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Lifestyle

Time Warp: The St. Francis Bungalow Court

Angeleno Sights
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Love ‘em or hate ‘em, nothing says Southern California Living like a bungalow court — and with good reason. They originated here, specifically in the City of Pasadena. In fact, the photo at left depicts what’s left of the world’s very first one.
Built in 1909 by Sylvanus Marston, the St. Francis Court once occupied the [...]

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My Downtown L.A. Shooting Spree

Odds and Ends
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The FBI will probably put me on some sort of watch list for this post, but I don’t care. I can’t resist crowing about a brand-new experience I had this past weekend: a shooting spree at the downtown Los Angeles Gun Club.
The whole idea came about while sitting over coffee Sunday afternoon with friend and [...]

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Memory Lane: 1950s Los Angeles

Odds and Ends

Automobiles with fins cruising broad boulevards and open freeways; street cars and paper boys; well-dressed people lining up to dine at the Pantry; industry and commerce — these are just a few of the sights recorded in this nostalgic view of 1950s Los Angeles. If you grew up Angeleno during that era, enjoy the trip [...]

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BlogoBuzz: A Downtown Guide for Last-Minute Valentine’s Romance

Life in Angel City
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Frantically looking for last-minute Valentine’s activities in the Downtown Los Angeles area? Don’t worry, all is not lost. The Downtown Center Business Improvement District (DCBID) has a host of ideas for procrastinating Romeos (and/or Juliets), including intimate dining locales, lovingly thoughtful gift-shopping suggestions, and especially romantic spots to pop the question if you’re so inclined. [...]

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Megastorm Watch 2011 and Beyond!

Reading Room
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Local television news anchors and their producers must be salivating. Scientists are warning that the Mother of All Storm Seasons may soon be headed our way.
No, it’s not due to global cooling, global warming or climate change (whichever term is in vogue nowadays). Rather, like our region’s major earthquakes, such megastorms are natural phenomena that [...]

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Bearing Christmas Greetings

Life in Angel City
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Decorated for the holiday season, this Santa Bear guards the Ferndell entrance to Griffith Park. Someone has apparently taken it upon himself to ensure the statue is always dressed appropriately for every occasion. A few weeks ago the bear was wearing a winter sweater. During the summer he’s bare (bear?) naked.
The bear was a gift [...]

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The Lights Are On in Hastings Ranch!

Life in Angel City
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Well, sort of… With the rain pouring and the troubled economy encouraging drastic energy conservation, the annual Upper Hastings Ranch Light Up seems more of a hit-or-miss event this year.
Driving through the soggy Pasadena enclave during a 10 p.m. deluge, I saw plenty of houses wired up with lights and displays, but few were actually [...]

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L.A. Auto Show a Trip Down Memory Lane

Life in Angel City
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Unless you’re totally pedestrian, you probably know the L.A. Auto Show has made its yearly return to the Los Angeles Convention Center, running Nov. 19-28. I’m headed that way tomorrow, filled with anticipation. It’s always hard to say which I enjoy most — seeing the exciting new automotive technologies and concept cars or bumping into [...]

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More Trash Talk From Victorian Los Angeles

Reading Room
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Ever eager to view our region’s current events through the prism of its off-the-wall history, Friday’s garbage post (below) got me thinking: How did Angelenos handle their refuse problems, say, a century or so ago?
As you might expect, the answer isn’t very pretty.
Ralph Shaffer, history professor emeritus at Cal Poly, Pomona, has written an interesting [...]

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Get Ready to Pay Through the Nose for Dumping Your “Illegal” Trash

Life in Angel City
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Fines for dumping illegal garbage in Los Angeles have skyrocketed drastically, thanks to a new city ordinance. Yet, strangely, officials waited weeks to launch their public awareness campaign for the new regulations, which actually took effect last month.
Aimed primarily at businesses, the law allows trashy offenders to be charged “administrative” fines of $500, $750 and [...]

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The Bricks and Mortar of Feminist Power

Angeleno Sights
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Who says L.A. has no history? Open your eyes (or in this case your camera lens) wide enough, and you’ll literally discover it in the most out-of-the-way corners of town.
While shooting the Broadway viaduct the other day, I parked my Jeep in front of this old brick building on N. Spring Street, thinking little of [...]

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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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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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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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Check It Out: The Original Foxfire Book Series

Reading Room

With the 1970s making their retro-glorious comeback, Dateline>City of Angels readers might want to check into the popular Foxfire book series that debuted during that decade.
I was reminded of these books while making my recent post about Grannie’s breadbox. As those who lived the 1970s will recall, “returning to nature” and “the basics” were prevalent [...]

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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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BlogoBuzz: A Streetcar We’d Desire

Odds and Ends

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 [...]

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