San Pedro Community Gardens

Off the 110 in San Pedro, along one of the many slopes that are left to grow wild in San Pedro and the Peninsula -- which is riddled with little canyons, crevices, and hills -- gardens bloom with fruit from all over the world. Filipinos started gardening here over fifty years ago, and the plots grew to cover six acres. Retirees and urban farmers from many cultures grow tropical fruits, bean trees, vegetables, potted vines of tomatoes, and more.

The picture at right is from a 2011 post on LA Eastside.

The problem that confronts this maze-like collection of gardens and makes it newsworthy? Water is becoming scarce, and so some of the gardens have been abandoned. But not many.

The gardens have a website: sanpedrogardens.org/, and it has a laser focus: the status of water. There I learned that few years ago a pipe broke, with devastating consequences. Now, the issue is that the landlords are just cutting off the water for most of the day.

Over a month ago, the Los Angeles Times ran a story about the San Pedro Community Gardens, and they have a video posted on their site as well. So you can see, in their own plots, Frank Mitrano, Carol Christian, and David Vigueras, who says: "It's not a garden. This is a universe."

At left is one of the photos that accompanied the Times article, which was packed with information.

The land belongs to Los Angeles City's Dept. of Sanitation, according to the Times. During the drought, they cut down on the water when they realized that hundreds of thousands of gallons a day was being poured into the gardens.

No bad guys here: there was a drought. There is still reason to conserve water. It's driven some of the gardeners out, but others are making do. The water flows only during select hours of the day, and pipes are old. Gardeners are doing what they can to collect the water their plants and trees need.

At right is a year-old picture from the Garden's website, showing the results of no water on some of the plots.

I applaud these gardeners and think we should have more of them. I will shorten my showers for them. I have no talent for gardening and am amazed at what men and women do to grow and nurture plants from the dirt.

If you'd like to know more about community gardens in our area, there's not only a website for the Los Angeles Community Garden Council, but Yelp has a list (of course) of the top community gardens, and CurbedLA has a 2014 list of the best.

Colorizing History

This is not a Los Angeles-centric post.

Several artists, like Mads Madsen of Denmark, spend hours, days, and weeks colorizing historical photographs so that others can appreciate and feel closer to the subjects.
This picture of Abraham Lincoln, taken when he was elected in 1860 but before he acquired his famous beard, is one example.
(That link at Madsen's name will take you to an Atlas Obscura article about him and other artists, and about their Reddit page.)
Here is a six-minute Vox video about more artists and the incredible amount of time and research that goes into colorizing old photos.
And if this and other things historical interests you, maybe you'd like to subscribe to my newsletter, The Triweekly Report. Three of the most fascinating history stories I find, sent out every three weeks. Fill in your name and email in the form to the right if you want to try it out (you can unsubscribe if you don't like it ... but you'll love it).

Weekend Reading: Cemeteries, Art Deco, Korean Bell, Take Out Pails

A selection of great articles on LA history came up. And while this blog is largely inactive, why not share?

• The first four cemeteries in Los Angeles, going back to the 18th century: Where were they, what became of them, and what happened to the bodies? From LACurbed.

• The NEW YORK Times has, over the last year or two, posted a lot of Very Good Stories about Los Angeles. I suspect ulterior motives, but I enjoy the articles anyway. This one is a tour of Los Angeles's Art Deco Buildings.

• Since today is the 40th anniversary of the dedication of the Korean Friendship Bell in San Pedro, NBC posted a collection of photos of the Bell and park, including one of a couple making out in the foreground. 

• Not limited to Los Angeles, but did you know that this ubiquitous take out container was invented in the 19th century and had nothing to do with Chinese food? 

Of Hobos

Ancient Hobo Graffiti Found in L.A.

Some of you may remember hearing about hobos when you were children. Before I knew about real homeless folks, I learned that in olden days, wandering men used to tie up all their belongings in a big red handkerchief and loop that over a stick. Then they'd hop onto a railroad car and go wherever it took them. Such was the tale; I have no idea what life was really like for these guys.

While looking for this picture, I learned that hobos were working men, not to be confused with simple vagrants. Important point.

Well, anthropologist Susan Phillips, who studies gang graffiti academically, stumbled upon some marks made with grease pencil and dated from the early part of the 20th century. Right here in Los Angeles. Expert that she was, she realized that these were signatures of well-known hobos.

On this picture, near the top right, you can see  "A NO 1" the hobo name of Leon Ray Livingston, a man who actually wrote and illustrated a couple of books before his death in 1944. A date of 8-13-14 is there too: August 13, 1914.

Those sideways hearts are really arrows, pointing upriver, according to Phillips. Probably, the man who drew them was headed to Griffith Park.

The rare graffiti was scrawled and even carved under a bridge over the Los Angeles River channel. It survived largely because after a major flood in 1938, that channel was dug down deeper and covered in concrete to prevent future flooding. That put the old graffiti far above anyone's reach and sight.

The LAist also reported it.

A Talk and Articles About Los Angeles

Here are some wonderful articles about our city, most worthy of your attention.

But first, an upcoming event: Were the '90s L.A.'s Golden Age?  On April 26, 7 p.m., at the Museum of Contemporary Art at 250 S.Grand. Parking is $9 but it looks like that's all you'll have to pay.

So here are articles about different aspects of Los Angeles through the ages:

• A discussion of the First Photo Ever Taken of Los Angeles!  Nathan Masters writes the most interesting pieces about L.A.'s history, and this one is about a photo taken in the early 1860s. What does it tells us and who might have taken it? It shows the Plaza, but Masters points out how spread out Los Angeles was, even then. I mentioned this article last Monday, but if you haven't read it yet, go treat yourself.

• PBS just debuted a show: "10 Homes that Changed America," and it features two houses in Los Angeles County: the Gamble House in Pasadena, and a Charles and Ray Eames home in Pacific Palisades. LA Curbed has the backstory and everything you need to know about these two structures and their environment, in a piece titled "Watch How Two LA Homes Changed America." Then you'll be ready for the PBS show--online at http://www.pbs.org/video/2365705138/.

• It's not quite L.A., but close: a pictorial display of a Palm Springs house that was beautifully decorated when it was built in 1969 and has not changed since. LAist presented this a few weeks ago when the house was on sale for $850k. There's probably a house near you for that amount of money, or a condo . . . but nothing can touch this one for style.

• How about a story of cleaning up the Valley of Little Smokes smog in the early 70s? A Zocalo feature, "How Angelenos Beat Back Smog" by Mary D. Nichols, describes a serious change in our air quality that Boomers remember well. I don't think kids today have many smog alerts, but they were a part of life in the Southland for many years. This 1968 photo of an October day in Downtown is from the LA Library's photo collection.

• Finally, here is a headline I might have dreamed of seeing: "Tracking the Decline of L.A.'s Black Widows," except for one thing . . . they're being replaced by brown widows. No less creepy to me, though actually less aggressive, this is a 21st century phenomenon and the data comes from those Natural History Museum programs that ask folks to bring spiders from home in to the museum to be identified. My daughter did that. She was a grown-up at the time. I modeled one behavior toward spiders for her during her formative years: scream and run. She didn't listen.

Visions of Light

In June of 1911, the Los Angeles Times reported a mystical event taking place at a homestead near Whittier. "Mexicans as well as their more patrician relatives of mission ancestry" (whatever that means!) were flocking to see the miracle: a picture owned by Senora Manuela Plaz radiating light in the darkness. Hundreds of people came to experience the vision, in which rays of light shone from the picture while the woman who owned it knelt on the floor to pray.

The picture--a "battered and broken portrait," according to the Times, was of Our Lady of Guadalupe. That's a phrase familiar to most Catholics. Los Angeles has more than one church named for this vision. Besides a couple in the city proper, there are also Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic churches in Irwindale, El Monte, and Hermosa Beach.  She's popular and revered, and her feast day is December 12--which is why I was scrolling for her in our old newspapers.

Nearly 500 years ago, the Mother of God appeared to a humble man of Indian descent near Mexico City. She left her portrait on his plain cloak, and it is this image--replicated a zillion times--which Senora Plaz, late of Durango, Mexico, had in her home near Whittier.

The newspaper also placed the vision near Los Nietos, so I'm guessing that means it was in West Whittier. I wonder if anyone today remembers the incident or heard about it? Perhaps there's a note at the historical society? Nothing more is mentioned in the Times, and internet searches of Manuela Plaz got no results. But--and again, I'm guessing, something drove hundreds of people to Plaz's home over a century ago. Even if the TImes only covered it once, it may have been an recurring phenomenon, building up a bitof anticipation as the word spread.

And then it was forgotten. Oh, well.

Music and Eco Fest at the La Brea Tar Pits

Today's guest post is from Lee Gale Gruen, a docent at the Page Museum and La Brea Tar Pits, (the picture at right is of the Tar Pits in 1920). She's also the author of the Featured Book in the right column,Adventures With Dad: A Father & Daughter's Journey Through a Senior Acting Class :

A few years ago, I was one of several docents staffing the Page Museum booth at the Music and Eco Fest held on the grounds of the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, California, where its attendant museum, the Page, is located.  We had a lot of people of all ages stopping by our booth to check out the reproductions of a mammoth tooth and skulls of a saber tooth cat and dire wolf.

One boy, who was about 10 years old and obviously autistic, excitedly recited more about those animals than even I knew while continuously fingering the skulls. I commented that his favorite seemed to be the saber tooth cat as he talked on and on about Smilodon.

“Yeah, that’s his favorite this week,” responded his mother.

She said that her son had learned all about the animals by watching television programs devoted to Ice Age mammals.

 Another child appeared at our booth clutching a DVD of a computer-animated, adventure movie called “Ice Age” which he had bought at another booth.

After a short while, a women appeared at the booth clutching a white plastic bag.

“Is there anyone at the Page Museum who would like to have this dead snake?” she inquired of me.

I was speechless, to say the least. That was definitely the first time in my life I had ever been asked such a question, and I guess my expression conveyed it. The snake owner explained that she was helping staff a nearby booth of the Southwestern Herpetologists Society. Various members had brought their snakes, giant lizards, and other assorted reptiles to display to the festival visitors.

The owner first got the snake 25 years ago and had displayed it many times at fairs and festivals. Today, when she opened the snake’s cage, she found it was dead. She seemed heartbroken.

I didn’t know how to answer her inquiry. Shortly, the docent coordinator arrived, and I suggested the woman pose the question to her. The coordinator was also stumped. The woman finally left, taking her snake with her.

Awhile later I took a break. I walked into the Page Museum to get some snacks set out for the booth volunteers. When I was about to leave, I walked up to the front desk where a few young men were selling tickets to the public. There was a lull in the visitor traffic, so I started chatting with them. Of course, I told them my amazing snake story.

“I’d like it,” said one.

“Why. What are you going to do with a dead snake?”

He explained that he wanted to pursue a career after college mounting ancient animal bones on scaffolds for display to the public. So, whenever he found a dead animal such as a squirrel or bird, he would bury it in his backyard. Eventually, he would dig it up to practice rearticulating the bones. He planned to use the snake for that purpose.

Off I went to the herpetology booth. I found the snake owner and explained about the museum employee, his pursuit of such an unusual career, and his interest in the dead snake. She agreed to give him the snake, but insisted upon accompanying me to meet him.

Just before I left, she was telling us that the snake had glaucoma. I caught a quick glimpse of its cloudy eyes. That was another first in this day of firsts. I had never before thought about snakes getting glaucoma.

I returned to the herpetology booth to see the reptiles. One of the people staffing the booth offered to let me inside the tape barrier since I was also a volunteer at the festival. He showed me all the reptiles and let me touch them. One, a crocodile monitor lizard, was about a yard long in the body with a tail at least one and a half times that length. It had long, black claws and a forked tongue that darted in and out.

“This kind of lizard can grow to a maximum of 19 feet in length,” he explained. “They are found in the wild in New Guinea, Timor and Indonesia, and are extremely dangerous.”

The crocodile monitor lizard, named Snowball, was two years old and not dangerous as it had been bred in captivity and was docile. I petted Snowball on the back. Its skin was bumpy, dry, and leathery to the touch. The owner took a picture of me with my new friend.

One never knows what being a docent at the La Brea Tar Pits and Page Museum will bring. Each of my experiences at the Music and Eco Fest would have been wonderful on its own. Putting them altogether, it was an amazing day.

What a Week: Historic Events

This is the week before my own birthday, so maybe that's why I am so struck by the number of historic anniversaries that occur this week and into mid May. These are events of national import, not just for Angelenos. Consider:

130 Years Ago:

May 1, 1884: Moses Fleetwood Walker plays baseball, becoming the first African American to enter the game professionally five years before the National and American Leagues began banning players of color. He was catcher for the Toledo Blue Stockings. His brother played professionally too.

Pro sports, race, and athletes must be on my mind; can't imagine why.

60 Years Ago:

Brown v. Topeka Board of Education

This was actually one of five cases brought to the U.S. Supreme Court over legal segregation in education. For decades, the doctrine of "separate but equal" schools for different racial groups had been the accepted, legal norm.

After new Chief Justice Earl Warren read the unanimous decision on May 17, 1954 (and Warren worked hard to make it unanimous), everything changed. Even in California, which strictly speaking was not a segregated state, the decision turned school districts upside down.

The picture at right, from the LA Library's collection, was taken at a protest in 1963. Yup, here in Los Angeles, we did not jump up and de-segregate with all due dispatch. Surprise!

Like most places, separation of the races was entrenched. The city decided that our schools were integrated enough that busing students to different schools was not needed; many folks disagreed. According to this timeline from UC San Diego, another lawsuit filed in 1963, Crawford v. Los Angeles, pointed to our failure to integrate. That lawsuit made it to court in five years, and a busing plan was ordered in 1970, put in place in the late 70s, but the issue wasn't really settled until 1982.

It's very complicated, involved a voted referendum and more, and you can read the entire decision here.

And you can read a very thoughtful analysis of Los Angeles school desegregation history prepared after the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education here.  It puts school desegregation efforts in context with other civil rights, hot-button issues of the time, as well as discussing the changes and politicalization of the LAUSD Board.

50 Years Ago:

The New York World's Fair opened on April 22, 1964. I remember reading all about the Unisphere, the 12-story high globe, in My Weekly Reader and wishing I could somehow see that.

Did you know that fair introduced Americans to Belgian waffles? Oh, the things you can learn on Wikipedia!

Picture Phones were on display, as well as a big mainframe computer, courtesy of IBM.  The Ford Mustang was debuted there, too.

Disney created four separate attractions for four separate companies at the fair that Angelenos remember well--not because we were at the fair, but because the displays turned out to be prototypes for Disneyland installations in their theme parks:

• Progressland for GM, which became the Carousel of Progress in Anaheim (both venues included the song "It's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow") 

• It's A Small World, at the Pepsi Pavillion

• Magic Skyway, for Ford Motors. This first version of Disney's Peoplemover (an aerial tram that closed in the 90s) put folks in Ford-designed cars, like the Mustang, and took them through a land of dinosaurs.

• "Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln" at the Illinois Pavillion

Also in early May we saw the first protests against the VietNam War, in New York an San Francisco, an the first burning of draft cards.

40 Years Ago;

On May 9, 1974, impeachment hearings began in Congress. The target? Richard M. Nixon. Only a few days before, April 30, the transcripts of the infamous tapes that chronicled the Watergate break-in and subsequent conversations about cover-ups, had been released. Those introduce the lovely phrase "expletive deleted" to the public.

Congress would vote to impeach in the summer, leading to Nixon's resignation in office--the first time a president had ever resigned.

Here's a pretty thorough timeline of the whole Watergate miasma, with lots of pictures and links.

30 Years Ago:

On May 8, the Soviet Union announce it would boycott the Summer Olympic Games, held in Los Angeles. Guess what? We had a great time anyway.

20 Years Ago:

Riverdance debuted. Yes, a 7 minute long performance first took place at the Euorvision Song Contest on April 30, 1994. Michael Flatley was the main dancer, and the performance was not an entrant in the contest, but an interval act. An audio recording was released on May 5, just a few days later. Both went viral--or whatever we called viralness in 1994.

In 1996, the full show included Los Angeles in its world tour. . . and then of course, there were the PBS specials. Forget "Hips Don't Lie." Riverdance proved that hips don't even have to move.

Oh, and South Africa held its first multiracial elections on April 27,  elected Nelson Mandela as president, and inaugurated him on May 10.

Woodie Guthrie's Los Angeles

" . . . the lights of Los Angeles jumped up, running from north to south as far as I could see, and hanging around on the hills and mountains just as if it was level ground. Red and green neon flickering for eats, sleeps, sprees, salvation, money made, lent, blowed, spent. There was an electric sign for dirty clothes, clean clothes, honky tonky tonks, no clothes, floor shows, gyp-joints, furniture in and out of homes."

That was Woody Guthrie's first impression of Los Angeles after hitchhiking into town in the late 1930s. He wrote those words in Bound for Glory, his 1943 memoir.

A few pages later in the book, he comes back to LA. By now he's got a guitar and is a bit less penniless than when he first breezed through. His book leaves out a lot and is hard to fit to dates, but it's so wonderful to read you just don't care.

He had a radio show here in Los Angeles, at station KFVD. The picture to the right shows his on-air partner Lefty Lou (Maxine Crissman).

So here's what Guthrie says about Los Angeles in December of 1941, down along "old Fifth and Main:"

"Skid Row, one of the skiddiest of all Skid Rows. God, what a wet and windy night! And the clouds swung low and split up like herds of wild horses in the canyons of the street."

Woody hooked up with another guitar player whom he calls the Cisco Kid in the book--I think that's Cisco Houston. "We moved along the Skid looking in at the bars and taverns, listening to neon signs sputter and crackle, and on the lookout for a gang of live ones. The old splotchy plate-glass windows looked too dirty for the hard rain ever to wash clean. Old doors and dumps and cubbyholes had a sickly pale color about them, and men and women bosses and workhands bumped around inside and talked back and forth to each other. Some soggy-smelling news stands tried to keep their fronts open and sell horse-race tips and sheets to the people ducking head-down in the rain, and pool halls stunk to high heaven with tobacco smoke, spit and piles of dirty men yelling over their bets. Hock-shop windows all piled and hanging full of every article known to man, and hocked there by the men that needed them most; tools, shovels, carpenter kits, paint sets, compasses, brass faucets, plumbers tools, saws, axes, big watches that hadn't run since the last war, and canvas tents and bedrolls taken from the fruit tramps. Coffee joints, slippery stool dives, hash counters with open fronts was lined with men swallowing and chewing and hoping the rain would wash something like a job down along the Skid. The garbage is along the street stones and the curbing, a shale and a slush that washes down the hill from the nicer parts of town, the papers crumpled and rotten, the straw, manure, and silt, that comes down from the high places, like the Cisco Kid and me, and like several thousand other rounders, to land and to clog, and to get caught along the Skid Row."

The picture of Woody Guthrie and Cisco Houston on the left came from a memorial website to Houston, who died at age 42.

Here's how Woody described the people on the Skid:

"Movie people, hoss wranglers, dead enders, stew bums; stealers, dealers, sidewalk spielers; con men, sly flies, flat foots, reefer riders; dopers, smokers, boiler stokers; sailors, whalers, bar flies, brass railers; spittoon tuners, fruit-tree pruners; cobbers, spiders, three-way riders; honest people, fakes, vamps and bleeders; saviors, saved, and sidestreet singers; whore-house hunters, door-bell ringers; footloosers, rod riders, caboosers, outsiders; honky tonk and whiskey setters; tight-wads, spendthrifts, race-horse betters; blackmailers, gin soaks, corners, goers; good girls, bad girls, teasers, whores; buskers, corn huskers, dust bowlers, dust panners; waddlers, toddlers, dose packers, syph carriers; money men, honey men, sad men, funny men; ramblers, gamblers, highway anklers; cowards, brave guys, stools and snitches; nice people, bastards, sonsabitches; fair square, and honest folks; low, sneaking greedy people, and somewhere, in amongst all of these Skid Row skidders--Cisco and me sun for our chips."

Over the next few pages, Guthrie tells how he and Cisco sang in a place called The Ace High, next door to the Imperial Saloon. They sing for sailors and soldiers, until one drunk--who tried to enlist but was rejected--decides he wants to beat up all the Japanese in Los Angeles. The owners of the Imperial Saloon are Japanese, so that leads to a street brawl, with Woody, Cisco, and most of the sailors lining up to protect the place. It's colorful and maybe it really happened.

Woody's adventure never made the Los Angeles Times (I checked) but I doubt that reporters were hanging out in that neighborhood on a rainy night.

Bound for Glory is an incredible, heartbreaking read. It's not at all what I expected, which is what most 21st century reviews of it say. The book is a doorway to your parents' or grandparents' world, which was a lot more ugly and bitter than they ever let on.

Trashy Lingerie and other great names

Remember when Trashy Lingerie showed up on La Cienega in the early 70s?

Where did they come up with that name?

Or the Apple Pan, for that matter?

Or Spearment Rhino?(or is it Rhino Spearmint?)

Best fun read for Angelenos has got to be this article from LAWeekly: "How Six L.A. Businesses Got Their Weird Names."

It actually came out in early December but I was probably asleep. I must have done a Rip Van Winkle, since it's clearly July now and I slept through the entire winter.

Johnny Martinez on PBS

This is a clip from an upcoming documentary on Johnny Martinez--to be shown Thursday, December 12 at 10:30 pm on the ARTBOUND show. For those of us in Los Angeles, that will be on Channel 28, KCET.

Full title: Johnny Chano Martinez, El Padrina Salsero

The producer, Roland Aquilar, is a high school friend of mine who made the documentary after meeting Martinez being invited to dinner with him. He asked about making a documentary of Martinez' life, and this is the result.

I found a 1993 article in the LA Times celebrating Martinez, saying that he'd been performing three to five nights a week with his 10-piece band, Salsa Machine, for about 35 years . . . in '93. One of his regular gigs was at the time was the Sportsmens Lodge in Studio City, but he was also at the Quiet Cannon in Montebello and other places.

You'll have to watch the documentary for more!

Forget Turducken; Have Ostrich this Thanksgiving!

Ah, me. Don't we miss the quaint and lovely ostrich ostrich farms of Old Los Angeles?

You know about them. right?

No?

While we all wax nostalgic over Red Cars, Bullocks and their Tea Rooms, and the dirt roads that are now freeways, no one sits back and sighs over the lost ostrich farms of LA. Notice that?

I'm guessing--not having farmed anything, including big birds, I don't really know--that no one could really miss the honking, the dust, the giant droppings, and anything else you can think of that would make living downwind of an ostrich farm less than idyllic.

Los Angeles' history with ostrich farms goes back well over a century. In the LA Library's photo collection I found pictures of the Los Angeles Ostrich Farm, which was in business at least from 1892 to 1941; it's address was 3609 N. Mission--at Lincoln Park.

But the Lincoln Park farm was not unique!

A farm started in Anaheim in 1882 was the first, and spawned a second farm (same owner) at Los Feliz Rancho, soon connected by rail line to 2nd Street and Beaudry in LA. These were  followed by Al Cawston's Ostrich Farm  in South Pasadena (which existed from 1886 through 1935, and which was reputed to be the largest in the country when Edwin Cawston sold it to a syndicate of bankers in 1911). Then there was the Wilshire Ostrich Farm on Grand and 12th and an Ostrich Park Farm in Glendale in the 1880s. Briefly, there was one at 2nd Street Park, and one in Norwalk and even Santa Monica. We were awash in ostriches.

Why so many? Well, ostrich feathers were big at the end of the 19th century, especially in Europe. In fact, after Mr. Cawston bought fifty ostriches from South Africa and brought them to California, he sold plumes plucked from the birds every six or seven months for two or three dollars apiece. Each bird could supply 25-30 feathers. That was big money!

Plumes were the main product of the farms, but vast numbers of tourists also paid to have their pictures taken in ostrich-drawn carriages. The petite wagons held one person and were hitched up to two yoked ostriches . . . there's gotta be a good pun in there somewhere. I must be tired.

We were gonna corner the ostrich plume market!

Cawston likely provided the ostriches for the other farms that spread across the Southern United States. The site of his farm, btw, is now home to the Ostrich Farm Lofts, carved and modeled out of brick buildings that (I think) were part of the original farm.

One fanciful 1914 article claimed that "The boy is now alive who will behold the wharves of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego some day laden down with bales of ostrich feather for import to foreign lands, while through the Panama Canal en route to New York will go quantities for distribution to the crowded centers of the distant East. The ostrich is a first-class multiplier and greatly assisted by the various American ostrich farmers by the scientific methods adopted for the incubation of the eggs. This means an immense American ostrich population in the distant future and consequently much to the glory, honor and profit of the people of California."

Um, yeah. Sure, you bet.

But as these pictures demonstrate, not all visitors came to ooh and aww over the plumage, or to sit in the cute little cart and send a postcard to Aunt Gertrude. Some visitors came to eat ostrich. Did they pick their bird the way we pick lobsters at the pier? Ugh!

If ostriches weren't enough to draw you into Lincoln Heights--and I just can't imagine such a case--there was also an Alligator Farm there, built in 1906 and owned by the same folks as the Los Angeles Ostrich Farm.

It was right next door, which makes one wonder whether any ostriches ended up as 'gator snacks.

An excellent site for more information and pictures is the History of Lincoln Heights website. That's where I learned that the bungalows and parking lot that sit there today are actually residential units for those in treatment for chemical dependency. One ancient pepper tree (a non-native species, ironically--just like the birds) is all that remains of the Los Angeles Ostrich Farm.

The first picture above is from our library's photo collection and was taken at the Los Angeles Ostrich Farm across the street from Lincoln Park in 1929.

The other photos come from a blog post of the California Historical Society, and were digitally reproduced by the USC Digital Library. They're part of the Title Insurance and Trust and the C.C. Pierce Photography Collection.

They are also labeled Lincoln Park though undated--but I'd put them at around 1929.

But really, check out the Lincoln Heights History website, and its ostrich page. They have text from the old brochures ("Take the Yellow Car marked Lincoln Park and get off at the farm. Fare 5 cents")and postcards of folks in the little carriages from all over the world.

If you want to see live ostriches, you'll probably have to drive north to Solvang.

Louis Zamperini: The Man, Movie, and the Airport

Torrance's own home-town hero for the past . . . well, 70 years if you want to count from his Olympic career, is pictured below with Angelina Jolie, who is directing the movie based on the book about his life: Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand (herself a woman with an amazing story).

The book, of course, is about Louis Zamperini, who ran in the infamous 1936 Olympics (the one where Jesse Owens took so many medals and embarrassed the Nazis)and who was expected to be The Man Who Broke the 4-Minute Mile Barrier (at age 17 he was clocked at a 4:21 mile, and in college at 4:12)--but instead ended up fighting in World War II. His plane went down in the South Pacific, where Zamperini and another soldier set a different kind of record: the most days surviving being lost at sea on a raft (47).

Unfortunately, they were found by Japanese forces and ended up in a camp for prisoners-of-war, under the command of men who were often sadistic. And that's just scratching the surface of the story.

Amazing that no one did the movie before, but here are some of the fist photos from it now: one of Jolie & Zamperini, and one of the filming itself, above.

This is all linked loosely to an event at the small airport inTorrance called Zamperini Field (that's the link--the name, honoring Louis Zamperini).

On Saturday, Nov. 16, those who want to sit in the backseat of a T-6 aircraft can pay for a short flight, which is a pretty rare opportunity. The event happens between 10 am and 3 pm; the flights cost $165 for 15 minutes or $375 for 40 minutes.

Col. Marv Garrison will talk about the air war in Vietnam (he was chief of the fighter section of the 7th Air Force there), and there will be events for children too

For reservations on the flights and more information, contact CM@wmof.com (which stands for Western Museum of Flight.com) or call 714-300-5524.

Newboys, 1915

Ah, the good old days. When the poor sent their children out barefoot to sell newspapers on street corners, instead of coddling the little leeches . . .
This picture is from Shorpy, and was taken in Los Angeles. Here's the caption: May 1915. "Nine-year-old newsie and his 7-year-old brother 'Red.' Tough specimen of Los Angeles newsboys." Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine.

Picnic in '59, Christmas '55

It's Monday at 4:30 pm and I am just now getting through three days of emails, each with attendant tasks . . . so in lieu of shortchanging a post on mosaics, how about a couple of  feel-good photos?  One under the pepper trees (I think) and one of a pink Christmas tree?

Picnic first, courtesy of Shorpy.com. This picture is of a 1959 picnic on the grounds of the Mission San Fernando. Kodachrome gives us those nice, bright colors . . . who remembers Langendorf bread? "Grow grow grow with Lang Lang Langendor bread!:

Second, this photo has come up on a couple of my Google searches for my Baby Boomer Christmas book (out November 1!) Nothing says Christmas like a pink flocked tree, right?

 I didn't use this picture in the book because I wasn't sure who owned it, and now see that it's labeled as belonging to Charles Phoenix, who will be giving colorful and funny talks on mid-century kitsch in LA's Chinatown & in Claremont and Pasadena over the next few weeks:

Watts Towers as Mosaic Art

Are they mosaics? How could they not be? Look at these pictures!

Seventeen structures make up the Watts Towers, with three tall towers dominating. The tallest, at 30 meters (99 feet) , has the longerst reinforced concrete column in the world.

Simon (actually, Sabato) Rodia built the Watts Towers between 1921 and 1954--working on them for thirty-three years. He wasn't an engineer or a trained artist. He just plugged away with hand tools in the evenings and weekends, after putting in his time as a construction worker.

He owned the  land on the 1700 block of East 107th Street, and back in those days you could pretty much put up what you wanted on your property. Public agencies didn't involve themselves and the building codes were, well, mostly ignored by everyone.

Rodia called his work "Nuestra Pueblo" Why did he build it? He said he wanted to do something big.

He started his structures by wiring rebar or pipe together, then wrapped the joints with wire mesh. He packed them with mortar added tiles, pottery, broken bottles and glass, shells, and all sorts of found objects to make mosaics, or he used simple tools to impress hearts, spirals, vines, and other designs into the drying mortar.

 

And while he did all that, he hung onto the towers with a window washer's belt.

The Watts Tower US website is the source of the pictures above and to the right. That site is maintained as a labor of love and has updated information on it about the Towers. You can see videos there too.

In 1956, the Watts Towers were almost demolished. No one interfered when he built them, but when Rodia gave the triangular property to a neighbor who then sold it to someone who wanted to turn it into a commercial site, the city wanted to tear it down because of its lack of permits.

There was a public outcry. New owners proved that the Towers were stronger than any of the cranes and cables meant to test their strength, so the Towers stayed.

The grounds are now called a campus. The Watts Towers Art Center opened there in 1961 and  is still offering classes and exhibiting art; admission is free.On the last Saturday of September--which is coming up--they always host a Drum Festival, and the next Sunday, a Jazz Festival. More about that here

The Charles Mingus Youth Center opened in 2008.

Rodia moved to Martinez, CA after he gave the property away. He died in 1965.

The two men who had saved the Watts Towers by buying them and stopping their demolition--Bill Cartwright and Nicholas King--gave the property and towers to the city of Los Angeles in 1975, and the city turned them over to the state in 1978. So technically, the Watts Towers are a State Park.

But the site is run by a combination of our city's Cultural Affairs Department and LACMA--the LA County Museum of Art.

The Towers were named both a California Historic Landmark and a National Historic Monument in 1990.

You can tour the Watts Towers on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday any week from 10:30 am to 3 pm, and on Sundays from 12:30 pm to 3 pm--unless it rains. No tours in the rain!

Tours leave every half hour. The charge is a measly $7, though children and seniors get discounts.

The photo on the left was taken by friends of my friends Pol and Andy, who  stopped here on a Tuesday on their way to Popeye's (yes, Pol was craving. He worked there in high school and still has to get a fix occasionally), so I know that this is now as close as you can get when it's closed. No tours on Tuesday. It's fenced off.

Christmas Eve Mosaics

It's not from Los Angeles, but this is kinda neat:

The picture at right is a closeup of a mosaic made of Legos.

Since this is a Christmas Eve posting, can you guess the subject from the closeup?

The mosaic was built in 2004 in Spartanburg, SC by Eric C. Harshbarger at the Christian Supply store. The store and artist actually planned this for a year, according to Eric's blog.

And the store owned it and may still be displaying it, for all I know.

Eric is not a mosaicist, really, more a puzzle-ologist who does these amazing installations--as well as creating gizmos, aplets, and doodads.

OK, here's the finished work, another photo from Eric's own blog (hope he doesn't mind). To the left of the mosaic is the picture it was based on, a Nativity scene by (I think) Tom DuBois. DuBois' work--many Nativity scenes and paintings of Mary--can be seen here at LDS Art.

The mosaic is 90 inches by 70 inches and Eric limited himself to 8 colors. He had three days in SC to build it, and about a third of work was done in advance. The store wanted him to work on it standing up so the customers could see a work in progress. I get the impression from his blog that doing so was not easy. I found more pictures of the work in progress on Eric's blog and here.

But the effect is stunning, isn't it? The torchlight especially.

Eric spent 34 hours over three days, and used 30,000 pieces on this mosaic.

Death Speaker is available!

I'm going to let Mosaic Monday take a bye this week in favor of a huge announcement:

My new historical novel, Death Speaker, is published and for sale!
It has nothing to do with Los Angeles history.

Nope. It's set in Ancient Gaul, which today is France, Belgium and Switzerland. The action takes place over 2,000 years ago, when Julius Caesar began his Conquest of Gaul--a phrase that is also the English title of Caesar's writings. In fact, first-year Latin students throughout history have been forced to read that book.

My story is told from the point of view of the people Caesar conquered. The Gauls were Celts. Here's a teaser:

Emyn, a Celtic peasant, hears the dead and lets them plunge her into visions. Using her voice, ghosts advise druids and kings, warning them of danger from Caesar and his Roman troops. But can the spirits be trusted any more than the living? Emyn suffers loss, kidnapping and betrayal. Ultimately, she must rely on her own stubborn courage to face her destiny.

You can read the first five chapters at the book's website.

And, of course you can buy the book.

For ebooks--iPad, Nook, Kindle, pdf, etc.--just follow this link to Smashwords.com, where you can download Death Speaker.  Here's a 10% off coupon to thank you for your support: WA75V.

If you'd like a printed book, you can purchase it at CreateSpace  (the link takes you right to it) for $16.00.

If you'd like me to send you a signed book, I'd love that! Just email me, either by leaving a comment on this blog, or by going through the book's website (Deathspeaker.com). I'll ask $3.00 more to cover shipping, so the price will be $19.00.

So enjoy! Even if you don't read historical fiction--with elements of magical realism and romance--chances are you know someone who does, so please tell them about Death Speaker!

National Walking Day

The American Heart Association has dubbed the first Wednesday in April National Walking Day. And I'm just cynical enough to wonder how the first Thursday in April compares to other days in terms of reported heart attacks.

It makes a nice excuse to use this cute picture from the In-And-Around-Los-Angeles.com site, though. Lots o' stuff on trails and walking there.

But wasn't there an 80's song--"Walkin' in LA, Nobody Walks in LA" ? Yes, and it was by Misssing Persons, a band that originated in Los Angeles. It sounded an awful lot like their other 80s hit, "Words" or possibly the two songs are just mixed up in my head. But is there a blog post in here somewhere?

Searching for the phrase "Missing Persons" in the LAT is not the best approach (gee, did you know that in 1924, the LA County Sherifff handled 500 missing persons cases and found about 450 of the missing?) but I did find this. Robert Hilburn, the Time's pop music critic for 35 years, went to a Missing Persons concert at the Long Beach Arena on New Year's Eve in 1983. He called them a "dumb band."

For those who remember the 80s fondly, here's what he said:

"It's not that Missing Persons is horrible. We're not talking Sammy Hagar or Judas Priest here. But the quintet, which is the hottest pop attraction to come out of Los Angeles sine the Go-Go's, is trying so hard to get to the top that it sacrifices some occasionally interesting pop instincts for a trendy, lightweight mentality."

Occasionally interesting? Wow, talk about damning with faint praise.

"The band buried all hints of warmth and charm beneath lead singer Dale Bozzio's tacky Cher (pre-Altman)-meets-Wendy O. Williams Stance."  Hilburn did seem to like the lyrics of the songs, oddly enough. He just disliked the people who performed them, I guess.

The best part of the 1983 review is the b&w picture of Dale Bozzio. Hilburn says her hair was pink, but she seems to be wearing the same bra as in this pr photo at left.

No one under 40 is gonna get Hilburn's allusions.Today, she would be called GaGa-esque, rather than Cher (pre-Altman).  And I'm far from the first to make that comparison.

Bozzio's still touring, and Robert Hilburn is on the radio and online. He wrote a book about his years as a critic: Corn Flakes with John Lennon: And Other Tales from a Rock 'n' Roll Life (Hardcover)I haven't read it, but it sounds wildly interesting and it got great reviews.

21st Century Equestrians

Mosaic Monday will have to wait till Tuesday, but it is special. Really.

Meanwhile, I offer this picture taken at the San Pedro Christmas Parade over the weekend.

Let's be fair. Maybe she had a call from a family member telling her a donor had been found for her father's life-saving transplant surgery. Or maybe her Mom had called to tell her that the bank refinanced and their home is saved! Or maybe it was her agent, and she just got tapped to star in a new Disney after-school series called Parade Princess...

But let's face it, we all know that what's really being said on the phone is probably, "I dunno....what do you wanna do later?"