[sic]

Robert F. Kennedy was shot 40 years ago yesterday, just after midnight. Just after declaring victory in the California primary in the Embassy Room Ballroom at the Ambassador Hotel, a landmark whose demolition was completed last year.

It’s become tiresomely cliché to recall one’s location at the occurrence of calamitous events — especially on anniversaries. And as an entirely unaware 4 year old, where I was at the time and place Kennedy was assassinated carries no significance whatsoever. But still there’s something compelling to my “as the crow flies” proximity… at least to me. Perhaps because I grew up obviously knowing about the murder — and even its location — but in such an abstract, almost otherworldly context. And only in the last year or so did I realize it wasn’t near as far as I’d always thought.

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At the moment the shots rang out in the pantry area between the hotel’s ballroom and its serving kitchen (pinpointed in the lower right of the map image above), I was 1.15 miles away — no doubt sound asleep upstairs in the front-most bedroom of the front-most apartment that was part of a Hancock Park-adjacent building centered around an open courtyard that stood on the northwest corner of 5th Street and Westminster Avenue (in the upper left of the image above), until it was torn down in the early 1970s for the condo complex that’s there now.

I remember the view from my bedroom window included the large Union Bank moneybag/bird logo hung high on the windowless western side of the skyscraper that occupies the southwest corner of Wilshire and Western, eight blocks from the hotel. I loved staring out the window at that big bird all lit up at night.

I don’t remember anything from that day that transpired between the time of the shooting and the time he died. It may have been, but I don’t remember the television being tuned to news reports. She may have, but I don’t remember my mother crying or commiserating at length with any neighbors or friends. I can’t recall anything particular or specific about that day, but in all likliehood I can say with some confidence I was most likely loaded up into my mom’s old Corvair that workday morning and dropped off at the Bambi preschool I attended in Hollywood and had a mega toddlercrush on my teacher who I recall wore those white go-go boots that were the style then. Her name escapes me.

Some time later I can recollect leafing through the pages of the old “Look” magazine my mom had gotten and being very intent on photos that featured the locations of the assassinations of Robert and his brother John. I remember being frightened

Robert Kennedy died 40 years ago today at the hospital where I’d been born on the same day as his brother.

There are two ways you can read that headline: 1) As coming from someone whose patience is waning, or 2) As coming from someone answering “What’s this about?”

From my perspective I’m way more in the No. 2 camp. See, this Thursday it will be 44 years to the day that I came into this world at 7:08 a.m., delivered via C-section at Good Samaritan Hospital, across the street from Pacific Dining Car restaurant. I like to wonder who might have been having their breakfast a baseball steak’s throw away from me when I got hauled into the cold and light.

If you happen to be nothing more than acquainted with me you might roll your eyes when I tell you that I really have no issues with the number. Why not? July 6, 1994, that’s why not. Folks who either know me well enough or those whose visits here have happened to coincide with some sort of exploratory recap of that particular evening might recollect I could have died that night. But since I didn’t — whether it be for the grace of god or a fluke of impact physics, or vertebrae density/resilience/flex, or the fact that I’m a tough sumbitch who can go motorcycle helmet-first into the side of a car at 40mph and stand up right away with a wrecked head and a flood of blood — pretty much every day since has been a gift too precious to get too bogged down worrying about the trivial realities that come with hiking further into middle age. The scars and damage I suffered may still bother me, but the wrinkles and the gray? I’m just glad to be here to have ‘em.

Yeah, but do I hop up out of bed and greet every single day with a whistle and a grin? Hell nah. I’m not some sort of carpe diem freak. It may all be gravy to me these past 14 years but sometimes that gravy is lumpy and cold and gloppy.

But this Thursday the gravy’s gonna be savory — in part because I’ve decided to do something I wouldn’t normally do and take the day off work… so that I can do something I wouldn’t normally do and start eeeeeeeeeearly spending the better part of the day celebrating the milestone by pedaling a 68-mile route around the city that’s been percolating in the cranium for quite some time under the working title of “This Is Your Life” ride.

That might be something of a misnomer, because it isn’t really anchored on specific events of my life so much as all the places I’ve lived during that time. Thus will I be pedaling to each of the 16 addresses I’ve lived at throughout the first semi-nomadic half of my life (assuming I’m indeed somewhere in the middle of it) — and my first stop will be Good Sam Hospital where it all began. I’ve charted the 68.3-miles via Gmaps as follows:

Chronologically speaking, here’s the where and when (any question marks early on indicate approximations and do not take into account a period of my very early childhood spent living with my grandmother in Carbon Hill, Ala.):

1. Good Samaritan Hospital, Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles (May 29, 1964)
2. S. McCarty Drive, Beverly Hills ( - 1966?)
3. Westminster Avenue, Los Angeles (1966? - 1970?)
4. S. Hamilton Drive, Beverly Hills (1970? - 1972)
5. S. Tower Drive, Beverly Hills (1972 - 1974)
6. Holly Drive, Hollywood (1974 - 1977)
7. S. Wilton Place, Hollywood (1977 - 1979)
8. S. Hamilton Drive, Beverly Hills (1979 - 1983)
9. Murietta Avenue, Van Nuys (1983 - 1984)
10. Beverly Glen Boulevard, Sherman Oaks (1984 - 1986)
11. Fulton Avenue, Van Nuys (1986 - 1988)
12. W. Tujunga Avenue, Burbank (1988 - 1990)
13. Verdugo Avenue, Glassell Park (1990 - 1990)
14. E. Palmer Avenue, Glendale (1990 - 1991)
15. Murietta Avenue, Van Nuys (1991 - 1991)
16. Beverly Glen Boulevard, Sherman Oaks (1991 - 1994)
17. Murietta Avenue, Van Nuys, (1994 - 1994)
18. Seabury Lane, Beverly Glen (1994 - 1995)
19. Burbank Boulevard, Encino (1995 - 2001)
20. Beverly Glen Boulevard, Sherman Oaks (2001 - 2003)
21. Del Mar Avenue, Silver Lake (2003 - 2004)
22. N. Occidental Boulevard, Silver Lake (2004 - )

For purposes of the most mileage-efficient route we will not be going in chrono order, instead it will be as follows:

1. Good Samaritan Hospital
2. Del Mar Avenue, Silver Lake
3. S. Wilton Place, Hollywood
4. Holly Drive, Hollywood
5. Westminster Avenue, Los Angeles
6. S. Tower Drive, Beverly Hills
7. S. Hamilton Drive, Beverly Hills
8. S. McCarty Drive, Beverly Hills
9. Seabury Lane, Beverly Glen
10. Beverly Glen Boulevard, Sherman Oaks
11. Burbank Boulevard, Encino
12. Murietta Avenue, Van Nuys
13. Fulton Avenue, Van Nuys
14. S. Tujunga Avenue, Burbank
15. Verdugo Avenue, Glassell Park
16. E. Palmer Avenue, Glendale
17. N. Occidental Boulevard, Silver Lake

If this seems an outlandish thing to do, I’ve done more over-the-top stuff. A couple years ago with the help of Susan and my good friend Rachel Rausch I summited Death Valley’s 11,049-foot Telescope Peak my last day as a 41 year old and for the first morning of my 42nd year bombed the 17-miles and 8,000-feet elevation drop between the Mahogany Flat campground and the Panamint Valley floor.

To me this seems totally tame in comparison.

It’s 52 degrees and calm outside right now at 3:50 a.m. It seems not as socked in as yesterday, but it’s early yet — literally. I’m up this morning this time not because of an tresspassing critters, but instead to get my ass on down to the 14th running of the bicycles known as the Acura L.A. Bike Tour, and ensure a spot near the front of the pack of some 15,000 or so others.

I just realized that with the L.A. Marathon I completed in 1994, and all the bike tours (and three orther marathons) since, this marks my 15th consecutive year of getting up the first Sunday in March.

It’s my least favorite part of the fun to come.

Stumbled upon in the archives, and taken during the last Midnight Ridazz ride shortly before I opted-out of all the not-riding that was going on here and doubletimed it to a doublecheese at Tommy’s (click to quadruplify):

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Another one from the archives, this one taken near the midway point of Franklin Avenue’s Great Pico Walk from Central Avenue to the sea last November.

It was last summer when I read Lucas Crown’s piece in Los Angeles Magazine about the enigmatic life and times and writings of his friend, novelist Mercedes Lambert who died in 2003 at the age of 55.

It was last week when I went into the Border’s across from the office building where I work to get my bay-bee a little valentine, and while I was there I decided to see if any of Lambert’s books were available, which was a great idea being where I was except for the EPIC FAIL that I couldn’t remember any of the titles, nor her name, nor her unique pseudonym. All I could remember to the clerk there was that she was dead and that she wrote using a male’s first name. Michael? David? Bradley? Fuck.

I left with a fancy card and some gourmet jelly beans, but without any of Lambert/Munson’s works. Eventually and still drawing blanks except that I was pretty confident that the first name was Douglas I got around to googling and damn if she wasn’t hard to find. I tried searching the L.A. Times website but came up totally empty same with Los Angeles Magazine. Ask.com was no help and it was only when I returned to the Google and entered some variation of “noir los angeles novels by deceased female authors Douglas” in the search term box did I get a hit — and only then on the third or fourth page in!

I saw her nom de guerre: Douglas Ann Munson and slapped my knee and immediately went to Amazon and snapped up two used copies of her previously published books as well as her last, published late last year, four years after her death.

In a nutshell Lambert was a lawyer turned novelist and the author of three well-received titles: El Niño in 1990, Dogtown in 1991 and Soultown in 1996. All are based in Los Angeles, with the last two centered around a female detective named Whitney Logan. By the publication of her third she was considered one of L.A.’s top mystery writers among James Ellroy, Michael Connelly and Walter Moseley. In 1996 she quit being a lawyer and moved to Washington to finish her fourth title “Ghosttown.” A month later Viking notified her they’d rejected it. After unsuccessfully attempting to retool the book she gave up and moved to Czechoslovakia and taught English until 2001 when she discovered a lump in her breast and returned to the U.S. for treatment. She’d previously beaten breast cancer in the 1980s, but this time she was given six months to live. She exceeded that prognosis, but succumbed in December 2003. Her ashes were returned to California and scattered in the waters off Marina Del Rey.

Source: Douglas Anne Munson Wiki page.

Crown’s piece in L.A. Magazine went into a bit more detail about the tragic last year or so of her life, making her unrealized future as a writer, one cut short by disease and her own demons, all the more poignant. I can’t remember specifics but I believe there was a period where she was almost completely destitute and even homeless on the streets of L.A. for a spell.

I think I’m drawn as much to her mysteries as I am the mystery that she was.

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Just one from the archives, snapped late December.

It’s another successful IAAL•MAF ride in the books, this one much different from last year’s there-and-back to the Watts Towers of Simon Rodia. This time I went crazy with the research and we made stops at the childhood home of Nobel Peace Prize winner Ralph Bunche (1121 E. 54th Street); the location of the 1969 shootout between Black Panther Party members and the LAPD (4145 Central Avenue); the Dunbar Hotel, which was the center not only of the black community through the 1950s but also of the extensive jazz era that thrived there (4225 Central Avenue). From there we went a few blocks east to the location of the SLA shootout with the LAPD in 1974 that left six of its members dead (1466 E. 54th Street). Then we hit the road south the rest of the way down Central to 103rd Street and a few blocks east across the tracks to get down to the towers for a tour and a group photo…

…before coming back up Avalon to 42nd and stopping to remember the old Wrigley Baseball field that existed there until it was demolished in 1969. After that it was up to King Taco at Washington and San Pedro before coming on home.

It was an amazing experience — not just to be able to behold the glory of Simon Rodia’s lasting achievement, but to be able to do it with a group of 20-plus cyclists who don’t think twice about about riding into part of town few people think of driving through. Thanks to all who joined in the adventure.

Flickr photoset is here.

This doesn’t come close to being a find of any type of archaeological proportions, but in a city so often faulted for covering up its history, I can’t help but feeling somewhat similar to what I imagine a palentologist might feel discovering  preserved footprints of some ancient creature.

In this case it’s the pawprints of some dog (or maybe even a coyote, perhaps?) that happened to trek out from the apron of our driveway across the still drying concrete that had been poured to pave the street we live on. Here’s a a pair of side-by-side prints:

The year: 1925. That’s right, 82 years ago. Our house had been standing some nine years already when the city got around to covering up the dirt road that had existed for who knows how long before that.

I didn’t just now discover them. I first saw them perhaps a year or so ago, and since then I’ve attempted photos that never quite showed the worn impressions satisfactorily. I even once tried to take a molding of one with silly putty but that failed miserably too. So yesterday I just said screw it, and snapped several shots. The one after the jump shot from the center of the street has red circles that indicate the progression of the prints as they move away from our garage, disappearing across the center line.

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It was simple: Wherever I had to stop my bike during my ride home from work last night I pulled out the cam and snapped a pic, occasionally two. Sometimes I tried to find something even moderately compelling, sometimes I just pointed and shot and moved on.

Viewable here.