Posts tagged as:

Sightseeing

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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Cryptic Sights No. 3: Monument to a Wireless Operator

Angeleno Sights

Among the things I enjoy most about old graveyards are the many untold tales they contain.
Let yourself wander amid all the monuments to the rich and famous, and you’ll also find countless revelations about the life-and-death struggles of us common folk, whose stories would otherwise be lost to time.
A case in point is this riven [...]

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Field Trips: Five Family Friendly Halloween Haunts

Cryptic L.A.

My fascination with Angeleno ghostlore is no secret. For the past several years, I’ve spent every spare moment I can “collecting” spooky legends, researching their roots, interviewing witnesses, and joining professional ghost hunters in their explorations of our region’s most historic haunts.
Recently, fellow blogger Rebecca Lacko asked me to recommend some “family friendly” locales with [...]

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Cryptic Sights No. 2: The Unforgettable Cora May Phillips

Angeleno Sights

Take a walk through the tombstones in Section 5 of Angelus-Rosedale Cemetery, and you’ll find this witty epitaph for a once highly popular lady:
Cora May Phillips
1872 – 1912
Gone But Not Forgotten
Yes, how could the City of Angels ever forget Cora May Phillips, one of its most notorious madams?
In the late 1800s, Los Angeles turned a [...]

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Photo Op: Carroll Avenue Revisited

Angeleno Sights

While organizing my old digital files I stumbled across this detail shot of a dusk-lit Victorian porch on Carroll Ave. It was snapped about two years ago with my then-new Nikon D70s, just after I took up amateur photography.
Each fall I like to return to Carroll Ave. and take in its haunting Victorian homes. Part [...]

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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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Street Scene: Labor Day Night at Pink’s

Odds and Ends

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 [...]

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Marian Parker’s Mystery House

Cryptic L.A.
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I have wanted to visit this L.A. landmark for quite a while and finally had the opportunity recently. At first glance, this rather nondescript house that straddles the West Adams and Koreatown districts would appear no different from the many late-Victorian homes dotting the city. However, it has quite a storied past, being connected with [...]

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