From the category archives:

Life in Angel City

Pasadena’s Windy Malady Lingers On

Life in Angel City

The aftermath of Wednesday night’s Santa Anas lingers on in Pasadena, which was hit hard by the blusters. This morning I came across the above scene at the intersection of Foothill Blvd. and Altadena Drive: Cleanup from a triple-car collision caused in part by a pair of non-functioning signals that were both snapped in two [...]

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Detail Shot: If Gates Could Talk…

Life in Angel City

The entry gate of an old Hollywood estate near Runyon Canyon. When practicing my photography, I try to look for subjects that suggest a story. Somehow these rustic doors caught my imagination: How long have they stood? Which historic names, if any, have passed through them? What momentous events have they witnessed over time? Who [...]

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Lost and Found: Original 1927 Grauman’s Chinese Theatre Footprints

Life in Angel City

NBC Los Angeles reports that concrete slabs bearing the original footprints of Sid Grauman, Douglass Fairbanks and Mary Pickford have been found in — of all places — a local airport hanger. Along with the still-lost footprints of Norma Talmadge, the silent-era imprints date to 1927 and, through a quirk of fate, were the very [...]

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Toxic Flora: Dayhiking Amid the Poison Oak

Life in Angel City

The upside to the February and March rains we get here in the Southland is that our dry chaparral suddenly springs to life, making hillside hikes all the more enjoyable once the sun comes out. The downside is that same breathtaking chaparral along the trail includes lots of poison oak.
Western poison oak (Toxicodendron diversilobum) [...]

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BlogoBuzz: A Downtown Guide for Last-Minute Valentine’s Romance

Life in Angel City

Frantically looking for last-minute Valentine’s activities in the Downtown Los Angeles area? Don’t worry, all is not lost. The Downtown Center Business Improvement District (DCBID) has a host of ideas for procrastinating Romeos (and/or Juliets), including intimate dining locales, lovingly thoughtful gift-shopping suggestions, and especially romantic spots to pop the question if you’re so inclined. [...]

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Bearing Christmas Greetings

Life in Angel City

Decorated for the holiday season, this Santa Bear guards the Ferndell entrance to Griffith Park. Someone has apparently taken it upon himself to ensure the statue is always dressed appropriately for every occasion. A few weeks ago the bear was wearing a winter sweater. During the summer he’s bare (bear?) naked.
The bear was a gift [...]

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The Lights Are On in Hastings Ranch!

Life in Angel City

Well, sort of… With the rain pouring and the troubled economy encouraging drastic energy conservation, the annual Upper Hastings Ranch Light Up seems more of a hit-or-miss event this year.
Driving through the soggy Pasadena enclave during a 10 p.m. deluge, I saw plenty of houses wired up with lights and displays, but few were actually [...]

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L.A. Auto Show a Trip Down Memory Lane

Life in Angel City

Unless you’re totally pedestrian, you probably know the L.A. Auto Show has made its yearly return to the Los Angeles Convention Center, running Nov. 19-28. I’m headed that way tomorrow, filled with anticipation. It’s always hard to say which I enjoy most — seeing the exciting new automotive technologies and concept cars or bumping into [...]

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Get Ready to Pay Through the Nose for Dumping Your “Illegal” Trash

Life in Angel City

Fines for dumping illegal garbage in Los Angeles have skyrocketed drastically, thanks to a new city ordinance. Yet, strangely, officials waited weeks to launch their public awareness campaign for the new regulations, which actually took effect last month.
Aimed primarily at businesses, the law allows trashy offenders to be charged “administrative” fines of $500, $750 and [...]

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What a Difference a Doggie Year Makes

Life in Angel City

Back in August this blog introduced Diablo, “my cute little puppy from hell.”
Mischievous and troublesome from the moment he arrived home, the black-and-tan Dobie was a replacement for my irreplaceable red Doberman, Ramses, who died much too young this past summer. (To this day, I still miss him.)
“Little Diablo” hailed from a European sire who [...]

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Winter Wonderland, SoCal-Style

Life in Angel City

The return of these tumbleweed snowmen to Stadium Way can only mean one thing: It’s officially Christmas time in the City of Angels.
It’s amusing how ingrained the concept of a White Christmas is in our pop culture. Even here, at the edge of the Mojave Desert, these are the lengths we’ll go to in “recreating” [...]

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A Tale of Two City Murals

Life in Angel City

It’s either the best of wall art or it’s the worst of wall art, depending upon your perspective. After all, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But if you ever needed a demonstration of the self-evident principle that murals mirror the life and cultural assumptions of their respective communities, this is it.
This first [...]

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Detail Shot: Frogtown Garden Gate

Life in Angel City

A colorful gate to a community garden catches the morning sun in the Elysian Valley’s Frogtown neighborhood. Just a block or two from the river, this is one of the nicest community gardens I’ve ever stumbled across. Everything is very neatly arranged and tidy, with a well-maintained brick path leading past a variety of fruit [...]

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Anonymous Billboard Urges Boycott of Los Feliz’s Vermont Hand Wash

Life in Angel City

At first I thought this new billboard along Sunset’s 4400 block might be the work of advertising amateurs — or possibly a lone disgruntled customer angry enough to splurge on an outdoor display. The slogan’s catchy enough, but there’s nothing to support the message or make us care. For all we know, the alleged “injustice” [...]

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Check Out Silver Lake’s Gleaming New Neutra-Inspired Library!

Life in Angel City

It was a long time in coming, but Silver Lake finally saw the much-anticipated opening of its new $12-million library this morning. The residents’ campaign for the building actually began in the mid-1990s, but considering how Silver Lake’s elite history dates to the early 1900s, you wonder why it even took that long.
In any event, [...]

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Angeleno Streets Rank a Fatal Third Most “Dangerous by Design”

Life in Angel City

As if you didn’t have reason enough, now there’s even more cause to fear the mean streets of Los Angeles.
The Transportation for America (TFA) advocacy group has released a report ranking Los Angeles as 27th in the nation for pedestrian accidents, but third in pedestrian fatalities.
In other words, your stroll along Main Street carries less [...]

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A Halloween Post Mortem

Life in Angel City

Halloween used to be my favorite holiday. I guess it still is, but I just don’t seem to enjoy it as much nowadays.
The past several years a busy work schedule usually kept me on the road for the holiday. No costume parties, no Day of the Dead processions at Olvera Street, no ghosts, ghouls or [...]

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Blightseeing: Down by the L.A. Riverside

Life in Angel City

Ride along the Glendale Narrows Bike Path to its southern terminus, and you’ll find these colorful, life-size scribblings “decorating” a Golden State Freeway overpass of the L.A. River.
Similar graffiti graces another bridge approach just beyond the bikeway (left).
So how should we label these taggings? Guerilla art or urban blight?
To me, graffiti is like a paisley [...]

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Introducing the Cute Little Puppy From Hell

Life in Angel City

Allow me to introduce Diablo, the latest addition to our Echo Park household.
While our entire family still very much misses Ramses — and realizes no dog can ever fill the void left by his passing — life must go on. Plus our surviving Dobie Isis desperately needs a companion, having slipped into an obvious funk [...]

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Goodnight and Goodbye, Ramses, My Big Puppy

Life in Angel City

Your humble blogger hasn’t felt much like blogging lately. This past week our household had to say goodbye to our proud red Doberman, Ramses, roughly a month short of his eighth birthday.
We knew this day was coming. On average, Dobermans live about nine years, making Ramses a senior dog. Yet even in his advancing age, [...]

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