Find links to photography dating back to Monday, March 2, 2015 at the Photography tab above – other photography dating back to 2003 can be found in the complete archives –
The latest galleries at the sister site Just Above Sunset Photography –
March 2023 Photography
Spring Arrives: The first Saturday after the vernal equinox in Beverly Hills, by the fountain in Will Rogers Park, the first Saturday of Spring. The winter storms may be ending. It’s about time. ~ Saturday, March 25, 2023
One Dozen Roses: Three weeks of winter storms – eleven so far – with heavy rain – decimated the local rose gardens. Not much left. But on the first sunny morning in a month, these few pulled through. More rain is on the way, but there will be more roses. ~ Saturday, March 18, 2023
Sunshine Again: The local gardens on the first sunny morning in a month. The clouds rolled in again in the afternoon, more rain on the way. but California was California again, if just for a few hours. ~ Saturday, March 18, 2023
February 2023 Photography
Hollywood Roses: The white roses are just outside the front door, here on North Laurel Avenue, just up the street from Sunset Boulevard, and just down the street from Hollywood Boulevard, in Hollywood of course. They deserved the Hollywood treatment. Fancy lighting and odd angles, to add drama. After all, this is Hollywood. ~ Saturday, February 18, 2023
Pushing Up Daisies: African daisies in a parking lot off Sunset Boulevard in the dead of winter, but no one is dead here. Nothing is. There’s color everywhere, of all sorts. ~ Saturday, February 18, 2023
That Hollywood Light: Just the usual roses. But the winter afternoon light was extraordinary. It was Hollywood light, in Hollywood of course. ~ Saturday, February 11, 2023
Full-Color Winter: The dreary storms are over, for a bit. The sun is out, and brilliant. The colors in the gardens pop. Winter is good, here. ~ Saturday, February 11, 2023
Winter Whites: The are no flamboyant roses in Los Angeles in winter. Only the whites bloom on and on, And a bit of pink here and there. But that will do just fine. ~ Saturday, February 4, 2023
Pushing Up Daisies: “Osteospermum is a genus of flowering plants belonging to the Calenduleae, one of the smaller tribes of the sunflower/daisy family Asteraceae. They are known as the daisy-bushes or African daisies.” Of course they are. There are twenty or thirty species in the genus. These are three of them. They grow like weeds out here. You know. Winter. But they do go well with the hibiscus and whatnot. ~ Saturday, February 4, 2023
January 2023 Photography
A Few Good Roses: Los Angeles is dormant. No roses anywhere for a few more weeks, except for the standard and rather ordinary white roses here and there, and one persistent red rose that someone forget to cut back. This is a dismal time of year, but not completely dismal. ~ Saturday, January 28, 2023
Winter Close-Ups: Winter geraniums and those unstoppable South African daisies, and a bit of densely-packed alyssum. Hollywood was still ready for its close-ups. ~ Saturday, January 28, 2023
Substitute Roses: Roses? Only the first rose is from today, Saturday, January 21, 2023. That’s all that was out there. Two weeks of rain ruined what was in bloom, and now everything is cut back, everywhere, waiting for sunny days. The other roses are from other Saturdays here in Los Angeles. Such roses will return.
Winter Cactus: Winter in Los Angeles. Cactus and hibiscus and those odd South African daisies. Everything else seems to be dormant. This is a strange place. ~ Saturday, January 21, 2023
Storm Roses: The year opened with a series of rainstorms. Most of the roses everywhere in Los Angeles have been cut back to bare stems – winter is here. But some still were in bloom. This is after two days of heavy rain, before two more days of heavy rain on the way. Roses can be persistent. ~ Saturday, January 7, 2023
New Year Blooms: The new year opened with dark storms, one right after another, but here in Los Angeles that doesn’t matter. Something is always in bloom, no matter how odd. ~ Saturday, January 7, 2023
December 2022 Photography
Advent Roses: Roses in Beverly Hills, just one week before Christmas Eve. There really should be roses at Christmas. Every year. ~ Saturday, December 17, 2022
Considerably Pink: Azalea. Rhododendron indicum, to be exact. Native to Japan and very pink, and all over Beverly Hills in the middle of December. But everything seems to be pink now, or if not pink, at least mysterious. ~ Saturday, December 17, 2022
Getting Darker: Heavy rain on the way, maybe. Hard to tell in Los Angeles. But the day got darker and darker. And so did the local roses. ~ Saturday, December 10, 2022
December Details: There no winter here, but there are small unintentional details in the local gardens that speak of Christmas and such. That helps. ~ Saturday, December 10, 2022
Winter Roses: This is how December opens in Beverly Hills. Roses everywhere. Why not? ~ Saturday, December 3, 2022
The Holiday Season: New in the planters all along the Sunset Strip, bright red poinsettia, indigenous to Mexico and Central America, but a Christmas thing too. And the usual hibiscus and gazania and those odd South African daisies, and trumpet vine too. That’s the holidays in Los Angeles. ~ Saturday, December 3, 2022
November 2022 Photography
Even Better Roses: This cannot be. The end of November and the local roses are better than ever. There is no winter here. ~ Saturday, November 26, 2022
Getting In Close: The usual Thanksgiving weekend in Los Angeles. Hibiscus and whatnot. But fascinating up close, really close up. ~ Saturday, November 26, 2022
Complex Roses: Nothing is simple. Roses can have twists and turns. Look closely. They’re complicated. ~ Saturday, November 19, 2022
Late Autumn Color: Local bougainvillea doing a rather good imitation of the fall colors back east a few months ago. And the hibiscus blossoms look like miniature Christmas trees. The colors are right. But the flora is all wrong. The climate here is Mediterrian, on the far side of a vast desert. This is our autumn. ~ Saturday, November 19, 2022
Darker Roses: Daylight Saving Time is over. The days are darker, even here in Los Angeles. There a bit of a chill in the air now and then. And the local roses have turned subtle. ~ Saturday, November 12, 2022
The Odder Blooms: Local closely. There are odd things in the autumn gardens here. ~ Saturday, November 12, 2022
November Roses: Yes, this is how November opens in the local rose gardens. Bright. Complicated. Amazing. This may be the best month for roses, here where there’s no real winter. ~ Saturday, November 5, 2022
A Bright Good Morning: A bright late autumn morning in Los Angeles. Morning Glory and Bougainvillea and Hibiscus. Who could ask for anything more? ~ Saturday, November 5, 2022
October 2022 Photography
The Extra Roses: This month there were five Saturdays, which meant an extra Saturday morning to photograph the local roses. Look at these. This was a good month. ~ Saturday, October 29, 2022
The Butterfly Effect: November is just around the corner. The butterfly iris (Dietes grandiflora) set the scene. This is a subtle time of year. ~ Saturday, October 29, 2022
Softer Roses: Low autumn clouds in Los Angeles. Diffused light. That slows things down. This week’s roses are a bit softer. ~ Saturday, October 22, 2022
Persistent Hibiscus: The rest of the nation has autumn leaves. Los Angeles has autumn hibiscus, and a few other autumn odds and ends. ~ Saturday, October 22, 2022
A Rain Garden: That was odd. Steady light rain from before dawn to noon. The local rose gardens became rain gardens. Los Angeles wasn’t Los Angeles, for a time. That’s a good thing. ~ Saturday, October 15, 2022
Pleasant Darkness: Of course it never rains in Southern California. Until it does. The local gardens were pleasantly subdued. And quiet. For one day. ~ Saturday, October 15, 2022
Autumn Roses: The light changes at this time of year. The local roses somehow have more depth, and there’s backlighting too. This is good. ~ Saturday, October 8, 2022
Everyday Strangeness: Hibiscus in pleasant from a distance. Up close, it’s pretty strange. Too close, it’s rather frightening. But this is true of everything in every garden in Los Angeles. ~ Saturday, October 8, 2022
Late Roses: A dim quiet morning. The sun eventually came out at noon. So did the roses. That’s autumn in Los Angeles. ~ Saturday, October 1, 2022
In Close: Los Angeles in best close up. From a distance, Los Angeles is rather shabby. Too dry. Too dusty. Too burnt out. At least this is true of the local gardens. ~ Saturday, October 1, 2022
September 2022 Photography
Roadside Roses: The three local formal rose gardens were looking a bit shabby. Everything cut back to force massive blooms for the rest of the year. No matter. There are roses on side of the road everywhere. They’ll do just fine. ~ Saturday, September 24, 2022
A Bit Blue: Saturday morning. The weekly hunt for botanical oddities in this corner of Los Angeles. What’s this? Much more blue than usual. Cool. But all of these are still oddities. ~ Saturday, September 24, 2022
Autumn Roses: The long record heat wave ended. The low clouds rolled in. Perhaps there will be an autumn here. The late roses glowed in the dark. ~ Saturday, September 17, 2022
A Bit Subdued: Bougainvillea and hibiscus shouldn’t be subdued. They should be bright. This is Los Angeles after all. But on a cool September morning, with low clouds and no sun at all, Los Angeles wasn’t itself. Los Angeles became subtle. ~ Saturday, September 17, 2022
The Survivors: Rain. Finally. But not much. Still, at the end of a ten-day record-setting heat wave, in the middle of an historic decades-long drought, even a few drops of rain are welcome. And here are the grateful roses that made it through that heat wave. ~ Saturday, September 10, 2022
Definitely Twisted: A dark steamy day in Los Angeles. Just too hot. Hard to breathe. And the local gardens are defiantly twisted in odd ways. ~ Saturday, September 10, 2022
August 2022 Photography
Absolutely Fabulous: The buttery-yellow floribunda rose here is the award-winning Julia Child rose, bred by the Tom Carruth in 2004. The late Julia Child personally chose this floribunda rose to bear her name. In the UK the rose was renamed and marketed as the Absolutely Fabulous rose, after the television show, but it’s the same rose, blooming everywhere here is Los Angeles, because it’s drought-resistant and has no problem with the extreme heat here, and it seems to be smog-resistant too. And it blooms year-round. Yes, it is absolutely fabulous, and Julia has friends. Those other roses are fabulous too. ~ Saturday, August 27, 2022
Bright Spots: Here in Los Angeles the drought only gets worse. The place is dry and dusty, everything is the color of concrete now, but there are bright spots. ~ Saturday, August 27, 2022
Roses Out Front: The white roses are just out front, all along the street here on North Laurel Avenue. The other roses in front yards from here to Beverly Hills. Los Angeles can be a welcoming place. ~ Saturday, August 20, 2022
High Summer: All of this is in bloom along the sidewalks and in the parking lots here in Hollywood. Summer here is quite a trip. Go ahead. Get high. ~ Saturday, August 20, 2022
The Hottest Roses: The neighborhood roses on the hottest day of the summer, so far. They’re pretty cool. Nothing else is. ~ Saturday, August 13, 2022
Summer Details: Too hot to move. Sit quietly and attend to the details. Azalea. Those pale summer lilies in the shade. The hibiscus on the wall over there. That’ll do. ~ Saturday, August 13, 2022
Opening August: The roses that open August here. This summer will end well. ~ Saturday, August 6, 2022
High Intensity Gardens: The first Saturday in August here in the neighborhood. All the local gardens became quite intense. Too intense? Never. ~ Saturday, August 6, 2022
July 2022 Photography
Forty Extra Roses: Saturday morning is for roses. This month had five Saturdays. Look! Forty extra roses! ~ Saturday, July 30, 2022
Strange Summer: Plant taxonomy us best left to experts. There are bees in the orange-fuzz trees. And little blue morning glories everywhere. Unless those are something else. Deep summer in Los Angeles is a bit strange. ~ Saturday, July 30, 2022
Another Rose Day: The midsummer heat has cooked a lot of the roses in the public gardens here, but they persist. Another summer afternoon. More roses. Always more roses. ~ Saturday, July 23, 2022
Hot Shade: Summer in Los Angeles. Stay out of the sun. And look around. Under the giant tree ferns there’s good stuff in bloom. ~ Saturday, July 23, 2022
Complicated Roses: The shapes of roses are never simple. Here in Los Angeles, in the middle of summer, the shapes are wonderfully complex. ~ Saturday, July 16, 2022
Intense Summer Color: Ah, the supersaturated colors in the summer gardens here in Los Angeles. These colors could not be more intense. Everything here is intense. ~ Saturday, July 16, 2022
Coming Up Roses: There’s always a new way to shoot the usual roses, a way to may them unusual. They are unusual. Always. Los Angeles is always coming up roses. ~ Saturday, July 9, 2022
Certainly Summer: Purple bougainvillea everywhere and bees in the zinnia all along Sunset Boulevard at Sunset Plaza. Must be summer in Los Angeles. ~ Saturday, July 9, 2022
Mature Roses: July opened with this array of roses in the local gardens. It’s the June array of roses, or the May array, a few of them a bit singed around the edges from the new heat, but they’re the same roses. Now they’re mature. They’ve seen a thing or two. ~ Saturday, July 2, 2022
Deep Shade Blooms: Now it’s really summer. The best blooms are in the deep shade. As are the oddest blooms. ~ Saturday, July 2, 2022
June 2022 Photography
Baked Roses: The first heat wave of the summer baked all the roses in Beverly Hills. Many of them, in full bloom, are burnt around the edges and looking a bit shabby. But not all of them. People do tend their roses. So does the city. And the heat wave will break, sooner or later. And then the roses will be better than ever. ~ Saturday, June 25, 2022
The Unintentional Garden: All of this are around the edges of just one parking lot on Sunset Boulevard, behind the absurdly expensive and quite exclusive shops at Sunset Plaza. Casual random plantings of this and that, that no one maintains. This is just another informal and unintentional but quite fine botanical garden. That happens a lot on Los Angeles. ~ Saturday, June 25, 2022
The Saturday Roses: For almost a decade here, or perhaps longer, Saturday has meant another gallery of roses. That’s Southern California. Endless roses. And now these are old friends. But they always seem new. ~ Saturday, June 18, 2022
Wake Up Now: Yes, that’s morning glory. Ipomoea purpurea, common morning-glory, saying that it’s time to wake up. That’s what the daylilies, and the hibiscus and hydrangea and agapanthus, and that miniature butterfly iris, say too. So does that trumpet vine. It’s a June morning in Los Angeles. Wake up. ~ Saturday, June 18, 2022
Beverly Hills Roses: Beverly Hills is absurd. Rodeo Drive and too many rich people. But everyone there has fine roses. Some are in the public gardens. Some line the residential streets. That’s not absurd. ~ Saturday, June 11, 2022
Brighter Every Day: Another early and dangerous heat wave. The sun is brutal and the air thick and brown. The city, and the state, and the west, are running out of water. End times. But everything all along Sunset Boulevard is brighter every day. So far. ~ Saturday, June 11, 2022
Pride: June is Pride Month, or Gay Pride Month, or LGBTQIA Pride Month, but there’s no need to worry about the details. The concept is simple. Be who you are. Be yourself. Celebrate that. Don’t hide. Be proud of yourself. Why not? This is the current array of Pride Month street art on Melrose Avenue, the day before the giant Pride Parade right through the middle of Hollywood. Don’t say gay? That’s just Florida. There are Pride Parades all across the country. Why not? ~ Friday, June 10, 2022
Early Summer Light: The light out here in Los Angeles as summer is about to begin. Will Rogers Memorial Park, Beverly Hills. A quiet afternoon. ~ Thursday, June 9, 2022
The June Roses: The first Saturday in June was quiet, with no sun until late afternoon. The public rose gardens in Beverly Hills were quiet too. The roses were patiently waiting for the camera, waiting to show off in the soft diffused light, which they did. ~ Saturday, June 4, 2022
The New Desert: Everyone in Los Angeles had better get used to the worst drought that everyone west of the Rockies has ever seen, one that may never end. Water will be scarce from now on. No lawns. Dead gardens. But we will still have cactus in bloom. That’s a comfort. The transition begins. ~ Saturday, June 4, 2022
The Quiet Beach: Not much sun. Not much surf. A weekday afternoon at the beach. Just the locals. But pleasant enough. Lots of pelicans flying overhead in formation. El Porto, Manhattan Beach. ~ Thursday, June 2, 2022
May 2022 Photography
Inner Light: This week’s roses without all the high-contrast drama, a Saturday without any sunshine at all. The local rose gardens glowed all on their own. ~ Saturday, May 28, 2022
In Shadow: Odd blooms hidden in the shadows on a rare dark overcast weekend in Los Angeles. No sun? No problem. Explore the darkness. ~ Saturday, May 28, 2022
Bluff Cove: There are strange trees in the hills above Bluff Cove down in Palos Verdes, the hidden cove at the bottom of those treacherous crumbling cliffs. Four careless young people, just fooling around at the edge, went over together this week. One of them died. But the surfers love the place anyway. And the view out to Malibu is cool. And there’s the Point Vicente Lighthouse a few miles further south, with its view of Catalina. The cliffs there are just as treacherous, but fenced off. The only issue there is those rattlesnakes. But it was a good day. No snakes. ~ Friday, May 27, 2022
Almost Andalusia: The North Harper Avenue Historic District just off the Sunset Strip on a sunny afternoon. Old Hollywood, from the late twenties, restored and reconstructed, or this is Andalusia. This feels more like Andalusia. ~ Tuesday, May 24, 2022
Sunday Roses: The usual Saturday array of roses had to wait until Sunday – a family matter came up. But these were worth the wait. ~ Sunday, May 22, 2022
The Jungle Out There: It begins with bougainvillea but it doesn’t end there. It’s late May in Los Angeles. It’s a jungle out there. ~ Sunday, May 22, 2022
Absurdly Colorful: Monday afternoon on the Sunset Strip just down the street here – absurdly colorful today – parked right behind two brand new school-bus yellow Ferraris – one a new model no one had seen yet – and walked around the block and took some shots. This is a curious place. But it is colorful. ~ Monday, May 16, 2022
Even Better Roses: A blistering May heat wave only makes the local roses better. Ninety degrees before noon? Deadly bright sunshine? Dry as a bone? No matter. The roses love it. ~ Saturday, May 14, 2022
Local Exotics: From the blue agapanthus – Lily of the Nile – through all the varieties of hibiscus – certainly not native to this desert town – to the giant white South African daisies, everything in Los Angeles comes from somewhere else. So do almost all the people here. But it all works out. ~ Saturday, May 14, 2022
Ukraine Here: The street today. Putin meets Hollywood. The street art defeats him. ~ Thursday, May 12, 2022
The May Roses: A drive through Beverly Hills on the first Saturday in May. These are the roses. Life is good here. For now. ~ Saturday, May 7, 2022
Come What May: Giant white daisies tossed around in the warm breeze, daylilies everywhere, odd miniature yellow iris at the duck pond in the park. Everything is in bloom. It’s the first Saturday in May, looking like the middle of summer. It’s Los Angeles. ~ Saturday, May 7, 2022
That Eucalyptus Tree: Eucalyptus camaldulensis, commonly known as the river red gum, is indigenous to Australia. It has smooth white or cream-colored bark, lance-shaped or curved adult leaves, flower buds in groups of seven or nine, white flowers and hemispherical fruit. A familiar and iconic tree, it can be seen along watercourses all across inland Australia, providing shade in the extreme temperatures of central Australia. An image of The Old Gum Tree was engraved for a stamp in 1936 to commemorate the centenary of foundation of South Australia, and there’s the Queen’s Tree, planted in Kings Park, Perth, Western Australia, in 1954, by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on her first visit to Australia. This one is just a bit far from home, at Palisades Park in Santa Monica, twisted and spooky on the cliff above Pacific Coast Highway, at the far end of this continent. That’s the Pacific out there. Australia is out there somewhere. Eucalyptus camaldulensis may now be one of the most widely planted eucalypts in the world, but it’s still kind of spooky. So is Palisades Park. ~ Wednesday, May 4, 2022
April 2022 Photography
Extra Roses: That’s odd. This month had five Saturdays. That means an extra Saturday of roses, and here they are, the quite odd extra roses. ~ Saturday, April 30, 2022
In Shadow: Bright sun means deep shadows. That’s where the Japanese Butterfly Iris are hiding, so are the indestructible brilliant Gazania, basic groundcover almost everywhere out here. Even the hibiscus variants hide a bit from the sun, as another hot dry deadly summer is on the way. ~ Saturday, April 30, 2022
The Twists: The twists up on twisted Mulholland Drive. Like the David Lynch movie, Mulholland Drive, which made no sense at all, this just is. Twisted, high above Los Angeles. A bit unsettling. But kind of cool. ~ Tuesday, April 26, 2022
Increasing Intensity: Spring is well underway. Summer is coming soon. The local roses get more intense each week. And now more of them are violent red. ~ Saturday, April 23, 2022
High Contrast: The light was right. Everything in the local gardens was in high contrast this day. That’s why the film industry started here and remains here. The light is always right. ~ Saturday, April 23, 2022
The Easter Roses: The roses in the local gardens at Easter. They’re the same roses as always, but somehow they seem special right now. These are good for the soul. ~ Saturday, April 16, 2022
April White: Bright white tiny Japanese Butterfly Iris. Fresh bright white common daisies, and the usual white hibiscus everywhere. Hollywood wakes up this time of year. Ah, but there are exceptions, mysterious colors. ~ Saturday, April 16, 2022
Rose Therapy: The world is falling apart. The local roses are not. That’s a comfort. That’s always a comfort. ~ Saturday, April 9, 2022
April Blue: Something changed. Los Angeles’ gardens suddenly turned blue, or odd variations of something like blue. Maybe it was the sudden brutal heatwave. Or maybe everyone out here is just feeling blue. It happens. ~ Saturday, April 9, 2022
Softened Roses: That was odd. The month opened with cool overcast skies, not like Los Angeles at all, but the soft light softened all the roses in bloom everywhere. They became subtle, and hectic Los Angeles became quiet and still. ~ Saturday, April 2, 2022
The Survivors: This is what persists here in Southern California now. There’s nothing new. The last item is Orchid Rockrose – Cistus creticus (Cretan rockrose) – “Cistus is a genus of flowering plants in the rockrose family Cistaceae, containing about twenty species. They are perennial shrubs found on dry or rocky soils throughout the Mediterranean region, from Morocco and Portugal through to the Middle East, and also on the Canary Islands.” No need to water these. Useful out here these days. They’ll survive. ~ Saturday, April 2, 2022
March 2022 Photography
Oddball Stuff: The small pocket park on Santa Monica Boulevard just beyond the Troubadour, where fifty years ago, a young Linda Ronstadt sang so beautifully. She’s old now. So are Jackson Browne and Carole King and James Taylor and the rest of that crowd. They’re all gone now. There’s just this park, just over the line in quiet and staid Beverly Hills. But it’s nicely surreal. As it should be. ~ Tuesday, March 29, 2022
The Spring Roses: Six days after the vernal equinox, the actual start of spring, an explosion of roses all across this end of Los Angeles. They were waiting for this. ~ Saturday, March 26, 2022
Busywork: Yes, that’s a bee hard at work. Everything is in bloom now. There’s lots to cover. This is Los Angeles. ~ Saturday, March 26, 2022
The White Roses (35 images): For the middle of March, mostly white roses. They’re everywhere here in Los Angeles at the moment. But there’s more to Los Angeles than that. ~ Saturday, March 19, 2022
Botanical Headshots (40 images): Consider these Hollywood headshots. Everyone who comes here to be a star has a portfolio of their headshots. Everyone wants to be a star. These are botanical headshots. These guys want to be stars too. ~ Saturday, March 19, 2022
Gradations of Roses: Spring roses in the public gardens in Beverly Hills, increasing in color from white, ending in deep red. ~ Saturday, March 12, 2022
Curbside Pick-Up: There’s more than enough that’s quite amazing in just one parking lot behind the shops at Sunset Plaza. The beautiful people are out front. These are out back. ~ Saturday, March 12, 2022
March Roses: Here they come. Almost everyone cut back their roses to bare stubs in late January, to force them to bloom profusely as the spring begins, but that’s happening now, early. Los Angeles is all roses already. ~ Saturday, March 5, 2022
Opening March: March did come in like a lion – cold winds and dark storms – snow low in the mountains that stand behind Los Angeles. And darkness in the local gardens at noon. Very nice. ~ Saturday, March 5, 2022
February 2022 Photography
The Roses: What is there to say? It’s late February and there are still roses everywhere, and better all the time. This is Los Angeles. This is good. ~ Saturday, February 26, 2022
Layers of Color: Things are getting crowded in the local gardens, a fight for any available space. But no one messes with those oddball yellow succulents. ~ Saturday, February 26, 2022
Los Angeles Law: Merrell Gage’s bust of Abraham Lincoln hidden in a pocket park on the northeast corner of First and Grand, at the midcentury modern 1958 courthouse for the Los Angeles County Superior Court, as seen in old Perry Mason shows from way back then, with The Law Givers by Albert Stewart – Thomas Jefferson with the Constitution, William the Conqueror with the Magna Carta, and Moses with the Ten Commandments. The Masons added bronze braziers out front reminding everyone of Solomon and Babylonian Law. This was the courthouse for the conservatorship dispute over Britney Spears, and thus the site of endless “Free Britney” rallies. But that’s over. The place is quiet now. Frank Gehry’s 2003 swoopy Walt Disney Concert Hall fills the southwest corner of the intersection. His more geometric Grand Avenue Project fills the southeast corner of First and Grand. Frank Gehry is now the law in Los Angeles. ~ Friday, February 25, 2022
About That Light: Deep blue skies and bright winter sunlight at the International Cinematographers Guild’s building on Sunset Boulevard, Cinematographers know how to manage light and make it dramatic. The Motion Picture Editors Guild, next door, does the same. Hollywood is all about the light. ~ Thursday, February 24, 2022
Bright Glass: A steady cold hard wind off the Pacific cleared the air. Everything was bright. The Directors Guild of America complex, down on Sunset Boulevard at Hayworth, was showing off. ~ Tuesday, February 22, 2022
The Twisties: Up on top of hills out back, the twisty trees all along twisty Mulholland Drive. Winter skies. Long views. Far above Los Angeles ~ Monday, February 21, 2022
Painted Porcelain: The pink and white rose is a relatively new (2020) hybrid tea rose, Painted Porcelain. Not sure who owns the trademark and patent, but someone is doing just fine. This variety is everywhere now. The variegated “circus” rose seems to be a variety named George Burns. The yellow rose was tagged as a variety named Doris Day – a “celebrity” rose. This is the public rose garden in Beverly Hills after all. None of the others were labeled. Call them what you will. Use your imagination. ~ Saturday, February 19, 2022
Extra Bright: The planters all along Sunset Boulevard at Sunset Plaza were suddenly filled with full color, and in the middle of winter! The rest was in the parking lots out back. Southern California is a good place. ~ Saturday, February 19, 2022
Good Vibrations: These seem to be sound waves made visible. That curious wall at the Guitar Center on Sunset Boulevard, next door to the Sunset Grill. ~ Friday, February 18, 2022
From Another World: Los Angeles can be a strange place in the middle of winter. The municipal cactus garden in the middle of Beverly Hills. Surreal. Disturbing. Slightly menacing. Perhaps from another world. Definitely from another world. ~ Thursday, February 17, 2022
Hudson Avenue: Alfredo de Batuc’s 1990 mural “A Tribute to Dolores del Rio” – 6529 Hollywood Boulevard at Hudson Avenue – completely restored and as vivid as it was meant to be. Dolores del Rio (1906-1983) was a major Hollywood star long ago – one of the mysterious “exotic” ones – and she’s back – but Hudson Avenue is little more than an alley. And across the alley is Hillview Hollywood, originally the Hudson, Hollywood’s first “artist’s” high-rise, built in 1917 by Jesse L. Lasky, the co-founder of Paramount Pictures, and his brother-in-law Samuel Goldwyn, co-founder of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. At the time this was one of Hollywood’s only apartment buildings willing to rent to aspiring actors – they were a suspicious lot – but that only made this “the” place to be. The basement housed a rehearsal space until Rudolph Valentino turned it into a speakeasy, but the Hudson fell on hard times and was eventually abandoned, and later there was serious structural damage from the 1994 Northridge earthquake. Tear it down? A group of investors restored and completely redid it as the Hillview in 2005. They went bankrupt, but others jumped in. But now Covid has killed it again. It’s in tatters. Its magic club closed years ago. The new owners are rethinking things. Still, Dolores is back. ~ Wednesday, February 16, 2022
The Malibu Coast: Meanwhile, in Malibu, a small-craft warning, steady and cold high winds all day. But clear blue skies. The coast was clear at Topanga Canyon. ~ Tuesday, February 15, 2022
Red Hot Roses: The Super Bowl is in town. The National Weather Service issued a Heat Advisory. It was ninety at noon. And the local roses were hot, hot stuff. ~ Saturday, February 12, 2022
Local Garden Details: South African Butterfly Lilies, and those strange sort-of daisies everywhere, and hibiscus, and geraniums and all sorts of oddities. It’s winter in Los Angeles. ~ Saturday, February 12, 2022
Super Colors: Super Bowl weekend in Los Angeles. Super colors on Melrose Avenue, mostly supplied by the CBS (“Can’t Be Stopped”) Crew. That’s what they do. But there was bright white skywriting in the deep blue sky too. The surprise hot Santa Ana winds immediately ripped the lettering apart, rendering all of that abstract too. Cool. It was a good day. Good colors. ~ Friday, February 11, 2022
Quiet Time: Heavenly Pond, Franklin Canyon, just north of Beverly Hills. In the late sixties this was the “paradise” planet in a Star Trek episode or two. This day Paramount was here again with a major crew and all the trucks and lights and whatnot, but they were out by the dam at the main lake, and on the dusty road where Frank Capra filmed Claudette Colbert’s famous hitchhiking scene in “It Happened One Night” back in 1935. That’s where Opie and Andy were walking to the old fishing hole each week in the opening titles for the Andy Griffin Show long ago. But ignore that. Heavenly Pond is off to the side, hidden. No one was around. Just the ducks and the turtles. Quiet time. ~ Thursday, February 10, 2022
Nervous Trees: The winter trees in the small pocket park on Santa Monica Boulevard just beyond the Troubadour, where fifty years ago, a young Linda Ronstadt sang so beautifully. She’s old now. So are Jackson Browne and Carole King and James Taylor and the rest of that crowd. They’re elsewhere now. There’s just this park, just over the line in quiet and staid Beverly Hills, with its scary trees. They sing of death. ~ Tuesday, February 8, 2022
With Fine Violins: There’s a fractal lotus blossom at Sunset Boulevard and Seward Street. There are many strange things at Sunset Boulevard and Seward Street here in Hollywood. It’s all new, with a bit of 1929 mixed in, along with fine violins. ~ Monday, February 7, 2022
Early February Roses: February opened with ice storms and heavy snow from Texas to Maine, shutting down everything back east. February opened in Los Angeles with the usual roses everywhere – not that many at this time of year – but they persist. Winter is elsewhere. ~ Saturday, February 5, 2022
Looking Closely: The local gardens here in the middle of winter. Look closely. Things are happening. ~ Saturday, February 5, 2022
All That Jazz: A sunny day at Capitol Records in Hollywood. The famous jazz mural was looking good. And across the street the golden doors of the Avalon caught the sun nicely. The Avalon started out in 1927 as the Hollywood Playhouse, a vaudeville house that occasionally showed silent movies, then it became a real movie palace, and then a television studio – home to the Lawrence Welk Show for years, and the Jerry Lewis telethons – Nixon gave his “Checkers” speech from a studio here – but now it’s an absurdly hip Electronic Dance Music club – DJs from Europe – house music, trance, techno – that sort of thing. It’s all good on Vine Street now. ~ Friday, February 4, 2022
Angular Momentum: Exploring the angles at the West Coast campus of Boston’s Emerson College – 2014, Thom Mayne, FAIA, principal of Morphosis Architects – Sunset Boulevard at Gordon. Mayne won the 2005 Pritzker Prize for his Caltrans District 7 Headquarters building at 100 South Main Street, around the corner from Los Angeles City Hall. This is a smaller version of that – all odd angles and odd curves – down the street from Epic, the severely geometric office tower designed by the architecture firm Gensler for Hudson Pacific Properties, on the northwest corner of Sunset and Bronson. That has been leased to Netflix, which had already purchased the 1918 Sunset Bronson Studios across the street, the original home of Warner Brothers, now the home to all Netflix productions. Epic, however, is all new pure-white grid work. The new Technicolor building is just to the west of all this. And everything is at an odd angle. ~ Thursday, February 3, 2022
Shooting Chinatown: The month began with the rise of the second new moon after the winter solstice, marking the lunar new year – Tet and the Chinese New Year, the Year of the Tiger this time. It was time to visit Los Angeles’ Chinatown again to see what was up down there – but Bruce Lee was surrounded by Klieg lights. ABC Freeform was there filming an episode for the new season of Good Trouble. Gaffers and grips and rigging everywhere. The Year of the Tiger? Maybe. Later. ~ Wednesday, February 2, 2022
Blue Winter Skies: The play of light at 8750 Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills. The building is vacant again. What does that matter? The light was good. The sky was extraordinary. ~ Tuesday, February 1, 2022
January 2022 Photography
Softer Light: An overcast dreary day, but the softer diffused light turned the local roses subtle and sophisticated. ~ Saturday, January 29, 2022
Winter Blooms: This is what winter looks like in Los Angeles. Something’s always in bloom. ~ Saturday, January 29, 2022
Hollywood Palms: The palm trees at Local 600 of the International Cinematographers Guild, at 7755 Sunset Boulevard, in winter. They’re quite dramatic. But this is Hollywood, after all. Everything looks cinematic. ~ Friday, January 28, 2022
Downtown Time Warp: Park on Hill Street at Third. Up on Bunker Hill, the always new giant glass skyscrapers at California Plaza. But walk around the corner. At 307 South Broadway there’s what left of Sid Grauman’s 1917 “Million Dollar Theater” – one of the first movie palaces built in the United States, when films were silent. Ten years later he built Grauman’s Egyptian Theater and then Grauman’s Chinese Theater, both on Hollywood Boulevard. Downtown Los Angeles didn’t matter anymore. But this is still here, waiting for better times. Spanish Colonial Revival with bursts of lavish Churrigueresque decoration, statues, longhorn skulls, and much more, from the Los Angeles architect Albert C. Martin Sr. But that was long ago. Still, the city is a time machine. ~ Thursday, January 27, 2022
High Ice: Strange skies over Beverly Hills today. That’s ice up there. With wind shear. ~ Wednesday, January 26, 2022
Blue Winter Skies: Hearts in the bright blue sky. A wayward egret at the fountain in the local park. Dramatic bare trees. Winter on Sunset Boulevard. ~ Tuesday, January 25, 2022
Gemini Roses: The only reliable winter rose out here is the hybrid tea rose Gemini – half pink and half white – the twins – two faces – but showing many more faces here. The yellow rose is Julia Child – another thoroughly reliable variety, like that woman, Julia Child. The white rose in New Dawn. Indestructible. Well named. ~ Saturday, January 22, 2022
Winter Colors: Close-ups. The color of winter in the gardens here in Hollywood. ~ Saturday, January 22, 2022
More Fresh Paint: Betty’s dead. The sign painters keep painting. Life goes on. ~ Friday, January 21, 2022
Icarus: Look up. Icarus above the Sunset Strip on a sunny winter’s day. Why not? ~ Thursday, January 20, 2022
Bare Branches: Winter on Olive Hill in Hollywood. ~ Tuesday, January 18, 2022
Rainy Day Roses: Yes, it rains in Southern California. The roses love it. And the camera loves it too. ~ Saturday, January 15, 2022
On Dark Days: A winter storm blew through. The local gardens were glowing in the dark. ~ Saturday, January 15, 2022
Western Woods: Fern Dell. Griffith Park. Los Angeles. Winter. ~ Friday, January 14, 2022
Winter Waves: Manhattan Beach. High Surf Advisory. High Wind Advisory. A sepia kind of winter day. A different sort of California day. ~ Wednesday, January 12, 2022
City Winter: California Plaza on Grand Avenue, at the top of Bunker Hill at the center of Los Angeles, in winter, the second winter of the pandemic. The glass skyscrapers are empty. The streets are empty. This used to be the center of everything. Not now. This winter may never end. ~ Monday, January 10, 2022
The Surviving Roses: Southern California winter. Everyone has cut back their roses to bare thorny stalks. But some survive that. They persist. These persist. ~ Saturday, January 8, 2022
Winter Hibiscus: Nothing says winter in Los Angeles like all possible varieties of hibiscus in full bloom, floating above the butterfly lilies and those odd South African daisies. Everyone else gets snow. ~ Saturday, January 8, 2022
Feathers: Ducks and geese and coots at Echo Park Lake in their winter feathers, although it wasn’t very cold. It’s never very cold in Los Angeles. But their feathers were impressive. ~ Thursday, January 6, 2022
Good Winter Light: There was on open parking space down on Wilshire Boulevard, just in front of the La Brea Tar Pits, next to all the cranes. They’re building the new country art museum next door. The light was good. The light was enough. ~ Tuesday, January 4, 2022
The Other Parade: Alternative roses in Hollywood and Beverly Hills as the annual Rose Parade moves through Pasadena. These are stationary. Roses are better that way. ~ Saturday, January 1, 2022
Another New Year; Azalea to hibiscus to magnolia in bloom. That’s how January starts in Los Angeles. Winter. ~ Saturday, January 1, 2022
December 2021 Photography
Catching Clouds: Between the early winter storms rolling through Southern California, the Pacific Design Center – 8687 Melrose Avenue at San Vicente – the work of the late Argentinean-born architect Cesar Pelli – catching the clouds. This is the best place for that. Center Blue opened in 1975 and was immediately called the Blue Whale. It is enormous. Center Green opened in 1988 just behind it. Center Red was announced in April 2006 and was finished in late 2011 – and that was that – complete – except for the sky. The sky is everything. The cold rain starts soon. ~ Tuesday, December 28, 2021
The Winter Sun: Roses lit by the bright Southern California winter sun, in Hollywood, where dramatic lighting is everything. ~ Saturday, December 18, 2021
Almost Christmas: The local gardens one week before Christmas, in the land where there will never be a White Christmas, ever. ~ Saturday, December 18, 2021
Odd Beasts: The streets today. Release the Kraken? Something like that. This is a parking lot across the street from Fairfax High School in the Melrose District. Herb Alpert is a graduate, as are James Ellroy and Timothy Hutton and Phil Spector and Warren Zevon. This is an odd town. ~ Friday, December 17, 2021
Dark Glass: A dark rainy day in Hollywood. The glass skyscrapers all along Sunset Boulevard. Their glass turned mysterious. And there’s that bell. This used to be El Camino Real – the Royal Road, the King’s Highway – the long road that connected all the Spanish Missions from the Baja to San Francisco, when California was a colony of Spain. El Camino Real was also California’s first main highway, following the old road. The bells were added in 1906 as road markers, but they’re mostly gone now. The systematic genocide of most of the indigenous people soured everyone on that whole era. Now it’s just glass skyscrapers in the light rain. ~ Thursday, December 16, 2021
Malibu Winter: Malibu, Pacific Coast Highway at Topanga Canyon, the day after a massive storm blew through. Heavy rains washed everything clean, but the sky was still unsettled. No one was around. It was cold. It was quiet. It was a good day. ~ Wednesday, December 15, 2021
Rose Light: Winter roses, backlit. This is the best time of the year for roses here. The light is extraordinary. ~ Saturday, December 11, 2021
The Usual Drama: It’s just Los Angeles in December, a few odd daisies, the brightest yellow hibiscus imaginable, with friends, and mysterious lantana everywhere. It’s all quite dramatic, and just another day here. ~ Saturday, December 11, 2021
Vine Street Light: Stuck on Vine Street, halfway between Hollywood and Vine and Sunset and Vine. This seems to be the center of Hollywood. The place is lit like a movie set. Maybe it is a movie set. ~ Friday, December 10, 2021
The Big Sleep: The Security Pacific Bank Building, 6383 Hollywood Boulevard, at Cahuenga, 1921, John and Donald B. Parkinson – also known as the Cahuenga Building, Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) created the totally cynical but totally honorable wisecracking private investigator Philip Marlowe, with his office here in his Cahuenga Building, high over Hollywood Boulevard. Chandler’s first Marlow novel was The Big Sleep (1939), which became the 1946 Howard Hawks movie with Humphrey Bogart (as Marlowe) and Lauren Bacall. The screenplay was by Chandler and William Faulkner, of all people, but that was long ago. The building is now being gutted, the first step concerting it to hip condominiums. The exterior will remain as is. The big brick Scientology headquarters is next door. Across the street it’s the pure-white Bauhaus medical building from the thirties. This is Raymond Chandler Square. And this is the Big Sleep. ~ Wednesday, December 8, 2021
Alternative Trees: December in Griffith Park. These are the alternative Christmas trees. These seem more appropriate this year. ~ Tuesday, December 7, 2021
Christmas Loot: Giant gold and silver elves lugging around big sacks of Christmas loot? It’s Christmastime on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. It’s all about the loot. ~ Monday, December 6, 2021
The December Roses: Winter begins a few weeks. Who cares? December opened with these. ~ Saturday, December 4, 2021
Like Christmas: It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas on Sunset Plaza in the middle of the Sunset Strip. The planters are filled with bright red Poinsettia. But that’s it. There will never be a White Christmas here. We make do. ~ Saturday, December 4, 2021
Hollyhock Haze: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House has been sitting on Olive Hill since 1919, at the east end of Hollywood Boulevard – it’s not going anywhere – but sometimes the light changes. This day it was deep fog at dawn and then an odd white haze all day. Hollyhock House turned weird. ~ Friday, December 3, 2021
Concrete Poetry: Once again, the Dominguez-Wilshire Building, 1930, by Morgan, Walls & Clements, at 5410 Wilshire Boulevard – mainly the work of Stiles O. Clements (1883-1966) – this time emerging from a morning of deep fog off the Pacific. It was a Film Noir moment. Something nasty is going on. ~ Thursday, December 2, 2021
November 2021 Photography
Intense Paint: New bright metallic paint on the wall of the body shop where they rebuild crashed Lamborghinis and Bentleys down on Melrose Avenue. And in the alleys behind, high drama from the CBS (“Can’t Be Stopped”) crew. Things get intense in this neighborhood. ~ Tuesday, November 30, 2021
Sunset Sunshine: The first Monday after Thanksgiving on the Sunset Strip. Christmas is coming. The light was amazing. ~ Monday, November 29, 2021
An Early Rose Parade: There may be no Rose Parade in Pasadena this year. Omicron is coming instead. So, these roses may have to do. They’ll do nicely. ~ Saturday, November 27, 2021
Curiously Colorful: November shouldn’t end like this. All the local gardens are lit up in full color. There will be no winter here. There never is. ~ Saturday, November 27, 2021
Tree Therapy: A walk in the park – Echo Park – by the lake – because the world is an awful mess – and because the slow life of trees in the bright sun isn’t a mess at all. The trees are a sort of therapy. Slow down. Dream in the sunshine. ~ Tuesday, November 23, 2021
Disturbed Skies: Dark skies rolling in off the cold Pacific. Dry hot empty Santa Ana winds blowing in off the Mojave. They meet over Robert Merrell Gage’s Noble Savage at the Electric Fountain – from 1931 – on the corner of Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevards. Late autumn in Los Angeles. ~ Monday, November 22, 2021
Thanksgiving Roses: Los Angeles roses, the Saturday before Thanksgiving, ready for the holiday. Everyone is thankful for the endless roses out here. ~ Saturday, November 20, 2021
Local Lush Life: Close-ups of the lush late November gardens of Southern California. There’s far too much exuberance out here. ~ Saturday, November 20, 2021
Glass Boxes: These are the big glass boxes, of all sorts, at the far end of the Sunset Strip, at the edge of Beverly Hills, where the zoning changes to residential, absurdly wealthy residential. But these big glass boxes are cool too. Basic geometry can be comforting, Order is comforting. Consider this Urban Zen. ~ Friday, November 19, 2021
The Remaining Light: Chris Burden’s “Urban Light” – his iconic grouping 202 vintage Los Angeles streetlamps – on Wilshire at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. And the palms at Renzo Piano’s Broad Contemporary Art Museum next door. Everything else has been torn down to make way for the massive new museum coming soon. This is the remaining light. ~ Thursday, November 18, 2021
Where California Ends: California ends at the Pacific. California Avenue in Santa Monica ends at the cliffs above the Pacific, at Palisades Park with its old wooden gazebo, high above the beach below. A steep ramp, the cantilevered California Incline, hugs the cliff and leads down and down and down to Pacific Coast Highway, and then it’s off to Malibu just up the coast. But this is where California really ends. At the old wooden gazebo. ~ Wednesday, November 17, 2021
Pure Geometry: The Pink Wall at Melrose and Harper, in context. Pure geometry and basic colors. It doesn’t get more basic than this. ~ Tuesday, November 16, 2021
The Mermaids: There are mermaids in the small pocket park on Santa Monica Boulevard just beyond the Troubadour, where fifty years ago, a young Linda Ronstadt sang so beautifully. But she’s old now. We all are. And this park, just over the line in quiet and staid Beverly Hills, is a good place to sit quietly in the November sunshine. Old men do that. But there are those mermaids. And there’s Eliot – “I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.” ~ Monday, November 15, 2021
Beyond White Roses: This week’s gallery of roses begins with white roses, but then things got complicated. ~ Saturday, November 13, 2021
Botanical Afterthoughts: There’s more to Los Angeles than all the roses all the time. There are surprises in the gardens. These common afterthoughts are pretty cool. ~ Saturday, November 13, 2021
November on Sycamore: First and Sycamore in the Wilshire District – bright white Streamline Moderne Art Deco, evocative Spanish Revival in the shadows, and an impressive bit of French-Norman formality, and the sycamore trees – late autumn in Los Angeles. ~ Friday, November 12, 2021
The Street World: There’s the real world. There’s the street world. Sometimes they intersect. Sometimes they don’t. ~ Thursday, November 11, 2021
Silhouettes: Down on Wilshire Boulevard, down on Museum Row, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Ahmanson, the Art of the Americas and Hammer buildings, as well as the Leo S. Bing Center, are all gone, torn down. They will be replaced by one new building, designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, consisting of eight semi-transparent pavilions that support an elevated, organically shaped, and translucent main exhibition level. That will swoop over and across Wilshire Boulevard, creating a bit of an odd surreal tunnel. But not yet. Work just started. Now it’s just spiderly cranes and brutal-looking augers. And the local trees. But that’s art too. ~ Wednesday, November 10, 2021
New Old News: Another restoration – the Hollywood Citizen News Building, 1545 North Wilcox, right in the middle of Hollywood, from 1930, by the architect Francis D. Rutherford. The Citizen-News was once the fourth largest paper in the city and had a reputation as “a progressive voice that campaigned vigorously” against social injustice and police corruption, but it’s long gone. Relevant Group is turning the building into “flexible event space” and restaurants with outdoor dining areas. Rockefeller Kempel Architects is in charge of that. But across the street the seedy Gilbert Hotel is just as seedy as ever. That was purchased by the AMDA College and Conservatory of the Performing Arts, which began in Manhattan as the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. They use it as overflow dorm space. Their campus is up on Vine Street. But their soulful young actors love the Gilbert. It’s old Hollywood. ~ Tuesday, November 9, 2021
Nightmare Colors: The city cleared out the homeless encampment alongside the La Luz de Jesus Gallery – 4633 Hollywood Boulevard, where Los Feliz meets Silver Lake – and the paint is new. The gallery, home to anything surreal and a bit nasty and oddly disturbing, has been refreshed. And the associated curio shop, Wacko, Is open again. Things are back to normal, in a Tim Burton sort of way, a full-color rather pleasant nightmare. ~ Monday, November 8, 2021
The November Roses: The month of November in Los Angeles opens with rather impressive roses. But every month in Los Angeles opens with roses. Los Angeles is exempt from winter. ~ Saturday, November 6, 2021
The Best Colors: Just another Saturday morning in Los Angeles. The usual. Amazing colors everywhere. ~ Saturday, November 6, 2021
1929 Once More: The scaffolding is gone. The El Mirador, the landmark apartment building in West Hollywood – 1929, S. Charles Lee – vacant for a decade, is almost completely restored. S. Charles Lee (1899-1990) was a theater designer – Glendale’s Alex, Westwood’s Bruin – and this is very theatrical, a mix of Spanish Colonial Revival and Churrigueresque detail. Lee was born and raised in Chicago and graduated from the Armour Institute of Technology. He arrived in Los Angeles in 1922 at the age of twenty-two to open his architectural business out here, and he really got into Hollywood glamour. He did the thirties makeover of the Max Factor building in the center of Hollywood. Jean Harlow lived at the El Mirador for a few years. The current owner, Jerome Nash, wants to bring back those days. As an incentive for rehabilitating the building, Nash was allowed to convert it into an urban inn or a condominium complex, though the building currently remains permitted for residential use as apartments. But it’s back, or almost back. ~ Friday, November 5, 2021
Illuminated Waterfowl: Diffused light all day – the marine layer off the Pacific never did burn off – but that made the light wonderful. The ducks and geese at Echo Park Lake became magical. ~ Thursday, November 4, 2021
At City Hall: The light was good. The light turned things surreal. Beverly Hills City Hall, 1931, William J. Gage and Harry G. Koerner, a baroque Spanish Renaissance local landmark. But that’s just the background. The light is everything. ~ Wednesday, November 3, 2021
And Vine: Life is returning to Hollywood. Hollywood and Vine is ready, as always. Nothing much has changed. ~ Tuesday, November 2, 2021
Sunset Abstracts: Sunset Boulevard, the Sunset Strip, in the abstract, on a dark day not meant for tourists. Some famous places are far more interesting in the abstract. ~ Monday, November 1, 2021
October 2021 Photography
Closing October: The rather subtle Centennial roses at Will Rogers Memorial Park in Beverly Hills close the month here. California winter is coming, and the other local roses show that too. Things are slowing down. ~ Saturday, October 30, 2021
The Close-Ups: Late October in the local gardens here. Close up and personal. ~ Saturday, October 30, 2021
Fort Moore: On August 13, 1846, naval forces under Commodore Robert F. Stockton arrived at Los Angeles and raised the American flag without opposition. A small occupying force of fifty Marines, under Captain Archibald H. Gillespie, built a rudimentary barricade on what was then known as Fort Hill overlooking the small town. Then came the Siege of Los Angeles. This is Mexico! Get out! Nope. We poured in more troops. The Mormon Battalion and the U.S. 1st Dragoons built Fort Moore right here, dedicated on July 4, 1847. The Mormon Battalion, the U.S. 1st Dragoons, and the New York Volunteers, raised the American flag over the fort on July 4, 1847, the first Independence Day in Los Angeles. And it’s all gone now, except for the Fort Moore Pioneer Memorial, funded by the County of Los Angeles, the City of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Board of Education and the Department of Water and Power, dedicated on July 3, 1957 – the largest bas-relief military monument in the United States – now hidden on busy Hill Street two blocks west of Chinatown at a busy freeway ramp. No one stops. No one can. But this is how the White Man won the West. ~ Friday, October 29, 2021
That Saturated Color: From the late thirties through the fifties, Hollywood offered the drab real world a Technicolor world of bright vivid saturated color. And then Eastman Kodak came up with something better and cheaper and easier to use, and far more stable than the tedious and complex Technicolor three-strip dye process. There are no Technicolor movies anymore, but Technicolor has moved on, doing quite well now that it’s owned by a French media company. And bright vivid saturated color is still pretty cool. This is Technicolor building at Sunset Gower Studios, and Siren Studios across the street, and Emerson College next door. Look! Color! ~ Thursday, October 28, 2021
The Sun Came Up: “This ain’t no disco / And it ain’t no country club either / This is L.A. / All I want is to have a little fun before I die.” That’s how Sheryl Crow’s 1994 breakthrough hit “All I Wanna Do” opens – that year’s party song – “All I wanna do is have some fun / Until the sun comes up over / Santa Monica Boulevard.” Do that. This is what happens when the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard. ~ Wednesday, October 27, 2021
October Trees: This isn’t Vermont. Autumn leaves of red and gold don’t drift by anyone’s window in Los Angeles. But there is color and drama here. Jacaranda and Western Sycamore do their autumn thing too. Autumn in Los Angeles has its own charm. ~ Tuesday, October 26, 2021
Clean Roses: Roses washed clean by the surprise rain overnight. They needed this. ~ Saturday, October 23, 2021
Shots in the Dark: Mysteries in the local gardens after bit of rain overnight, the first rain in nine months. That changes things. ~ Saturday, October 23, 2021
Urban Autumn Light: The last of the sunshine. Rain on the way. The autumn light at 6500 Wilshire Boulevard, West Los Angeles. ~ Friday, October 22, 2021
Sky High: The sky just outside a dive bar on Sunset Boulevard. Avoid such places. Sip some cheap scotch in the pleasant darkness, walk out the front door, and suddenly the world is a strange place. ~ Thursday, October 21, 2021
Enigmatic Light: There was a green Lamborghini parked in front of Enigma Coffee. The light was good. ~ Wednesday, October 20, 2021
Going Formal: This is new. Two shades of gray with brilliant white accents. This is The Television Center, 6311 Romaine Street, 1930, an Art Deco landmark that from 1930 to 1975 was the Hollywood home of Technicolor. All of their films were processed in the labs here, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1938) to The Godfather, Part II (1974) – the last American film to use the Technicolor dye process. Now the place is filled with independent television production companies and high-tech soundstages. But the building’s new owners decided to repaint the original all-white landmark and make it formal and classy. Technicolor? Technicolor is long gone. ~ Tuesday, October 19, 2021
Catching Sun: A day in the sun. Echo Park Lake. Halfway between Hollywood and Chinatown. Hanging with these guys. Seemed like a good idea. ~ Monday, October 18, 2021
Blasted Roses: Ninety at noon. Humidity at zero. The Santa Ana winds off the Mojave, howling. Red Flag warning. High fire danger everywhere. And the heat has blasted the roses here. That makes them more interesting. ~ Saturday, October 16, 2021
Interior Los Angeles: The local gardens on an October afternoon. Everything is a bit magical. ~ Saturday, October 16, 2021
All Possible Colors: The colors of Los Angeles from Koreatown to the Sunset Strip. Nothing is dull in this city. ~ Friday, October 15, 2021
Under New Management: The Wilshire Boulevard Christian Church, 1925, Romanesque Revival with Byzantine elements, designed by Robert H. Orr, a prominent architect of Protestant churches in Southern California and a member of the congregation. The rose window by Judson Studios is said to be a copy of one in the Rheims Cathedral. At the building’s dedication on April 3, 1927, Dr Charles S. Medbury, pastor of the University Christian Church and “the most useful citizen of Des Moines” according to a newspaper contest, gave the dedicatory sermon. Also part of the ceremony, Miss Julie Keller led an ensemble of seven harps and a violin, and dedicatory meetings were held every evening for the following two weeks. The wealthy had their impressive church. The building was bought by the Oasis Church in 2012. That church started as a Bible-study group, ten people in Beverly Hills. One of the original members of the Bible-study group was the singer Donna Summer, but now there are thousands of members, including Viola Davis. They do social justice work, to make the world a better place. And this is their place now. ~ Thursday, October 14, 2021
Street Doves: White doves in a local parking lot. Street art about hope. ~ Wednesday, October 13, 2021
Clear Air: A night of high winds cleared the air. Los Angeles became vivid again. ~ Tuesday, October 12, 2021
Beverly Hills Autumn: This isn’t Vermont. Autumn here is fan palms, and Australian Tree Fern hiding behind giant ornamental-banana fronds, and Imperial Palms being quite imperial, and Banyan trees in bloom everywhere. This is autumn at a small park in Beverly Hills. It will have to do. ~ Monday, October 11, 2021
Beyond Pink: Autumn roses in the local gardens. The colors have moved beyond the ordinary. ~ Saturday, October 9, 2021
Close Inspection: The closer one looks, the stranger Los Angeles’ gardens become. ~ Saturday, October 9, 2021
City Light: The light was good. The clouds were even better. Frank Gehry’s 2003 infinitely-curved Walt Disney Concert Hall fills the block between Grand Avenue and Hope Street. That caught both nicely. So did his nearly complete and more geometric Grand Avenue Project, across the street at First and Grand. But the clouds stole the show. The view down Grand Avenue confirmed that. ~ Friday, October 8, 2021
Boulevard Ruins: The pandemic closed the movie theaters but new streaming technologies had already started making those theaters unnecessary. The major studios didn’t know what to do and then had to shut down production for a year. Everything went wrong. Hollywood was dead. All that’s left are the ruins of what was, long ago. These are the ruins, Hollywood Boulevard now, with rain on the way. ~ Thursday, October 7, 2021
Industrial Light: Industrial Light and Magic is George Lucas’ visual effects company he created when he began production of the Star Wars movies. Now they do everyone’s special effects. Their work is amazing. But there’s industrial light and magic everywhere. This is the corner of Romaine and Sycamore in the industrial flats south of Hollywood. The light here is magical too. ~ Wednesday, October 6, 2021
Hollywood Highs: The alumni mural at Hollywood High School on Highland Avenue between Sunset Boulevard and Hollywood Boulevard. Everyone knows these people. The Hollywood High School football team is The Sheiks. Directly across the street it’s retro-kitsch neon at a tourist trap attached to the former Max Factor Makeup Studio, a 1934 Hollywood Regency renovation by the architect S. Charles Lee. Max Factor, legendary make-up artist to the stars, bought the building in 1928, but the Great Depression got in the way. His massive “studio” opened in 1935 – the place to be in Hollywood at the time. But now it’s the Hollywood Museum, filled with kitsch from the past. All of Hollywood is. ~ Tuesday, October 5, 2021
Cloud Cover: The weather was changing. The medical office buildings on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills, midafternoon. The heavy thunderstorms would roll through the Los Angeles basin at sunset. This was the warning. ~ Monday, October 4, 2021
Ongoing Roses: It’s autumn. No, it isn’t. The summer roses are still here, and maturing nicely. ~ Saturday, October 2, 2021
Mainly Hibiscus: The first Saturday in October in Los Angeles. One hundred in the shade at noon. Dry as a bone. The sky impossibly blue and the sun brutal, and great Hibiscus everywhere. It’s autumn in Hollywood. There are those Birds of Paradise everywhere. ~ Saturday, October 2, 2021
Trash Time: Hollywood prepares for Halloween. Trashy Lingerie and the Cactus Wall across the street. ~ Friday, October 1, 2021
September 2021 Photography
The Hollywood Years: After twenty-seven years the light is still good at this apartment building just above the Sunset Strip. It’s classic Hollywood from the early sixties. Yes, the view from the balcony out back isn’t much – the white walls of another apartment building. But the shadows are good, and there’s a sideways view of the pool next door. Fine, but real Hollywood is outside the front door, all the curious shadows and that big blue gem of a pool in the middle of everything. That’s Hollywood. David Hockney painted it. Some of us lived it. ~ Thursday, September 30, 2021
A Bit Scary: The Sunset Strip gets a bit scary in the weeks before Halloween, but the Sunset Strip is always a bit scary. ~ Wednesday, September 29, 2021
Ground Transportation: Angels Flight, the narrow-gauge funicular railway from 1901, climbs from Hill Street to the big glass skyscrapers up on Bunker Hill. But it’s still long ago down on Hill Street. There’s the train station from 1925, Subway Terminal, once the main station of the Pacific Electric Railway, with connections to everywhere, designed by the New York firm Schultze and Weaver, an Italian Renaissance Revival giant with amazing arches. But no trains. It’s luxury condos now, and they all face the 1913 Hotel Clark across the street. The architect, Harrison Albright, had fun with that. Downtown Los Angeles was a bustling place long ago too. ~ Tuesday, September 28, 2021
Late September Roses: This week’s roses are the same as last week’s roses, except as the autumn light changes, they get even more dramatic. ~ Saturday, September 25, 2021
Nicely Ordinary: Pay attention to the ordinary flowers in the gardens here. Look closely. They can turn extraordinary. ~ Saturday, September 25, 2021
A Quiet Day: That was odd. The sun was hidden all day. The light was subdued. Hollywood was quiet. A good day to drop by the Harper Avenue Historic District just off the Sunset Strip. The light was perfect for a visit to Hollywood’s Golden Age long ago, but still here. ~ Thursday, September 23, 2021
The Equinox: The 2021 autumnal equinox, when the sun is exactly above the equator and day and night are of equal length, occurred at 7.21 pm GMT – which was 12:21 pm here in Hollywood, and at that moment, the skies at Barnsdall Park on Olive Hill looked like this. Unsettled. Autumn begins. It only gets darker now. ~ Wednesday, September 22, 2021
The Body Electric: “I sing the body electric, / The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them…” But this is just another alley out here, behind a curiously named tattoo and body piercing shop. Walt Whitman had something else in mind. Or perhaps not. ~ Tuesday, September 21, 2021
Cool Waters: Once again, because it was too hot and too dry, and the blistering Santa Ana winds were howling in off the Mojave, the fountain at the SAG-AFTRA Plaza on Wilshire Boulevard. Fountains fix heat waves. Here, two abstract shapes dance in the sun. Yes, this is the home of the combined Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists – another place where Hollywood does business – but the plaza was empty – no screen actors anywhere. That didn’t matter. The place was cool anyway. ~ Monday, September 20, 2021
Silent Roses: Los Angeles is filled with autumn roses. They have nothing to say. They say everything. ~ Saturday, September 18, 2021
Ordinary Pleasures: There are small pleasures in the ordinary, in the corners of Los Angeles’ gardens, every single day. Like these. ~ Saturday, September 18, 2021
Sitting Quietly: This is the hidden pocket park on the corner of Rexford Drive and Burton Way in Beverly Hills. This is a good place to sit quietly. The geometry is good. The wood is good. The shadows are perfect. Life is good. ~ Friday, September 17, 2021
New Blue Glass: The light was good. The geometry severe. ViacomCBS at Columbia Square, 6121 Sunset Boulevard at Gower, the home of CBS’s west coast radio and television operations from 1938 until 2007, that opened in 1938 with a special radio broadcast starring Bob Hope, Al Jolson and Cecil B. DeMille. Lucille Ball filmed the pilot episode of “I Love Lucy” here in 1951, and James Dean once worked here as an usher – but CBS moved out and it’s been rebuilt and it’s all glass now. And now it’s ViacomCBS. And it’s spooky. ~ Thursday, September 16, 2021
At Sycamore: The Hollywood Professional Building on Hollywood Boulevard at Sycamore – Gothic Revival, John Lautner, completed in 1925 – once where the headquarters of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences could be found, and later the headquarters of Screen Actors Guild. When Ronald Reagan was president of the Screen Actors Guild, from 1947 to 1952, when he was a Democrat and the president of an actual labor union, he had an office on the eighth floor. But everything changes. The tan building across the street is another Scientology office complex, and everything else is white modern or mirror glass. Ronald Reagan wouldn’t recognize the place. ~ Tuesday, September 14, 2021
Not My Circus: The west wall of American Vintage on Melrose Avenue. Salvador Dalí dropped by, or his ghost did. ~ Monday, September 13, 2021
Glowing Roses: The roses were glowing this week. The light was just right. ~ Saturday, September 11, 2021
The Brightest Now: Bougainvillea and gazania are the two brightest things in the neighborhood now. They want you to pay attention. They’re rather insistent. ~ Saturday, September 11, 2021
Bright White Walls: Vine Street in Hollywood. The white west walls of Capitol Records in the bright sun. Good shadows, and stars underfoot. ~ Friday, September 10, 2021
The Jagged Edge: Mulholland Drive. Dry up there. Autumn trees. This is not Vermont. This is the jagged edge of this country. This is the other end of America. ~ Wednesday, September 8, 2021
Small Late Wright: The Anderton Court Shops, 333 North Rodeo Drive, in the center of Beverly Hills, 1952, Frank Lloyd Wright, the only commercial project he ever designed from scratch and his last project in the Los Angeles. It’s small, and now obscured by all the dramatic new flagship stores on this the most expensive shopping street in the world, but it’s pure Wright, designed during the time the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan was being planned. And somehow it still fits in, almost entirely unchanged after all these years. It just feels right. ~ Tuesday, September 7, 2021
Cartoon Corner: Things return to normal. Down on Melrose Avenue, at Spaulding, Vintage T-Shirts has reopened, with all the slightly warped cartoon characters everywhere. This is Cartoon Conner once again. Even the new commercial building on the other corner is a bit cartoonish. There’s a bit of M. C. Escher about it. Yes, this is normal out here, once again. ~ Monday, September 6, 2021
High-Definition Roses: The sun was brutal. But the shadows were deep and dark. The roses were wonderful. ~ Saturday, September 4, 2021
A Bit Twisted: Slightly twisted blooms in the local gardens. Symmetry is overrated. This is better. ~ Saturday, September 4, 2021
Renegade: Gardner Street just of Sunset Boulevard, an obscure actor’s studio, a minor talent agency, an experimental art gallery in the middle of a crumbling old brick block, and a Russian motorcycle with a sidecar. This is Hollywood too. ~ Friday, September 3, 2021
Dramatic Lighting: Pay attention to the light. It changes as summer ends. This dark mirror-glass skyscraper on the southeast corner of Wilshire and La Cienega was once the world headquarters of Larry Flynt Enterprises – Hustler magazine and so on – but now it’s a boring bank once again. Still, the historic Saban Theater, just across the street, is floating in its glass. The Saban was the Fox Wilshire when it opened in 1930. The architect was S. Charles Lee and his walls are still dramatic when the distinct late summer light catches them. And that Lamborghini helps too. A little extra drama. ~ Thursday, September 2, 2021
Lost Angels: Hollywood is full of lost angels. This is the Body Shop down on the corner here on the Sunset Strip, across Sunset Boulevard from the Chateau Marmont, where John Belushi died of a drug overdose years ago. Speedballs. And the Body Shop is closed now. Nothing is sexy in the middle of a pandemic. And everything is dark. ~ Wednesday, September 1, 2021
August 2021 Photography
Under Los Angeles: The Neon Man on the wall of the Olive Street underpass, under Bunker Hill in downtown Los Angeles, and under Angels Flight, the restored turn-of-the-century short funicular railroad to the top of the hill, under the tall glass skyscrapers. Los Angeles is a curious place. ~ Tuesday, August 31, 2021
Street (Art) Party: It’s party time in that odd parking lot down on Melrose Avenue, the one with all the street art. They did just add party lights. ~ Monday, August 30, 2021
Lighting Up Roses: Sometimes the late summer light is just too good. It lights up the local roses to perfection. ~ Saturday, August 28, 2021
Late Summer Miniatures: Miniature gems curbside in the local gardens. Each is a gem. ~ Saturday, August 28, 2021
Beverly Hills Metal: Hot metal, Beverly Hills, and another piano in the park. Summer. ~ Friday, August 27, 2021
Since 1916: The Mack Sennett Studios – 1215 Bates Avenue at Effie Street in Silver Lake – Hollywood’s oldest continually operating movie studio, now an independent contract studio used for music videos and commercials, and by the major studios now and then when they need a bit more production space. This was the home of the Keystone Cops. Mabel Normand, Charlie Chaplin and W. C. Fields got their start here. Sennett built the studio 1916 for Mabel Normand, a gift for her and her career. But those days are long gone. Shepard Fairey arrived. His mural still covers the west wall. ~ Wednesday, August 25, 2021
Under Some Trees: An old truck parked under some trees here in Hollywood. ~ Tuesday, August 24, 2021
Wigging Out: Hollywood can be a dark place. And on Hollywood Boulevard it’s the wigs. ~ Monday, August 23, 2021
Somewhat Subdued: A rare sunless August day in Los Angeles. The light changed. The roses turned subtle. ~ Saturday, August 21, 2021
Subtle Blooms: Minor details in the local gardens on a cloudy morning, subtle details. ~ Saturday, August 21, 2021
Paramount Pictures: Paramount Pictures on a quiet summer afternoon as the pandemic worsens again. There’s no one around. There are no studio tours. They might be making movies in there. They might not, but Astro Burger next door is open and doing just fine. These are strange times. ~ Friday, August 20, 2021
Chocolate Photography: The darkest building in Koreatown is the 1928 Spanish Revival fantasy, or nightmare, at 3275 Wilshire Boulevard, at Berendo Street, two blocks east of the site of the former Ambassador Hotel, where Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in 1968, and across the street from a giant dark and intimating neogothic church from the late twenties. This is a dark neighborhood, but that Spanish Revival fantasy now houses an odd yoga studio and a raucous Korean speakeasy, for those who speak Korean, and Chocolate Photography – wedding and event photography – but the name also matches this street corner. Chocolate photography is also dark photography like this. ~ Thursday, August 19, 2021
Chinese Darkness: The pandemic won’t end. Everyone’s angry, and Los Angeles’ Chinatown remains empty and abandoned, and very quiet, and very strange. ~ Wednesday, August 11, 2021
Up Olive Hill: Drive up through the olive trees to the pines, and beyond, to even odder trees. This is Barnsdall Park at Olive Hill at the far east end of Hollywood Boulevard. But this is not Hollywood. ~ Tuesday, August 17, 2021
Just One Block: One short block – Fourth Street between Spring Street and Main in downtown Los Angeles – the old banks. Hollywood had just started making feature-length silent movies. Color and sound would come later. Automobiles were a new idea. So was radio. William Howard Taft was gone. Woodrow Wilson was the new president. And the big money was downtown. Back then, Los Angeles looked like this. ~ Monday, August 16, 2021
The Summer Roses: Los Angeles roses in the middle of August. The heat is brutal. Only the strong survive. But they do it with style. ~ Saturday, August 14, 2021
Parking Lot Beauties: Who needs botanical gardens? This was the scene in the parking lot behind the shops at Sunset Plaza. Hey, it’s California! ~ Saturday, August 14, 2021
Serious Neon: The Fine Arts Theater, 8556 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills, designed by the Seattle-based architect B. Marcus Priteca, the primary architect for the Pantages circuit. He designed the Hollywood Pantages (1930) and this one opened on April 21, 1937, as the Wilshire Regina Theater with “That Girl from Paris” and “Black Legion” and a March of Time newsreel and a cartoon. It became the Fine Arts Theater in December 1948 after a renovation by Fox West Coast Theaters, but it has changed hands many times since then, even if it now has Historic Landmark status. Michael Hall’s Screening Services Group assumed management November 1, 2019. They had been the operators from 2005 to 2009 when the building had been owned by Italian distributor Cecchi Gori. But that doesn’t matter. The neon is amazing. And it’s always 1937 down there. ~ Friday, August 13, 2021
Sing for Hope: That’s odd. There was a piano in the park, covered with butterflies painted by a local artist originally from Panama. And it had a sign on it. Sing for Hope. Can’t sing a lick. Never could. But no one was around – it was a brutally hot afternoon – and the piano was there for everyone or anyone. So it was a quick run through Hoagy Carmichael’s “Skylark” – the right song for the day – and then some quiet time in the shade. Will Rogers Park on Sunset Boulevard is a good place, and hope is a good thing. ~ Thursday, August 12, 2021
Thick Air: Hollywood went dark. A river of thick low clouds blew up from storms down in the Baja, so it was hot as hell and so close it was hard to breath. But it wouldn’t rain. There would be no relief. There was only odd light down on the corner. The Directors Guild of America building turned spooky in the thick air. ~ Wednesday, August 11, 2021
Managing California Light: These are the sunscreens on the International Cinematographers Guild’s building on Sunset Boulevard, Cinematographers know how to manage light and make it dramatic. The Motion Picture Editors Guild, next door, does the same, and so does that odd white brick wall, and then the brutalist concrete Harmony Gold building next to that. It’s all about the light, ending with the pure white walls of that abandoned Moroccan restaurant. ~ Monday, August 9, 2021
The August Roses: There is little to say. Deep summer comes the local parks. Life is good. Roses, Los Angeles, Saturday, August 7, 2021
The Summer Light: Deep summer is here and now everything in the local gardens is backlit. This is quite dramatic. Hollywood knows how to do these things. ~ Saturday, August 7, 2021
Significantly Los Angeles: A wall of drag queens across the street from a cactus garden filled with pink plastic flamingos? This must be Los Angeles. ~ Friday, August 6, 2021
Books and Movies: The giant Hollywood stars had remained on the north wall, but the pandemic had closed the historic Los Feliz Theater, 1822 North Vermont Avenue, three blocks north of Hollywood Boulevard, for the first time since 1934. But now it’s being rebuilt and restored for better times, next to the Art Deco bookstore that had never closed at all, in a neighborhood full of surprises. ~ Thursday, August 5, 2021
Statements Under Glass: The pandemic turned the Hollywood Palladium into a mostly virtual art gallery. The art is in the windows. This is the Windows of Expression exhibition, original works of fourteen Los Angeles artists on equality and social justice. This opened on Juneteenth, 2021, for obvious reasons, but the bands will be back soon, which is a bit of a shame. Hollywood needs the art as much as it needs those bands. ~ Wednesday, August 4, 2021
Bare Bones: Griffith Park is dry as a bone and they say that this severe drought is not going to end. Not this time. The climate did change. The water is gone now, or will be gone soon. This is it. It’s bare bones out here now. ~ Tuesday, August 3, 2021
On Yucca Street: Yucca Street between Argyle and Vine. The telephoto lens. The old Capitol Records building. The new highly-geometric offices and condominiums. Bright blazing sun. Empty streets. Hollywood on an impossibly hot day. ~ Monday, August 2, 2021
July 2021 Photography
Hot Roses: Now it’s heat waves that never end, and in the gardens only the strong survive. These roses made it to the last day of July. They will survive this. ~ Saturday, July 31, 2021
A Few Hidden Gems: In the summer gardens the best things are hidden. Summer is a treasure hunt here. ~ Saturday, July 31, 2021
Swan Song: The boathouse at Echo Park Lake on a summer afternoon – the swan boats – the amazing California sun – the waterlilies – all is right with the world. ~ Friday, July 30, 2021
Entirely White: The Community Laundry Building, on the northeast corner of Highland and Willoughby, 1928, W. J. Saunders. It’s entirely white. It’s entirely strange. And it’s still a commercial laundry, supplying fresh linens and uniforms to Los Angeles’ hotels and restaurants, but Saunders had something else in mind. He had somewhere else in mind. This is Barcelona at its most whimsical. He had fun with this. ~ Wednesday, July 28, 2021
Hot Summer Glass: Consider it urban Zen. When it’s too hot to move, and all of Hollywood seems to be hiding, there’s the brutal sunshine bouncing off all the glass along Sunset Boulevard. That’s mesmerizing. Get lost in it. ~ Tuesday, July 27, 2021
The Oldest Hollywood: Quentin Tarantino just bought the other Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, the Vista Theater, 4473 Sunset Boulevard, at the far east end of Hollywood Boulevard. The Vista was designed by Lewis A. Smith and opened on October 16, 1923, with Baby Peggy in “Tips” along with live vaudeville acts on stage. Six years later it was showing the new talkies and it just kept going. Ed Wood – voted the worst director of all time again and again, mainly for “Plan 9 from Outer Space” in 1956 – had an office in this building. Tarantino will reopen the place and only show movies on film, not with digital projection. This will be Old Hollywood again, not a revival house, but a film house, by Christmas. The past is back. Once upon a time in Hollywood. ~ Monday, July 26, 2021
Rose Clouds: Summer roses here in Los Angeles doing their imitation of clouds, strange surreal clouds. ~ Saturday, July 24, 2021
Summer Close Up: Details matter. Botanical details matter. This is summer in the gardens here in Hollywood. These are the summer close-ups. ~ Saturday, July 24, 2021
A Different Flag: Watch the street art. Los Angeles has a different flag. Los Angeles has a different everything. ~ Friday, July 23, 2021
The Summer Streets: The light is always good in the gallery district at Melrose Avenue and Harper. The light is even better on a summer afternoon. The geometry is hot. ~ Thursday, July 22, 2021
Sofa Entertainment: At the far end of the Sunset Strip, at the edge of Beverly Hills, what was once the offices of David Geffen’s Asylum Records. He signed Joni Mitchell and the entire Laurel Canyon crowd in 1971 – and then signed Bob Dylan – and then moved on. Across the street it’s Sofa Entertainment. They license old television shows for rebroadcast. That’s next door to that odd building buried in ivy, filled with expensive entertainment lawyers. This is a working neighborhood. ~ Wednesday, July 21, 2021
Peace and Love: Ringo Starr has lived out here in Beverly Hills for years, with his wife of nearly forty years, Barbara Bach, the Bond Girl from “The Spy Who Loved Me” – and for two years he’d been trying to give this Peace and Love hand, his hand, by sculptor Jeremy Morrelli, to the city. In late 2019 the City of Beverly Hills finally gave in – this eight-hundred-pound polished steel monument of Ringo’s hand making a peace sign was art after all, and here it is in the park across the street from City Hall. And it’s next to Hunter and Hounds (Le Chausseur et les chiens) by Henri Alfred Marie Jacquemart that stood guard above a subterranean chamber that was an American Army communications center in the 1918 Second Battle of the Marne – now a memorial to those from this area who died there, dedicated on Armistice Day 1925. Ringo would understand. ~ Tuesday, July 20, 2021
The Summer Show: This is Fifth and Broadway, the oldest part of Los Angeles, now the rather seedy Jewelry District, on a brutally hot summer afternoon. This corner of Los Angeles has seen better days. But it is kind of funky. Look around. The city is putting on a show. Summer in the city is always an adventure. ~ Monday, July 19, 2021
A Circus of Roses: Variegated roses are sometimes called “circus roses” – for obvious reason – they put on a show. But all the roses now put a summer show. Here’s a circus of thirty roses. ~ Saturday, July 17, 2021
Morning on Sunset: Wake up. This is morning all along Sunset Boulevard. Even the bees are busy. ~ Saturday, July 17, 2021
Deep Summer Trees: Just one corner of Hollywood on a hot summer day – Sierra Bonita at Selma – the Sunset Square district just south of Hollywood Boulevard. One corner is more than enough to get a feel for summer here. Hollywood can be spooky. ~ Friday, July 16, 2021
A Sideways Glance: This is a sideways glance at Sunset and Vine on a summer afternoon in Hollywood. Things look different, sideways. ~ Thursday, July 15, 2021
Out East: Hollywood has an East End. The Hollywood-Western Building, constructed in 1928 from a design by architect S. Charles Lee, on the southwest corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Western Avenue – the first headquarters of Central Casting but a municipal building now, next to a branch of California Bank, 1929, by John and Donald B. Parkinson, at 5620 Hollywood Boulevard. It’s heroic. Now it’s a “collision center” – they repair wrecked cars in there. Across the street it’s the dramatic fire escapes at the old Gershwin Apartments, and the neon star at the seedy motel next door. East Hollywood is the forgotten past. ~ Wednesday, July 14, 2021
The Music Center: The startlingly angular Los Angeles Department of Water and Power building at Hope and First Street – 1965, Albert C. Martin and Associates – shows up in science fiction movies all the time. But the good stuff is across the street, California Plaza and the Music Center – the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for opera and the swoopy Walt Disney Concert Hall for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and odd new construction everywhere. There’s no music yet, but there will be soon. ~ Tuesday, July 13, 2021
Dog Days: The dog days of summer arrived a few weeks early this year. Sirius, the Dog Star, is not in the sky yet, but it is hot and weird out there. ~ Monday, July 12, 2021
Baked Roses: Global warming doesn’t bother the roses here. The current heat wave just bakes them better. ~ Saturday, July 10, 2021
High Summer: In the local gardens at the moment, a real trip. Get close to what’s in bloom now and get high. These are mind-expanding. ~ Saturday, July 10, 2021
Ninety Years Ago: Hollywood ninety years ago – Hayworth Towers, 1314 North Hayworth Avenue – 1931, Leland Bryant – one of his many fantasy apartment buildings for the stars at the time. This one is showing its age, but it’s still glamourous, amid the jacaranda trees and with that Spanish Colonial extravaganza from the same time period just across the street. Those were the days. ~ Friday, July 9, 2021
Steam Heat: This is the doomsday summer heat wave in the middle of the now-endless severe drought, no rain, perhaps ever again, but odd unsettled skies and impossibly high humidity – steam heat. But it’s visually impressive. ~ Thursday, July 8, 2021
Wrought Iron: Everyone needs an escape to the past now and then, and extravagant wrought iron fantasies on old Spanish Colonial Revival buildings from the twenties will do the trick. These are on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, the block where it’s 1928 again, every single day. Old Hollywood soothes the soul. ~ Wednesday, July 7, 2021
This Place: This place is Sunset Plaza, in the middle of the Sunset Strip, the heart of the good life out here, where those who have made it, in one way or another, hang out. And they park their cars out back. Those are statements too. Life is good. ~ Tuesday, July 6, 2021
Hollywood Staples: Consumers Liquor on the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Detroit Street has its Rock murals. The Sunset Strip isn’t far away. And it shares a parking lot with Readings by Helen, a thriving psychic shop with its own startling murals. The two somehow complement each other. Both seem necessary; This is Hollywood after all. ~ Monday, July 5, 2021
Mellow Yellow: The yellow rose is a hybrid tea rose named Mellow Yellow – a variety that does well in the summer heat out here – but all the summer roses are mellow out here. They slow everyone down a bit. ~ Saturday, July 3, 2021
Summer Hibiscus: July, and this side of Los Angeles is flooded with hibiscus everywhere, announcing summer, and the trumpet vine everywhere announces it too. ~ Saturday, July 3, 2021
The Cartoon City: And then sometimes Los Angeles is a cartoon. This is Wilshire Boulevard at Westmorland. Roger Rabbit must be around here somewhere. ~ Friday, July 2, 2021
Van Gogh on Sunset: Van Gogh on Sunset Boulevard. His sunflowers on the wall of the now empty Amoeba Music building, soon to be the home of the “Immersive Van Gogh Exhibit” – walk though his (virtual) paintings with cool music and words about what Vincent Van Gogh was up to. It’s ready to open now, in just a day or two. But it’s rather strange. He may not belong here. ~ Thursday, July 1, 2021
June 2021 Photography
The Future Corner: Get used to the future on Museum Row, down on Wilshire Boulevard. The Academy Museum will finally open, one day soon, perhaps. The big glass sphere is its movie theater and the access road beside it is now Rodenberry Way, as in Gene Rodenberry, the man who came up with the idea of Star Trek. That fits. This corner does have a science fiction feel to it – this new museum and the swoopy Peterson Automotive Museum across the street and even the abandoned coffee shop on the corner from the space-age fifties. And that space dragon hanging from the local power lines helps too. This is another world. ~ Tuesday, June 29, 2021
Hot Geometry: The main gallery building and the small theater at the Barnsdall Art Park, at the other end of Hollywood Boulevard on Olive Hill, both built in the last sixties, have Mayan detailing that echoes the 1922 Mayan Revival Frank Lloyd Wright Hollyhock House just across the lawn with all its pines. The geometry is rather odd, but on a brutally hot afternoon here in California, only Mayan will do. ~ Monday, June 28, 2021
Late June Roses: These are the last of the June roses. The next weekend will be July, and the July roses will look much like these. This is Los Angeles. The roses never end. ~ Saturday, June 26, 2021
Close-Up Action: Get close enough to what’s in the gardens out here and these things seem to have personalities. They seem to move. And they speak of summer. ~ Saturday, June 26, 2021
That Pacific Light: The summer light at the end of the world, Palisades Park on the cliffs above Pacific Coast Highway, where Route 66 finally ends. The Dust Bowl ate America. Head west. End here. And then there was nowhere else to go. But this would do. ~ Friday, June 25, 2021
Vincent: That’s Vincent van Gogh and his sunflowers, or soon will be, on the wall of the now empty Amoeba Music building on Sunset Boulevard. Far-beyond-hip Amoeba Music, with what seemed like anything ever recorded by anyone, where Paul McCartney or Ringo Starr would drop by and sometimes sing a bit, moved up to Hollywood Boulevard. This building will be torn down and replaced by a new glass skyscraper – luxury condominiums. But for now it’s Lighthouse Los Angeles, the home of the “Immersive Van Gogh Exhibit” – walk though his (virtual) paintings with cool music and words about what he was up to. The exhibit was created by Italian film producer Massimiliano Siccardi with music by Luca Longobardi and premiered in Paris in July 2020 and has popped up in every major city most everywhere since then. Now it’s Hollywood. Opening soon. And this mural is almost finished. ~ Wednesday, June 23, 2021
The Lotus Monks: It seemed like a good day to head over to Echo Park Lake and hang out with the Buddhist monks at the lotus beds and snap pictures of the ducks and geese. But it’s always a good day for that. ~ Tuesday, June 22, 2021
Tiny Kindness: This is the Tiny Kindness Project on Melrose Avenue, in the parking lot street-art gallery across the street from Fairfax High School. Masks seem to be the tiny kindnesses, or what they represent. But there’s much more going on here. Kindness isn’t everything. ~ Monday, June 21, 2021
Holiday Roses: It’s the brand-new federal holiday, Juneteenth, and these are the holiday roses. The usual Los Angeles roses. But they’re special this day. ~ Saturday, June 19, 2021
The Summer Jungle: Summer here in Los Angeles begins on Sunday evening, the solstice, but it’s already a jungle out there. ~ Saturday, June 19, 2021
Acting Out: Down at the bottom of the hill, on Santa Monica Boulevard, next door to the strip mall with the 7-11 and the laundromat, there’s the Lee Strasberg Theater and Film Institute, with its small Marilyn Monroe Theater. That’s him on the wall. Marilyn Monroe was his student for a time. But it’s quiet down there now. The Coast Playhouse just down the street has been shuttered for more than a year. Hollywood isn’t what it used to be. ~ Friday, June 18, 2021
The Rock Walk: There are ninety years of handprints and footprints in the concrete in the courtyard of Grauman’s Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard, all the movie stars. That courtyard is always filled with tourists, and there are the bronze stars in the sidewalks all along Hollywood Boulevard, the Walk of Fame. This is the Hollywood Rock Walk at the Guitar Center on Sunset Boulevard at Vista Street, off the beaten path. There are few tourists here. This is about rock stars, and their hands. ~ Thursday, June 17, 2021
On Olive Hill Again: The Barnsdall Art Park at the other end of Hollywood Boulevard, on Olive Hill, finally opened again. The mysterious pines are still there. The sky above was still a wonder. And the Frank Lloyd Wright Hollyhock House is still there, after the pandemic. Drama has returned to Hollywood. ~ Wednesday, June 16, 2021
Excessive Heat Warning: They said stay home and hide. This new heat wave might kill you. But that meant it was time to photograph Hollywood, when it’s hot. There’s the Hollywood Palladium on Sunset Boulevard, almost ready to open again, and the old Earl Carroll Theater across the street. In 1968 that became the Aquarius Theater, the home of the long-running Los Angeles production of “Hair” – night after night after night – and it’s the Aquarius Theater once again. Quentin Tarantino did that. He needed that façade as good as new for a background shot in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” – his movie about those days. Everyone has agreed that façade should stay for now. The big back skyscraper is the Sunset Media Center – industry offices baking in the sun. The green skyscraper is Sunset-Vine Tower, as seen in “The Towering Inferno” of course. And there’s the blazing sun. Yes, Hollywood was hot this day. ~ Tuesday, June 15, 2021
Setting Up Summer: The local roses as June begins – full blooms and lots of buds too – this is going to be good. ~ Saturday, June 5, 2021
Garden Details: Everything is better close up. Everything is stranger close up. ~ Saturday, June 5, 2021
One Crow: On the road up to the observatory, just past the Greek Theater, there’s a dry wash on the right, an arroyo seco, full of twisted old trees. They say it’s a bird sanctuary but there are never any birds, except this day. There was one crow. It was the Old West this day. ~ Thursday, June 3, 2021
Cosmic Energy: The Cosmic Energy mural hidden in an alley off Spaulding Avenue in the Melrose distract. This has been painted over the Free Tibet Now mural that had been on that particular wall for years. This is better. Look around. This is a high-energy place. This is a cosmic place. ~ Wednesday, June 2, 2021
Lighting Up Sunset: The light keeps changing on the Sunset Strip – the Main Room at the Comedy Store, the severely geometric Mondrian Hotel across the street, next to the new Pendry hotel and residences with its six thousand square feet of mesmerizing digital displays, where the House of Blues once stood, and a supergraphic being applied to the hotel that was once known as the Riot House, where all the rock stars stayed, and trashed the place. And on the other side of the Comedy Store there’s Charles Sherman Cobb’s 1927 Italian Renaissance Revival Hacienda Arms, now the Piazza del Sol. Hollywood madam Lee Francis was convicted in 1940 of running a house of ill repute here, but it has since been gutted and restored to perfection and now it catches the light just right. ~ Tuesday, June 1, 2021
May 2021 Photography
Chasing Flags: Memorial Day 2021 – the flags – from Beverly Hills City Hall to the old heroic Art Deco buildings still standing in Hollywood. ~ Monday, May 31, 2021
Memorable Roses: Los Angeles roses, Memorial Day weekend, subdued, no sun this day. That was appropriate. ~ Saturday, May 29, 2021
In Quiet Gardens: Hollywood was socked in. Low clouds all day. No one around. That made the details in the local gardens better than ever. ~ Saturday, May 29, 2021
Jacaranda Once More: Jacaranda mimosifolia coming into bloom down the street here in Hollywood – purple and messy. The live oaks are around the corner on North Orange Grove Avenue. That’s the neighborhood now. It’s Jacaranda Time in Los Angeles again. ~ Friday, May 28, 2021
Sunset Noon: The middle of the Sunset Strip at noon, the middle of the day. That’s when the light is best. Everything pops. ~ Thursday, May 27, 2021
That Other World: The restored mural at the community health clinic on the corner of Echo Park Boulevard and Sunset Boulevard, and the new mural at that odd shop on Mohawk Street. Echo Park is another world. ~ Wednesday, May 26, 2021
Looking Straight Up: No one has returned. The empty city in the sunshine. Sit quietly. Point the camera straight up. This will do. Pure geometry quiets the mind. ~ Tuesday, May 25, 2021
One Year Dark: Hollywood isn’t all movies and television and streaming. Hollywood has its own theater district – live theater – real people on stage in front of real audiences of real people – down on Santa Monica Boulevard between Wilcox and Cole. But all of that has been dark for more than a year. The coronavirus pandemic did that. The theaters are shuttered, Broadway, back east, may recover. Small theaters may not. These may not. They’re still dark. ~ Monday, May 24, 2021
With Bees: You can’t have roses without bees. They’re back. This will be a good summer in Los Angeles. ~ Saturday, May 22, 2021
Curbside Pickup: All the restaurants have curbside pickup now, but there are better things at the curbsides these days, botanical wonders! ~ Saturday, May 22, 2021
Old Scandals: The Sunset Tower Hotel, designed in 1929 by Leland A. Bryant, opened in 1931, right in the middle of the Sunset Strip. Both John Wayne and Howard Hughes lived here for a time, and a young Truman Capote, in Los Angeles in 1947 to write an essay on Hollywood for Vogue, sent this in a note to a friend back east – “I am living in a very posh establishment, the Sunset Tower, which, or so the local gentry tell me, is where every scandal that ever happened happened.” But those days a long gone and only Bryant’s Art Deco masterpiece remains. ~ Friday, May 21, 2021
Good Fences: They say good fences make good neighbors. They say lots of things. Here’s an alley full of good fences. ~ Thursday, May 20, 2021
Changing Landscapes: Dangerbird Records, on the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Lucille over in Silver Lake, dropped the post puck scene for a bit. The group Arthur King spent the past year putting the finishing touches on a record, film, and now gallery exhibition here – all about their time on the Scottish Isle of Eigg. Changing Landscapes (Isle of Eigg) – that’s gallery exhibition here – “a spatial interpretation of the Scottish Isle of Eigg brought to life through projected video, amplified audio and three-dimensional design.” These are the exterior walls. Somehow, they fit right in this neighborhood. Everything does. ~ Wednesday, May 19, 2021
Calm: On the southeast corner of Beverly Boulevard and Crescent Heights Boulevard, one of the busiest intersections in West Los Angeles, a new mural by Esao Andrews, interpreting a work by Torie Zalben – “Calm in Chaos” – which doesn’t seem to slow the traffic at all. But it should. And there’s that flower shop on the northwest corner too. ~ Tuesday, May 18, 2021
Bright Shiny Objects: The stainless-steel IAC building on the Sunset Strip – 2005, Frank Gehry – designed for Barry Diller’s media corporation IAC/InterActiveCorp. It’s very shiny, even on a cloudy day. So was new red Ferrari parked at the curb. Sometimes the light on the Sunset Strip is mesmerizing. ~ Monday, May 17, 2021
Subtle Lighting: Los Angeles roses without all that bright sunshine. Diffused light on a cloudy day can change things. ~ Saturday, May 15, 2021
Botanical Detailing: No sun. Dead quiet. A good day to sneak up on the details in the local gardens. This is what’s really there. ~ Saturday, May 15, 2021
Epic Hollywood: Epic, the new thirteen-story office tower designed by the architecture firm Gensler for Hudson Pacific Properties, 5901 Sunset Boulevard, on the northwest corner of Sunset and Bronson – built on speculation “to appeal to creative companies looking for an urban campus-style environment” – with a fitness center, outdoor terraces with fire pits, most with a view of the Hollywood sign, and with landing pads for drones and so on. Most of the space has now been leased to Netflix which has purchased the 1918 Sunset Bronson Studios across the street, the original home of Warner Brothers, now the home to all Netflix productions. Epic, however, is all new, and amazingly geometric. ~ Friday, May 14, 2021
Moroccan Dreams: It’s just an abandoned Moroccan restaurant on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, but think of Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) in Casablanca – burnt out and cynical and hiding out the war in his Café Américain there, an apolitical and rather classy gambling joint. Is that this place? And will Ingrid Bergman show up and change everything? Nope. Rick’s Café Américain was just an elaborate set on a Warner Brothers soundstage just off Barham Boulevard over in Burbank. And this is just another failed restaurant. But one can dream, right? That’s what Hollywood is about. ~ Thursday, May 13, 2021
Full Color: Color! Technicolor! Well, the glass walls of the snazzy Technicolor building at Sunset Gower Studios on Sunset Boulevard, with Siren Studios across the street. The sun came out. The movies aren’t back yet, but the color is. ~ Wednesday, May 12, 2021
Late Morning: Late morning, Will Rogers Memorial Park, Sunset Boulevard, Beverly Hills. The morning gloom off the cold Pacific is just starting to break up. The fountain is from 1912, when this was Sunset Park, long before Will Rogers showed up out here. It’s quiet here. ~ Tuesday, May 11, 2021
Hollywood Bronze: The dark skies are back – deep gloom until late afternoon most every day until July rolls in. Everything looks rather mysterious. This is film noir season in Hollywood, and this is the Directors Guild of America building on Sunset Boulevard at Hayworth Avenue, as in Rita Hayworth, all bronzed glass and dark marble. It’s a mysterious place now. Just down the hill on Hayworth, on December 21, 1940, F. Scott Fitzgerald died of a sudden last heart attack in Sheilah Graham’s apartment there, far from his Paris of the twenties. Hollywood can be a dark place. ~ Monday, May 10, 2021
Increasing Intensity: This week’s Los Angeles roses arranged by color from understated to quite intense. ~ Saturday, May 8, 2021
Getting Subtle: It’s not just the pastel bougainvillea against the white wall. Los Angeles gardens are full of subtle stuff this time of year. Slow down. Stop. Take a look. ~ Saturday, May 8, 2021
Electric Hollywood: Sunset-Bronson Studios on a sunny afternoon. It takes a lot of power to crank out all those movies and television shows. ~ Friday, May 7, 2021
Coming Along Nicely: Just checking. Frank Gehry’s swoopy Walt Disney Concert Hall, that fills the block between Grand and Hope Street, opened on October 24, 2003. That’s a landmark now. It’s doing just fine. And his long delayed Grand Avenue Project, across the street at First and Grand, an odd twenty story hotel and thirty-nine story residential tower, with terraced shops and whatnot, due in 2022 or so, is coming along nicely. That’s the city’s next landmark. This is progress. ~ Thursday, May 6, 2021
Parting Shots: A few weeks ago, the day after the news hit the wires that the famous Cinerama Dome was closing forever, the local and national media showed up for remotes. The Los Angeles Times sent a photographer. We all took photographs of the shuttered theater, and then everyone left. But it was time to go back. Consider these “parting shots” before they tear the place down. That happens to Hollywood landmarks. The film school across the street stays. ~ Wednesday, May 5, 2021
Meditation: There’s a meditation center on the corner of La Brea and West 4th Street, halfway between Hollywood and Wilshire Boulevard’s Miracle Mile. The corner is visually unsettling. It’s just strange. Los Angeles makes meditation necessary. ~ Tuesday, May 4, 2021
Applying Color: The first Monday in May. The pandemic beginning to end. Businesses reopening. No masks, outdoors. And the crews showed up to hand-paint bright new giant ads on the sides of a few buildings down on Melrose Avenue. Color returns to the world. ~ Monday, May 3, 2021
The May Roses: May Day as it should be. Roses all over Los Angeles. It will be a good summer. ~ Saturday, May 1, 2021
The Small Stuff: Just the details in the local gardens as May arrives. Bees at work. All is well. ~ Saturday, May 1, 2021
April 2021 Photography
Oddly Fascinating: The Residences at 8500 West Sunset Boulevard, the center of the Sunset Strip – with the plaque in the sidewalk saying this was “77 Sunset Strip” in the 1958-1964 television series – now AKA luxury apartments. These two towers were designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in partnership with Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects. The pandemic was not kind to the property. Much of it is empty. But it’s still oddly fascinating. ~ Friday, April 30, 2021
Horizon and Main: They’re old now. Where did all those aging hippies go? Horizon and Main, Venice Beach. And they painted everything is sight. ~ Thursday, April 29, 2021
Cactus Flower: It seemed like kind of a cactus day. They are in bloom. It is spring, after all, even out here in the far west. ~ Tuesday, April 27, 2021
Those City Clouds: The clouds were good. The Caltrans District 7 Headquarters building at 100 South Main Street, for the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and the Los Angeles Department of Transportation. Thom Mayne won the 2005 Pritzker Prize for this. In the background, the heroic former Los Angeles Times building and the iconic Los Angeles City Hall. And next door, the Cathedral of Saint Vibiana, the former cathedral church building of parish of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles – 1876, Ezra F. Kysor – designated a world heritage site on May 10, 1963. It was a good day downtown. ~ Monday, April 26, 2021
The Latest Roses: Another week, another array of the local roses. And this is just the start. May is next, then June. This will be a good year. ~ Saturday, April 24, 2021
Extremely Close: Get too close and the local botanical goodies get a bit surreal. They get better. ~ Saturday, April 24, 2021
Brutal Geometry: A dark day on Wilshire Boulevard – Brutalist architecture, New Brutalism from the late sixties and the last decade too, structural elements over decorative design, angular geometric shapes and a predominantly monochrome color palettes – no nostalgia about anything – high drama on a dark day. The whole city was in a brutal mood and it looked like this. ~ Friday, April 23, 2021
Earth Day 2021: No sun this day – dead gloom – the bare trees up on Mulholland Drive – Robert Merrell Gage’s Noble Savage at the Electric Fountain – from 1931 – on the corner of Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevards, one of the busiest intersections in the world. This was a dark day. ~ Thursday, April 22, 2021
The Abstract: Sometimes this end of Los Angeles is better in the abstract, without all the people. Walls are good. People aren’t. ~ Tuesday, April 20, 2021
Old Light: Over on Havenhurst, just south of the Sunset Strip, Leland Bryant’s 1929 big white Colonial House, commissioned by Paul Whiteman, the man who commissioned “Rhapsody in Blue” and introduced George Gershwin to the world. Whiteman made jazz safe for White folks, got rich, and needed someplace to park his money. Bette Davis lived in the penthouse for years. Next door it’s the Mi Casa complex, a Spanish Revival extravaganza from the same year, four interlocking fantasies, now a bit worse for wear, but these two places are where the stars lived, when Hollywood was young. And they still look good in the bright Hollywood sunshine. ~ Monday, April 19, 2021
The Rose Spectrum: Los Angeles roses come in all colors, some quite unexpected. The spectrum keeps changing. ~ Saturday, April 17, 2021
Never Ordinary: Pay attention to the botanical oddities. The bees do. ~ Saturday, April 17, 2021
Street Poetry: Yes, that’s that famous young poet on the wall down on Melrose Avenue. There’s a lot of street poetry down there. ~ Friday, April 16, 2021
Malibu April: A quiet weekday afternoon in Malibu – Pacific Coast Highway, Big Rock Canyon down to Topanga Canyon – hardly anyone around – just the locals. Maybe the tourists will never return. That would be nice. ~ Thursday, April 15, 2021
California Color: There was a circular rainbow, a rainbow sphere, over the La Cienega Design District on this day. Everything glowed. This is California. ~ Wednesday, April 14, 2021
Elegy Shots: Quentin Tarantino couldn’t save it. It looks like the famous Cinerama Dome is closing forever. The news hit the wires overnight so it was time to head down the street to take “elegy” photos – in a light drizzle on a dark day. Yeah, corny, but the weather is the weather. Then the Los Angeles Times photographer showed up to do the same, on assignment. Then the local NBC affiliate (Channel 4) showed up to do their thing – one guy with an amazing video rig. Everyone showed up. But the place is still closing. Hollywood is dying. ~ Tuesday, April 13, 2021
Abandoned Color: Grauman’s Egyptian Theater on Hollywood Boulevard opened in 1922 in the middle of the Egyptian craze, just two weeks after Howard Carter, the real Indiana Jones, finally discovered King Tut’s tomb. A few weeks later it was the first-ever Hollywood premiere, Robin Hood, starring Douglas Fairbanks, on Wednesday, October 18, 1922. But the theater has been shut down for more than a year now. In May 2020, Netflix bought the place and promised to make it wonderful again. That will have to wait. Hollywood is dead quiet now. But the colors are still wonderful, here and around the corner on Las Palmas. That mural is startling. ~ Monday, April 12, 2021
A Flood of Roses: All of the public rose gardens came to life all at once, and the curbside roses were suddenly in bloom everywhere too. Los Angeles was flooded with roses. It’s about time. ~ Saturday, April 10, 2021
The Odd Stuff: This is unconventional spring out here – those strange South African daisies at the local liquor store, heavily geometric lantana in the shadows everywhere, and azalea everywhere too. None of it matches. None of that matters. It’s all good. ~ Saturday, April 10, 2021
Hazardous Voltage: The middle of the Sunset Strip in the bright sunshine, before the evening crowds, is quiet and calm, but still a dangerous place. ~ Friday, April 9, 2021
That Other World: This shouldn’t be here. Fern Dell in Griffith Park, at the edge of Hollywood. It’s full, formal name is “The Fern Dell Nature Museum” but there’s no museum, just a walking path which winds its way for a half-mile alongside a meandering, spring-fed brook, and the deep shade, and the ferns. The first ferns were planted here in 1912, and handrails and rustic bridges were added in the 1920s – but nothing has changed since then. This is another world. It was a good day to visit another world. ~ Wednesday, April 7, 2021
Mysterious Walls: That woman on the wall of the parking structure at Hollywood Center Studios, now Sunset Las Palmas Studios, is forever staring at the blue fractal walls of a set of odd buildings on the northwest corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Seward Street. There’s no signage. Just the walls. But head north. There’s a fractal lotus blossom at Sunset Boulevard and Seward Street. That’s a hip restaurant. That’s better. ~ Tuesday, April 6, 2021
The Coronet Sun: The Coronet Theater, 366 North La Cienega Boulevard, built in 1947, the year of the world premiere of Bertolt Brecht’s “Galileo Galilei” here, the English version Brecht wrote with Charles Laughton, who played Galileo this time – arrogant dogmatism versus his calm scientific evidence, the value of constancy in the face of oppression – that sort of thing. But that was long ago. There’s a cactus mural on the north wall now. And across the street it’s the very pink Trashy Lingerie emporium. But there’s the sun. Galileo was right. Everything really does revolve around it. ~ Monday, April 5, 2021
Easter Roses: Easter was early this year. The roses were ready. This was their show. ~ Saturday, April 3, 2021
Starting Out Right: April isn’t the cruelest month. Not out here in Los Angeles. April began with this. T. S. Eliot lived elsewhere. ~ Saturday, April 3, 2021
The Art Scene: The light was good at that mural in the manner of Joan Miró at the corner of Melrose and Laurel in West Los Angeles. Miró joined the Surrealist group in Paris in 1924 and hung out with the Dada crowd. And he’s quite dead. But not really. And the real surrealism is across the street – art knitwear. ~ Friday, April 2, 2021
March 2021 Photography
Seafood Alley: Someone’s got to paint the alleys, right? At least they have to in this neighborhood. And they do fine work. ~ Wednesday, March 31, 2021
Vine Street Now: The pandemic is almost over. Hollywood is almost back to normal. But there’s no such thing as normal in Hollywood. So it’s back to whatever. This is Vine Street now. ~ Tuesday, March 30, 2021
High Drama: Sierra Bonita, Sunset Square, the oldest part of Hollywood, streets of restored turn-of-the century Craftsman bungalows that had replaced the original orange groves from long ago, long before the movies, and dramatic tress. Because this is Hollywood. ~ Monday, March 29, 2021
The Sudden Roses: April is just around the corner. That which was dormant sprang to life. Suddenly there are roses everywhere, some quite surprising. ~ Saturday, March 27, 2021
Curbside Attractions: Just a drive down Sunset Boulevard to the edge of Beverly Hills and back. With stops. With the camera. These were the Saturday morning roadside attractions ~ Saturday, March 27, 2021
Quixotic Technicolor: The old Technicolor complex on Romaine Street is black and white. The Quixote Studios warehouse across the street is not. ~ Friday, March 26, 2021
Murder Skies: The wind has been howling for two days. It’s the Santa Anas blowing the alkali dust in off the Mojave, toppling a few trees, and so dry that anything sparks when touched, and putting everyone on edge. This is when the murder rate spikes. This is when the skies over Sunset Boulevard are strangest. ~ Wednesday, March 24, 2021
Remarkable: Beverly Hills. Rodeo Drive. The light was good. The rich were hiding. Champagne wishes and caviar dreams? No, just remarkable geometry. ~ Tuesday, March 23, 2021
Bare Bones: Spring has not yet arrived at the west walls of the Sunset-Gower Studios here in Hollywood. The studio is humming again after a year shut down by the pandemic. But that’s inside. Outside, it’s still bleak. ~ Monday, March 22, 2021
Coming Up Roses: This was the first day of spring in the neighborhood. The local roses were showing off. ~ Saturday, March 20, 2021
Making It Official: This year’s vernal equinox occurred on March 20, 2021, at 2:37 AM Pacific Daylight Savings Time. It’s official. Spring is here. It looked like this. ~ Saturday, March 20, 2021
Sunset Spectacular: Sunset Spectacular is still under construction. That will be the new sixty-seven-foot-tall three-sided digital billboard being assembled in a city-owned parking lot right in the middle of the Sunset Strip. Three twenty-five-foot-wide vertical panels hung on a skeletal frame with giant video screens for digital advertising eighty percent of the time and digital public art the other twenty percent. The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) will program the digital public art. Tom Wiscombe is the architect and also designed the accompanying plaza. But it’s not ready yet. This stretch of the Sunset Strip will have to be spectacular all on its own for a few months more. ~ Friday, March 19, 2021
Art Palms: The palms and the public art in front of the Superior Court of the County of Los Angeles, the Beverly Hills Courthouse, on Burton Way in Beverly Hills. There are other laws. ~ Thursday, March 18, 2021
The Actual City: An iconic city hall, a new giant glass and steel police headquarters complex, the remains of a major newspaper – Los Angeles seems to be an actual city. It’s not just a movie set. ~ Wednesday, March 17, 2021
World of Wonder: The Hollywood Center Building – Hollywood Boulevard at Cherokee – the first home of the Screen Actors Guild and of the Writers Guild of America – 1929, by Norton and Wallis – an example of the subset of Art Deco known as Zigzag Moderne – eventually became the home of World of Wonder Productions. They produce reality television shows and one of their biggest hits is RuPaul’s Drag Race. So this is the Drag Queen corner of Hollywood, but the wonder is the architecture – this Zigzag beauty and the Spanish Revival beauty from the same year, just across the street. That’s the world of wonder. ~ Tuesday, March 16, 2021
Tall Buildings: The Sunset Strip ends in tall buildings, with Sierra Towers, the thirty-one-story condominium tower designed by Jack A. Charney, who studied under Richard Neutra and Rudolph Schindler, both of whom studied under Frank Lloyd Wright. It was completed in 1965 and it’s very angular, and surrounded by other equally odd and angular tall buildings. Sierra Towers, hidden in the middle, is where Peter Lawford and Sidney Poitier and George Hamilton once lived. Elton John and his partner David Furnish commissioned designer Martyn Lawrence-Bullard to paint the walls of their unit Kelly green and install a chandelier from the Grand Hotel de Milan in the kitchen. Cher sold her two stories in 2013 and moved elsewhere. Joan Collins’s former unit was sold in 2017 and Courteney Cox sold hers on the same floor last year. But other stars always move in. It’s an odd corner of Hollywood, just where Beverly Hills begins. ~ Monday, March 15, 2021
Washed Clean: A bit of very rare rain washed the roses in Hollywood clean again. They needed that. ~ Saturday, March 13, 2021
Pushing Up Daisies: If you’re going to be pushing up daisies, push up the South African daisies that bloom wild all along Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Go in style. ~ Saturday, March 13, 2021
Rainy Day Women: Bob Dylan recorded “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” at Columbia Studio B in Nashville on March 10, 1966. You know. Everybody must get stoned. This is a parking lot on Melrose Avenue on March 12, 2021. You know. Rainy day women. ~ Friday, March 12, 2021
On June Street: American sycamore (buttonwood) – Platanus occidentalis – June Street – Hancock Park. A bit unsettling in late winter. ~ Thursday, March 11, 2021
A Parting Shot: A quick massive storm passed through Los Angeles in the night. It left clouds over Sunset Boulevard. A parting shot. A parting gift of sorts. It’ll do. ~ Wednesday, March 10, 2021
Dead Again: The Shakespeare Bridge at the far end of Franklin Avenue in Los Feliz was built in 1926 – a public works project, a simple open-spandrel reinforced concrete deck arch bridge – but the designer, J. C. Wright, made it Gothic, with Gothic aedicules at either end. Yes, it’s spooky, and since 1974, a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument. It pops up in movies now and then. It didn’t survive its fictional destruction in the 2015 movie “San Andreas Quake” but it’s central in “Dead Heat” – the 1991 neo-noir mystery directed by Kenneth Branagh and starring him and his wife, Emma Thompson. He’s the private eye. She’s the femme fatale. The bad guys chase him across this bridge and beat him up. He’s a famous British Shakespearean actor. Of course he used this bridge. ~ Tuesday, March 9, 2021
That Woman: That woman. That neighborhood. Once upon a time in Hollywood. That sort of thing. ~ Monday, March 8, 2021
Budding Now: Winter was dull. Most of the local roses were dormant. But they’re budding now. And so it begins. Summer soon enough. ~ Saturday, March 6, 2021
More Than Subtle: This is Los Angeles as March begins, subtle in places, flashy and extreme in other corners. This applies to the city too, not just the gardens. ~ Saturday, March 6, 2021
Absolute Sunshine: This is as California as it gets. Friday afternoon on Guitar Row and the Sunset Strip – absolutely brilliant sunshine – and yeah, hot babes in a Ferrari too. ~ Friday, March 5, 2021
Still There: No one has been out and about for almost a year now. It was time for a quick drive over to Santa Monica. It’s still there. The cliffs are still there. The beach is still there. The Pacific is still there. It’s not Hollywood. ~ Thursday, March 4, 2021
Jailhouse Rock: The abandoned studio where Elvis recorded Jailhouse Rock, and where Bing Crosby recorded White Christmas, on the corner of Orange Drive and Santa Monica Boulevard, has been taken over by Postcommodity, the Southwest Native American Artist collective founded in 2007 by Kade Twist and Steve Yazzie. They’ve covered it in words and filled it with books and conceptual art. There’s no color. That’s provided by the “art wall” at Libra Leather across the street. Elvis would approve. ~ Tuesday, March 2, 2021
Bright White Walls: White walls. Blue skies. Wilshire Boulevard at Cloverdale – the Dominguez-Wilshire Building, 1930, by Morgan, Walls & Clements, at 5410 Wilshire Boulevard – mainly the work of Stiles O. Clements (1883-1966) – and across the street, the Streamline Moderne walls of the old Sontag Drug Store – quite the place in 1939 but empty now – and on the corner, the blank white windows of a wig shop. The heads are pure white too. The wigs are not. ~ Monday, March 1, 2021
February 2021 Photography
Rose Row: Winter roses all in a row here in Hollywood and at the edge of Beverly Hills. ~ Saturday, February 27, 2021
A Closer Look: Winter colors close up in the gardens of Los Angeles. ~ Saturday, February 27, 2021
Playing the Angles: Those two union halls just down the street, the International Cinematographers Guild and the Motion Picture Editors Guild, Sunset Boulevard at Genesee, somehow turned surreal in the afternoon winter sunlight. These people know what to do. Shoot at an angle. That’s always more dramatic. ~ Friday, February 26, 2021
Down Descanso Way: There’s nothing nice down at Sunset Boulevard and Descanso Drive in Silver Lake. It’s just another scruffy corner on the way to someplace else on the edge of Los Angeles. Echo Park is just down the street. There’s nothing else. But it’s still a bit of an art colony, for the down and out. No one is hip here. No one tries to be. That makes things better. ~ Thursday, February 25, 2021
Gordon and Lily: Hanging with Gordon and Lily at that bank plaza on Camden Drive in Beverly Hills. Gordon and Lily have friends here. ~ Wednesday, February 24, 2021
The Silent Future: The West Coast campus of Boston’s Emerson College – 2014, Thom Mayne, principal of Morphosis Architects – Sunset Boulevard at Gordon – empty in winter. There are no students majoring in television, film, marketing, acting, screenwriting, or journalism here now. The pandemic has shut this place down. No one knows if it will reopen. ~ Tuesday, February 23, 2021
Like Royalty: The El Royale on Rossmore Avenue in Hancock Park – 1929, designed by William Douglas Lee – Clark Gable and Loretta Young lived here. William Faulkner lived here when he was writing screenplays for MGM in the forties. George Raft lived in one of the penthouses, and since then Cameron Diaz, Ben Stiller, Uma Thurman, Jack Black, Ellen Page and Josh Brolin have lived at the El Royale. Next door it’s Art Deco. And next door to that it’s stylized French-Norman. This is Hollywood housing. ~ Monday, February 22, 2021
The Lady Bug: This week’s roses were magnificent, as usual. The bonus is that lady bug, and of course that bee. ~ Saturday, February 20, 2021
Brightest February: There’s no need to look very far for color in the middle of winter here. These were at the edge of a parking lot behind Sunset Plaza. Just the usual suspects. ~ Saturday, February 20, 2021
Long Gone: This corner of Hollywood isn’t what it used to be. ~ Friday, February 19, 2021
Dragons: Six days into the Chinese New Year – the Year of the Ox – diligence, dependability, strength and determination – the Dragon Gate where Los Angeles’ Chinatown begins. Forget the oxen. It’s all about the dragons. ~ Thursday, February 18, 2021
Levitated: Levitated Mass, 2012, Michael Heizer, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, a 340-ton boulder placed above a 456-foot viewing pathway, a concrete trench in the ground. This is art for these times. The museum has been closed for a year. The grounds are deserted. But there’s this rock. Now it’s a metaphor. A heavy weight weighs on the world. It may crush us all. And now everything looks surreal. Get used to it. ~ Wednesday, February 17, 2021
Nightingale: The wind was howling. The skies were strange. La Cienega was deserted. Nightingale, the absurdly hip dance club, has been closed for almost a year now – the pandemic of course. But it still looked hip. That stretch of La Cienega always is. The camera loves the place. ~ Tuesday, February 16, 2021
The Dark Wood: Dante Alighieri, Inferno, Canto I, The Dark Wood and the Hill – “I came to myself, in a dark wood, where the direct way was lost. It is a hard thing to speak of, how wild, harsh and impenetrable that wood was, so that thinking of it recreates the fear.” And this is Griffith Park, the dark wood on the road up to the big white observatory, up on the hill. ~ Monday, February 15, 2021
A Botanical Valentine: This is Valentine’s Day in Los Angeles, curbside in Hollywood and Beverly Hills, no florist necessary. ~ Saturday, February 13, 2021
Hill Street Blues: Suddenly, in the eighties, gritty neorealism was hot. Hill Street Blues was the hot television show – cops and robbers with multiple layers of moral ambiguity in an unnamed fictional city that looked like a quite real inner city, a place where nothing is easy. Let’s be careful out there. Most of the location shooting was done here in Los Angeles, but not on our Hill Street. This is South Hill Street in downtown Los Angeles. It’s not gritty at all. It’s pretty cool. ~ Friday, February 12, 2021
Route 66 Neon: Santa Monica Boulevard at the bottom of the hill is also “Historic Route 66” – the last of it before it ends out at the Santa Monica Pier. Here, in West Hollywood, it has neon. ~ Thursday, February 11, 2021
Vivid: The days are dreary. The local streets aren’t. The local street artists make sure of that. ~ Wednesday, February 10, 2021
Morning Coffee: A man sitting on the fire escape at a transient hotel on Sunset Boulevard at Bronson, nursing his morning coffee on a cold winter morning. Life may be hard. But the view is good. ~ Tuesday, February 9, 2021
Bauhaus Blues: The Beverly Hills Media Center, 100 North Crescent Drive at Wilshire Boulevard, an old office building, was transformed by the architectural firm Gensler (M. Arthur Gensler Jr. & Associates, Inc.) – because everybody needs a bit of Bauhaus now and then. Bauhaus was that German art school, founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar in 1919, that gave the world the Bauhaus style in modern design and Modernist architecture. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe took over the school in 1930, and that’s what this is about, streamlined highly geometric architecture. It never gets old. ~ Monday, February 8, 2021
Bright Winter: No, really, this is how February opens in Los Angeles’ gardens. Yes, it’s not fair, but this is why people still stay in California. There’s no winter here. ~ Saturday, February 6, 2021
Southwest: This is the southwest, an improbably bright white elaborate Catholic church surrounded by cactus and dust. But this isn’t the crumbling white village church in the middle of nowhere from the Magnificent Seven. There are no oppressed peasants here. This is Good Shepard Catholic Church in Beverly Hills, next to the city’s formal cactus garden. This is the southwest done right. ~ Friday, February 5, 2021
City of Angels: The recent City of Angels mural at Willoughby and Vine just behind Red Studios Hollywood, formerly the Desilu Cahuenga Studio and then Ren-Mar Studios. The front gate was the “Maroon Cartoon Studio” in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” (1988) and then, in January 2010, the Red Digital Cinema Camera Company bought the whole complex – thus the name. And now there’s this mural out back. This is a strange town. ~ Thursday, February 4, 2021
Rock Light: Even with no one around now, or perhaps forever, the Sunset Strip still glows, but now it’s just the winter light of a quiet weekday afternoon. ~ Wednesday, February 3, 2021
Six More Weeks: Groundhog Day at Echo Park Lake. Six more weeks of winter. Obviously. But that would be Los Angeles winter. ~ Tuesday, February 2, 2021
Curious Winter Light: Monday in the city – 8th and Figueroa – tall buildings and sidewalks and that sort of thing – and curious winter light. ~ Monday, February 1, 2021
January 2021 Photography
Mixed Winter Roses: Almost everyone has cut back their roses to bare stem and root. Only the white roses remain. The others here are from four years ago this month, when life out here wasn’t so severe. ~ Saturday, January 30, 2021
Extra Bright: Los Angeles gardens in the sudden sunshine after two days of steady rain. They woke up. ~ Saturday, January 30, 2021
Darkness on Sunset: This is Sunset Boulevard at the Hollywood Palladium on a rainy winter day. Alfred Hitchcock would understand. Things turned sinister. Viacom-CBS just added a big shiny star to their new offices. It doesn’t help. This was a dark day. ~ Friday, January 29, 2021
The Hardest Part: Waiting for better days at the El Rey on Wilshire Boulevard. ~ Thursday, January 28, 2021
These Dark Streets: The other Los Angeles. A dark winter day in the neighborhood here. But of course this matches everyone’s mood at the moment. ~ Wednesday, January 27, 2021
Live Oak: This is Maple Drive in Beverly Hills just off Sunset Boulevard, and these are not maples. These are live oaks, but not the usual southern live oak, Quercus virginiana. These are Quercus chrysolepis – canyon live oak. This is California after all, and Coldwater Canyon starts up into the hills just across Sunset. Maple Drive’s maples are down in the flats near Beverly Hills City Hall. Up here it’s the Wild West. ~ Tuesday, January 26, 2021
New Norms: Things change. The skies above Los Angeles suddenly got interesting, between winter storms. ~ Monday, January 25, 2021
Gone Dark: Winter is here. Rain. Dark skies. The local gardens were almost bare, and a bit mysterious. ~ Saturday, January 23, 2021
High Drama: Rain on the way, a series of winter storms barreling toward Los Angeles, but not here quite yet. That’s when the skies get dramatic. That’s when it’s time to drive over to the Pacific Design Center. Everything is more dramatic there. ~ Friday, January 22, 2021
Heliotrope Drive: Heliotrope Drive at Melrose Avenue, the rather obscure minor arts and theater district over by Los Angeles City College, is now dead. Everything is closed and empty. None of it will ever reopen. It’s all gone. But the residue is still cool. The Ukrainian Community Center is still open. So is the Zen Center. Val Kilmer, the guy from Top Gun who was also Jim Morrison in The Doors, now immobilized with cancer, lives in a little arts center here – hiding from the world. Or so they say. No one has seen him in years. It’s that kind of neighborhood. ~ Thursday, January 21, 2021
Hollywood Whitewalls: Some days the light is just too good. Stop. Take it all in. ~ Wednesday, January 20, 2021
Double Indemnity: The Bryson Apartment Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard just north of MacArthur Park, from 1913, is an odd Beaux Arts fantasy. Hugh W. Bryson, the developer, hired architects Frederick Noonan and Charles H. Kyser to design this, and it eventually became almost a character in Raymond Chandler’s dark and nasty crime novels. Philip Marlowe looked for bad guys here. Chandler also used The Bryson as a setting when he co-wrote the screenplay for the 1944 film noir classic Double Indemnity, starring Fred MacMurray, who then bought the place. He owned the building for thirty years, and now it has been restored as good as new. Next door it’s the Wilshire Royale, 1927, from Walker and Eisen, a residential hotel built for the local leader of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, Olive Philips, as the Arcady, advertised for people who were accustomed to fine living. It eventually ended up as the retirement home for the elderly of First Congregational Church at Lafayette Park, but was recently renovated as the Wilshire Royale luxury apartments. And now this corner is back to what it was supposed to be. ~ Tuesday, January 19, 2021
Local Life: Tommy Lasorda has died. But it’s all part of the Los Angeles Circle of Life. ~ Monday, January 18, 2021
Even More Roses: These shouldn’t be. These are Los Angeles roses when the rest of America is buried in snow. ~ Saturday, January 16, 2021
The Wild West: Yes, it’s wild out here. This is what’s in bloom in Los Angeles in the middle of winter. ~ Saturday, January 16, 2021
Ghost Light: Hollywood and Vine on a winter afternoon in this year of the plague. Hollywood is a ghost town now. But the light has never been better. ~ Friday, January 15, 2021
Now Pink: Sunset Las Palmas Studios was built by Charlie Chaplin’s studio manager, John Jasper, in 1919, as Jasper Studios. Then it became Metropolitan Pictures. Harold Lloyd rented the studio in 1925 and Howard Hughes shot the silent version of Hells Angels here 1929 and then it grew into General Services Studios. In 1980, Francis Ford Coppola bought the whole place for his American Zoetrope company and sold all of it in 1983 when that didn’t work out. Then it became Hollywood Center Studios and got bigger and bigger, and in 2017 Hudson Capital purchased the whole campus and renamed it Sunset Las Palmas Studios. Everyone uses this place. In 1951, Stage 2 became the first home to I Love Lucy, and from 1951 to 1953, it was the home of Desilu Productions, owned by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. CBS used the place for Petticoat Junction and Green Acres and The Beverly Hillbillies. The Lone Ranger was produced on the lot. And now they’ve painted the old core studios bright pink. Why not? ~ Thursday, January 14, 2021
The Split: This is where Hollywood begins, that intersection in Silver Lake where Hollywood Boulevard begins, where it splits off from Sunset Boulevard at the old movie palace, near the Tiki bar, both now closed, where everything is now closed, and quite strange. ~ Wednesday, January 13, 2021
Villa Carlotta: Villa Carlotta is the villa and botanical garden in Tremezzo on Lake Como in Northern Italy. Villa Carlotta is the Spanish Colonial apartment building on Franklin Avenue in Franklin Village, just below Griffith Park, here in Hollywood. It was built in 1926 for the widow of Thomas Ince and designed by Arthur E. Harvey, who also designed the elaborate Château Élysée across the street, now the Scientology Celebrity Center – but Edward G. Robinson once lived at this Villa Carlotta. So did Marion Davies. So did William Saroyan. So did David O. Selznick. Louella Parsons wrote her gossip column from her two-story apartment here. That was long ago, but there are ghosts. ~ Tuesday, January 12, 2021
Off Broadway: The city is empty. There was an open parking space on Second at Broadway. Up on the hill, Frank Gehry’s long delayed Grand Avenue Project, an odd twenty story hotel and thirty-nine story residential tower due in 2022 or so, is coming along nicely, if somewhat oddly. And below it’s the new (2016) United States Courthouse, another big glass box from Skidmore, Owings & Merrill – but a magnificent big glass box – and there are those winter shadows across the street. The city is better empty. ~ Monday, January 11, 2021
That Glow: The winter light really does make Los Angeles’ gardens glow. That makes winter all better. ~ Saturday, January 9, 2021
Winter on Wilshire: This is winter on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills, just trees and a glass. And that’s enough. ~ Friday, January 8, 2021
The Auction House: All better now. The plaster detailing on the Italianate but quite British auction house, Bonham’s, that has been down on the corner on Sunset Boulevard since the days of silent movies, has been restored to perfection. It’s a Norma Desmond thing. So is the sky. ~ Thursday, January 7, 2021
Telling Stories: The streets tell stories. This is Sunset Boulevard at Gardner, just around the corner. The stories here are ambiguous. ~ Wednesday, January 6, 2021
Royal Trees: Hancock Park, just off Wilshire Boulevard, was developed in the 1920s an enclave for the rich. Their mansions still stand. This is the land of old money, with the Official Residence of the British Consul General on June Street in a home designed by Wallace Neff that was completed in 1928. Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, stayed there in July 2011 on their first visit to the United States after their wedding. Nat King Cole was first black resident of Hancock Park. It’s a royal place. It has royal trees. ~ Tuesday, January 5, 2021
Strip Lighting: A winter urban light show, a short drive down the Sunset Strip from the Roxy to the Directors Guild. Los Angeles is shut down, but the light is still amazing. ~ Monday, January 4, 2021
The Constant Garden: So, another year begins. In the gardens the roses and all the rest don’t care. They just go on, and that’s a comfort. ~ Saturday, January 2, 2021
First Light: The first light on the first day of the new year in Los Angeles was extraordinary. Perhaps it will be a good year. ~ Friday, January 1, 2021
December 2020 Photography
The Last Echoes: So this is how it ends. The last day of the year at Echo Park Lake, with the birds. ~ Thursday, December 31, 2020
The End Trees: The trees at the end if the world – but not really. This is on top of the hill out back. A short drive up through Laurel Canyon – Joni Mitchell and all that – turn left on Mulholland Drive – like in the David Lynch movie – and there’s a “scenic overlook” with these trees. They’re just trees at the end of the year. Or maybe this is the end of the world. ~ Wednesday, December 30, 2020
Tickled Pink: A day of heavy rain did wash Hollywood clean. Santa Monica Boulevard at Cole Avenue in the flats south of Hollywood, old buildings built by the Technicolor Corporation long ago, now restored, catch the fresh sun. The Art Deco building on the corner is now very pink. Technicolor is long gone from this neighborhood, but the memory lingers on. And the light was good. ~ Tuesday, December 29, 2020
Year-End Roses: This was an awful year. But the all year long the Los Angeles roses were just fine. These are the last of them for the year, sitting pretty on the last weekend of an odd year. ~ Saturday, December 26, 2020
The Final Close-Ups: This is how the year ends in the local gardens, a few daisies, the usual hibiscus, but wait! Lantana! Yucca! Yucca! Yucca! ~ Saturday, December 26, 2020
An Escape: The North Harper Avenue Historic District just off the Sunset Strip. Turn left at the strip club with the giant neon sign – Live Nude Girls – and suddenly it’s a different world. And it’s very quiet. And a bit strange. But in a nice way. ~ Wednesday, December 23, 2020
Compelling Pictures: Just one block. But one block is enough. This is Cahuenga and Selma in the middle of Hollywood. Just point and shoot. Cool stuff. Compelling stuff. The new film and video production company on the corner is Compelling Pictures. Of course it is. ~ Tuesday, December 22, 2020
Pink This Year: This has not been a good year and now it’s ending with Southern California in crisis, the hospitals filled with the dying and Christmas pretty much cancelled. Everything’s wrong. So why not a surreal Pink Christmas this year? ~ Monday, December 21, 2020
The Late Roses: Los Angeles roses one week before Christmas. Save the best for last. ~ Saturday, December 19, 2020
The Season: Poinsettia in everyone’s garden, bright red bougainvillea everywhere, no snow, but it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, in Los Angeles. ~ Saturday, December 19, 2020
Turquoise Boulevard: The winter light was good. Bullocks Wilshire, 3050 Wilshire Boulevard, is the landmark Art Deco building from 1929, from Los Angeles architects John and Donald Parkinson, a luxury department store for more than sixty years and now a private law school, and restored to its turquoise copper glory. It does light up the boulevard, as does the anonymous midcentury office building across the street, painted turquoise to match it. It’s a good color. ~ Friday, December 18, 2020
Into the Darkness: No sun this day, a good day to dive into the darkness, so, at that odd Art Deco building on Hollywood Boulevard, turn left onto Whitley Avenue and suddenly it’s 1923 again, with that nightmare Italianate fantasy apartment building, and then the dark French-Norman one, and then the brutal concrete one, with those odd women. This was the place to be in the twenties, and now it’s the darkest place in Hollywood. ~ Thursday, December 17, 2020
Bright Desolation: Another afternoon here on the Sunset Strip – no one around – the sightlines open – the light was good. California has been shut down, and here, in the heart of Hollywood, that ends in quiet but total desolation. It’s bright and vibrant, but this is a graveyard. This is the last of the Sunset Strip. ~ Wednesday, December 16, 2020
The Danger: “One person was killed and another hospitalized after a shooting Tuesday afternoon on Melrose Avenue in the Fairfax district, police said. Both victims, identified as men in their early to mid-20s, were standing near Melrose and Stanley avenues when the gunman, also a man in his mid-20s, approached them on foot and fired multiple times. The block where the shooting occurred is a popular shopping destination, with a Starbucks, Urban Outfitters and several other businesses.” – But there was an open parking space next to the police tape, and there was the street art. This is life out here. ~ Tuesday, December 15, 2020
High Skies: Suddenly the winds were howling, all day, and just as suddenly the sky turned strange. This was Sunset Boulevard at Western Avenue over to Sunset and Vine. ~ Monday, December 14, 2020
The Dark Roses: The local roses got dark in a Bruegel sort of way. That’s how one knows that it’s winter out here in the land of endless summer. ~ Saturday, December 12, 2020
The Enhanced Ordinary: The usual suspects in the local gardens turn unusual, close up and in tight. So, pay attention. ~ Saturday, December 12, 2020
The Remaining Light: Almost all the galleries in the arts district all along North La Brea Avenue have gone under. They’re empty shells now. Only the gallery selling art lighting seems to have survived. The light survives. The avenue glows. ~ Friday, December 11, 2020
Painting Those Walls: This is the land of giant hand-painted display advertising, whole walls of it, and they were at it again down on Melrose on that wall across the street from Fairfax High School. Start with the flowers and one face. Something will come of this – but here all the walls are painted, one way or another. The messages are mixed. ~ Thursday, December 10, 2020
Spaced Out: Sometimes the empty streets of Los Angeles look like the streets of some strange alien planet. This is Sunset Boulevard at Bronson. Or it’s the set of a science fiction movie. ~ Wednesday, December 9, 2020
Still Golden: Gold – Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills – Christmas – this year much is closed and no one is around, but the rich will have their Christmas. ~ Tuesday, December 8, 2020
Stay at Home: There’s a new stay-at-home order. Stay at home for the rest of the year. On Hollywood Boulevard, the Frolic Room at the Pantages Theater has closed. The theater itself has gone dark. It’s locked up tight. And the sun did not come out this day. This is going to be a strange Christmas. ~ Monday, December 7, 2020
The Winter Roses: So, December begins. But the roses never end. And the lighting is even better now. ~ Saturday, December 5, 2020
Boulevard Blooms: Sunset Boulevard as the holiday season begins. But it’s always a holiday of some sort here in Hollywood. ~ Saturday, December 5, 2020
Chasing Geese: The usual suspects. Using the telephoto lens down at Echo Park Lake. Wasting a perfectly good afternoon with the birds. Or this was a necessary escape. People have messed up this world. These guys didn’t. They’re better company. ~ Friday, December 4, 2020
Pandemic Paramount: Down the street at Paramount Pictures. It was quiet down there. It was too quiet. It’s the pandemic. But damn, the light was good. ~ Thursday, December 3, 2020
Old Medicine: The Beverly Professional Building on the corner of Camden Drive and Brighton Way in Beverly Hills, 1926, Spanish Baroque Revival with Churrigueresque detailing, including the traditional symbol of medicine, the Caduceus of Mercury, and it has a goddess too. It was built as a medical office building and it still is a medical office building. But this is old medicine. ~ Wednesday, December 2, 2020
Icons of Darkness: Forget that “rich Corinthian leather” in the long-forgotten Chrysler Cordoba, and forget Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The theater seating inside the Ricardo Montalbán Theater on Vine Street, the Montalbán, has been removed for Icons of Darkness, an exhibition from the largest private collection of sci-fi, horror and fantasy memorabilia in the world, and the place looks scary. And the opening has been delayed indefinitely. The coronavirus pandemic is scarier. The place is locked tight. But that’s okay – this end of Hollywood is scary enough. ~ Tuesday, December 1, 2020
November 2020 Photography
Dead Quiet: California has been shut down again. The Sunset Strip feels like a graveyard. The Rainbow Room and the Roxy may never reopen. They may disappear forever, but they haven’t disappeared yet. They’re just dead quiet at the moment. ~ Monday, November 30, 2020
The Roses Persist: Yes, Thanksgiving is over and Christmas is on the way, but that doesn’t matter. There are always roses in the neighborhood. This is Southern California. ~ Saturday, November 28, 2020
Color Saturation: The skies cleared. The bright angled autumn sun backlit everything in the gardens. The colors jumped out. ~ Saturday, November 28, 2020
Bright Emptiness: Black Friday 2020 in the year of the killer pandemic – no one was shopping – little remained open. It was a bright empty afternoon on the Boulevard of Abandoned Art Galleries, Beverly Boulevard in West Los Angeles. ~ Friday, November 27, 2020
Shadow Work: Black shadows on the white walls of the Wilshire Theater, originally the Fox Wilshire when it opened on September 19, 1930. The architect was S. Charles Lee. On November 4, 1953, it was Marilyn Monroe arriving on the red carpet here for the premiere of “How to Marry a Millionaire.” Now it’s the Saban Theater and it’s gone quiet at the moment. There’s only its reflection in the glass of the nicely rounded skyscraper on the southeast corner of Wilshire and La Cienega next door, once the world headquarters of Larry Flynt Enterprises. The light was good this day. ~ Wednesday, November 25, 2020
Misplaced Concreteness: Industrial geometry old and new, Romaine and Sycamore by the CEMEX plant – ready-mix concrete moving out in giant mixer trucks all day long. In Alfred North Whitehead’s Science and the Modern World, the fallacy of misplaced concreteness is central to his analysis, a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction is treated as if it were a concrete real event or physical entity. So, what is this Mexican concrete plant doing here? ~ Tuesday, November 24, 2020
Outside the Box: Think outside the box. This is a quiet afternoon at Melrose and Ogden, where everything is outside the box. ~ Monday, November 23, 2020
Rose Glow: Late autumn sunlight comes in at a low angle in Los Angeles and makes the local roses glow. ~ Saturday, November 21, 2020
A Close Look: This is what Hollywood looks like in late autumn, if you look closely. The local gardens are ironic. ~ Saturday, November 21, 2020
South of Pink: The block down the street from Pink’s Hot Dogs, on North La Brea at Melrose, isn’t pink at all. It’s severe black and white Art Deco, with an abandoned pastel movie theater from the thirties, next to the giant colored cubes of Torath Emeth Academy. And there’s Spider Man too. It’s very Los Angeles. ~ Friday, November 20, 2020
Just About Everything: Just one block – Wilshire Boulevard at Ardmore, at the edge of Koreatown – one block west of the site of the former Ambassador Hotel where Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June 1968 – but that was long ago and now this place is urban hip and a curious mix of just about everything. ~ Thursday, November 19, 2020
Quiet Hollywood: The neighborhood was looking all Edward Hopper empty. This was Sunset Boulevard between Formosa Avenue and Poinsettia Place. Hollywood should be lively. Maybe it’s the pandemic. ~ Wednesday, November 18, 2020
Quite Twisted: North Orange Grove Avenue just off Sunset Boulevard, just around the corner here. Yes, Hollywood has tree-lined streets. They’re just a bit strange. And they’re even stranger in late autumn. ~ Tuesday, November 17, 2020
Lighting Tricks: This is Hollywood. Sometimes the light is so good that every shot is a trick shot, and it was one of those late autumn days. This is Viacom-CBS on Sunset Boulevard at Gower, lit wonderfully. ~ Monday, November 16, 2020
Monet Roses: Claude Monet painted water lilies. But had he painted roses, which he didn’t, they would have looked like this, Los Angeles roses on his birthday. ~ Saturday, November
November Reds: Los Angeles gardens turn red in this month, loosely red. There are all sorts of shades here. ~ Saturday, November 14, 2020
By Design: There’s Autumn in New York, glittering crowds and shimmering clouds in canyons of steel, that sort of thing. And then there’s autumn at the Pacific Design Center. ~ Friday, November 13, 2020
Hollywood Rides: These are the rides of the one percent, on the streets of Hollywood, for now. By the time the coronavirus pandemic finally fades away, if it does, these won’t matter much at all. The world will have changed. But for now, they do catch the light nicely. ~ Thursday, November 12, 2020
California November: This is California in November. It’s a walk in the park. It’s a walk in a Beverly Hills park. ~ Wednesday, November 11, 2020
The Light Fantastic: It was 1894 – the “Sidewalks of New York” – “Boys and girls together, me and Mamie O’Rourke / Tripped the light fantastic / On the sidewalks of New York.” But the light was fantastic out here on the sidewalks of Los Angeles all these years later. And it was pretty trippy too. ~ Tuesday, November 10, 2020
Raymond Chandler Square: The Security Pacific Bank Building at 6383 Hollywood Boulevard, at Cahuenga, from 1921, by the father and son architects John and Donald B. Parkinson. This is also known as the Cahuenga Building. Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) was the creator of the cynical private investigator Phillip Marlowe, with his office here, high over Hollywood Boulevard. Chandler’s first Marlowe novel was The Big Sleep (1939) but most people remember the Howard Hawks movie (1946) with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Hawks had William Faulkner help with the screenplay. Faulkner decided he hated Hollywood and never returned. This is Raymond Chandler Square. It is an odd place. ~ Monday, November 9, 2020
A Victory Garden: Everyone was in the streets, celebrating the election of a new president, and at the side of the street, a victory garden. Look. Things will get better. ~ Saturday, November 7, 2020
The Dark Side: The first rain in six months is on the way. The day gets darker and darker, and this brings out the mysterious dark side of the Sunset Strip. ~ Friday, November 6, 2020
Sweet Air: Something changed. Sunset Boulevard from the Directors Guild building on west down the Sunset Strip to the edge of Beverly Hills – the smoke is gone. There’s light rain on the way soon, or not. This is Southern California. But the air was sweet this day. ~ Thursday, November 5, 2020
While Waiting: This year’s Election Day never ended. Nothing was decided. They were still counting votes the next day, and the street was waiting to see who’d be president now. The concerned constituents are an odd lot. ~ Wednesday, November 4, 2020
A Bit Unnerving: The Chateau Marmont on the Sunset Strip, modeled loosely on the Château d’Amboise, a royal retreat in the Loire Valley, has been a Hollywood institution since 1929. Everyone has stayed here, and worked here, and some of them died here. John Belushi died of a drug overdose in Bungalow 3 on March 5, 1982, and the famous photographer Helmut Newton died here on January 23, 2004, after crashing his car pulling out of the driveway. That makes this block of the Sunset Strip a bit unnerving. ~ Tuesday, November 3, 2020
Plastic People: The coronavirus pandemic is only getting worse. The streets are empty. There’s no one around. But that doesn’t matter in Beverly Hills. Those odd plastic people are still there, frozen in place forever. And the brilliant colors all around are lively enough. It’s all artificial, but it is rather pleasant. ~ Monday, November 2, 2020
October 2020 Photography
Extraordinary Light: They’re just the usual roses, the same roses that bloom every Saturday all around Los Angeles, all year long. But the light suddenly changed and made everything translucent. Late autumn can be like that out here. This can be a fine place. ~ Saturday, October 31, 2020
Spooky Blooms: Look at this. Halloween morning in the local gardens actually is a bit spooky. And a full moon will follow. ~ Saturday, October 31, 2020
Dead White: The painted white palm trees are a bit of conceptual art from Vincent Lamouroux, the French artist who painted the old Sunset Pacific Motel on Sunset Boulevard in Silver Lake, and all the trees and bushes around it, a blank dead white, to disrupt the vibrant “commercial landscape” that surrounds it – a public art piece called Projection. That was back in 2015, and then everyone moved on to other matters. But the dead white motel and the white palms are still there, at Sunset and Bates Avenue. Think of it as the Bates Motel, as in the movie Psycho. ~ Friday, October 30, 2020
Painting This Town: Everything is a promotion for something or other. That’s why someone is always painting this end of Los Angeles. Of course, these days, no one is buying anything, but that’s okay. The visuals are great anyway. ~ Thursday, October 29, 2020
Another Hollywood Ghost: Had he lived, which he didn’t, Nat King Cole would have been one hundred years old, last year. Here he haunts the windows at Capitol Records on Vine Street. This is where he recorded almost everything. His ghost has been in the windows for a year now. Things get spooky in Hollywood. ~ Wednesday, October 28, 2020
Not Technicolor: This is the Television Center, 6311 Romaine Street – 1930, an Art Deco landmark that from 1930 to 1975 was the Hollywood home of Technicolor. All of their films were processed in the labs here, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1938) to The Godfather, Part II (1974) – the last American film to use the Technicolor dye process. But the technology changed and Technicolor is now a division of the French company Technicolor SA and housed in a new glass box on Sunset Boulevard at Gower, and now this Art Deco landmark is filled with independent television production companies and high-tech soundstages. But it’s still dramatic. And television production obviously requires a whole lot of electricity. ~ Tuesday, October 27, 2020
A Los Angeles Morning: This is early morning at Echo Park Lake, with the city in the distance. That’s where the action is. But it’s serene here. ~ Monday, October 26, 2020
Autumn Roses: Roses just after dawn on an autumn morning in Hollywood make Southern California look like a seventeenth-century still life. ~ Saturday, October 24, 2020
Autumn Darkness: There was no sun. The local gardens didn’t need sun. They create their own light. ~ Saturday, October 24, 2020
This Particular Dream: Perhaps the Hollywood Dream, whatever that really was, is over now. The town is dead. The coronavirus killed it. And this is Cosmo Street and a bit of Cahuenga Boulevard right in the middle of Hollywood on a dark and empty afternoon. The dream has gone dark. ~ Friday, October 23, 2020
The Real City: Too much sunshine can be deceptive. This is Los Angeles on a rare dark day. Now it looks like a real city. Los Angeles is actually a dark place. ~ Thursday, October 22, 2020
The Dark Now: The Craft and Folk Art Museum on Wilshire Boulevard, across the street from the La Brea Tar Pits, changed its name to the Craft Contemporary. The museum’s board of directors decided that the old name had “an association to something very old and very dusty” and they wanted to be rooted in the “now” – and then the coronavirus pandemic shut down all the museums and the place went dark. This is the now. ~ Tuesday, October 20, 2020
These Escher Streets: Los Angeles has turned into an M. C. Escher lithograph. This is the empty Wilshire Courtyard office complex on what was once called the Miracle Mile. Now it’s a surreal geometric maze. ~ Tuesday, October 20, 2020
The Justice Corner: RBG down on the corner today, with Shepard Fairey and a few friends, and so on. This must be the justice corner. ~ Monday, October 19, 2020
Even More Roses: There always mores roses in Hollywood. These are seriously dramatic. ~ Saturday, October 17, 2020
In the Corners: There are odd things in the corners in Los Angeles’ gardens these days. ~ Saturday, October 17, 2020
Rich Geometry: Sometimes simple geometry is a comfort. The Beverly Hills Civic Center will do – not a rich person in sight – not a person in sight. That helps. ~ Friday, October 16, 2020
The Immediate Neighborhood: Just down the street – Villa d’Este (1355 Laurel Avenue) – “Italian villas in rural Tuscany inspired architect brothers F. Pierpont Davis and Walter S. Davis when they designed the complex in 1928.” Romanesque Villa (1928) – “In 1928, Michael and Isaac Mann commissioned Leland Bryant to design an apartment building at the corner of Harper and Fountain Avenues. Bryant combined Spanish Colonial Revival and Churrigueresque, the style named after the 18th century Spanish architect, Jose Churriguera, who used lavish ornamentation in his designs. It was at this building that the infamous ‘triangle’ between Marlene Dietrich and Josef and Riza Von Sternberg took place and led eventually to the divorce of the Von Sternbergs.” Bryant built the Norman-French apartments across the street too. And then just a gate – Villa Primavera (1923) at 1300-08 North Harper Avenue – the Spanish style courtyard apartment building designed and built by Arthur and Nina Zwebell. Katherine Hepburn and James Dean both rented here. It was also used in “In a Lonely Place” (1950) directed by Nicolas Ray and starring Humphrey Bogart as a serial killer screenwriter, who lived right here. That’s the neighborhood. ~ Thursday, October 15, 2020
Absurdly Colorful: They said no pictures at the body shop down on Melrose Avenue where they were working on a brand-new Rolls-Royce Cullinan. Someone had wrecked their new four hundred-thousand-dollar SUV – lots of body damage – probably some ditzy sixteen-year-old girl from Beverly Hills High School. It happens. But no pictures – so it was pictures of their amazing metallic wall instead. And then it was time to look around. This is an absurdly colorful neighborhood. ~ Wednesday, October 14, 2020
High Contrast: Hollywood is always dramatic – that old municipal building, now a Department of Water and Power warehouse and garage, across the street from Sunset-Gower Studios, now pretty much shut down – the light was wonderful. ~ Tuesday, October 13, 2020
Mad Lab: There will be no Halloween this year, but there is that neon skeleton on Sunset Boulevard near Vine. Yes, it’s just a hip coffee shop, but it will do. This block is spooky. There’s that strange striped wall to the right, and to the left, there’s the 1924 Hollywood Athletic Club. Women were prohibited above the first floor. W. C. Fields was known to have wrapped his mistress, Carlotta Monti, in a rug and smuggled her upstairs. That was the real Mad Lab. But that’s all shadows now. That’s Halloween this year. ~ Monday, October 12, 2020
Dark Roses: Sometimes there’s a dark day, even in Southern California. Things change. The roses look baroque. ~ Saturday, October 10, 2020
Brilliant at Breakfast: This is the morning mix in the gardens here, just off Sunset Boulevard, just after dawn. No one is around. This is the way to start the day, even in October. ~ Saturday, October 10, 2020
On Grand Now: Frank Gehry’s swoopy Walt Disney Concert Hall that fills the block between Grand and Hope Street always looks new, even if it opened on October 24, 2003, and his long delayed Grand Avenue Project, across the street at First and Grand, an odd twenty story hotel and thirty-nine story residential tower, with terraced shops and whatnot, due in 2022 or so, is coming along nicely, if somewhat oddly. The Broad is the contemporary art museum on the other corner, with its honeycomb concrete-and-steel outer structure, the “veil” that wraps around the actual box of a museum, all of it designed by the firm of Diller Scofidio and Renfro. That opened on September 20, 2015, but the pandemic has closed it. Still, downtown Los Angeles goes on – just checking to be sure of that. ~ Friday, October 9, 2020
Fading Away: No one is making movies now. No one may make movies ever again. Hollywood may be over. This is the corner of Wilcox Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard, abandoned Art Deco buildings and the empty Warner Pacific Theater with its dead radio towers, and the 1983 “You Are the Star” mural by New Mexico artist Thomas Suriya. That’s been vandalized and restored, as good as new, again and again. It’s rather famous. But it won’t be restored again, not now. It’s on the west wall of the Attie Building – 1931, H. A. Minton – with its red windows. That’s been empty for years too. This is where the stars fade away. ~ Thursday, October 8, 2020
Dancing in the Park: It was another day of Hazardous Air Quality (for Sensitive Groups) and breathing was difficult. It was time to head out in the clapped-out old car, still with working air-conditioning, off toward downtown on Sunset Boulevard. And there was Echo Park Lake. And there was a parking space. And there were these people having a fine old time making a dance video of some kind. They seemed happy. That would do. But it’s a jungle out there. ~ Wednesday, October 7, 2020
The Quiet Past: Los Angeles used to be a different place. This is Sycamore and First Street, down in the Wilshire District, where it’s always long ago. Go ahead, slip into the past. It’s a quiet place. ~ Tuesday, October 6, 2020
Hollywood Haze: After three weeks of smoke in the air, from the massive distant fires, the haze in Hollywood lifted a bit, here and there, leaving strange skies and odd empty streets below. ~ Monday, October 5, 2020
The Roses: Every Saturday it’s roses. Los Angeles is endless roses. That helps in troubled times. What else is there? ~ Saturday, October 3, 2020
Hot Color: October is autumn everywhere else. In the gardens of Los Angeles, October is an explosion of hot color in the middle of a heat wave. ~ Saturday, October 3, 2020
Esoteric: Brutal heat and bad air, but there’s great color down on Melrose Avenue, all new, so Los Angeles isn’t all that bad, a little surreal, but not all that bad. ~ Friday, October 2, 2020
In Sunset Park: Will Rogers Memorial Park, 9650 Sunset Boulevard, across the street from the Beverly Hills Hotel, constructed in 1912 and dedicated in 1915, the first public park in Beverly Hills. Charlie Chaplin filmed a few scenes here. So did Laurel and Hardy. This was Sunset Park until 1952 when it was renamed the Will Rogers Memorial Park in honor of Rogers, the first Honorary Mayor of Beverly Hills from 1926 to 1928, who rather liked the place. On April 7, 1998, George Michael was arrested for committing a “lewd act” by Marcelo Rodriguez, a plainclothes officer of the Beverly Hills Police Department, in the restrooms here. That was quite the scandal. But that doesn’t matter now. This is a good place to sit quietly on a hot day and chat with the turtles. ~ Thursday, October 1, 2020
September 2020 Photography
Hot Walls: The neighborhood in late September just before another extreme heat advisory forced everyone indoors, and just before the air got so thick that the Air Quality Management District issued its own run-and-hide warning again – sit in the dark and try not to breathe too much – just another day in paradise. But the street art never stops. And these are pretty hot walls. ~ Tuesday, September 29, 2020
Abandoned Art: Ethos Contemporary Art, the beyond-hip art gallery on Highland Avenue just south of Hollywood, went under. They reopened in a small space in downtown Los Angeles, but they left this on Highland, a reminder of the days before the pandemic. And the LGBT center across the street, with its wall of giant eyes, is empty now – the building is for lease. Only one gallery is left here now. And it’s a little scary. ~ Monday, September 28, 2020
Dawn Blooms: The smoke has been awful. The heat has been awful. And neither will end soon, if ever. But there are those few hours of cool morning mist before Los Angeles becomes unbearable once again. That’s when the local gardens are subtle and inviting, like this. ~ Saturday, September 26, 2020
The Piano Corner: There’s an odd Art Deco building on Wilshire Boulevard at Robertson in Beverly Hills. It’s a bit of a nightmare, and across the street from the Steinway showroom, now with one bright red grand piano in the window, next to a big purple one. Someone’s into surrealism. But this corner is like that – all curved glass with the big bronze “Pablo at the Beach” (2013) by Guy Dill on the corner there. Life here is a visual treat. ~ Thursday, September 24, 2020
Old Heroism: The mural next door works. American architecture used to be heroic. This is the heroic California Bank branch, 1929, by John and Donald B. Parkinson, at 5620 Hollywood Boulevard. It has that attitude. America can do anything. There is nothing to fear but fear itself, a useful attitude as the Great Depression deepened. But this bank was abandoned soon enough. Warner Brothers slapped a temporary marquee on it and pretended it was a movie palace in 1997 in “L.A. Confidential” – everyone was corrupt and nasty in that movie. Now it’s a “collision center” – they repair wrecked cars in there. But it’s still heroic. The rest of the neighborhood, East Hollywood where Little Armenia meets Thai Town, isn’t. It’s mysterious. ~ Wednesday, September 23, 2020
Three Walls: There’s the new “Love” wall on Beverly Boulevard. There’s that cactus wall next door. There’s the odd glass wall across the street. And there’s Andy Warhol. This is West Los Angeles. ~ Tuesday, September 22, 2020
Fifty Shades Clearer: The fires are still raging everywhere but the wind shifted. The smoke is gone. After two weeks of thick haze and the constant smell of that smoke in the air, all of Los Angeles is visible again. And the gardens are back. They made it through this. All is well. ~ Saturday, September 19, 2020
I’m suspending the photography until the smoke clears.
Softened Light: The smoke was thick all day from the fires everywhere. The air was unbreathable. That made for a day of diffused light. The softened light made the local gardens rather mysterious. ~ September 12, 2020
Smoked Cactus: Hollywood smelled of smoke at dawn and the morning got darker and darker, not lighter. The whole Los Angeles basin filled with smoke from the fires out east and the sky turned dull orange. The air was thick. Breathing was difficult. And it looked like this – the cactus garden in Beverly Hills, looking like the end of the world. ~ Thursday, September 10, 2020
The Empty Plaza: Sunset Plaza on the Sunset Strip is empty all day now, every day. A raging pandemic will do that. But this stretch of the Sunset Strip is still ridiculously photogenic. ~ Wednesday, September 9, 2020
These Dark Days: Hollywood was filled with smoke, not sunshine. All of California seemed to be on fire. But that only makes things more interesting – a new tattoo parlor just off Hollywood Boulevard, the odd façades from long ago, and the Hillview Hollywood built in 1917 by Jesse Lasky, the co-founder of Paramount Pictures, and his brother-in-law Samuel Goldwyn, the co-founder of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. At the time this was Hollywood’s only apartment building willing to rent to aspiring actors – they were a suspicious lot – but that only made this “the” place to be. The basement housed a rehearsal space until Rudolph Valentino turned it into a speakeasy. Clara Bow found her first home at the Hillview in 1923 – but the building was eventually abandoned. It was a tear-down, and then a group of investors restored and completely redid the place in 2005, and went bankrupt, and then others jumped in. It was back in 2015 – and now it’s dead again – the Covid pandemic did it in – but Alfredo de Batuc’s 1990 mural “A Tribute to Dolores del Rio” next door has just been restored. She’s not dead yet. But Hollywood is. ~ Tuesday, September 8, 2020
That Dome: At the center of Hollywood, the Cinerama dome on Sunset Boulevard, across the street from the campus of Los Angeles Film School, around the corner from the CNN studios at Larry King Square, all looking quite odd now that Hollywood has been shut down, perhaps forever. ~ Monday, September 7, 2020
Just Too Hot: These are Los Angeles roses in the middle of a heat wave, over one hundred in the shade just before noon. It’s too hot for humans. They persist. They’re doing just fine. ~ Saturday, September 5, 2020
More Hidden Gems: There are curious things hidden in the local gardens on a quiet Saturday morning here in Los Angeles. ~ Saturday, September 5, 2020
The Heat Light: “State of emergency declared as California faces historic heat, possible power outages…” And the Air Quality Index was at 218 and rising – “Very Unhealthy” – don’t breathe that stuff out there. So it was time to drive around and take pictures of nothing at all, of just the light and heat. But that’s really something. ~ Friday, September 4, 2020
Prehistoric Los Angeles: They’re still digging up Wooly Mammoths and Saber-Toothed Tigers down the hill at the La Brea Tar Pits. And they built a nifty new museum next to the excavation pits, with their research facilities in the basement, where they try to reconstruct what they just found. The friezes at the museum are stunning, but this is still a working scientific site. It seems that prehistoric Los Angeles is down there, just three miles from up here in Hollywood. ~ Thursday, September 3, 2020
Can’t Be Stopped: This sort of thing can’t be stopped. Hollywood’s “Can’t Be Stopped” crew was one of the most influential and recognizable graffiti crews in the early eighties, when the initials CBS popped up everywhere. They’re still around, but now no one can be stopped. No one can stop the street art now. ~ Wednesday, September 2, 2020
Reaching Back: The Italianate “luxury” apartment building from the late twenties on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and North Stanley Avenue, surrounded by Craftsman bungalows from a decade earlier, each with a lush garden now – with a new glass McMansion wedged in here and there. Before the bungalows, and long before there was a movie industry, this was all orange groves, and Hollywood Boulevard was a dirt road named Prospect Avenue until 1910, when the town of Hollywood, created by H. J. Whitley, was annexed by the City of Los Angeles. Things change. ~ Tuesday, September 1, 2020
August 2020 Photography
Hollywood Style: The end of summer in the year the pandemic shut down everything, and Hollywood is now dead. Hollywood will not recover. This is Hollywood Boulevard at Cherokee. The streets are empty and silent. There’s only the past. ~ Monday, August 31, 2020
A Blast of Roses: These are insistent. That last roses of August will not be ignored. ~ Saturday, August 29, 2020
Summer High: Everything in bloom all across Los Angeles in high summer would make anyone high. In the sixties they’d call this psychedelic. Out here it’s just summer. ~ Saturday, August 29, 2020
Entirely Abstract: Don’t expect a statement or a story or history or any deep inner meaning. This is one block of Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood on sunny summer afternoon, in the abstract. Sometimes the abstract is more than enough. This block just feels kind of cool, for some reason, or for no reason at all. ~ Friday, August 28, 2020
Distant Drums: Stopped at a light just down the street on Sunset Boulevard and a fantastic drum solo from the second floor of the building on the right tickled the air. This is Guitar Row where all the rock stars buy their gear, or have it repaired, and there are private studios above the shops. Roll down the window. This guy was damned good, whoever he was. And that must be his big black motorcycle out front. That’s a rock star’s ride. This is a rock star’s neighborhood. Everything is startling, even the details of the old Italianate auction house on the corner. Bid on Jean Harlow’s old jewelry. And that guy kept drumming away. ~ Thursday, August 27, 2020
The Seville Tower: The La Giralda Tower at the Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences – 333 South La Cienega Boulevard at Olympic – is modeled after La Giralda, the bell tower of the Cathedral of Seville, in Spain. The first two-thirds of that is a former minaret from the Moorish period, with the top third serious Spanish Renaissance detailing. El Cid won. He did drive out the Moors. Here architect Arthur Taylor offers a precise replica of that tower, from 1927, but his sits on top of a Mission-style building, red tile roofs and low arches, which looks like it came from a Roy Rogers movie. All of this was originally the City of Beverly Hills Water Treatment Plant Number 1 – abandoned in 1976 when Beverly Hills began to purchase its water from the Los Angeles Metropolitan Water District. In March 1988 the City of Beverly Hills accepted a proposal by the Academy that the abandoned waterworks be restored to house their library and film archives, and this opened in January 1991. It’s named after Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. – the first president of the Academy. The Academy Film Archive is here, the most complete film archive in the world, along with just about every screenplay and book on film ever written, and there’s the Cecil B. DeMille Reading Room with all the biographical files. The lobby is named after Bob Hope. But really, it’s all about the tower. ~ Wednesday, August 26, 2020
Set in Stone: The late Millard Sheets was an architect, illustrator, muralist, printmaker, and he juried art exhibitions, and in 1954 he was appointed Director of Otis Art Institute. Back in the thirties he was one of fifteen artists chosen to paint murals in the Department of the Interior in Washington and he served on the executive committee of the Public Works Arts Project, the first New Deal art project. And years later, in 1952, he met Howard Ahmanson, the somewhat eccentric multimillionaire, who asked him if he’d be interested in designing a few buildings on Wilshire Boulevard for him. He was interested and beginning in 1952 designed mosaics for the offices of Ahmanson’s Home Savings of America throughout California, fifty of them, and of course he designed most of the buildings too. This is the mosaic mural at Sunset and Vine for the new bank building that replaced NBC’s 1938 Radio City. Sheets’ mural here is site-specific. This is Hollywood so there’s Greta Garbo and Bette Davis and Gary Cooper and all the rest. The bull in the fountain out front is by Paul Howard Manship, the sculptor who created the iconic big gold Prometheus in Rockefeller Center, just around the corner from Radio City Music Hall. The bull has been here since 1938, left over from this coast’s Radio City, now surrounded by more and more new glass towers. But some things in Hollywood are set in stone. ~ Tuesday, August 25, 2020
These Dog Days: It’s August, the dog days of summer. That’s when Sirius the “dog star” rises with the sun and then sets with the sun. During late July, Sirius is in conjunction with the sun. Roman astronomers had the notion that its heat added to the heat of the sun, creating a stretch of hot and nasty and thoroughly uncomfortable weather. They named this period, from twenty days before the conjunction to twenty days after, the “dog days” after the Dog Star, Sirius. And it’s that time again. Look! Dogs! This is an odd time of year. ~ Monday, August 24, 2020
The Saturday Roses: These need no explanation. It’s August. It’s hot as hell. Roses, Los Angeles, Saturday, August 22, 2020.
Quiet Gardens: There are curious things hidden in the garden shadows here in Hollywood. ~ Saturday, August 22, 2020
No Fairy Tale: August has been brutal, too damned hot to do much of anything, and now dark and steamy all day. So was the Sunset Strip. One of the billboards above it all said “This Is No Fairy Tale.” That’s about right. ~ Friday, August 21, 2020
Coffee with Bernie: On the day Joe Biden accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination as their presidential candidate, with a rip-roaring acceptance speech, coffee with Bernie Sanders seemed like a good idea, at Bernie’s Coffee Shop down on Wilshire Boulevard by the new spherical museum. This used to be Johnny’s Coffee Shop, a bit of kitsch from the late fifties, but it’s been Bernie’s place for years. There’s always hope, even on this strange corner. ~ Thursday, August 20, 2020
City One Hundred: When it’s one hundred in the shade Los Angeles is empty, and the sightlines are clear. There’s the Hotel Figueroa that was opened on August 14, 1926, by the YWCA as a safe haven for unaccompanied female travelers, who were prohibited from checking into most hotels without a male chaperone – Italian Renaissance Revival by local architect Lester Hibbard. Now it’s just hip. Across the street it’s the Friday Morning Club, designed by architects Allison and Allison, built in 1923. The Friday Morning Club was founded by the abolitionist and suffragist Caroline Severance in 1891. She was a good friend of Susan B. Anthony and this was the club’s headquarters, a place for self-improvement and study of the arts, literature and culture, and the political and social advancement of women. William Butler Yeats gave a reading here once, and then it turned into the Variety Arts Center. And down the street it’s the new Grammy Museum. The rest is glass. And no one was around. ~ Wednesday, August 19, 2020
Save Our Stages: The Troubadour down on Santa Monica Boulevard is closed. It’s shut up tight. That’s where Elton John, Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, the Eagles, the Byrds, Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Van Morrison, Buffalo Springfield, and others, established themselves – next door to Dan Tana’s where Frank Sinatra used to hang out and where the Eagles wrote “Lyin’ Eyes” – but there’s a new “Save Our Stages” mural on the plywood encasing the Troubadour. There’s hope. There’s pending legislation, the Save Our Stages Act introduced in the Senate in July, to provide Small Business Administration grants to music venues and theaters and other venues that rely on crowds in order to operate, to tide them over until crowds are possible again. That may save the Troubadour. Until then, everything is visual. ~ Monday, August 17, 2020
Increasing Intensity: An array of August roses here in Los Angeles should be displayed in order of increasing intensity. So here they are. ~ Saturday, August 15, 2020
The Jungle Out There: Another extreme heat advisory and it’s a jungle out there, here in Hollywood. ~ Saturday, August 15, 2020
All Everything: There are urgent sociopolitical messages at the corner of Melrose and Laurel in West Los Angeles, and also that mural in the manner of Joan Miró who joined the Surrealist group in Paris in 1924 and hung out with the Dada crowd, around the corner from a bit of thirties Bauhaus and whatnot. So this corner is right now, and also someplace else, from long ago. This is a bit overwhelming. Los Angeles is perpetually overloaded. ~ Friday, August 14, 2020
Net Sunlight: The light at La Cienega on the Sunset Strip – the new glass towers and strung between them “Dream Catcher” (2016) – Janet Echelman. She was named an Architectural Digest 2012 Innovator for “changing the very essence of urban spaces” and this is what she does – machine-woven polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) and ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) suspended between skyscrapers. It shifts and ripples. Perhaps it catches dreams. It did catch the odd summer light this day. ~ Thursday, August 13, 2020
The Best Color: This is Hollywood Boulevard at Schrader – fresh paint just behind the new Hustler Hollywood store just up the street from the Gay and Lesbian Center and other oddities – and the bluest of skies. This is a rather peculiar corner of Hollywood. But the colors were perfect this day. ~ Wednesday, August 12, 2020
Light on Light: These are the art galleries on Melrose Avenue at Orange Drive in bright summer sunshine, with deep shadows. The rows of curved lamps make all of this even more dramatic. They provide commentary. Summer in Los Angeles can be startling. The light is startling. ~ Tuesday, August 11, 2020
The Art of Elysium: The Hollywood Palladium opened on September 23, 1940, with a concert by Frank Sinatra and the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra. The Hollywood Palladium went dark this spring. It was the pandemic. But now, the Art of Elysium, a local nonprofit arts group, has commissioned a new “socially distant public art installation” by Shepard Fairey, filling all the windows along Sunset Boulevard. Art of Elysium founder Jennifer Howell – “August 2020 marks 23 years of the Art of Elysium’s mission and programs that are all centered around bringing the healing power of art to those who need it the most. At this moment in time, the world is in great need and in celebrating our anniversary we wanted to create a moment to honor exactly where we are. My personal belief is that art can change the society for the better much quicker than any politician or policies have been able to. Art unites. Art inspires. Art calls to action the people. Art allows us to transcend. It is an honor to have Shepard and his creativity mark 23 years of this mission.” So here it is. ~ Monday, August 10, 2020
Curbside Roses: No one walks in Los Angeles. Everyone should. There are amazing roses on every street, even on a blazing hot August afternoon. ~ Saturday, August 8, 2020
In the Shadows: The summer sun is brutal. The summer shadows are deep and cool. That’s where the lilies hide. That’s where everything hides. ~ Saturday, August 8, 2020
Late Light: The late afternoon light on Sunset Boulevard was too good to ignore. This is Sunset Boulevard two blocks west of Sunset and Vine, the old part of town, old Hollywood, with some new mixed in. ~ Friday, August 7, 2020
For Rita: The Hayworth Theatre, the performing arts center at 2511 Wilshire Boulevard, with three auditoriums and large ballroom used for rehearsals, classes, and special events, was designed in 1927 by Stiles O. Clements of the firm Morgan, Walls and Clements. Like his El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, this is extreme Spanish Colonial Revival, also called Churrigueresque. It originally opened as the Masque Theatre, a playhouse. In 1950 the building was renovated by architect Dwight Gibbs and became the Vagabond, a first-run movie theater that went out business in 1985, and then the site was occupied by an evangelical church. In 1983, the theater was restored by the Rita Hayworth Theatre Company, who renamed the space based on someone saying that it was once housed a dance studio for the family of Rita Hayworth. Maybe it did. Earlier, in 1969, the corner of the building became La Fonda de Los Camperos, a very high-end mariachi dinner theater. The whole place was designated as a cultural-historic landmark by the city of Los Angeles in 1983, and in 2013 all of this was purchased by Jenji Kohan, the creator of Netflix’s “Orange Is the New Black” and Showtime’s “Weeds” – and with her partner Christopher Noxon the two have been renovating and restoring everything. Yep, this place is amazing, but so is the neighborhood. ~ Thursday, August 6, 2020
Pacific Design: Sometimes the background becomes the foreground. The Pacific Design Center and the West Hollywood Public Library across the street are the background in the neighborhood. The locals walk by. Commuters drive by. No one pays attention to the background. No one is surprised by what is here any longer. But pause. Look. This is an extraordinary corner. ~ Wednesday, August 5, 2020
Get Used To It: Things didn’t get better. Things were always this way. We simply got used to it. And the street art really didn’t change. ~ Tuesday, August 4, 2020
Emptied Out: Hollywood is best when no one’s around. The empty office buildings on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, on a silent and empty summer afternoon, prove that. ~ Monday, August 3, 2020
Hot Roses: Get ’em while they’re hot! Get your cool roses in a Los Angeles garden on a blistering hot summer afternoon! ~ Saturday, August 1, 2020
August Heat: The month opened with a heat wave, and fires in the hills, and drama in the local gardens. ~ Saturday, August 1, 2020
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Just Above Sunset 