From the category archives:

Odds and Ends

Taking in the Prose Parade

Now that I’ve come to the end of my documentary film class (more about that later), it’s time to play catch-up here at the ol’ blog. Let’s start with a new addition to the Dateline>City of Angels blogroll: Prose Parade.
Launched a few weeks ago by my friend Linnea Hunt-Stewart, Prose Parade’s focus is grammar and [...]

View full item →

Stuff My Grandma Knew, No. 1: Use a Breadbox!

With another Great Depression potentially looming over these United States, I’m discovering the simple stuff my grandma’s generation did to stretch a dollar.
For example, two weeks ago I got a breadbox, which is already proving a surprisingly nifty little investment.
Beyond the aesthetics of a tidy countertop, there’s a science to breadboxes, and Grannie knew it. [...]

View full item →

For Auld Lang Syne, My Dear, Remember the Lyrics!

Tonight, at thousands of New Year’s Eve parties across America, a cultural tragedy will strike along with the midnight hour.
Countdowns will end, horns and shouts of Happy New Year will ring out, and drunken revelers will launch into a rousing chorus of Auld Lang Syne, only to realize within a few bars that no one [...]

View full item →

Gageteria: In Vinturi Veritas

Whether you’re a wine lover yourself, or gift shopping for someone who is, you’ll find this handy gadget the perfect item for holiday sippings.
Called the Vinturi, it’s a clever little “instant decanter” that can liven up your reds straight from the bottle. I discovered this $39.95 gizmo during a recent wine excursion through the Santa [...]

View full item →

So Much for SoCal’s ‘Deadly’ Shake and Bake Reputation

Quakes, wildfires, flash floods, mudslides, and now Storm Watch 2008. Amid all the local media hype that invariably goes with natural hazards like these, you’d think Southern California was the nation’s most dangerous place to live.
Not so, according to a new “Death Map” (left) prepared by researchers Kevin Borden and Susan Cutter at the University [...]

View full item →

BlogoBuzz: The Halloween Edition

Dateline>City of Angels would like to take this opportunity to wish readers a Happy Halloween and announce a special treat: Before dusk descends and the little costumed urchins hit the streets, I’ll be posting this site’s very first Podcast Report. (Be sure to check back here shortly!)
Technologically challenged as I am, this podcast was a [...]

View full item →

Photo Op: La Purísima Basks in the Late-Day Sun

For me, a visit to this mission is always like a trip back in time.
Off the beaten track just outside Lompoc, La Purísima was founded in 1787 as the 11th of California’s 21 missions. It moved to its current site in 1812 after a huge quake destroyed the first complex, four miles away.
Now a California [...]

View full item →

BlogoBuzz: Urbanization, Poachers Eat Away at Venus Flytrap

Did Venus Flytraps captivate you as a child?
Carnivorous plants may not have been the fascination of every kid on the block, but I was admittedly geeky enough to have a whole terrarium of them.
I could try to justify my offbeat hobby by claiming it was educational, but the truth is it was just plain cool [...]

View full item →

BlogoBuzz: Ghosts in the Weight Machines?

Do the dead need to tone for the afterlife? Apparently so, if you can believe the security cams at the Anytime Fitness center in Overland Park, Kan. Sometime, somehow, in the late hours when the building was otherwise vacant, someone or something tripped the motion-sensitive cameras into action. When staff later inspected the surveillance footage [...]

View full item →

Introducing “Cryptic Sights”

As promised last week, Dateline>City of Angels is introducing several special treats for the Halloween season. The first is “Cryptic Sights,” a series of visits to noteworthy tombs and markers throughout the Southland.
Ranging from the famous to the obsure to the just plain bizarre, you’ll find the first one, below, dealing with the rather strange [...]

View full item →

Friday Flix: Boozing It Up in the Face of Certain Death

Talk about dumb! Not much more to say about this party crowd, except that sadly we’ll probably be reading about them in the post-hurricane missing-person reports.

View full item →

D’oh! Simpsons Behind Bars

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 [...]

View full item →

More Proof That Skunks and Dogs Don’t Mix

“Uhh ohh, who got skunked?” asked the clerk behind the CVS counter. She seemed incredibly astute and chipper for someone working the graveyard shift.
“Does it really smell that bad?” I responded, sniffing the front of my shirt.
“No, it’s what you’re buying,” she explained. “All of that peroxide, baking soda and eye wash. You’re like the [...]

View full item →

Street Scene: Labor Day Night at Pink’s

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 [...]

View full item →

Pop Quiz: Mission San Gabriel of the Earthquakes

Today’s pop quiz is dedicated to Mission San Gabriel, which celebrates its 237th annual fiesta tomorrow through Sunday. Founded Sept. 8, 1771, it was fourth in California’s chain of 21 missions, and among the most prosperous. It can also be called L.A.’s Mother Church, since the pobladores set out from here to found the City [...]

View full item →

More BlogoBuzz: Deconstructing Sunset Junction

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, [...]

View full item →

BlogoBuzz: A Streetcar We’d Desire

L.A. Metblogger Jason Burns has the perfect recommendation for the new downtown streetcars proposed by the Bringing Back Broadway initiative: Make them vintage, à la San Francisco’s famous trolleys and cable cars.
Burns makes an eloquent case for such vehicles in his full post, a snippet of which reads:
While the very notion of a new streetcar [...]

View full item →

Surprise! Bigfoot “Discovery” Just One Big Scam

You’d think Sasquatch investigator Tom Biscardi would’ve seen this one coming. Certainly the warning signs were all there.
First, the two men who claimed to have discovered the over-seven-foot carcass in northern Georgia this past July couldn’t stick to a coherent story as to how they bagged it in the wilds, dragged it out, and iced [...]

View full item →

Flashback: The Great Griffith Park Fire of 1933

As this past weekend has again reminded us, fires have long been the scourge of Griffith Park. Devastating as the 2007-2008 fire seasons have been, however, the worst disaster in the park’s history remains the Great Fire of 1933, seen in this vintage AP photo sent by a Dateline>City of Angels reader.
Like the recent spate [...]

View full item →

Big Billboard for a Tiny Lost Dog

Posters and fliers in search of lost pets are a common sight in any neighborhood, but this is the first time I’ve seen a fullsize billboard.
This one overlooks the corner of Sunset and Alvarado in Echo Park and seeks the return of Hedkayce, a 10-pound mixed breed who vanished from her front yard in the [...]

View full item →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →

Angels Flight Railway