their impatience to see it implemented. Still, I don’t begrudge city leaders for taking their time to fully consider the plan’s longterm effects on safety and congestion.

No matter how much urban boosters may wish for it, L.A. is not like any other city, nor can we merely snap our fingers and make it so. Taxis and public transportation may reign supreme in Chicago, New York, Boston or even San Francisco, but those cities have always been more geographically compact and were never built for and around the automobile as this place was. (Freeways, “Miracle Miles,” big, street-front department store windows and backlot parking malls were, after all, Angeleno innovations.)

Rushing to copy other metropolitan templates isn’t necessarily “farsighted.” Our region’s transit woes call for distinct, imaginative solutions that honor our unique character — not to mention the creativity and “out of the box” thinking that have traditionally demarcated the Angeleno “sense of place.”

That said, I’m not against the plan, except that judging from most of the comments on the local blogosphere, its biggest proponents seem to be: (a) cabbies who stand to make a profit, (b) tourism officials, and (c) transplants who come to L.A. to live its dream and then do nothing but complain about how it’s not the place they escaped from.

The cabbies and visitor bureaus I can get behind. The transplant whining is just getting old.

Question: Ask someone where you’ll find California’s steepest streets and they’ll likely guess San Francisco, where roadways like Filbert and 22nd sport a 31.5-percent grade. Hilly as the City by the Bay may be, however, it’s got nothing on the City of Angels, which actually lays claim to not one, but five of the state’s meanest climbs. Can you name them and the neighborhoods in which they’re found? Hit the “Read More” link to jump to the answer. And no fair peeking or Googling for hints… Read more