[sic]

(click to quadruplify)

Ranger alerted us to one of our local opossums being out on the roof of the house to the north of us, so I busted out camera and the million-candlepower light — which Susan shined on it — to catch it hanging out. People hate ‘em. I hate people who hate ‘em because the opossum is one of the most remarkable and resilient creatures on the planet.

For far too many Saturdays mornings the gardeners for the people next door to us have been excessive (to say the least) in their illegal (LAMC Sections 112.04 & 112.05) use of gas-powered leafblowers. This particular morning it started shortly after 9 a.m. and with a couple brief breaks (I assume because the machines ran out of gas) it continues now as we approach the hour of 11.

Marshaling my diplomatic tendencies while simultaneously quelling my urge to go on a rampage with a baseball bat, I sat down and took the first expletive-free documentational step, as follows, toward resolving this. If this doen’t work I start complaining to the proper authorities.

February 9, 2009

Dear Neighbor,

As your next door neighbors we submit this request with the utmost respect, but the situation with your groundskeepers has gotten to an untenable point that requires your immediate attention and intervention.

At some not-too-distant point, your gardening crew began doing its work on Saturday mornings. I can only assume that this unfortunate switch is the result of scheduling conflicts that prevent them from doing their work during the week.

I call it unfortunate primarily because of their extensive use of gas-powered leafblowers in violation of the Los Angeles Municipal Code Sections 112.04 and 112.05 which state:

112.04: “No gas powered blower shall be used within 500 feet of a residence at anytime. Both the user of such a blower as well as the individual who contracted for the services of the user, if any, shall be subject to the requirements of and penalty provisions for this ordinance. Violation of the provisions of this subsection shall be punishable as an infraction in an amount not to exceed One Hundred Dollars ($100.00), notwithstanding the graduated fines set forth in L.A.M.C. Section 11.00(m). ”

112.05 “Between the hours of 7:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m., in any residential zone of the City or within 500 feet thereof, no person shall operate or cause to be operated any powered equipment or powered hand tool that produces a maximum noise level exceeding the following noise limits at a distance of 50 feet therefrom.”

This morning specifically one of your gardeners (pictured at right) began blowing leaves with a gas-powered “backpack” blower shortly after 9 a.m. and it continued unabated for more than an hour. It then stopped at 10:15 a.m. only to recommence at 10:30. It continues as I write this.

Not only is this illegal from a mechanical perspective but it is also a severe and prolonged disruption of the peace.

To be fair and honest, last Saturday when our gardeners showed up uninvited (a day after missing their regularly scheduled visit) we quickly discovered that they too use a gas-powered blower. We put a stop to it immediately and have contacted their supervisor to insist any further work be done without such offensive equipment – and never on Saturday.

Again we submit this with the utmost appreciation for the good neighbors you are and in the hope your quick action will put an end to this illegal activity. If you have any questions or wish to discuss this further please do not hesitate to contact us.

Regards,

Will & Susan Campbell

(click to twoandahalfiply)

Found on the front of Monkeyhouse Toys store on Silver Lake Boulevard (click to triplify):

With 17 years in its location on Silver Lake Boulevard just north of Effie, The Back Door Bakery & Cafe was a neighborhood institution. Thanks to a heads-up from Sean Bonner about the place closing yesterday after being given 30 days notice to vacate by the building’s owner, Susan and I didn’t miss the opportunity for one last fried egg sammich:

Back door’s proprietors are actively looking to relocate and reopen but they say it may be awhile, and so in the meantime there will be a hole in the ‘hood where once there was a hole-in-the-wall hangout.  And regardless of whatever moves in to take the cafe’s place, something will be missing. Farewell Back Door, you will be missed.

If there’s one moment that shows my hip quotient to be less than zero when divided by one while also calling into question my credentials as a native angeleno it occured in the run-up to the long-running  Sunset Junction streetfair in 2001 when a fellow coworker at the time — who was so hip her last name was Urban — asked me if I’d ever been to it.

Been to it? I’d never heard of it.  Of course, I didn’t say that. I just fibbed about “having always wanted to go” and then went online to find out what I’d been missing.

In my defense I was 17 years into a 19-year stint in the valley and it was all too easy to miss or ignore all the stuff that was going on within the faraway other side of the Santa Monica Mountains. So when in 2003 I escaped to Silver Lake Adjacent and was actually living in an apartment building nestled in the crook of the elbow formed by the actual junction of Sunset and Santa Monica boulevards I made it a priority to finally attend and when it came around I walked up to the entry gate, coughed up the “suggested donation” (can’t remember if it was $7 then or had climbed to double digits), wandered the length and back, met up with my friends Cybele and Manny, wandered some more and wound up a few dozen rows back in the crowd in front of the stage listening first to a band whose name I can’t remember but had scored a hit with their song “California” that year in large part because of its use as the theme for the TV series “The OC,” and then second to the Dandy Warhols, who I don’t remember dick about other than they were a half-hour late for their set.

Then I went home and on that hot August night with the sliding glass doors of my junction-facing balcony open I tried to go to sleep to the Circle Jerks’ lead singer who shouted “Coup d’Etat!” about 500 fucking times along with everyone in the audience there for them. Very cool.

By the next fair I had moved in with Susan east and away from the madness and really had no desire to go so we didn’t. In 2005, having reunited with my daughter I invited her and a friend to go and it was interesting to acquaint Katie with the event. And last year Susan and I went in part because we’d been given access to the special “VIP” area set up at Cliffsedge restaurant and after a couple mojitos we paid the ridiculous entry fee essentially to walk from one end to the other and then go home.

This year access can be had for the low-low of $15 and the only thing suggested about the  “donation” is that the fair’s organizers suggest you fuck off if you don’t wanna pay the now-mandatory fee. And sorry, but when Morris Day & The Time is the only act I’m interested in seeing (purely for nostaligia reasons), I’ll pass.

And I’ll regret never having attended back when the event was about inclusion not exclusion.

The good news is that the footprint of the fair has changed. Whereas it previously ran on Sunset between Manzanita all the way to Maltman, this year it only extends east to Hyperion on Sunset, hanging a right down along the headwaters of Santa Monica Boulevard. So if Susan and I get the urge for margaritas at El Conq or a combo at Tacos Delta we can go there without getting fleeced passing through any bullshit checkpoint.

My friends and neighbors Cybele & Manny went all-day whalewatching up off the coast of Santa Barbara today and when they asked me to come take their dog Becky for a mid-day outing I told them I’d be happy to do so and walked over to their place shortly after 1 p.m. After hanging out in the backyard with Beck for about 15 minutes I got her situated back inside and decided to come back via Westerly Terrace, which winds down to Sunset Boulevard by La Parrilla restaurant and is notable for its southerly view, which at 2:08 p.m. looked like this:

click to octify

Of note: Before being considered a part of Silver Lake, the ridge where our house is on the left side of the panorama south of Sunset (which is where our house is) was originally known back in the early 1900s as Rowland Heights, which for whatever reason is now here between Hacienda Heights and Diamond Bar.

Click to quadruplize, of course

I don’t fancy myself a sports reporter, and I certainly try not to kick a person when they’re down, but in regards to the game Susan and I walked to and from last night things were going relatively well for Dodger pitcher Mark Hendrickson and his team through the fifth inning (picture above) even though by the end of it they were down 2-1 to the Atlanta Braves. That was when manager Grady Little decided to yank his starter and bring to the mound some middle reliever named Brett Tomko to start the sixth. A third of that inning later Tomko got the hook having pitched as if he was getting a little $umthin’ $umthin’ under-the-table from the Braves: the first three batters he faced got hits. And before Tomko’s mess could be cleaned up the Braves ended up adding a couple more runs, ultimately winning by a score of 5-2. The Dodgers did manage to bring some life back to the party by putting two men on and the tying run at the plate in the form of pinch hitter Olmedo Saenz with two out in the bottom of the ninth, but Saenz struck out. Game over. Feh. And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

Pretty much everything else that afternoon went according to plan — with the exception of the bars that we found closed during our walk. My friend Stephen had called with advanced warning that Barragan’s was taking the day off, so we were prepared for no margaritas. But arriving outside the Silver Lake Lounge we had no clue that place was shuttered as well. What the hell’s up with that!? You’d think this was a holiday or something!

Fortunately our timing was such that the No. 4 bus was approaching while we were shaking our heads in front of the Silver Lake Lounge so we decided to decrease our output by boarding it to Echo Park where we were relieved to find the Gold Room open for business like true patriots and stepped inside its dark confines where a couple regulars kindly slid down a stool so Susan and I could sit and enjoy our $3 Newcastle drafts and soak up a bit of the local flavor of the cool cave as Mexico and Venezuala battled for soccer supremacy on the flatscreen TV off my left shoulder.

Adjourning the Gold Room we headed east on Sunset passing Barragan’s with disdain then crossed Douglas before making our way to Sunset’s north side where we escaped the heat by entering the Shortstop bar nondescript except fora sidewalk placard out front touting its Dodger home game-special $1.50 Pabst Blue Ribbon drafts. Inside with pints in tow we learned of free barbeque for the taking outside the back door.

With a tasty beer in one hand and an equally tasty burger fresh off the grill in the other, for a fleeting moment — actually several of them — I thought about not leaving My New Favorite Bar’s uncrowded corner in the pool table room. But like the 56,000 others in attendance and the (632 who didn’t drive) we had a game to get to and so undaunted and duly fortified we proceeded up the hilliest section of the trek, past all the cars piled up at the gate with occupants waiting to pay their $15 until we were at last standing sheened in sweat in the shade above Section 10 of the Top Deck, just in time for “God Bless America” and the National Anthem followed by a flyover from a massive and loud C-17 transport:

Afterward, we stayed put in our seats for the fireworks that were a far cry better than our last July 4 at Dodger Stadium. That pyrotechnical display in 2005 was shut down early on and unceremoniously after two small fires erupted in foliage near the launching site. Thankfully no nearby brush was harmed in the making of this year’s extravaganza and the finale was delightful — and the walk home was a special treat if you like strolling through smoke-filled streets of a simulated warzone of firecrackers, bottle rockets, the occasional M80 and regular series of sky-high starbursts and booms that rivaled the scope and sound of some we’d seen at the stadium.

It was almost enough to make me want to grab Susan and dive into the Shortstop for cover (and more beer) as we passed it on the walk back home, but not quite.

A Flickr photoset of pix from the walk, the bus, the bars, the booze, and the game can be viewed here.

Caught you! You lousy… paper… thieving…

Cat?!

Alas, after putting out the decoy paper this neighborhood feline proved to have the most interest of any of the parade of beings that my surveillance camera caught passing by between about 8:30 p.m. last night and a little after 9 a.m. this morning.

The switch-and-bait manuever occured around 5:40 a.m. and even though I finally declared the covert operation unsuccessful and shut it down about four hours later, I had fun reviewing the video clips captured from the cam to the computer and have compiled a sequence of stills for your viewing pleasure:

Better luck next week.

I first learned about the art garden of Silver Lake’s Alberto Hernandez when I read about it in the L.A. Weekly back in 2004 and then again in an L.A. Times feature that came out around the time of Quinceañera last year thanks to the garden’s use as a location in that film.

After seeing the movie Susan and I were very curious about the remarkable place, but having no idea where it was we gave up on discovering it even before we got started searching… besides, we thought it was in Echo Park and even if we did find the place it’s not like we’d just barge on in to take a gander and set a spell. By all accounts this place is private and personal and only on occasion does Hernandez open things up to the public instead prefering to pretty much keep the garden to himself and his circle of friends, family and neighbors.

So it was with much pleasant surprise on a morning walkabout to the Silver Lake farmers market that I charted us a course that brought us past a house in the midst of a big yard sale and the first thing we noticed was the decorative mosaic-y stuff along the sidewalk. Then after entering the property to have a look-see, a man who we later realized turned out to be Alberto saw Susan’s camera and invited her to explore the wonderous garden and it was even more marvelous than we could’ve imagined.

Pix from the walk and the garden are here in this Flickr photoset.