Category Archives: Los Angeles

California, Part III: Around Los Angeles

L., Los Angeles, travel,

We completed our recent California trip in and around L.A. We took the Coastal Highway (AKA Rte. 1) most of the way up from San Diego, with many beautiful views of the ocean. They remained “from afar” because it was so chilly with almost gale force winds all the way. Finally reached L.A. just in time to get caught in rush hour. (Which is not hard to do since it lasts, like, from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. most days.) But we were treated to the spectacle of the snow-capped mountains flanking downtown L.A. so it wasn’t so bad.

We’ve housed a number of Smithsonian interns over the years, and kept close some of them. Madeeha Ahmed and her family have adopted us. We stayed with Madeeha at her cozy apartment near Echo Park several days, and visited her mom’s for a delicious Pakistani-American feast one night, and had fun playing with her niece and nephew and visiting with her sisters and brother in law. Another former intern, and 2022 Festival assistant, Andrea Mayorga, invited us to Santa Clarita for an outstanding Guatemalan-American feast with her family. Needless to say, we did not lose any weight on this trip!

Along with visiting friends, eating lots of good food, and taking some walks around Echo Park and Silver Lake, we visited the new(ish) Academy of Motion Pictures Museum. The museum is located next to the Los Angeles Contemporary Museum of Art (LACMA) and not far from the La Brea Tar Pits. It’s quite large, with rotating exhibits focusing on different films which illustrate the complex business, and magic, of movie-making. (Something that I have been long fascinated by, but then who isn’t?) The Godfather exhibition brought back a lot of memories – not all good. Spoiler alert – remember the horse head in the bed?

Our trip to California all seems like a dream (a chilly and often damp one) now. Isn’t that the way with vacations?

Madeeha and Steve live the good life, sipping coffee at Woodcat on Sunset Boulevard.
Swan boat on Echo Park Lake. Note snow-capped mountains in the distance.

One of my favorite things on display at the Academy museum was this set of facial hair. A mustache for all occasions!
Of course, many more famous things are on display, like these Jack Skellington heads showing various emotions.
More hipster action from Steve and Madeeha, this time brunch at Sqirl.
Sidewalk wisdom near Silver Lake.

Spring Hopes Eternal: Visiting L.A. Landmarks While Winter Returns to D.C.

culture, Los Angeles, travel, ,

 

March is a quixotic month, offering a false sense of spring only to take it back and slap you with winter again.  It gets even more confusing if you decide to take a trip to Southern California in the middle.  When we left, all systems were go for a plus or minus March 15 peak of the famous Washington, DC Cherry Blossoms, but alas they were nipped, literally, in the bud.  We returned to snow, ice, and biting winds, huddling and shivering at the pick-up lane of Dulles airport and, once finally transported to our parked car, forced to chip ice off the windshield without an ice scraper.

Oh, cruel March.  So, transporting one’s self back to sunny 80s SoCal, if only in one’s mind, is perhaps the way to go.  One highlight of the trip was the splendid Getty Villa.  Thank goodness for eccentric ultra-rich people like J. Paul Getty who get crazy notions like reconstructing an ancient Pompeii estate in which to display his (dubiously attained?) ancient art collection.  On top of a Malibu hillside no less.

Equally philanthropic,  Griffith J. Griffiths (does it get more Welsh than that?) bequeathed L.A. and the world a temple of another sort across town.  Griffith Observatory is a temple to science, more particularly to astronomy.  With a theater named after Leonard Nimoy.  The observatory has lately been featured in the film La La Land, where Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling dance suspended in gravity and reality in the planetarium dome.  Personally, we had fun playing with the Periodic Chart exhibit, and the night sky view is stunning.

Emma and Ryan also visited the Watts Towers, and so did we on this trip.  Simon Rodia, the Italian immigrant builder of this folk art installation made of salvaged materials, was not rich and famous like Getty and Griffiths.  His legacy doesn’t sprawl for acres or add to scientific and artistic discovery.  But, it is nonetheless impressive, and an important part of the L.A. story.

It’s thawing now in D.C., and the cherry blossoms might not be a total loss.  We’ll have to get out and visit sites in our own city.  Meanwhile, the L.A. memories will keep us warm.