Shattered

I can’t tell you whether the charbroiling burger smells that emanate from Carl’s Jrs are unique in their aroma, but I can tell you that when I biked by the one on the corner of Olympic Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue yesterday morning and got a good whiff in passing, I boarded the sense-memory express on …

One Year Ago Today

On this date last year was one of the saddest days in my biking life. It was the day The Phoenix died. The Phoenix was my pride and joy, brought back from wretched rusted abandonment  with my own two hands and questionable repair skills to a charmed new colorful life as a single-speeder that really …

Drinks Are On Me

Earlier this week I dusted off that bike story from the archives, now let me tell you this one: It was without doubt the single most infuriating and vengefully satisfying bicycling encounter with asshats in a car and it happened a looooong time ago. It was the summer of 1991. I was going through a …

On The First Day After Christmas I Gave This Thing To Me…

…Oooooooone Squuuuuuuuaaaaaaashed Thuuuuuuuuumb! The picture might not do the mash justice, but see that abnormally discolored cloud of sadness within the bed of my thumbnail? Yeah:  hurts like sunovagunzabeech.  Suffice it to say it was bike-repair related and idiocy induced, and by way of a more detailed explanation let’s just go to the series of …

Funiculi Funicular

I am thrilled by the news that the restored twins, Sinai and Olivet have been unmothballed and re-installed on their Angels Flight tracks (clickably thumbnailed below in a photo I took in the summer of 2007) to once more (at a date as yet to be determined) go up and down Bunker Hill. I paid …

Sometimes They Come Back

An L.A. Times article today on the excellent success of the island fox captive breeding program on Santa Rosa Island reminded me that in a few days it will be the fourth anniversary of my trip to Santa Rosa’s neighbor Santa Cruz Island with a team of fellow Los Angeles Zoo docents. Invited by The …

Richard Sylvan Selzer, RIP

Way back in another life when I was the theater critic at-large and filing a theater review every Monday for the Pasadena Weekly newspaper, I once found myself at Westwood’s Geffen Playhouse seated directly behind one Richard Sylvan Selzer — far more recognizable as Mr. Blackwell, the self-styled arbiter of taste most famously known for …