From the category archives:

Life in Angel City

Winter Wonderland, SoCal-Style

Life in Angel City
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The return of these tumbleweed snowmen to Stadium Way can only mean one thing: It’s officially Christmas time in the City of Angels.
It’s amusing how ingrained the concept of a White Christmas is in our pop culture. Even here, at the edge of the Mojave Desert, these are the lengths we’ll go to in “recreating” [...]

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A Tale of Two City Murals

Life in Angel City
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It’s either the best of wall art or it’s the worst of wall art, depending upon your perspective. After all, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But if you ever needed a demonstration of the self-evident principle that murals mirror the life and cultural assumptions of their respective communities, this is it.
This first [...]

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Detail Shot: Frogtown Garden Gate

Life in Angel City
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A colorful gate to a community garden catches the morning sun in the Elysian Valley’s Frogtown neighborhood. Just a block or two from the river, this is one of the nicest community gardens I’ve ever stumbled across. Everything is very neatly arranged and tidy, with a well-maintained brick path leading past a variety of fruit [...]

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Anonymous Billboard Urges Boycott of Los Feliz’s Vermont Hand Wash

Life in Angel City
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At first I thought this new billboard along Sunset’s 4400 block might be the work of advertising amateurs — or possibly a lone disgruntled customer angry enough to splurge on an outdoor display. The slogan’s catchy enough, but there’s nothing to support the message or make us care. For all we know, the alleged “injustice” [...]

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Check Out Silver Lake’s Gleaming New Neutra-Inspired Library!

Life in Angel City
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It was a long time in coming, but Silver Lake finally saw the much-anticipated opening of its new $12-million library this morning. The residents’ campaign for the building actually began in the mid-1990s, but considering how Silver Lake’s elite history dates to the early 1900s, you wonder why it even took that long.
In any event, [...]

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Angeleno Streets Rank a Fatal Third Most “Dangerous by Design”

Life in Angel City
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As if you didn’t have reason enough, now there’s even more cause to fear the mean streets of Los Angeles.
The Transportation for America (TFA) advocacy group has released a report ranking Los Angeles as 27th in the nation for pedestrian accidents, but third in pedestrian fatalities.
In other words, your stroll along Main Street carries less [...]

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A Halloween Post Mortem

Life in Angel City
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Halloween used to be my favorite holiday. I guess it still is, but I just don’t seem to enjoy it as much nowadays.
The past several years a busy work schedule usually kept me on the road for the holiday. No costume parties, no Day of the Dead processions at Olvera Street, no ghosts, ghouls or [...]

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Blightseeing: Down by the L.A. Riverside

Life in Angel City
Riverside Bike Path

Ride along the Glendale Narrows Bike Path to its southern terminus, and you’ll find these colorful, life-size scribblings “decorating” a Golden State Freeway overpass of the L.A. River.
Similar graffiti graces another bridge approach just beyond the bikeway (left).
So how should we label these taggings? Guerilla art or urban blight?
To me, graffiti is like a paisley [...]

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Introducing the Cute Little Puppy From Hell

Life in Angel City
Diablo

Allow me to introduce Diablo, the latest addition to our Echo Park household.
While our entire family still very much misses Ramses — and realizes no dog can ever fill the void left by his passing — life must go on. Plus our surviving Dobie Isis desperately needs a companion, having slipped into an obvious funk [...]

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Goodnight and Goodbye, Ramses, My Big Puppy

Life in Angel City
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Your humble blogger hasn’t felt much like blogging lately. This past week our household had to say goodbye to our proud red Doberman, Ramses, roughly a month short of his eighth birthday.
We knew this day was coming. On average, Dobermans live about nine years, making Ramses a senior dog. Yet even in his advancing age, [...]

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L.A. in Quotes: Wigging Out to the Hollywood Plastics

Life in Angel City
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“I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They’re beautiful. Everybody’s plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic.”
– Andy Warhol (1928-1987).
Thanks to out-of-town guests, I’ve been spending a lot of time around Tinseltown lately. For some reason this dingy wig shop along Hollywood Blvd. struck me as the perfect illustration for Warhol’s quote. [...]

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Driveby Shot: Hollywood’s Celebrity Pawnbrokers

Life in Angel City
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I don’t know why this pawn shop’s tagline amuses me, but it does. Guess everyone’s falling on hard times nowadays, including our Movieland elite.
Located at the corner of Melrose and Cahuenga, Brothers Collateral is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. seven days a week for all your celebrity liquidation and/or collectible shopping needs.
According to a [...]

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Blightseeing: Curbed Sofas in Echo Park

Life in Angel City
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Don’t you just hate when someone decides to redecorate your neighborhood streets with their tired, worn-out furnishings? (All the more so when they take up precious parking space…)

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Weekend Matinee: Recalling Beverly Park and Ralph Story

Life in Angel City
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For your weekend enjoyment: An excerpt from the PBS program Things That Aren’t Here Anymore, narrated by Ralph Story, a guy who (sadly) isn’t here anymore.

Beverly Park operated at the current site of the Beverly Center from 1945-1974. Having never been there as a kid, your humble blogger lacks any personal recollections of it. However, [...]

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Tea’d Off in Glendale

Life in Angel City

Joyce Meadows (left) of Canyon Country hoists her “Don’t Tread on Me” flag as Tea Party participants begin to gather at Glendale City Hall just before noon today.
One of many such Tax Day protests held across the nation, the Tea Party was organized by Debi Devens, a self-described “average American housewife” from Glendale’s La Crescenta [...]

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Hey!… You!… Nightriders!

Life in Angel City

This rant’s for you! Yeah, you know who I’m talking to…
The less responsible bicyclists “ridazzing” through Echo Park and Silver Lake any given weeknight without regard for the traffic around you…
Your after-dark excursions may have you feeling oh so hip, smug and eco-friendly, but you know what would really demonstrate  social consciousness?
Some friggin’ lights.
And [...]

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For Lease: 2 Bdrm Echo Park Split-Level With Views!

Life in Angel City

At first the thought of using my blog’s main column for advertising seemed almost sacrilegious. Then lo and behold, yesterday the Los Angeles Times caved to exactly this sort of journalistic iconoclasm. So why not join the trend? After all, I have an apartment to rent ASAP, and these are tough, recessionary times…
Considering a Large, [...]

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Shared Nostalgia: Rachisio Oliva’s Downtown Store, 1948

Life in Angel City

The above photo was sent by reader Patrick Oliva. Depicting a downtown market run by his father, circa 1948, the image was part of a recent El Pueblo exhibit celebrating L.A.’s Italian community. (Many Angelenos don’t realize it, but Italian immigrants and their descendants formed a significant presence in the Plaza area from the 1820s [...]

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Spirited Getups for the Easter Season

Life in Angel City

I like Halloween as much as the next person, probably more. But when it’s over, it’s over — right?
Not for the good people at the Spirit Halloween Co., who’ve become incredibly innovative in their attempts to keep the seasonal marketing going, and going, and going.
Back in October I purchased a hanging skeleton at their Silver [...]

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Yet Another Ill-Fated Hollywood Dream?

Life in Angel City

Here we go again… Yet another attempt to “bring Hollywood back to Hollywood.”
Ever on the lookout for L.A. stories that might inspire me to blog more, my Atlanta-based writer pal, Hilda, alerted me to this New York Times piece about the new five-star hotel going up at Hollywood and Vine. The article details the plans [...]

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