Posts tagged as:

Oddities

Banking on a Dead Horse in Silver Lake

Cryptic L.A.

For all Citibank’s Silver Lake customers know, their branch safeguards a mythic lost treasure.
But it’s not in the bank’s vault — at least not the one where the loot is kept.
That’s because the treasure in question isn’t gold or currency, but rather Old Blue, faithful steed of cowboy movie legend Tom Mix. And according to [...]

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More Old News: Trouble at the Ol’ Coronel Place

Odds and Ends
LAPL image

If you’re a faithful reader of this blog, you’ve already met Antonio Coronel, 19th century L.A. mayor and leading citizen extraordinaire. Now it’s time to meet his widow Mariana, courtesy a news item carried by the Los Angeles Times 110 years ago this month.
Entitled The Coronel Mansion, the May 2, 1899, piece reports the  courtroom [...]

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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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Col. Griffith’s Brush With the Cursed Grim Reaper

Cryptic L.A.

One of L.A.’s favorite ghost stories is the Feliz Curse, a hex allegedly placed on Griffith Park by a young girl a century and a half ago. Each Halloween, the story inevitably pops up in some newspaper or blog.
I’ve written extensively on many aspects of the curse (for example, here and here), but a little-known [...]

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Cryptic Sights: One Lulu of a Burial at Angelus-Rosedale

Angeleno Sights

They say you can’t take it with you.
Maybe not, but it sure can buy you one helluva sendoff.
Just ask Louise Maier, only daughter of the wealthy Joseph Maier, the Bavarian owner of L.A.’s Philadelphia Brewery in the late 1800s. When Lulu (as she was known about town) died in 1897 at the blossom age of [...]

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Rudy Valentino’s Cryptic DeLongpre Park Memorial

Cryptic L.A.

Hollywood is known for countless oddball pairings: Laurel and Hardy. Spanky and Alfalfa. Sonny and Cher.
But in my mind one of the oddest has to be Rudy Valentino and DeLongpre Park. There is no historical connection between the two. Yet here in the pocket park commemorating the famous floral artist Paul DeLongpre, you’ll find not [...]

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Surprise! Bigfoot “Discovery” Just One Big Scam

Odds and Ends

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 [...]

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Fillmore: Southern California’s Newest “Hotspot”

Odds and Ends

Believe it or not, right now, the “hottest” spot in Southern California is someplace outside Fillmore in Ventura County, but unless you’re a thermogeologist, it’s probably no place you’d want to visit.
Experts are reportedly still baffled over the “thermal anomaly” that caused ground temperatures on a small patch of terrain to soar to more than [...]

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