For 31 years the Lotus Festival in Echo Park was one of the highlights of summer. Founded by an Asian community group, the festival took place at Echo Park Lake with its abundance of lotus flowers in bloom, providing two days of fun in the park, with dragon boat races, music, food stalls and entertainment [...]
For years I tried to find a motif embodying the City of Los Angeles for me. Finally I found it. “Dance Door” by Robert Graham The bronze sculpture, created by Graham in 1978, was donated to the Music Center in 1982 by Frederick and Marcia Weisman. For me this vista is Los Angeles at its [...]
Sometimes it is hard to give away the location of a place. One might reveal a secret to others who then come and take away what is so unique about this little hideaway. But with St Vincent Court I’ll make an exception. The history behind this tiny little court is just so utterly fascinating. This [...]
At the turn of the century (19th to 20th, that is) Bunker Hill in Downtown was what the English would call a “posh” area. It was not only a desirable living quarter, it also loomed above the lower parts of Downtown. The incline was (and is) short, but steep, which made people grumble just enough [...]
The former “Real” Downtown, today known as the Historic Core, starts at Hill street and stretches to the South. What was once (before WW II) the center of the city with company headquarters, banks, department stores, theaters, cinemas, apartment buildings, restaurants and bars, started to change in the ’50s. People packed up and moved to [...]
The layout of Downtown Los Angeles needs a word of explanation: the area is basically split into two – the “old” and the “new” one. The new part is the one with the banks, the museums, the courts, the Civic Center; it is polished and quite impressive. It is also quite empty after 8 PM [...]
What is going on? Rain? In June?????? What’s next? Unicorns? World Peace?
The story of the seals in the Cove at La Jolla and the dispute over whether or not they should be dispersed just took another turn: At a cost of nearly $700,000 the city of San Diego wants to use a loudspeaker that emanates a barking dog sound from 6 A.M. till sunset and have [...]
Besides the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the California African American Museum the park is home to the California Science Center, part of which is the Sketch Foundation Gallery – Air and Space Exhibits. Just to make sure that nobody who wants to visit the gallery gets lost, they decorated the outside [...]
A fun fact about the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum: it is the only stadium worldwide which was used twice to host the Olympic Games – in 1932 and 1984. Hard to imagine in a city like Los Angeles where razing buildings seems to be a popular sport, but there you are. In this case they [...]
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