LA - Skateboarding, Googie, Bernie's, And More

 

If you walk the path along Venice Beach, you'll come across the skateboard park.  

Skateboards first appeared along the beaches of Southern California, particularly Venice.  As a junior high student back then, I joined the others nailing half a roller skate to one end of a 2x4 and the other half to the other end.  We didn't have a lot of control. My street was one of the better hills.  One block to the south wasn't steep enough.  One block to the north was too steep for most.  I survived the steep one a couple of times. This was in the late 1950s and early 1960s.  You can read more about the history of skateboards from the Hermoso Beach Museum site.

Skate boarding has come a long way since then as have the places people ride them.  

Tuesday it got up to 75˚F and we spent a couple of hours at Venice Beach near the end of Rose Avenue.

Friday, when I biked down there, the fog blocked the view of the ocean from the bike trail.

 We went to the LA County Museum of Art on Thursday.  And passed this bit of graffiti on the way.  We also passed an Indian grocery store.  

This is just a part of the loooooooong spice shelf.  One of the reasons that Indian food is so good - lots of spices and thousands of years experimenting how to prepare them.  

We also passed Johnie's Coffee Shop.  It's an example of Googie architecture - but I didn't know that when I took the picture or I would have taken a better picture of the whole place.  My interest was that this coffee shop had been turned into Bernie's Coffee Shop. LAist has a January 31, 2019 story by Jessica P. Ogilvie about this transformation:

"Johnie's Coffee Shop was built in 1956 by architects Louis Armet and Eldon Davis, masters of the space-age Googie style. The restaurant came to be known for its striking design and by the 1980s, began making appearances in films like Miracle Mile, The Big Lebowski, American History X, Reservoir Dogs and City of Angels. In 1994, it was purchased by the Gold family, an entrepreneurial L.A. clan whose patriarch, David Gold, founded the 99 Cents Only Stores.

In 2013, Johnie's was designated an historic cultural monument, and for a short while, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority debated turning it into a Metro stop for the purple line."

That Metro stop is still being built kitty-corner from Johnie's/Bernie's.  The article goes on to tell the history of how it became Bernie's.  

This is at Fairfax and Wilshire.  Across the street is the old May Company department store - about 

2 1/2 blocks from where I lived as a kid.  Now it's the Academy of Motion Pictures Museum.  Fortunately the kept the historic facade of the building.  They used to have elaborate Christmas display windows right at that corner.  

We ended up checking out the Motion Picture Museum, but passing for now.  Instead we went to the Art Museum that is on the (now, there used to be a street between them) adjoining block.  But I'll save the museum for another post.  

Some of the apartment buildings on the street where I used to live.  Ours didn't have such fancy entrances.  

It was a hazy day which gave these buildings in Century City a surreal look as we drove home.  (None of the pictures in this post were edited except cropping.)

And I'm adding on this picture (below) of the LA airport.  I commented in an earlier post about the unsatisfactory taxi/Uber/Lyft parking lot that's a distance from the terminals.  The whole terminal traffic situation is beyond awful.  There are places where you can pick up arriving passengers.  But during Christmas vacation the three to four lanes are jammed.  You aren't supposed to be stopped unless you are actively picking up a passenger.  But it's near impossible to time when the car gets to the terminal to match when the passenger gets to the curb.  I pulled over at Terminal 5 with the expectation I'd move up to Terminal 6 when my daughter and family got out.  If a cop told me to move on, I could stop again at Terminal 6.  (I have been told to move on at LAX in the past, but no cops were sighted Saturday.)  If I got told to move on at Terminal 6, I'd have to go around the whole airport again.  I'm not sure what the solution is.  They're building a skytrain (which i assume will be similar to what they have in San Francisco) to get passengers out of terminal area.  I'm not sure it's just bad design.  More, just that LA's population grew so much.  They do have a target date to do something - the 2028 Olympics will be in LA.  The Metro line is also supposed to be all the way out to the airport.  The problem has been the taxis and other interests didn't want the Metro to get to the airport, I'm told.  

The airport was much easier to navigate back in 1967 when I drove a Yellow Cab out of the airport for several months between graduating from UCLA and returning to the second summer of Peace Corps training.  Those were good times - mornings at the beach playing volley ball and body surfing, evenings driving a cab.  I learned a lot about LA.  I'd never realized how many bars there were until I drove a cab.  

To the left us at this spot is the Los Angeles Airport (LAX) 'theme building."

"To truly immerse oneself in the world of Googie, a visit to the "Theme Building" at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) is an absolute must. Completed in 1961, this architectural marvel resembles a futuristic flying saucer perched upon four curving legs. With its observation deck, it was once a popular spot for locals and travelers to admire the planes taking off and landing at LAX. The Theme Building perfectly encapsulates Googie's out-of-this-world charm and stands as a testament to an era when the skies were no longer the limit."  from LA Explained Blog

I had a high school graduation dinner there with a dozen or more friends.  The restaurant is long gone.  

Taking Advantage of My Air Drop Working Again

 My phone asked me to log in with my Apple ID today.  On a whim, I tried Air Drop after and it worked.  So, in what I hope is a long window, I'll put up some pictures.  

Grow North is the farm in Mountain View where the Refugee Assistance and Immigration Service of Anchorage Catholic Social services grows food for the summer and operates a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) with once a week pick ups and sells fresh vegetables and some baked goods as well during the week.  You can't get much fresher food in Anchorage unless it's from your own garden.  

The garlic and the picture of the farm are from last week.  

This week's box includes:

• Classic cauliflower,
• Crunchy kohlrabi
• Unique malabar spinach,
• Tasty bok choi,
• And some lovely sage for the herb of the week!

From the email that CSA subscribers get:

"Malabar spinach seems like it would retain similarities to that of regular spinach. The plant uses the name spinach in it, yet the ironic part of that the two could not be more different. Malabar spinach grows on a vine, granting it the nickname of vine spinach, whereas regular spinach grows from the ground (like many leafy greens)."  

This Goose Lake as I rode by  The ducks hang out here because its's  spot where people feed them.

On a completely different bike ride, out past Taku Lake, they've had the big blue sign up much of the summer, but the little one just popped up.  If you can't read the small sign (which I'm guessing you can't) it says, "We are upgrading the skatepark!"  It also says the construction budget is $1.2 million. I know we've had inflation over the years, but really?  $1.2 million for curved concrete?  Curious how much profit the contractor, also listed as "Street Maintenance and Grindline Skate Parks LLC" is making.  I realize they may be doing more than just the skateboard park, but it would be nice if there was a watchdog group which gathered all the data on summer construction projects and evaluated how the money was spent.  

In other construction news, the ACS fiber optic team was out on Crescent in Geneva Woods today.  We're on the Lake Otis side, but all this area is getting wired.  That bright orange wire is popping up all around the neighborhoods.  

And it's mushroom season.  Here are some making appearances in my yard.

Don't have time now to research these.  The orange one is an amanita - hallucinogenic and al over Anchorage now.  It can also make you really sick.  Not planning on eating any, though I'm waiting for the King Boletes and the Shaggy Manes.  

But I have started eating the olive bread I made last night.  It came out well.  The one in the back is a dill experiment.  (We got lots of fresh dill from Grow North Farm last week.)

Meanwhile J got off the phone this evening with her long time friend (does 45 years count as long time?) who lives on the Haleakala foothills in Maui.  Her house is far from Lahaina, but there is also a fire up in that neighborhood as well and she's been evacuated and is staying with friends.  If I recall right, Maui has its share of eucalyptus trees, and their oil burns easily.  May the fire be quickly extinguished and your house survive.  

Venice Boardwalk - High Surf, Skateboarding, T-Shirts, Scooters, And A Macaw

It was a warmer, but hazier day and the recent rains seem to have stirred up the surf.

I'm not sure how high this surf was, but the people are closer (to the camera) and higher than the base of the wave, so it was a good size wave.

And then it crashed into the rocks.  There aren't a lot of rocks along this part of the beach, but they made for some dramatic splashing.

This was near the skateboard park.

We talked to this guy - Ryan.  He and three brothers, he said, had started their own clothing company.  He's the youngest.


You can see what they sell at Havet Clothing.





Back to the Boardwalk

Where to one side people were filming.  TV?  Movie?  Commercial?  Don't know.  It's a pretty busy shot, but if you look carefully, you can see a camera on the left.  There were also a couple of big screens for the lighting.  But they're not in the picture.  They seemed to be focused on the guy on the merry-go-round horse,

A guy was finger-painting, so to speak, high above us.  Is that going to be an accordion?

And on we walked  by a T-shirt shop.  If you click the image you can see the shirts better.

Those are scooters he's holding and was riding. They're ones he found that need to be recharged.  He collects them, takes them home, recharges them, and gets paid, I think he said $5 for each one.  We saw another guy riding about five scooters.  This is another piece of the scooter boom story.


And finally, before we headed home, we came across this magnificent blue macaw sitting on a railing with his caregiver.

Where Are The Steepest Ten Streets In The USA?

An LA Times columnist, Steve Lopez, answers this question in a story on the problems on Baxter Street in LA's Echo Park.  It seems that driving short cut apps like Waze are routing people onto this street and lots of people have trouble navigating it, especially when it rains.

The problem is that Baxter, with its Himalayan double dip between Allessandro Street and Echo Park Avenue, is not a normal street, and it was never meant to be a thoroughfare.
It was designed for goats, not people or cars.
Whoever built it, more than 100 years ago, must have gone on to design roller coasters. A video of a daredevil skateboarder blasting down Baxter has had nearly 1.2 million views on YouTube.
The Times has reported that Baxter ranks as the third-steepest street in Los Angeles with a 32% grade, behind 28th Street in San Pedro (33.3%) and Eldred Street in Mount Washington (33%).
Still, it’s on the list of the 10 steepest streets in the United States, seven of which are in California, and four of which are in Los Angeles, with Fargo Street in Silver Lake joining the others. Only two of the top 10 streets are in San Francisco, which is often thought of as a city of hills, and the famous Lombard Street (27% grade) doesn’t crack the list. The steepest streets in the U.S. are in Honokaa, Hawaii, (45%) and Pittsburgh, Pa. (37%).

OK, I'm embedding the skateboard video just so you can see this street.  The soundtrack is a bit raunchy so if you're showing it to little kids you probably should turn off the audio.  

Santa Monica Sunset

We spent a couple of hours at the play equipment near Santa Monica pier as Z walked the balance bars, crossed the monkey bars, climbed ropes, swang swings, and generally stretched her muscles and worked her balance.  But she didn't know she was exercising, she was just having fun.  We left as the sun was lowering over the Pacific.  (I started thinking about how to say that differently.  We know the sun doesn't lower itself, that it's the earth's rotation, not movement of the sun that causes us to move to dark in the evening.  Yet we still say rise and set.  I wonder how many people really think it's the sun moving.) (Well I googled it.  From Time:

"Does the Earth go around the sun, or does the sun go around the Earth? 

When asked that question, 1 in 4 Americans surveyed answered incorrectly. Yes, 1 in 4. In other words, a quarter of Americans do not understand one of the most fundamental principles of basic science. So that’s where we are as a society right now.
The survey, conducted by the National Science Foundation, included more than 2,200 participants in the U.S., AFP reports. It featured a nine-question quiz about physical and biological science and the average score was a 6.5."

And a bit later, from Venice.

And let me slip in this picture I took as we walked back to the car.  It's one of the murals we saw at the Skirball Saturday in the Ken Gonzales-Day exhibit.  This mural is Dogtown and having seen one of the Dogtown movies explains a bit more of the mural.  

Though having grown up in this area in the late 50's and early 60's when skateboarding was invented and we simply nailed the front and back ends of roller skates to 2X4s and zoomed down the hills (our street was perfect), I'm a little skeptical of getting background from a Chicago based movie critic.

LA Poster Edged - Comics, Costco Liquor, Burmese Halal, and Skateboards

It seemed like the comic store would like better after a Photoshop poster edge filter was applied.  And then it seemed the whole day would look better that way.  I'd note they had 20-40% off on all the graphic novels.  I'm enjoying The Last Man credited to Brian K. Vaughan, writer; Pia Guerra, penciller; José Marzán, Jr., inker on the cover, and inside Pamela Rambo, colorist, and Clem Roberts, letterer.  I'm sure it will get its own post.




The filter did enhance it the store, but the poster edge filter not obvious in this photo.







Again, it's not obvious to the average person in this shot of a couple of graphic novels.  But look close at the wood and the background.

But you should be able to notice the effect on our lunch at a Burmese/Indian Halal restaurant, called Jasmine, on Sepulveda near Washington.

The Costco liquor department had some eye-popping prices.  Maybe I'm not looking carefully in Anchorage where the liquor department is separate from the rest of the store and I don't usually go in.  In this Costco it's right in the middle of everything else.



















And this Saturday afternoon's shot at the Venice Beach Skateboard Park also seemed to be begging to be poster edged.


[As you can tell, I'm avoiding more current event posts for a bit.  Not because I don't think they're important and not because I don't feel strongly about the issues.  But it takes time to say something that everyone else isn't saying and that is also useful.  Like how to at least make Lisa Murkowski feel a tinge of guilt as she votes for the 500 plus page so called tax reform bill that she and others really won't read first that surely includes all sorts of hidden gifts and thefts will only learn about later.  Though reporters say things like "most people will get a tax cut until the middle income tax cuts expire in five years,"  what they don't say is that other costs - health care, child care, insurance, and countless other necessities - will go up and people will pay more on those things than they will gain in their tax cuts.]

A Break From The Political Stuff

Yesterday I posted some pics of the surf from Venice Pier.  The surf was up and they're worth a look of you didn't get to see that post because of all the election coverage. 

Just before I got to pier, I stopped at the skateboard plaza on Venice Beach and got these pictures.  The better camera (than my pocket Powershot) really does make a difference. 

Wheel Chairs Take Over Skateboarding Plaza At Venice Beach

I was going to ride on by the skateboard plaza, but there were lots of people, speakers and music, and flags all around, so I stopped to see what it was.

The skateboard plaza is in the background where all the people are.









Life Rolls On and Ezekiel  were sponsoring They Will Skate Again.

This Saturday July 20th from 9:00am - 4:00pm at the Venice Skate Park we're sponsoring the Life Rolls On Foundation's (LRO) annual "They Will Skate Again Shoe City PRO" event & contest. Every year we design and donate their event tee and we'll join hundreds of volunteers who come out to support the They Will Skate Again adaptive skating workshop, pro skate exhibition and adaptive skate competition (prize purse over $10,000). Featuring participants from all different levels of assisted mobility, giving everyone an opportunity to hang out, skate and compete in the park for the day. Our skate team including Derek Fukuhara, Justin Cefai & Vince Duran will be out there in donating their time along with skate legends Jay Adams, Bob Burnquist & Christian Hosoi and stars including Scott Can & Sal Masekela. Come by, say what's up and help out if you're in the neighborhood....stop by the Ezekiel Booth for games and giveaways at the interactive festival village!

I got there while they were warming up for the big events later on, but here's a bit of video of these folks taking over the Skateboard plaza.  The announcer was promising the good stuff later on, but I needed my own exercise and getting back. I know I'm supposed to put the best on in the beginning to get your attention, but I've saved the best for last. 





I'm sure YouTube will have much better stuff that people took later on, so check there.  There's an "inspirational" video that looks like from prior years at the Ezekiel link.

In the world of serendipity, I had  just posted a picture of my mom being wheeled down the ramp in front of her house.  And when I got home I was telling her there was life still to live in her wheel chair.  She gave me the look.