Automobiles with fins cruising broad boulevards and open freeways; street cars and paper boys; well-dressed people lining up to dine at the Pantry; industry and commerce — these are just a few of the sights recorded in this nostalgic view of 1950s Los Angeles. If you grew up Angeleno during that era, enjoy the trip down memory lane.

(StockXchange image)

The KCRW Shortcuts blog has a new post exploring the facts and fiction surrounding Los Angeles’ oft-ignored network of underground tunnels. The post includes links to several in-depth features on the topic by local news outlets.

Worthwhile as the item is, however, it unfortunately left out an entertainingly bizarre story about L.A.’s subterranean landscape: the mysterious Lizard People and their underground city.

Yes, as the Los Angeles Almanac reports, there really is such an urban legend, and over the decades it has lured many a would-be Indiana Jones on a futile search for the ancient caverns.

The whole idea seems to be based on a 3,000-year-old Hopi myth about a race of humans who chose to dwell deep within the earth. It’s not clear if they actually resembled reptiles or were called the Lizard People merely for their burrowing behavior. Either way, even prominent Angelenos have bought into the legend, including (allegedly) Charles Lummis, the famously eccentric writer-researcher of Native American culture.

The search for the Lizard People’s lost city apparently reached a fever pitch in 1934 when geophysicist and treasure-seeker G. Warren Shufelt sank a 250-foot shaft into Fort Moore hill, sure that he would find it. According to this January 29, 1934, Los Angeles Times article, Shufelt was led to the site by extensive “scientific” research that included radio X-rays.

Sadly, like numerous explorers before and after, all Shufelt ever dug up was dirt.

Colma mausoleum. (M. Imlay)

On my recent holiday jaunt to San Francisco, I was fortunate enough to visit the nearby city of Colma. Founded in 1924 and billed as the “City of Souls,” Colma has a unique history — it’s basically San Francisco’s necropolis, boasting 16 crowded cemeteries within its approximately 2-square-mile jurisdiction.

Colma monument. (M. Imlay)

In 1900, San Francisco outlawed burials within its city limits. Twelve years later, it went further and “evicted” all the dead, with the exception of those buried in two historic graveyards at Dolores Mission and the Presidio. Just a few miles to the south, sleepy Colma became the destination of choice for those seeking eternal rest. (Residents now like to quip that their municipality has more than a million and a half residents, about 1,700 of whom are actually living.)

As you might expect, Colma’s many cemeteries are filled with notable personalities. William Randolph Hearst, Wyatt Earp, Joe DiMaggio and William Henry Crocker are just a few of those taking their big dirt naps within the city’s boundaries.

A lion guards a plot at Colma. (M. Imlay)

The above three photos were taken at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park, one of the town’s larger cemeteries. Established in 1892, the place brims with the sort of artistic headstones, monuments and crypts that once defined American cemeteries before mundane “memorial parks” like Forest Lawn ruined all their ambiance.

Foothill and Altadena. Photo: M. Imlay.

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 by the high winds.

Photo: M. Imlay.

This second photo to the left offers a closer look at one of the mangled light standards.

Driving around town, I didn’t see a single neighborhood that wasn’t significantly beat up in some way. Pasadena is a foothill city known for its streets lined with vintage homes and big old pines, stately cedars, gnarled oaks and other tall trees — and every block seemed to have at least one of them dangerously twisted or uprooted. (Many of which displaced sidewalks, gas, electric and water lines when they fell.)

Like many Southland residents, I’m “stunned” at the wind carnage. Road closures are everywhere, and power has yet to be restored to many neighborhoods. The cost in terms of damaged homes and buildings will be astronomical.

Unfortunately, I can’t see this region fully recovered for a very long time.

Whether summery hot or wintry tepid like the ones shown above that are currently ravaging Pasadena and the Greater Los Angeles area, Southern California’s fiendish Santa Ana winds are the stuff of legends.

In his story Red Wind, Raymond Chandler described them as “those hot dry [winds] that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch.”

Around here they’re blamed for all sorts of pandemonium: Making people irritable, making them horny, making them murderous, and even making “earthquake weather.” While the winds’ ability to do any of the above remains scientifically debatable, one thing’s painfully obvious:

“Santa Anas can cause a great deal of damage. The fast, hot winds cause vegetation to dry out, increasing the danger of wildfire. Once the fires start, the winds fan the flames and hasten their spread. The winds create turbulence and establish vertical wind shear (in which winds exhibit substantial change in speed and/or direction with height), both posing aviation hazards. The winds tend to make for choppy surf conditions in the Southern California Bight, and often batter the north coast of Santa Catalina Island, including Avalon cove and the island’s airport.” [Source: UCLA.edu]

As local meteorologists will tell you, the Santa Anas can blow virtually any time of year, but are especially strong from September through November — one reason why September is typically this region’s hottest month.

Despite the legend that the “devil winds” were originally named for Satan, or a corruption of “santana,” most historians agree they take their moniker from Orange County’s Santa Ana Canyon, a natural funnel between the Mojave Desert and the greater Orange and Los Angeles County regions.

The dry, offshore winds actually have their beginning in the Great Basin of the United States. When high pressure builds there, the air stream is forced toward Southern California, picking up speed as it sweeps across the Mojave Desert and squeezes through mountain passes (like Santa Ana Canyon) into the Los Angeles basin.

For a more in-depth historical-cultural look at the Santa Ana phenomen, visit this San Diego history site and this UCLA site. UCLA also offers this quick Santa Ana Winds FAQ.

Source: Wikimedia

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 most famous bandido, and the most durable.”

Born Jose Jesus Lopez at Monterrey in 1835, he began his criminal career as a teenager by knifing a lawman at a fandango. From that point on, he changed his name and lived as a fugitive in California’s hillsides, leading a gang of desperados and generally menacing the countryside while ironically spreading quite the reputation as a passionate and irresistible ladies’ man. In 1857, he was sent to San Quentin for horse thievery but escaped for a brief period in 1859 until his re-apprehension.

Completing his sentence in August 1863, Vasquez graduated to yet more heinous criminal pursuits. No dummy when it came to PR, he cultivated an image as a sort of charming Mexican Robbin Hood, raging against California’s New American Order. He would later relate:

“A spirit of hatred and revenge took possession of me. I had numerous fights in defense of what I believed to be my rights and those of my countrymen. I believed we were unjustly deprived of the social rights that belonged to us.”

In 1873, already wanted for a spree of Northern California killings and robberies, Vasquez turned his attention to Southern California, where he supposedly buried loot amid a rocky hideaway some 40 miles from Los Angeles that now bears his name.

The following year the state legislature placed an $8,000 bounty on his head and Angelenos organized a posse of Californio rancheros, Yankee vigilantes and rangers determined to put an end to his thuggish ways. He was finally captured at a farmhouse near the present-day West Hollywood intersection of Santa Monica and Kings Rd. (Rumor had it that henchman Abdon Leiva set his boss up as payback after catching Vasquez in bed with Mrs. Leiva.)

During his incarceration at Los Angeles, Vasquez became a celebrated jailbird, holding court with society women, tourists and journalists, who fawned over him for autographs, photos and interviews.

In due course, the romantic villain was transferred to San Jose, where he was tried and ultimately executed. Given the traditional chance to say a few last words from the gallows, Vasquez merely responded, “Pronto!”

His body now rests in the cemetery of Mission Santa Clara.

Battle:LA, Sony Pictures

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 role of Corp. Imlay.

Forgive the crowing, but to my knowledge this is the first time my family moniker has ever appeared on the big screen or in other popular entertainment. Until recently, Imlay has been rare as far as surnames go. As late as about a generation back, only a scant 400 households bearing the name could be found in the U.S.

Ironically, the Imlays trace their American heritage to early Colonial days. A family of wealthy shipping merchants, they settled along the Eastern seaboard, mainly in New Jersey. When the American Revolution broke out, they did what they could to help finance the Continental Congress’ war against the Crown. In fact, John Imlay’s mansion is a historical site in Allentown, NJ. (Then there was Gilbert Imlay, a somewhat obscure American author and family black sheep.)

I’d love to know what inspired Battle:LA’s writer Christopher Bertolini to include the name in his script. Did he know an Imlay? Grow up in New Jersey? Visit this blog? Or just randomly pull the name from a phonebook?

Unfortunately, the movie isn’t doing all that well review-wise. Roger Ebert derided it as “noisy, violent, ugly and stupid,” and so far most other film critics seem to agree.

Old Hollywood Estate. (Photo: M. Imlay)

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 or what is hiding behind them now?

(And why hasn’t he or she changed the burned-out light bulb?)

If only walls and gates could talk, the stories these might tell!

(LAPL Digital Archives)

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 first to grace the famous Hollywood forecourt of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.

Exactly how and why the historic footprints were made, removed in 1958, lost, and eventually rediscovered by TV personality Chuck Henry is a story filled with bizarre plot twists. Ultimately, Henry stumbled across the artifacts while visiting a local airport this past December, and NBCLA has spent the two months since authenticating his find.

(LAPL Digital Archives)

Predictably, the slabs’ reappearance is erupting into an epic tale of Tinseltown avarice. Mann Theatres CEO Peter Dobson has told NBCLA he’d “like them donated to the Chinese Theatre. And I would like the slabs put in front of the forecourt, back to where they truly belong.”

But Hollywood developer Nick Olaerts, who now claims ownership of the famous concrete chunks, has wasted no time in rejecting the proposal, saying bluntly, “I have no interest in giving them back to Grauman’s.”

NASA-JPL image.

The year was 1960 when NASA development engineer Allyn B. “Hap” Hazard donned his stellar design creation to take a runway strut around Pasadena’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

According to the Kevitivity blog, where I stumbled across this vintage photo, the goofy suit was the inspiration for Mattel’s Major Matt Mason, the action figure for Space Age boys.

As a child of that generation, this photo got me reminiscing not only about Major Matt, but the general “space fever” that gripped our pop culture back then.

For us the future was dawning in the form of Univac computers the size of Amana refrigerators chewing on and spitting out stacks of punch cards. Television brought us The Jetsons, Star Trek, It’s About Time and My Favorite Martian, along with Lost in Space lunch pails. We guzzled Tang, “the drink of the astronauts” for breakfast and snacked on tasteless Space Food Sticks after school. We thrilled to the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space programs and fretted that big chunks of Skylab would fall on us as its orbit decayed.

And then there was that plodding, apocryphal Kubric movie classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey, that left theater-goers scratching their heads. (Planet of the Apes was much more intelligible and entertaining.)

Space exploration and the promises of science and technology bombarded us — in the classroom, on TV, in the theater, at the supermarket, in advertising. Now, looking back, most of what was sold to us seems as campy and outdated as this spacesuit.

But so what if our pop-cultural visions of the future proved a little off? They made for some very fun and imaginative childhood fantasies.

StockXchng image

Here at Dateline>City of Angels we love to dissect and examine historic ghostlore and other longstanding urban legends. However, it’s not very often that we get to see a real, living example of an oddball tale taking root. Yet here you have it, a Hollywood Hills mansion on its way to being known as “cursed.”

Perched over Runyon Canyon, the 16-room home on Solar Drive has sat forlorn and unoccupied since its building, prompting rumors of the supernatural. Yet as the New York Times article points out, there’s really no basis for the hearsay, other than a few meth-head “Satanists” crashing the place and scrawling devil art on the walls from time to time. Still, passersby somehow feel the need to concoct weird stories as to why a big pink mansion with majestic views can’t seem to hang on to an owner.

Can you say recession? Or maybe even eyesore?

But no…it’s far easier to turn to the paranormal to rationalize the home’s continued vacancy.

Now all we need is for a few strange accidents or an untimely death or two to strike the property over the new few decades. (Something that could pretty much happen anywhere given enough time.) Before you know it, we’ll have future generations musing over yet another great Hollywood ghost story that “everyone swears is true.”

Mount Wilson Toll Road. (Photo: M. Imlay)

A black-and-white view of Eaton Canyon — chaparral, poison oak and all. Situated in the San Gabriel Mountains near Altadena, the area was originally named El Precipicio for its steep gorges, the result of its location along what was once a main sector of the San Andreas Fault.

The bridge at the lower left is part of the historic Mount Wilson Toll Road that once connected Pasadena to the 5,712-foot mountain peak from 1891-1936. The arroyo passing beneath it drains into the Rio Hondo and ultimately the Los Angeles River.

Naturalist John Muir attempted to explore the gorge in 1877, but turned back at the mouth due to the “oppressive” heat. The canyon was eventually renamed in honor of Judge Benjamin Eaton, who lived in the area from 1865-1876. Today, thanks to numerous trail closures throughout the region, this one has become extremely popular for weekend hikers. If you get the urge to follow in Muir’s footsteps, be prepared to share the path with hundreds of others.

Poison oak in Altadena's Eaton Canyon. (Photos: M. Imlay)

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) is insidious in so many ways. Its leaves are fresh and vibrantly green in the spring and a brilliant red in the summer. It can grow shrub-like in low patches or vine-like to great heights as it twists innocently in and out of other bushes and trees. Worse, its waxy shine invites you to reach out and touch it. The plant is ubiquitous in our region — one of the West Coast’s most prevalent wooded shrubs.

Trail sign.

Yet most day hikers seem amazingly blithe to its presence.

This point was brought home recently on a hike with several friends through Altadena’s Eaton Canyon. One of our group strayed to admire the pretty plant bordering the trail head.

“Watch the poison oak,” I warned.

Too late. He was already exploring the smooth waxy texture of the leaves between his finger tips.

The result of such exposure is often a nasty, easily spread rash. If your pet runs into it, the animal’s fur acts as a natural protection — but not for you. The toxic oils can transfer to your skin when you pet your little Fido or Fifi. Campers foolish enough to burn the plant in their campfires can suffer severe lung infections and rashes all over their body — the smoke is that toxic!

Blending in.

So how do you recognize it? Poison oak’s leaves are usually lobed like an oak tree’s, and cluster from the stalk in groupings of three. (Thus prompting the old woodsman saying, “Leaves of three, let it be.”) As stated above, they can range in color from pure green in the spring, to a mix of orange and red in summer, and a russet color in the fall. During winter, the plant stalks are barren. Once in bloom the shrub also features small clusters of whitish-green flowers that eventually ripen into small white or tan berries.

Want to know more? For a quick and easy primer on identifying and avoiding this toxic flora in all its guises, click here. For a deeper botanical understanding of the shrub, along with tips for dealing with the itchy aftermath of exposure, click here.

StockXchng image.

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. (If on the other hand you’re not anywhere near the downtown area, well, you’re on your own. Sorry.)

StockXchng image.

Not to beat a dead horse, but having unearthed numerous pioneer skeletons at the abandoned Placita churchyard, LA Plaza officials might want to think twice before messing with the spot any further. Construction crews assembling an amusement ride in Britain have apparently disturbed a similar old cemetery, resulting in menacing visits by a headless monk.

Here in Los Angeles, no charnel entities have materialized — yet. But boosters of the new LA Plaza de Cultura y Arte center are probably wishing they had a single ghostly friar to contend with rather than a horde of outraged poblador and Gabrielino descendants.

Even now with Placita cemetery excavation suspended, the chorus against the site’s development only continues to grow. The most recent voice to be added to the clamor is that of Clarence Mendelson, a direct descendant of Augustin Olvera, who according to this Star News article may or may not have been buried in the former graveyard.

Olvera; public domain.

Olvera, of course, was the eminent early Angeleno judge who, after California was ceded to the United States, presided over 1850s trials in his adobe on Vine (sometimes Wine) Street. Unable to speak English when he first took the bench, he conducted court business in Spanish, aided by a bilingual sherriff. Completing his term as judge, Olvera then went on to become a respected Los Angeles County supervisor and presidential elector.

After the judge’s death, the unpaved alleyway was extended in 1877 and renamed Olvera Street in his memory, making the possible desecration of his beloved Plaza-area Campo Santo especially ironic.

StockXchng Image

Local television news anchors and their producers must be salivating. Scientists are warning that the Mother of All Storm Seasons may soon be headed our way.

No, it’s not due to global cooling, global warming or climate change (whichever term is in vogue nowadays). Rather, like our region’s major earthquakes, such megastorms are natural phenomena that strike California’s Central Valley every century or two. And again, like our major earthquakes, scientists say we’re way overdue for a Big One.

Incidentally, the 1861 floods mentioned in the Los Angeles Times article helped hasten the collapse of SoCal’s rancho system by the 1870s. Here in the present, I don’t know which we should be more braced for: The impending megastorm itself, or the deluge of  TV reporters “braving” the wind, rain and mudslides in their bright yellow slickers, all to bring us “the very best in Storm Watch coverage.”

Just for comic relief from this blog’s recent spate of death-related posts, here’s a video of a lively bunch of Caribbean Vervet Monkeys who really enjoy an afternoon of cocktails on the beach.

Image: Curbed LA

Inspired by Griffith Park’s oddly dressed bear statue, the gang at Curbed LA have taken it upon themselves to outfit other local statuary in the latest styles. Click on over and decide if their fashion sense merits a big thumbs up, or a surprise visit from Stacy and Clinton of TLC’s What Not to Wear.

Remembering the dead at La Placita. (Photos: M. Imlay)

Novena candles glow gently in the courtyard of Los Angeles’ Old Plaza Church. They seem a fitting enough symbol, given news a little over a week ago that construction crews working on a new LA Plaza de Cultura y Arte recently unearthed numerous remains of our city’s founding families.

The ensuing chaos has become a slapstick comedy, with fingers pointing every which way.

Let’s see… Everyone knew the site was once the pueblo’s first Campo Santo. Everyone knew that hundreds of early Angelenos had been buried there. And everyone knew — or should’ve known — that 19th Century cemetery exhumations/relocations were often a slip-shod affair.

Yet everyone is shocked, shocked, shocked that coffins and skeletons popped up during a big dig at a graveyard that was supposed to have given up the ghost more than a century ago.

The Plot Thickens

Even more ironic are the apparent initial efforts of LA Plaza officials to hush the discovery, lest construction be shut down. (They are, after all, supposed to be celebrating and preserving the area’s history, not bulldozing it.)

But I also find this quote from the Los Angeles Times’ first report of the discovery a real head-scratcher:

“The original Catholic cemetery on that site, as far as the archdiocese’s records indicate, was not simply closed in 1844 — it was relocated. ‘We removed the bodies,’ [archdiocesan spokesman Tod] Tamberg said. ‘It’s a huge distinction.’ Tamberg said there is no documentation on where the remains went or why bones are there now.”

Coming attraction!

Lack of official documentation aside, Angeleno historians have long agreed that most of the bodies were removed to Old Calvary Cemetery, up Eternity Street, which is now North Broadway. That second Catholic cemetery operated until Los Angeles outlawed burials within city limits in the late 1800s. Thousands of bodies were then again exhumed and relocated to East L.A.’s New Calvary Cemetery by the early 1900s. (Cathedral High School now stands on Old Calvary’s former spot, which is why its football team is called the Phantoms.)

In any event, updates on the latest LA Plaza attempts at damage control can be found here and here.

Plus, here’s the latest reaction from descendants of the early Angeleno families buried at the site.

Photo: M. Imlay

We’ve all heard you can “get your kicks on Route 66,” but would you feel just as fine on Route 99?

While less iconic than its cross-country cousin, Route 99 also has a storied past. It began as a dusty stagecoach trail running from Baja California to British Columbia, via California, Oregon and Washington. With the advent of the automobile, what was originally known as the Pacific Highway or Golden Chain became an officially designated U.S. highway in 1926.

During its heyday, the north-south route served as the West Coast’s principal thoroughfare and was often dubbed California’s Main Street or U.S. 66 turned upside down. It featured prominently in John Steinbeck’s classic novel The Grapes of Wrath as the Central Valley artery the Joad family and other Dust Bowl counterparts traveled in a desperate search for migrant work.

Never as kitschy as Route 66, or as romantic as the Camino Real, Route 99 was ultimately rendered obsolete by Interstate 5 and “decommissioned” between 1964-1968. But the historic highway still has its fans. Writing for Via Magazine in 2004, Jennifer Reese observed:

“Driving along 99 today, you’ll find a vibrant, unfussy, authentic California, a fitfully lovely landscape of almond orchards, mangy farmyards, rusty train works, peach trees, Depression-era hamburger stands, and Dairy Queens from more recent days.”

Until, of course, you hit a major city like Los Angeles. Here it’s swallowed into the urban landscape as just another congested roadway. Except for the easily missed historical signs along Cesar E. Chavez Ave., Figueroa St. and San Fernando Road (seen here), you’d never know it existed.

If for whatever reason you find yourself yearning to retrace the famous route on a road trip, probably the best place to start is at the Historic California U.S. Highways Website, which offers a “Finding U.S. 99 Guide” and links to books and other sites on the topic.