Church Photos and Picnic Sites

Angelenos, Vickey Kall is here to help you celebrate spring! Easter and picnics express the season so well, and Easter means churches, right?

So from Zocalo Public Square:

A photo collection and essay on Los Angeles' one-room churches by Kevin McKollister.

A dozen photos, mostly exterior, are included with the piece. McKollister says he has been photographing these churches for nine years, relishing their warmth, simplicity, and humility.

"Occasionally I have been invited in. Warmly. And fed. Generously. Fried chicken and iceberg lettuce. Pupusas. No judgment when I told them why I was asking to take a photograph. I’ve been prayed over—not to be saved from damnation, but just to be given something nice."

A bastion of grace in the world.

Also from Zocalo:

Ann article on street vendors. Specifically, a piece by food critic/writers Javier Cabral about food cart vendors on the streets of Los Angeles, and why he won't review them (spoiler: they'd wind up in jail). Cabral gives us a brief history of street food vendors and the ins and outs and ironies of permits that satisfy one county department but not another. He talks about the efforts to legalize them, the number of jobs such vendors create (as they are buying their food, hiring workers) and the taxes they would pay, if legalized.

Segue time: this picture of Kenneth Hahn Park is from PhotoPartyLA.com, and neither the park nor the site is mentioned in the following. But it makes a great presentation of the topic, which is picnic sites in Los Angles.

Now that the weather's changing, from "in like a lion" to the dry dregs of August, KCET has posted a roundup of SoCal's best sites for picnics, which includes the following:

• Spring (this is spring, right?): the best places to drive to and picnic while surrounded by poppies, lupin, and other wildflowers, and most of those are NOT in Los Angeles County

• Summer: Hollywood Forever Cemetery, with it's summertime movie screenings--although there are other events there as well, which you can check out here. The Hollywood Bowl and Leona Valley are other locations

• ;A hike to Cucamonga Peak was mentioned, but in today's heat, I have trouble thinking of that as fun, especially when carrying cold drinks and food.

KCET did not mention  Griffith Park, oddly enough. But wait! CBS News came up with a list just a couple of weeks ago that includes Palisades Park in Santa Monica, Echo Park  Lake, Grand Park, and the Rose Garden in Exposition Park, as well as Griffith Park and the Bowl. 

And of course, you can just Google, which is where I found HikeSpeak and all its l interesting data and lovely photos, like this one of the Old Zoo ruins in Griffith Park.