From the category archives:

Names and Faces

Hanging With the Legendary Tiburcio Vasquez

Names and Faces

Today marks the 136th anniversary of the hanging of Tiburcio Vasquez, notorious California outlaw and folk legend.
According to Los Angeles A-Z, my bible for everything L.A., he was the “last of the Mexican bandit leaders who roamed Southern California from the 1850s to the 1870s. Along with Joaquin Murrieta and Juan Flores, Vasquez was the [...]

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Imlay Name Goes Hollywood in Battle:LA

Names and Faces

I haven’t seen the movie yet, but friends report that Battle:LA features a character named USMC Corporal Lee Imlay. (They also take great joy in telling me he’s a motor-mouth who gets blown to smithereens by aliens.)
Apparently, there’s also a newly released video game based on the movie in which players can take on the [...]

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RIP: John J. Ward, Bishop

Names and Faces

Sadly, this morning’s Los Angeles Times carried the obituary of John J. Ward, an archdiocesan auxiliary bishop and veteran of Vatican II.
Bishop Ward confirmed me. During my several years at St. John’s Seminary, I had the privilege of meeting and interacting with him on numerous occasions. “Modern Catholics” often took issue with his conservative ways, [...]

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Cryptic Sights No. 2: The Unforgettable Cora May Phillips

Angeleno Sights

Take a walk through the tombstones in Section 5 of Angelus-Rosedale Cemetery, and you’ll find this witty epitaph for a once highly popular lady:
Cora May Phillips
1872 – 1912
Gone But Not Forgotten
Yes, how could the City of Angels ever forget Cora May Phillips, one of its most notorious madams?
In the late 1800s, Los Angeles turned a [...]

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A Very Small Street Honoring a Very Big-Name Angeleno

Names and Faces

Just south of L.A.’s Elysian Park, along an unpretentious turn of Stadium Way, you’ll find a little street named for a once very big man about town.
Don’t blink, though, or you might miss it. After all, Coronel Street is a poorly paved, “substandard” dead end, merely 11 houses long. Not the sort of honor you’d [...]

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Friday Flix: The Legacy of Biddy Mason

Names and Faces

In light of the historic events shaping the national political scene both yesterday and today, I thought it appropriate to choose a video that illustrates how far we’ve come over the last century and a half. A remarkable figure in Angeleno history, Biddy Mason helped break barriers for African Americans as well as women in [...]

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Did Uncle Walt Leave Mickey in the Public Domain?

Names and Faces

They say turnabout is fair play…
Having argued for years that their company has legally appropriated characters in the public domain for its cartoons (i.e., Bambi and Peter Pan), Disney officials may soon be in the uncomfortable position of fending off challenges to their own copyright on none other than The Mouse himself.
According to an extensive [...]

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Pop Quiz: Hooray for That Famous Hollywood Name!

Names and Faces

Famous as the film capital of the world and home to L.A.’s mythic “Boulevard of Dreams,” Hollywood has come a long way since its founding in 1886. Carved from lands that once belonged to Ranchos La Brea and Los Feliz, the area was known to the region’s Californios as “La Nopalera” because of the huge [...]

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Gushing With Pride: SoCal’s Not So Secret Oil Wells

Life in Angel City

This just in… There’s oil in these here hills. Black gold. Texas tea. Possibly billions of gallons of it, says a CNN Situation Room report observed by Metblog L.A.’s Dave Markland.
Geez, you think?
Astounding as the news may be to Wolf and the rest of the outside world, it won’t come as a surprise to native [...]

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Shaking Family Trees: Sanchez, Hossman, Lyon et. al.

Names and Faces

I know it’s another long shot, but in addition to hunting for ghost stories, I’m also trying to track down descendants of several prominent early Los Angeles families, notably anyone with ancestral links to:
Juan Bautista Sanchez, aka John B. Sanchez (1858-1920). In 1887 he married Rosa Escadon from Mission San Buenaventura parish. The couple resided [...]

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