AZUSA CANYON

If you like off-roading, seeing a little nature, 4-wheeling you probably know about Azusa Canyon. Take the 210 Freeway east to Azusa and head north. That's all. You head into the Angeles National Forest and pass the San Gabriel Dam. I've been up there a lot because I had a friend who did some 4-wheeling and had a sand rail. We stopped going there after a while because it got too crowded. But, it's the filthiest fun you'll ever have.

This picture is from my own personal archives and was taken at Azusa Canyon. There is always a little water there but right now there's a lot more water than usual, probably overflow from the damn after all the rain we had. Most times you can drive right under that bridge in the picture above. There is plenty of water everywhere and the mountains are beautiful and green, again after all the rain. It's a great time of the year to take a little drive and there are quite a few turn-offs as you head up the hill where you can stop and take pictures and more further up past the bridge where you can get out and take a look at the streams of water flowing down the mountains in the river beds.

Get out, take a drive and get some fresh air. Get out of the city and see what else Southern California has to see.

THE BEACHES

Over all, my trip this weekend to the beaches turned out to be a bit of a bust. I did get some decent pictures so I can't complain too much but I was disappointed by how much Redondo Beach Pier had changed, traffic after I left the pier was awful and it took me way too long to get down the coast, I couldn't stop at two of the beaches because of traffic and everywhere but the pier was a zoo. So, I'm taking the almost pictureless way of introducing you to the beaches down around L.A. Though these beaches are in different cites, they are all still a part of L.A. County and anyone in L.A. knows or should know where these beaches are.

REDONDO BEACH PIER - See the post below this one.

DOCKWEILER - I drove by it but didn't stop. I used to hit dockweiler beach a lot. I've always loved the beach and ladies, if you don't know the sand is like a natural pumice on your feet.

MARINA DEL REY - Marina del Rey is more about the marina than it is about a beach. It is where most of the boats are docked. Marina del Rey is mostly known for, at least by me, for the restaurants around Admiralty Way. I attended a meet 'n greet in December at The Warehouse. Great place! I drove through Marina del Rey today, thought I'd take some pics of the restaurants but that didn't work out either.

VENICE BEACH - I started to go to Venice Beach but the one street I took toward the parking lot I knew of was backed up and literally inched for four blocks. It would have made for some interesting pics because Venice is always full of interesting things, vendors and people. I was getting a headache from traffic so I opted out.

Cool! I just found a live webcam of Venice beach. Of course there's nothing going on now but check it out during the day. I will.

SANTA MONICA - When I was a kid this is where my family always went. I will always have a fondness for Santa Monica because of the fond memories. I thought I would go the the Santa Monica Pier but decided not to go. By this time I wasn't in the mood for how many people were there. I made a wrong turn and couldn't back out so I wound up having to pay $6.00 to drive through the parking lot which was half occupied by a filming crew's hundreds of trailers. I'm exaggerating...a little.

By now I'd been on the road for three hours and was a little ticked that after all this time I had not yet put my feet in sand or been near the water so I ventured down a packed Pacific Coast Highway and found a strip of the beach past the pier where the parking lot was practically empty. Eureka! My kind of place! I paid $7.00 for parking, parked, took my tennis shoes and socks off, put my earphones in, turned on my IPOD and treked across the sand with my camera.

LA BREA TAR PITS MUSEUM

The La Brea Tar Pits is known for having the largest and most diverse collection of extinct plants and animals from 10,000 to 40,00 years ago.

If you remember or saw the movie Volcano with Tommy Lee Jones, the volcano erupted near the La Brea Tar Pits which is located in the Wilshire district of Los Angeles.


There is a paleontologist lab inside of the museum where you can actually watch some of the paleongologist cleaning the fossils. They are still excavating fossils.


The pond in front of the museum, which is the tar pit, contains life size replicas of some extinct animals. It still smells of tar that trapped these animals and you can see bubbles forming on the surface. The tar preserved these bones/fossils in pristene condition.

Imagine this tar pit in the heart of Los Angeles. Stand facing the tar pit and imagine none of the buildings and none of the traffic around you - just wide open land with extinct animals roaming free. Imagine them coming to this watering hole and finding it a trap from which they can't escape. Their bones are still being excavated in the heart of this city for us to view and study.

UNIVERSAL CITY WALK

Universal City Walk or just CityWalk is like a cross between a shopping center and an amusement park without the rides. It's bright, colorful, entertaining, lots of shopping and lots of choices to eat. Of course, if you want the theme park it's there too at the end of CityWalk - Universal Studios. All wrapped up in one place is an amusement park, shopping, restaurants, nightclubs and movie theatre. It can be your daytime or evening source of entertaiment. It's great for a date or someplace you can go alone if you just feel like something to do or want to do a little shopping.

The cool thing about CityWalk is that you can take it all in or just take some of it in. Feel like a movie and something to eat? You can't really beat the surroundings for something different from the same old neighborhood movie theatre. Feel like some musical entertainment? Why not take in B.B. King's House of Blues?

It was a beautiful day in L.A. and a beautiful day to take a stroll around CityWalk with a cup of Starbucks or Coffee Bean, check out the stores, sit and have something to eat outdoors, all while a perfectly clear blue sky loomed above. It's colorful, it's lively, it's relaxing, it's definitely something to see and some place to go.

The slideshow below is a collection of my pictures of my day at CityWalk and hopefully a reason why you should plan to just get in your car, take a drive up the 110 Fwy and visit CityWalk.

The Disappearance of Hollywood

There have been stories in the news that the 138 acres around the Hollywood sign, owned by a Chicago investment group are about to be redeveloped, bulldozed and turned into luxury homes. You can click on this link to read an article in the L.A. Times website.

Supposedly these homes are not likely to obstruct the view of the Hollywood sign but it's not the point. The Hollywood sign has always been nestled in the green hills, seen for miles for as long as I can remember, a tourist attraction. It's difficult to imagine looking towards that hill and see houses around it. It's difficult to imagine that the many people who take hikes up to sit near that sign and look out at the fantastic view will no longer be able to do it because it will be surrounded by public property.

Sadly, I'm not surprised at this turn of events. Why not just tear it down, I wonder sarcastically. They've torn down practically everything else that use to be a symbol of Hollywood. If you've watched t.v. at all you're familiar with I Love Lucy and her infatuation with movie stars and their trip to Hollywood. Gone are all the places that used to be a part of Hollywood, places that in my eyes should have been kept as historical landmarks. Old Hollywood. Gone.

The Brown Derby - how could they tear that down? How could they let someone ever change it from what the original look into something pink and clownish? It was a landmark during Hollywood's golden era known for the celebrity clientel. It's nothing but a memory for many and soon no one will even know what it was, what it used to be.


The Ambassador Hotel and The Coconut Grove - once hotel and nightclub to the stars. Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in this hotel after winning the California primary. The hotel was demolished in 2006 and the only remaining part of it, The Coconut Grove club is marked to be the auditorium for a school to be built there... maybe.

Those are just two examples of the Hollywood that our city has let disappear. There are homes in historic neighborhoods in this city with rules that govern what you can and cannot do to improve the homes so that the homes remain historic and yet they've done little to preserve the historic buildings and streets of Hollywood.

When I was in high school Hollywood was the place to go on the weekend. It was great to walk the streets, hit the stores, take in a movie, check out the footprints of celebrities along the street. It's not the same. Hollywood and vine is not the same. The famous Grauman's Chinese Theatre is still there but Hollywood and the glitz and glamour of it... it's just not the same. Hollywood has disappeared. It didn't just disappear they slowly tore it down and let it go to pot.

L.A. - The Down Side

I know this is a lousy picture but I couldn't get a clear one and didn't want to have an accident but I think this picture is clear enough to make a point. The downside of living in L.A. and having so many places to go is that most of the time traffic is so bad who wants to get in it? This was at about 6:15 p.m. on a Saturday! There are too many people here, they just keep building, there's no public transportation that anyone is willing to take unless they have to, and too many people don't know how to freakin' drive!

In this picture I had just passed one of those digital road signs that told me it was going to take 30 minutes to get about 10 miles. This is every freeway in each direction, the streets are no better and then you look over at the shopping centers you pass and the parking lots are packed. All you see is wall to wall cars. On one street my sister and I sat through three signals just to get down one block and then through two more just to turn left. Five minutes to clear one block!

Even when traffic is decent there are still those clowns driving 40 miles an hour when the speed limit is 65 and they hog every lane so that traffic is backed up behind them. Even when traffic should be clear, it's not.

Every piece of vacant land is being built on - another 200 unit complex or condo complex to dump another 200 cars on the already crowded roads.

Sure, L.A. is wonderful and I admit that. But the traffic is so bad it takes forever to get anywhere and it's only getting worse! Why do people have road rage? I know why.

GRIFFITH PARK OBSERVATORY

My sister and I ventured out today and actually hit three places. The Griffith Park Observatory was one of them. My sister is three years old than me and imagine my surprise when I learned she had never been there! This was a treat for me to show it to her and I was glad I included her in my rediscover L.A. venture.

I was quite surprised to find out how many cars lined the two lane road as we neared the observatory. It was crowded and people were just out to enjoy the beautiful day. Many were just standing around the railing around the observatory or on the different floors of the observatory looking out over the wonderful view of the city.

Though it wasn't as smoggy as it sometimes is, it was still a little hazy. You could see the buidlings from Downtown L.A. but on a very clear day you can actually see the ocean. It was too bad it wasn't such a day so I could have shared such a picture with you. The wonderful thing about the observatory is that even if you chose not to go in, or you got there and found it closed, it's still a worthwhile trip just to stand atop this mountain with observatory and get about a 270 degree view of Los Angeles below. Or maybe you might choose to take one of the many hiking/walking paths that you can see below. Many people did just that today.

When you first enter the observatory the domed ceiling is really quite beautiful with paintings depicting astronomers. There are quite a few displays and things to look at but the real thrill of the observatory is to catch the shows. My sister and I decided not to do that on this trip. It was quite enough on this trip just to visit the observatory, take in the displays, enjoy the beautiful day and enjoy the view.

Can you see the Hollywood sign in the distance in the picture above? It's been in the news recently that the owners of the land around the Hollywood sign are trying to sell it for development. The city is trying to raise the money to buy it back. I think it would be a shame to take away from the sign by putting anything around it.



This is the back of the observatory. You can literally walk all the way around it to enjoy that 270 degree view.

EXPOSITION PARK - Museums. Coliseum & Sports Arena

I thought the best place to start this blog was with an area of this city that seems pretty central to me. For a short while as a teen I lived in this area. I passed it most days going to work, when I visit my sister I pass it, if you travel south on the 110/Harbor Freeway you pass it and when I attended USC it was right across the street.

Exposition Park consists of parks (of course), museums, a rose garden, The IMAX Theatre, The Coliseum, The Sports Arena, and the Los Angeles Swimming Stadium. The main picture is the entrance to the IMAX theatre on the left and the California Science Center on the right.

I finally made it to Exposition Park at about 1:00 p.m., that was after stopping at Olvera Street and driving through downtown to take a few pictures from the car. They finally kicked me out at 5:00 p.m. I had a great time because I had not been there in so long and they had definitely made architectural and display changes since I'd last been. There is still construction going on as they continue to expand and though I knew that because of this time of year there wouldn't be any roses in the rose garden it was still disappointed to see the thread-bare bushes. Still, the trees outlining the garden were beautiful just the same.

NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM

I started out at the Natural History Museum even though I had to walk through the Science Center and down the tree lined street to get to it. $9 per adult to get in on top of the $6 for parking, so far I was only out $15.00. The minute I paid and walked into the museum and saw the skeleton of the dinosaur on display a sense of nostalgia came over me and I realized how long it had really been since I'd been in that museum.


So me, my camera and my map set out on our museum adventure on the three floors of exhibits. I've got to admit that I think the Gems & Minerals exhibit was my favorite simply because they made for such great pictures. My pictures are in the slideshow below. If you notice a lack of dinosaur skeleton pictures it's because, I'm sad to report, it was closed.

CALIFORNIA SCIENCENTER



The area that changed the most for me was the California ScienCenter and they're still expanding as part of it was under construction. One side of the building is the old building. The other side by the IMAX Theatre has been "moderenized" and the interior has been completely redone. I couldn't tell you when this took place.

I didn't "play" with the exhibits so I can't give you first hand knowledge of whether or not they were fun but the place was full of kids who seemed to be having a great time and there is certain enough there to amuse and entertain while learning something in the process.


I was quite entertained by the new chicks hatching in the large incubator and the metal contraption suspended in the open between the 1st and 3rd floor which contracted and expanded like an accordion. Then there was the bicycle on the tightrope which, even though it had a safety net beneath it, you could not have got me on. There was a brave soul or two who ventured out on it as you'll see in the slidehow below.

The cost of this adventure - a donation of $5.00.

CALIFORNIA AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSEUM



My last stop was the California Afrian American Museum. I regret that after all the pictures I was able to take, we were asked not to take any photos inside of this museum because of copyright concerns. I was so impressed with the layout of the art and the art I wanted so much to be able to share my experience visually. I've provided you with the link so you can see some of the art for yourself. Please note that these the samples they have on the website are nothing compared to what art is housed inside the museum itself.

OUTSIDE THE MUSEUMS

Outside the museum are a couple of full size airplanes, one on a building and one between the walkway and the parking lot.






SPORTS ARENA & LOS ANGELES MEMORIAL COLISEUM



Then of course there is the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, historic points in Los Angeles. The Coliseum was host to two Olympic games, the most recent being in 1984. It is also home to the USC Trojan football games (USC in across the street from the Coliseum). It was also home to the Rams before they moved to Anaheim in 1980. My ninth grade graduation was held there and I attended several USC games and the track and field of the 1980 Olympics.

The Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena was at one time the home of the Los Angeles Lakers, The Los Angeles Clippers, USC Basketball and the Los Angeles Kings.