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Fun Stuff

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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Happy Thanksgiving!

Odds and Ends
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Dateline>City of Angels will resume regular posting after the holiday weekend. In the meantime, enjoy this Gloria Gaynor parody, courtesy USA Green Card Center.

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Ghosts and GHOULA at Olvera Street’s Casa La Golondrina Mexican Cafe

Cryptic L.A.
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Readers with a thirst for spirits — both the distilled and paranormal kind — should consider some monthly barhopping with GHOULA, the Ghost Hunters of Urban Los Angeles.
Last night the group’s “Spirits With Spirits” gathering descended on Olvera Street’s famous La Golondrina Mexican Cafe for dinner, drinks and an impromptu tour of the not-so-public upstairs [...]

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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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Altadena’s Weirdly Mysterious “Gravity Hill”

Cryptic L.A.
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Recently your humble blogger picked up a copy of the wondrously offbeat Weird California (left), a “travel guide to California’s local legends and best kept secrets.” Written by folklorist triumvirate Greg Bishop, Joe Oesterle and Mike Marinacci, the 2006 book devotes several pages to so-called “Gravity Hills” throughout the Golden State, including one in [...]

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Running With the RC Crowd

Odds and Ends
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Whenever there’s a lull here at the ol’ blog, you can bet I’m pouring all my energy into some paid writing gig. One of the great things about being a writer is the opportunity to learn all sorts of interesting stuff about a variety of subjects and then share those discoveries with readers.
Take for instance [...]

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Do You Blog Like a Girl?

Reading Room
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Well, do you? (Not that it’s a bad thing, especially if you are a woman.)
More importantly, which great writer do you emulate? Jane Austen? Homer? H.G. Wells?
Thanks to computer nerds with way too much time on their hands, the answers to these questions are just a few mouse clicks away.
Enter your blog URL (or any [...]

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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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Pop Quiz: SoCal’s Most Notable Flora

Odds and Ends

Thanks to the region’s famous mediterranean climate, Southern California boasts one of the richest mixes of native and exotic plant life found anywhere in the world. But here’s a thorny pop-cultural question for you…
What does the Bird of Paradise pictured here have in common with the rose, camellia and California Golden Poppy?
One little hint: We’re [...]

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

Odds and Ends

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 [...]

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Photo Op: Seeing the Lights in Altadena

Angeleno Sights

Still in a holiday mood? That’s OK, because technically the Christmas season runs the next twelve days until January 6, when the Christian world celebrates Epiphany, or the Feast of the Magi. So, if you’re looking for something to do this second night of Christmas (or the third or fourth, for that matter), why not [...]

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Friday Flix: A City of Angels Holiday Double Feature!

Life in Angel City

Search on keywords “Los Angeles + Christmas” in the vast video wasteland that is YouTube, and this is the campy sort of thing that pops up…

For the more nostalgically minded, there’s also the following vintage three-clip Dragnet episode in which Sgt. Friday and fellow gumshoe Frank Smith perform the Christmas miracle of tracking down and [...]

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BlogoBuzz: The Halloween Edition

Odds and Ends

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 [...]

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Return of the Autumnal Witching Season

Life in Angel City

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 [...]

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Friday Flick: Pacific Ocean Park, Circa 1959

Angeleno Sights

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 [...]

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Pop Quiz: Where Was L.A.’s First Chinatown?

Angeleno Sights

As the world celebrates the Beijing Olympic Games, it seems only fitting to serve up a pop quiz paying tribute to the City of Angels’ Chinese community, which has overcome tremendous adversity over the last 156 years…
The Question: Centered around North Broadway, New Chinatown is among L.A.’s most popular tourist attractions. However, as the name [...]

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Friday Flix: Anticipating “The Big One”

Odds and Ends

If this past week’s 5.4 Chino Hills quake rattled your nerves, you’d best brace yourself for The Big One that experts say has a better than 99 percent chance of striking California by 2038. To help prepare you, here’s an 8-minute excerpt from a PBS documentary focusing on the San Andreas Fault and highlighting a [...]

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Friday Flix: Just What the Doctor Ordered

Odds and Ends

This week’s pick for most interesting, offbeat and/or entertaining web video sharing themes with this blog…
Searching: Daily Motion
Keywords: “Los Angeles + History”

PSA For Tequilla, The Wonder Drug…
by SaveManny

The Result: Daily Motion’s search engine must be broken. As noted above, I entered “Los Angeles + History” and this is what popped up. Do they mean [...]

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Pop Quiz: Hooray for That Famous Hollywood Name!

Names and Faces

Famous as the film capital of the world and home to L.A.’s mythic “Boulevard of Dreams,” Hollywood has come a long way since its founding in 1886. Carved from lands that once belonged to Ranchos La Brea and Los Feliz, the area was known to the region’s Californios as “La Nopalera” because of the huge [...]

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