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Sightseeing

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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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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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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Tripout to Charles Lummis’ El Alisal Hideaway

Angeleno Sights
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Imagine trekking more than 3,000 miles to take a job. Yet that’s exactly what Charles Fletcher Lummis did in 1884 after accepting a reporting position at the Los Angeles Times.
In what has to be one of the greatest early promotional stunts in L.A. Media history, Lummis journeyed on foot from Cincinnati to the City 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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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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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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That’s Our Lady at 6th and Union Drive

Angeleno Sights
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Time now for the second installment in this blog’s occasional That’s Our Lady photo series, bringing you random depictions of Our Lady of the Angels from throughout the region.
Yes, I know that technically this colorful mural at 6th and Union Drive represents Our Lady of Guadalupe, but I don’t mind stretching the series definition to [...]

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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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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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Driveby Shot: Crossroads of the World

Angeleno Sights
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Now an office building, Sunset Blvd.’s Crossroads of the World opened in 1936 as L.A.’s first themed shopping mall. (Many believe it’s America’s first such mall as well.)
The shipshape design was the brainchild of Robert V. Derrah, well known for his Streamline Moderne Coca Cola building across town on Central Avenue.
Here at Crossroads, a twirling [...]

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That’s Our Lady: Depictions of L.A.’s Namesake

Angeleno Sights
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Los Angeles is known throughout the world as the City of Angels, a fact reflected in this blog’s title. But as your humble blogger has pointed out before, the city’s founders didn’t really name their pueblo for the angels, but for the Virgin Mary (aka, Our Lady of the Angels).
As a reminder of this oft-forgotten [...]

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Photo Op: Pasadena’s City Hall

Angeleno Sights

This building ranks as one of Southern California’s true gems. Completed in 1927, it was designed by the San Francisco firm of Bakewell and Brown. The red tile roofing, cast stone details and massive six-story dome recall 16th Century Italian architectural cues.
When I set out to snap my night photos, I began with the much [...]

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Rediscovering an Elysian Valley Treasure

Angeleno Sights

Sometimes it feels like I just don’t get around as much as I used to.
How else to explain my embarrassing ignorance of a splendid little pocket park practically in my own backyard?
Acting on a tip from a source that will remain nameless (OK, it was this month’s issue of Sunset Magazine), your humble blogger set [...]

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Photo Op: Grand Avenue’s Artsy New School

Angeleno Sights

My regular readers may be wondering where I’ve been lately. The answer is all over town.
Two magazine writing gigs, plus continued work on my book have kept me plenty busy. Add to that a documentary film class that I started at the Echo Park Film Center a couple of weeks ago, and you’ve got the [...]

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Photo Op: Two Views of Pasadena’s Wonderfully Creepy Bridge

Cryptic L.A.

As long as we’re still celebrating the Christmas season, remember the famous Bridge Scene in It’s a Wonderful Life? Had the film been set in Southern California, Jimmy Stewart certainly would’ve considered hurling himself from the spans of Pasadena’s Colorado Street Bridge instead of some snowy old trestle.
Built in 1913, the overpass towers 150 feet [...]

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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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Podcast: Probing Old Savannah Cemetery

Podcasts

Cue the fanfare! Dateline>City of Angels is proud to debut its very first Podcast Report.
Dating to the 1850s, Old Savannah Cemetery is located in Rosemead, Calif., at the end of the Santa Fe Trial, making it one of our nation’s most historic pioneer graveyards. Over the last few years, preservationists have fended off a plan [...]

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

Odds and Ends

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 [...]

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