Down on the streets, LA is a mess, a tent city of encampments, trash, shopping carts, RVs and civic disorder. But on the way up the trail to Griffith Observatory, the city assumes its old panorama of possibilities. Filtered out of these photographs are the humans and their rulers who make this city so perplexing.…
In 1954, architect Culver Heaton’s design for the Van Nuys Savings and Loan, with interior murals by artist Millard Sheets, rose at 6569 N. Van Nuys Bl. Along with other financial institutions such as Jefferson Savings, Lincoln Savings, Great Western Bank and Bank of America, they served the local community of hard-working people who opened accounts…
Browsing through the archives of the Huntington Library, I came across a set of photographs by Maynard Parker. They depict the inside and outside of a new home, one of 119 in a 100-acre development called Royal Oaks, south of Sepulveda, near Ventura, in 1950. Back then there was no 405, no 101. Sepulveda Blvd.…
The Getty Museum is one of those destinations in Los Angeles tourists come to see. I played a tourist yesterday and went there. I entered into the parking lot via a new automated system where one pays at the end of the visit and no interaction with a human is necessary. It cost $15. A…
CSUN will run, from August 25-October 11, 2014 an art show devoted to the San Fernando Valley as it existed in the years 1970-1990. One of the artists, whose work will exhibit here, is Mike Mandel. I found some of his photographs on Flickr.
Yesterday, near downtown Santa Monica, on a strangely cloudy and drizzly summer morning, I drove west, unintentionally, into blocked roads, past barriers and bulldozers. Men were tearing down buildings, punching holes in plate glass windows and digging trenches. The long winding humanitarian project known as the Expo Line had made its way from central Los…
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