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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Image: NASA/Jim Fakatselis

While it won’t compare much with the Star of Bethlehem some 2000 years ago, the heavens are nonetheless aligning to deliver us Left Coasters our own special astronomical phenomenon just in time for Christmas.

According to a NASA alert, a holiday lunar eclipse will begin Monday, Dec. 20 at 10:33 p.m. PST, taking a “dark-red bite” from the moon. Within an hour, the entire lunar face will be aglow, first in a festive amber tinge, then a full reddish coppery color for about 72 minutes, before fading slowly back to normal.

Your tiny tots will have to stay up awfully late for the best viewing, however. NASA advises that the color will reach its greatest saturation 17 minutes past midnight our time. For the full story, complete with the scientific mumbo-jumbo explaining the spectacle, click here.

Image: Birdclipart.com

Everyone has a pet holiday peeve. Mine is the ongoing misconception that the song The Twelve Days of Christmas is a countdown to December 25.

Gritting my teeth in L.A. freeway traffic this morning, I heard this popular mistake repeated again and again by local radio ads, newspeople, and rock stations announcing the start of their “12 Days of Mix-mas” buildups to the big holiday.

True, we are officially a dozen shopping days out from The Baby Jesus’ birthday fest, but before you go buying your true love a partridge, pear tree or any of the other nonsensical gifts featured in the traditional carol, there’s something you should know. The 12 Days of Christmas don’t actually start until Christmas.

That’s right: The carol is really about the period stretching between Christmas Day and January 6, the Christian feast of the Epiphany, also known as “The Feast of the Magi” (or three kings), “Little Christmas” or “Twelfth Night.”

My suggestion? Read up on the whole, fascinating truth here. Then amaze your friends at holiday parties by politely slipping this informative tidbit into your cocktail banter. Together we can put an end to a pernicious holiday fallacy.

Call me a sucker for GEICO commercials. As a MarCom professional myself, I  not only admire the auto insurer’s inventiveness, but also have to confess to a tinge of jealousy at all the fun the company’s creatives must be having behind the scenes. After all, who wouldn’t want to work for a corporation with a  sense of humor so off the wall as to come up with the above spot satirizing Honest Abe and a very perturbed Mary Todd Lincoln?

Think pink!

Muffler sculptures are a staple of auto garages everywhere, but thanks to our Car Culture, they’re especially ubiquitous here in Southern California.

As an art form, more often than not they lack imagination, frequently resembling uninspired robots or clunky mechanical aliens. When you come across one that’s truly whimsical — like this Pink Panther near the corner of Lincoln and Howard in Pasadena — it’s well worth stopping for a photo and applauding the artistry.

Personally, I think the Flowmaster welding visor perfectly completes our  friend’s pink grease-monkey ensemble.

Source: Kino International

Seeking 2 hours and 45 minutes of golden silence on the silver screen? You can’t do any better than Fritz Lang’s historic 1927 film masterpiece Metropolis, now playing on the Laemmle’s Theatre circuit.

Set in the 21st Century, the silent classic envisions a futuristic world in which a seductive female android goads subterranean proletariat workers to rise up against their surface-dwelling capitalist overlords. It’s a seminal work featuring amazingly elaborate sets, art and costumes; a good deal of theological and scientific reflection; lots of over-the-top melodramatic acting common to the Silent Era; and a sumptuous original score by Gottfried Huppertz.

In fact, the New York Times has hailed the particular Kino International release screening at Laemmle’s as the film’s “definitive reconstruction.” It includes 25 minutes of recently rediscovered footage, making it the most accurate approximation of the film’s 1927 Berlin premiere currently in existence.

But be warned: Metropolis is not your typical date-night flick. It’s ponderously long, alternately engrossing and plodding, and at a few points even laughably campy — more a piece for film students, true movie buffs and the historically curious.

The upside? Metropolis is, after all, an epic within Filmdom’s Pantheon, and even the casual viewer will enjoy spotting the origins of numerous movie cliches stolen for rehash in later Hollywood works.

Your Humble Blogger

I swear this blog has more lives than a danged alley cat.

Yes, since Dateline>City of Angels was launched a few years back, it’s suffered more B-Western-style cliff hangers than any self-respectin’ blog deserves. In fact, when we last left our plucky Web journal, it was finally starting to hit its stride once more after a disastrous train wreck. That was December 2009. (See the immediate post below.)

Yet, despite all his good intentions, your humble blogger again fell silent, thanks to a major setback in his personal life. Unlike many bloggers, however, he chose not to turn that unhappy event and its messy, ongoing aftermath into salacious online entertainment for readers. (Sorry. No daily jabs at “The Ex” here.)

Instead, after a five-month recovery from his fall off his high horse, here he is, back in the saddle, feeling like a kid again, eager to take up the ‘ol blogging reins and giddy up toward exciting new frontiers. (Yes, that photo really is me, circa the 1960s.)

So let’s hit the dusty trail together, shall we? Our journey into anything and everything quirky, historic, macabre and quintessentially Angeleno starts right here tomorrow at sun-up.

See ya then, pardners!

StockXchng image.

While the rest of us were carving up our turkeys for the holiday, it appears someone — or something — in southern Colorado was engaging in an otherworldly animal carving ritual of their own.

According to this Associated Press story, “a creepy string of calf mutilations” has left local ranchers and sheriff’s officials “mystified:”

“Four calves were found dead in a pasture just north of the New Mexico state line in recent weeks. The dead calves had their skins peeled back and organs cleared from the rib cage. One calf had its tongue removed.”

For those who aren’t too squeamish, grainy pictures of the carnage can be found here. The lack of blood, guts, footprints and predator or ATV tracks at the scene has raised speculation in some quarters that the cattle may have met with a close, deadly encounter of the alien kind.

But before you laugh this whole thing off as an isolated incident in rural Colorado, check out this ranching forum, where the story has stirred some buzz. At least one “real-life” tale shared there is oddly reminiscent of killings attributed to Latin America’s fabled Chupacabra.

Meanwhile, my question has always been why alien travelers never seem to visit us in the big city, preferring instead sparsely populated desert, wilderness and plains communities. But maybe any slight toward us urbanites is completely unintentional.

Perhaps after traveling thousands of light years they merely prefer the dining experiences offered by quiet little out-of-the-way spots.

Dateline>City of Angels will resume regular posting after the holiday weekend. In the meantime, enjoy this Gloria Gaynor parody, courtesy USA Green Card Center.

A purported sighting of the elusive Sasquatch along the trails of Los Angeles’ oldest city park near Dodger Stadium. Obviously this little clip is intended as a spoof, but even if it weren’t, there’s a glaring flaw in the video that should raise astute Angeleno eyebrows.

Can you guess what it is? Here’s a clue: Look closely at the opening sequence… OK, think you got it? Give up? Either way, click the Bigfoot icon to the right for the answer.

2nd Street cable car, circa 1889. (LAPL Digital Archives, Permitted Use)

A week ago this blog brought you the news that L.A.’s streets have been ranked the nation’s third most deadly to pedestrians. But have our streets always been so mean?

Obviously, such statistics weren’t kept 117 years ago, but this April 21, 1892, Los Angeles Times “City Brief” may offer a clue:

“People should be careful about getting on or off moving cable and electric cars, especially in rounding curves. A man took a ‘header’ on Broadway last evening, coming down on the pavement with such violence as to almost dislocate his vertebrae.”

Ouch! Were these the same safe, reliable old cable and electric cars that downtowners romanticize so much today?

Photo: Flickr, Ingrid Taylor.

If there’s one thing you can count on, it’s for Tournament of Roses officials to bring a trademark “rosy optimism” to each New Year’s celebration.

For a year overshadowed by malaise like 2010 promises to be, could they have done any better to lift our spirits than naming Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger as the parade’s Grand Marshal?

Throughout the Tournament’s history, Grand Marshal honors have gone mostly to celebrities, political figures and even cartoon characters. But kudos to parade officials for recognizing a true American hero right when we need one the most.

Since safely ditching his US Airways plane in the Hudson almost a year ago, Capt. Sully has remained a humble, straightforward man — despite the sudden celebrity thrust upon him for saving all 155 people in his charge. To hear him in interviews, he’s just a guy who happened that day to be doing a job he loved to the best of his ability.

As LAist notes, the Captain’s cool post-splashdown demeanor has even earned him “stud status” and 600,000 fans on Facebook.

All that silliness aside, to me Sullenberger embodies a reminder we desperately need in 2010: That our nation is actually filled with common men and women who are somehow able to roll up their sleeves and accomplish the uncommon when the going gets tough.

I know such sentiment is considered sappy nowadays, but I’ll underscore it anyway… All too often our pop culture worships the “media heroes” enshrined in the political or sports arenas and star-studded galas peddling the latest celebrity cause. We forget that every day, guided by a steady mindset and basic human values, “ordinary” people are rising to heroic stature in their homes, workplaces and communities, rarely noticed by the media limelight. It will be refreshing to see Sullenberger metaphorically representing them at the parade.

• For a look at the Captain’s ranking among the Tournament’s 121-year parade of Grand Marshals, visit the official online roster. (Wikipedia also has a list with additional links to many of the Marshals’ bios.)

• Even more interesting is the Tournament’s photographic timeline stretching back to the very first event in 1890.

Gloria Swanson, aka Norma Desmond. Wikipedia Commons.

Like Sunset Boulevard’s fictional movie fatale Norma Desmond, I hate the word “comeback,” so let’s take her cue and call this blog’s resurrection a “return.”

After a catastrophic attempt to update WordPress over a month ago, your humble blogger was left scrambling to recover hundreds of former posts and photos and redesign Dateline>City of Angels from scratch.

Add to this an extremely busy personal schedule, and you’ve suddenly got the recipe for one very reclusive blogger. For a while even I was wondering if Dateline>City of Angels would simply wind up another blogospheric has-been.

Thankfully, no! I’ve finally hunkered down and got this site’s makeover close to where I want it. (Thanks to the new Thesis 1.6 theme, the whole design and coding phase was far easier than expected.) Even better, as I wrote in a post below, all the old entries have been recovered, at least text-wise. The re-uploading of more than 300 photos will, however, take significantly more time. (Simple math will tell you I’d have to work on 10 a day just to complete this task in a month.)

Nevertheless, to paraphrase Ms. Desmond, I’ve kept the adoring public in the dark long enough, so lights, cameras, action! Dateline>City of Angels has returned! (We’ll just consider the re-posting of all those missing photos a work in progress, OK?)

A Little Preview…

So what can you, the reader, expect from this blog moving forward?

First, no more technical fiascoes leading to lengthy hiatuses. I’ve learned my lesson: backup, backup, backup.

Plus I’m committed to more regular posting. Look for more short photo essays, pop quizzes and fun stuff peppered among the lengthier feature articles. I also plan to ramp up the podcasts in coming months, along with occasional “documentary vodcasts” on local topics.

Now also might be a good time to explain two somewhat misunderstood features that I began to experiment with before the big blog crash:

• L.A. in Quotes: A weekly quotation about our region, illustrated through either amateur photography and/or historical images.

• Old News: Interesting tidbits unearthed from the archives of historic (and even defunct) local newspapers. Normally, I look for 100-year-old news items that remain as timely today as they were way back then. When that fails, I just go for something bizarre.

In addition to the return of the above, expect a greater focus on Southland kitsch and obscure, offbeat attractions.

Finally, as this blog becomes more active with local ghost hunters and their paranormal investigations, I’ll also be stepping up entries in the ever-popular Cryptic L.A. category.

Please Bookmark It!

As a reminder, please also note that you’re now viewing Dateline>City of Angels at its new subdomain: www.mimlay.com/blog1 — a move designed to separate it further from my main professional writing pages, which are equally destined for an overhaul soon.

All in all, I intend to loosen up and have more fun with this blog — and hope you enjoy the changing scene here as well.

I’m so excited! After one post, we’ll make another post, and another, and… well, you get both the idea and the lame Sunset Boulevard reference.

Sardonic wit and all, this blog’s back and ready for its closeup.

Photo: StockXchng

If you’re reading this, you likely reached Dateline>City of Angels either through a back door or some search engine, and are now wondering why it appears so … incomplete.

Answer: We’re still under construction — or rather, “re-construction” — after a nasty blog crash several weeks ago. That reconstruction has meant changing locations to a new subdomain (mimlay.com/blog1), applying a new WordPress “Thesis” theme, and starting to painstakingly re-upload 300 photos one by one from scratch.

For now, all this blog’s former posts have been restored, although most of their photos and links will take some time to complete.

Meanwhile, all of the parent site, mimlay.com, will soon undergo an overhaul as well. Your humble blogger realizes it’s more professional to do everything offline then unveil it all at once — but reader requests have convinced me it’s more important to at least serve up a little something right away.

This blog will be 100-percent ready to rock again with new posts very soon. Please pardon the mess until then.

Oh, and make sure to bookmark this new subdomain!

I count myself fortunate to have been a young witness to one of humankind’s proudest achievements. Forty years ago I, like millions the world over, gazed in awe as the Apollo 11 lunar module Eagle touched down at Tranquility Base.

A boy of seven, I was gathered with my brothers in our family living room along with our parents and grandparents. My father, a software engineer at Pasadena’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, had played a role in the unmanned moon explorations that had paved the way for this historic event. As a kid, I was fascinated by the Surveyor satellite photos of the pocked lunar surface that he brought home after missions. Now he had splurged on a brand-new color TV to view the manned landing — only to learn that the broadcast of the lunar excursion would be limited to black and white.

No matter. In the heady excitement of seeing Neil Armstrong take his one small step for man, the lack of color was quickly forgotten.

No one else seemed to mind, either. You could hear the cheers erupting in neighboring living rooms all up and down our street.

StockXchng image.

They say when Apollo 11 transmitted pictures of our own Big Blue Marble as seen from the moon, we Earthlings finally realized how tiny our place was in the universe. Perhaps philosophers, pundits and jaded statesmen felt that way, but my generation certainly didn’t.

Quite the opposite, our world now felt a whole lot bigger. Children of the Cold War’s Space Race, and raised on a steady diet of campy science fiction, we younger Americans seemed to recognize instinctively that in a single night we had become heirs to a dream passed down since the dawn of civilization. Each generation has its defining moment, and young as we were, this felt like ours.

Suddenly, imagination had no boundaries, the stars held no limit, and anything and everything was possible.