[sic]

Post rain and post wind, yesterday was one offering long views from my office 1o stories above the Westchester hardpan. The following semi-annotated view looking northeast was snapped through dirty glass and cropped from a 12x digitally zoomed image so it’s more surreal than real, but it gives you an idea of what’s out there on a clear day (click to quadruplify):

Sorry for the upside downishness of the image, I snapped this on the fly after catching it out of the corner of my eye (click to triplify):

 It’s a manhole cover I passed on Jefferson just north of Rodeo Road near the designated community of Cameo Plaza, and it reads:

City of L.A.
Made In Mexico

I find that true in both an historical and social and economic sense.

Sadly, in preparing for tonight’s game I have been unable to locate my Dodgers cap and can only ashamedly assume I suffered a major league brainfart in including it in my last clothing purge/donation to Goodwill. What an idiot!

But in the process of searching for it I did find some Dodger memorabilia that I would never get rid of no matter how big the brainfart, but no it will not be coming with us to the stadium tonight:

Though I’m guilty of not doing near enough over the years to care properly for it, even in its ratty state it is still a treasure to me: a souvenir pennant from the first Dodger game I attended way the heck back as a six year old in 1971. I even have the program stored away somewhere.

I can remember sitting field level on the first base side with my PeeWee League mitt hoping to catch a foul ball. I can’t remember who they played or who won, but I can remember falling in love with baseball and the Dodgers and their home.

Chances are good that you as a resident of the city and county of Los Angeles are in possession of some sort of hazardous material. Maybe it’s an old computer monitor stuck in the back of your closet or that quart of Navajo White paint you bought from Home Depot to touch up the livingroom wall that got damaged when you threw your cell phone against it for reasons we won’t go into here. Maybe it’s that very cell phone.

Whatever the item or items may be, they’ve been hanging around primarily because you’re just too dang lazy you have better things to do but also because you have something of a conscience in regards to personal responsibility and you don’t want to violate any laws disposing of the stuff improperly. So it just sits and sits and before you know it you’ve broken another cell phone against a different wall and bought another quart of paint because you’d temporarily forgotten you had the first quart stashed under the kitchen sink, and so on.

So what to do… what to do, indeed. Fortunately for us greater and lesser Angelenos the County of Los Angeles’ Department of Public Works in conjunction with the City of Los Angeles’ Bureau of Sanitation operate regional Solvent Automotive Flammable Electronic (SAFE) Collection Centers that are staffed and ready to go to work properly disposing of the crap you can’t (the county also maintains a calendar of mobile collection events; more info here). All you have to do is take it to them — although as we found out there are limits to what they will accept.

See in our case, Susan and I had what I would categorize as a “total shitload” of old paint stored out of the way in the basement. Not only was there some eight years worth accumulated since Susan bought the house, but also a bunch of leftover cans from her tenant’s past life as a grafitti paint-out specialist for the city.

After the jump, is what a “total shitload” of old paint looks like (click to enlarge):

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Tomorrow morning is the City of Angels Fun Ride. Forty-plus miles of police-accompanied (i.e. yelled at ceaselessly by The Man to stay to the right and obey all traffic laws!) bicycling goodness. I’m opting for my Giant road bike (improved this afternoon with two new shoes and a fresh saddle) rather than The Phoenix because the course includes climbs up into Elysian Park, Cahuenga Pass and the Griffith Park “rollercoaster.”

Then if I have the energy to do anything after that I may meet up for the L.A. River Bridge Walk departing from MTA Gateway Plaza behind Union Station at noon.

P.S. Look for a post scheduled to go live tomorrow morning on Blogging.la about my fateful day in L.A. 15 years ago when the riots broke out.

My patient and beloved Susan can attest to the annoying habit I have of barking out “Hey I know where that is!” at the TV when we’re watching a show or a DVD and I recognize wherever in Los Angeles a scene’s been filmed.

Never moreso were the opportunities for Susan to deal with such disruptive behavior than when we watched  The Prestige this weekend (No, not The Illusionist, the other one… the better one).

It’s one thing to see a car commercial that shows a young urbane couple miraculously navigating from downtown to Pink’s hot dog stand on La Brea in a matter of a few turns and a trip through the 2nd Street tunnel under Bunker Hill. It’s another to be watching To Live And Die in L.A. and pretty much be able to chart a turn-by-turn course of that movie’s infamous car chase. And still another to see Cheaper By The Dozen and recognize the supposed suburban Chicago house as actually being located at 4th Street in Hancock Park.

But it’s something else entirely to be watching a period film set almost entirely in England and have Los Angeles location after location pop up before us. There were so many I’m not sure I can remember them all.

If I were really good I’d have snapped
representative stills from the DVD for illustrative
purposes and to help refresh my memory… sorry.

Let’s see… first up was Pico House near Olvera Street whose internal courtyard masquerades as a London prison. After that we’re shown the cavernous lobby and grand staircase of the Park Plaza Hotel next to MacArthur Park all prettied up and pretending to be the Royal Albert Hall (and later on one of that hotel’s ballrooms is used for a scene that takes place in Colorado Springs). From there we’re taken inside the Los Angeles Theater on Broadway downtown and after that several scenes were filmed at the old Doheny estate, Greystone Mansion, in Beverly Hills. I’m pretty sure one of the mausoleums at Hollywood Forever Cemetery was the site of a funeral, too. And there were several outdoor scenes in the Rocky Mountains that I can only guess were filmed either in the Santa Monica or San Gabriel ranges.

Of course, ID’ing these places is made infinitely easier having been in them. Aside from Greystone and that specific space at the cemetery, Susan and I have had the distinctly enjoyable opportunities of exploring together Pico House, The Los Angeles Theater and the Park Plaza Hotel… the latter two with permission, the first one trespassingly without.

As to the movie itself? Not to much to say there. Wonderful cast of Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Michael Caine and Scarlett Johannsen (with extra special bonus of David Bowie As Nicky Tesla!) in a nice bit of fantasy filmmaking from Christopher Nolan (maker of Memento) with a couple interesting twists that are almost more of a relief  rather than revelation when they finally arrive at the end of the film whose runtime felt about 20-30 minutes too long.

Barring significant and steady rainfall tomorrow and looking for one last looooong pre-marathon conditioning walk, I’m seriously considering setting out super early and making Wednesday’s morning commute from Silver lake to El Segundo entirely on foot.

Should it not be raining and I somehow keep common sense at bay I expect I’ll be following alongside the tire treads of my established bike route, the distance of which totals 15.6 miles. Hoping for a pace maintained in the 3.5 mph range, I should be on the road about five hours… which means I’ll need to have feet on the pavement by 4 a.m. if I’m going to get to work on time.

And I thought the 110 was slow?

UPDATE (7:26p.m.): I got home a few minutes ago and reports of my motivation for this endeavor have been greatly exaggerated. I’m bushed at the present and the thought of getting up at 3 a.m. to walk five hours and then work eight hours and then mass-transit it home… in  a word (or two): ain’t happening.

Though Monday morning started off wet and dreary and disappointing with the cancellation (because of potential thunderstorms) of a whale watching excursion out of Redondo Beach  that I’d planned on going on with my friend Cybele, it turned into a remarkable day of discovery under clearing skies that included first-time visits to the Watts Towers, the Korean Friendship Bell, Pt. Fermin Park and Lighthouse, Wayfarer’s Chapel and San Pedro’s Ports O’ Call.

I can’t think of a single day in my life in L.A. where I’ve taken in so many landmarks I’d never seen before.

A Flickr photoset can be viewed here.

And I was so deeply moved by the monument to the human spirit that Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers are that from practically the moment I got home I got busy planning a group bike ride to them for this coming Sunday afternoon and posting it on the various bike-related calendars like Cicle.org, Bike Boom, and Midnight Ridazz.

I usually don’t do much in the way of identical cross-posting, but I just filed this prehistoric recollection over at Blogging.la and decided to paper the walls with it here as well: 

Seeing as it’s — ahem — that day, I figured why not regale anyone interested with what has to be the most spontaneously romantic thing I’ve ever ever seen happen in this city — or anywhere for that matter — and it all unfolded at the corner of Crescent Heights and Melrose back in either 1985 or ‘86.

At the time I was the courier for a firm that obtained travel visas for its clientele. I had just had lunch at the old Sundance Cafe on Robertson just above Beverly and I was coming back to the company’s Cahuenga Pass offices having completed my afternoon westside run to the consulates of France, Kenya, and South Africa all on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills at that time. Grandmaster Flash blasted proudly from the speakers of my adored little Mazda GLC hatchback (not because I remember but because that’s pretty much all I listened to):

It’s like a jungle sometimes,
It makes me wondah,
How I keep from goin’ undah,
Huh huh-huh-huh huh huh.

Those lyrics may not do much to set the mood for love, but it totally captures the period. Anyway, I can’t be sure exactly where it began, but after leaving Sundance and turning onto Melrose from Robertson I found myself bringing up the rear of a little romantic intrigue that then continued to play out for several blocks to La Cienega Boulevard and beyond. Cruising along in front of me was a spotless convertible Jag driven by a bombshell blonde and beside her in the right lane doing his best to get her attention was a rather undistinguished looking but obviously lovestruck man in a less than showroom-ready Ford Mustang and way out of his league.

Obviously well-versed in how to ignore stalkers, gawkers and loud talkers Ms. Bombshell coolly kept her eyes and attention straight ahead, having little if any of Mr. Smitten despite his shameless and unabashedly nutty attempts to catch her eye and heart by honking at her in conjunction with gesticulating and yelling variations of “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen!” Eventually the three of us approached Crescent Heights, slowing for the yellow light, and at the last moment, Smitten accelerated and yanked in front of her, slamming on his brakes so Bombshell had to stop short as his tires screeched against the asphalt, whereupon he threw open the door and jumped out almost before his car had come to a halt.

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The new folks over at L.A. Voice want to know just how bad L.A. is at historic preservation. Linking to a Preserve LA post that links to a Preservation Online article by Chris Epting titled “Lost in Los Angeles,”  L.A. Voice’s Ryan Knoll takes issue with Epting’s characterization of L.A. as one of the worst cities in the country in terms of preservation of its historic landmarks. Knoll sites Epting’s examples of the Ambassador Hotel and the Garden of Allah residential complex as just not being very heavy hitters in the history ring:

The Garden of Allah was a compound of bungalows that served as pieds a terre for celebs like Gretta Garbo, Humphrey Bogart, and Ernest Hemmingway. It was built in 1927 and bulldozed in 1959. Does a 32 year old apartment complex merit the “Historic” tag? If so, I want a tax deduction for my house.

You can make a strong argument for and against the Ambassador Hotel. It’s greatest claim to fame (or infamy), of course was as the spot of Robert F. Kennedy’s assasination. But the Kennedy family (I believe) wasn’t all that fired up about saving the building, and if you remove the Kennedy factor from consideration, the Ambassador becomes just another hotel that hosted famous people.

As an issue near and dear to my heart of course I started posting a comment in response to Ryan but it quickly rambled and so instead I decided to pop it up here, as follows:

Ryan, I would be interested to know where the line is to be drawn. If we look at a landmark and shrug about it not being old enough or that its only claim to fame is that it housed some celebs or hosted the murder of a presidential candidate then it shouldn’t be too difficult to shrug off all those vacant theaters on Broadway or that Frank Lloyd Wright house up on the hills or that luggage shop on Vine Street.

You can make the argument that historically speaking there’s not all that much going on and I wouldn’t necessarily disagree — not because few things actually qualify, but because there are so few things left. L.A. may be 225 years old but in the last 100 or so this city’s become the capital of reinvention and make-believe where the automobile is king, and our sprawled out drive-through cityscapes can’t help but reflect that.

As a prime example very near and dear to my heart, I site the “1,000 year old” oak tree that for the first 950 years of its undisturbed and unencumbered life was one of hundreds upon hundreds of oak trees growing in the area. But for its final 50 years or so it became isolated and imprisoned in what became the suburban bedroom community of Encino a hundred yards or so south of Ventura Boulevard until it finally succumbed to years of illness and indifference along with that winter’s relentless El Nino storms and fell in 1998. Sure, it was recognized in 1963 by the city as an historic and cultural monument (No. 74), but did that prevent the grand arbor from being relegated to a small island surrounded by the asphalt encroachment of the post-war boom? Of course not. City planners were so reckless in their disregard that they actually split Louise Avenue’s lanes around the tree, allocating a mid-sized shopping center to the north and a bank building to the south and multi-unit aparment buildings behind it. Why? Because what was it other than nothing but a big old tree. Never mind that it deserved a park of its own and even the slightest in protective distance from the pavement and pollution, this historic and cultural icon couldn’t even get the slightest consideration beyond being acknowledge for its longevity in a city whose residents ceaselessly strive to ignore the clock rather than recognize its forward progress.

And now it’s gone.

So while historic significance might be an oxymoron in L.A., it would be from a perspective of cultural significance that I would definitely say L.A. qualifies as one of the most ignorant cities at preservation. On a small scale countless are the landmark businesses that are nothing more than memories and pictures: Perino’s, C.C. Brown’s, Wallach’s Music City, Pickwick Books, Jay’s Jayburgers. Hell, rather than restore it the city came very close to razing downtown’s central library after it was torched by arsonists in the 1980s.

And the erasure is easily evident on a larger scale, too – and not without some irony. Union Station is an untouchable landmark in its own right, but it resides on what used to be the original location of Chinatown. Same with Dodger Stadium. I would throw myself in front of any bulldozer that threatened my beloved House of Blue, but it was built on the dirt that buried the barrancas and canyons and history of Chavez Ravine. And what they couldn’t fill in they chopped down. Bunker Hill used to be much more of a hill than it is now, but it was lopped off and trucked down and leveled and with it went so much of one of the city’s most historic residential cores.

The bottom line for me is that be it historic or cultural, Los Angeles’ past is a slate that’s historically been far more easily and regretlessly cleaned than most other American cities.