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You can click to gigantize this roughly knitted  panorama of a series of stills that capture the hundreds of people gathered prior to the start of the walk Sunday afternoon.

The news has landed. The coroner’s office has ruled today what many people feared and some will refuse to believe, that Silver Lake’s beloved Walking Man, Dr.Marc Abrams, killed himself.

Given how I feel about suicide I don’t want to believe it. Given the horrible manner within which he’s purported to have done it — by drowning himself in a covered hot tub — I can barely imagine it.

Not that I didn’t consider it in the days following his shocking demise last week. In fact I suprised myself by being ready to accept that conclusion if it had been a decision made in the wake of him contracting some debilitating illness that would ultimately immobilize him. But if he killed himself because of the criminal investigation that came to light, well… the following about-face might seem heartless, but as someone who spent many hours as a volunteer telephone counselor with the Suicide Prevention Center talking with people thinking about killing themselves but who had the strength to reach out for help, the regard I had for him just evaporated and the only sympathy I have is for those in his life who held him dear and who he so selfishly abandoned.

I’m not so narrow as to not realize there may be more to the story. Maybe he did reach out for aid and found no comfort from it. Nor am I callous enough that I can’t recognize the turmoil he must have been in to do such a terrible thing. But now because of what I can only accept as his official cause of death I’m left with abject disappointment, questions there may never be answers to, and the empty wish that he had been able to recognize there was a better way he could have gone.

I walked to honor Abrams twice, individually on Thursday and  yesterday with hundreds of others, because of what he meant to me and because I mourned the community’s loss of him. I wouldn’t walk for him today not because I no longer grieve, but because what he means to me today is something entirely less honorable.

Just amazing how a community can come together. When I turned the corner yesterday afternoon and came upon the hundreds of people gathered at the Silver Lake Recreation Center, there for a walk organized to honor and remember Dr Marc Abrams — Silver Lake’s indefatigable “Walking Man” — I choked up at such a wondrous sight. It made me so proud to be a part of this neighborhood.

Flickr photoset is here.

I was greeted this pre-dawn with a tweet from my friend Walt, saddened by the death of the man well-known as the Silver Lake Walker, otherwise known to his patients as Dr. Marc Jacobs.

In shock and abject sadness over the sudden loss of such a fixture of the neighborhood I then went about posting up on Blogging.la a bit of what he meant to me as a treasured community icon who I encountered numerous times since moving to Silver Lake in 2003, such as in the series of images above (click for the bigger picture), captured as he passed by me and other cyclists outside Trader Joe’s as we readied for a ride.

I’m going for a walk today at lunch in honor of him.

UPDATE (3:46 p.m.): Well, I did it. Took an extended lunch and logged five miles walking in honor of Dr. Abrams, stopping at Trader Joe’s to pick up a couple  bouquets of flowers in hopes of recognizing his house on Moreno Drive and leaving one there and leaving another at the mural on Sunset. Alas, I couldn’t recall the house’s location so both bunches of flora ended up at the mural.

And if there’s anyone reading this who thinks I’m making too big a deal about the man’s impact on this neighborhood, here’s a short and wonderful documentary from Lauren Malkasian made about the Walking Man a few years back:

Coming home from a 70-mile bike ride Saturday afternoon  I saw the smoke and my heart leapt into my throat as it seemed  pretty much aligned with where our house is located on the other side of the ridge rising up between my location heading west on Sunset Boulevard approaching Benton Way and our street. What I couldn’t be sure of is if the flames generating the plume were on the east side of Silver Lake Boulevard or beyond it to the west.

A hipster in front of me in the bike lane reflexively and entirely non-ironically yelled out “Cool!” when he saw the smoke and I passed him suggesting with a snarl that “cool” was about the worst way to react to anything burning down unless you’re an arsonist or an asshole. “And I’m guessing you’re not an arsonist,” I yelled before cranking hard past him.

I didn’t wait around for him to tell me to fuck off as traffic was clear giving me the opportunity to get across the westbound lanes and in the center of the street between the double yellows to make my left turn. It was about then there when I saw the smoke was well beyond our house and street and I cruised home to find Susan up in the guest bedroom with her binoculars watching the firefighters on-scene battle the blaze. My relief was tempered by the sight of someone’s home being destroyed. And as I watched the firefighters on a neighboring roof battle the flames that seemed to surround them, I hoped no one was or would get hurt. Then the top of a tall pine nearby erupted in orange but quick action snuffed that fright out almost as quickly as it ignited.

I set up my camera on timelapse at 4:30 p.m., approximately 40 minutes after LAFD personnel reportedly arrived at the home that I later found out was located on Descanso Drive. As I understand it the fire was extinguished about 20 minutes into this timelapse. One firefighter sustained burns to his neck during the ordeal, but is expected to recover. None of the neighboring structures sustained any fire damage. The loss is valued at $1.5 million for the structure and $500,000 for the contents.

My respect and appreciation goes to the firefighters for tackling what proved to be a difficult assignment made even moreso by gusting winds and limited access afforded by the winding narrowness of Descanso and its rough and rugged condition. And my heart goes out to the property owner with condolences for what was lost and hopes for what can be rebuilt.

A long time ago in response to the latest in a seemingly relentless if occasional parade of Curbed LA posts focus-mocking on the theme of “What Is/Is Not The Eastside” and the frustration it generates to those of us who know and give a damn, I  submitted a comment that offered what I consider to be the perfect alternative title to supplant the imperial ignorance of those Westside-influenced apathetics who can’t help but disrespect the significance and relevance of what is the True Eastside of Los Angeles by lazily and hipsterly and even sometimes indignantly and belligerently lumping the general region encompassing the neighborhoods of Atwater Village, Echo Park, Los Feliz Village, East Hollywood, Elysian Park/Valley, Historic Filipinotown, and Angeleno Heights as their kneejerk version of “eastside.”

To those edge-seeking dullards who are too busy growing ironic facial hair and shopping for ironic clothing to waste time considering the ironic error of their “if it’s east of the westside than it’s the eastside” ways, I offered something of the following comment:

Simple. Call it: The Upside. Problem Solved.

It had flavor. It had style. Being “up” from downtown it was not geographically incorrect. And it was certainly more compact and catchy than something compass-like such as Northwestcentraltownville. But of course, with the exception of a fellow commenter or two chiming in with an appreciation for my suggestion, nothing came of it.

At least not until a  couple weeks ago when sure enough Curbed LA decides to resurrect the issue once again — only this time with a surprising twist. Acquiescing that my surrounding area is indeed the “Not Eastside,” the good folks at Curbed made a call for nominations for a poll/contest that will result in what that new name should be. So of course re-submitted my original suggestion, but with no campaigning and little hope that it would make the cut.

Well the contest began this week and guess what?

Not a shocker: currently The Upside is losing badly to gimmicky stuff like “Hipster Heights” and “Griffith Triangle.” Right now the totally boring “North Central” is kicking ass. And as much as I’m biasedly partial to my creation, I gotta admit I voted for “The West Bank,” in part because I’m kicking myself for not suggesting something even better than The Upside: The Left Bank. Doh!

Answer: A flash-flood.

(click for the bigger picture)

For the last couple years (at least), every time I’ve passed the Sun-Lake Pharmacy’s neon at night it’s been off and I grumble to myself about what a shame it is that it’s not blazing bright on the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Parkman in my section of Silver Lake.

See, I’m one of those who thinks it should be a fineable offense to neglect neon signs.

Anyway, I’m not sure the occasion, but biking home tonight from work I was pleasantly amazed to see it shining in all its glory, and so of course I stopped, busted out the cam and snapped me a shot for posterity.

I was alerted to its presence by a scree’ing mockingbird in the vicinity, but it wasn’t until I looked into the boughs of the camphor laurel across the street that I spotted the predator — a juvenile Cooper’s hawk — clutching in its talons what remained of an unfortunate pigeon:

The heavily photoshopped image gets much bigger with a click, but not any better dangit. The light was low and diffused and behind the bird, and I was about 40 yards away handholding my SLR with its ungainly 70-300 lens. This was pretty much the best of the bunch I snapped until the hawk had enough of my intrusions flew northeasterly away.

This morning while doing my regular backyard waterings ‘n dogpoop scoops I found not only some early blooms on our neighbor’s San Pedro cactus, but in one of them a busy carpenter bee.

I managed somehow without falling or without to unsteady a hand to cantilever myself across the the tortoise hutch with my cam held at arm’s length and get a few seconds of footage of the find:

And on the San Pedro cactus tip, if you’re new (relatively or otherwise) to this blog or just wish to see them again, here’s the timelapses I got back in from August 2007 and August 2008 of one of the cactus’ famed nocturnal blooms:

Just me, a magnolia blossom and a hungry green June beetle on a Sunday morning in Silver Lake with me perched somewhat precariously atop our garage to get the shots and quick video that make up this Flickr photoset.