10 Below

I was all ready to run early this morning. The sun wasn't over the mountain yet, but it was light. But I foolishly checked the thermometer. And the storm door was covered in ice crystals. Maybe if it gets up to five I might go run. After three days in a row in LA, I'm itching to be out moving again.

[The details are better if you click on the picture.]

The Noodle Shop is now Yak and Yeti

[UPDATE June 2012:  Yak and Yeti now has a satellite fast food like place in the REI/Title Wave Mall. The Spenard store is still open too.]

The Spenard building that housed the old Korean Noodle Shop, a wonderful place to go, that closed a year or two ago now hosts Yak and Yeti, a new Himalayan restaurant that the ADN has already reviewed. Last night some of the Returned Peace Corps Volunteer in Anchorage met there for dinner. It's been nicely redecorated, the service was cordial, and the food good. We were warned to get there early (5pm). Good advice because by 6pm there were ten or 15 people waiting to be seated. Since we were taking up that much room ourselves, we left a little earlier than we would have.

Evening Sky Out of LA

A couple of views out the window before it got dark Friday.

Mom's January flowers

LA may have looked so ungreen when I flew in because it is ...January and lots of the trees are pretty naked. One forgets that about LA because there are so many other trees and bushes that don't lose their leaves. here's a sample or what's blooming in my mother's yard right now

Eating Indian and Bosnian in LA

I've meshed two pictures of my mom at Pradeep's Indian restaurant in a two story strip mall on Washington near Marina Del Rey. It was nice to sit out in the sun, though even with the glass shield, the breeze was a little chilly by the end of lunch. That was Wednesday.

Friday, on the way to the airport, we went to a Bosnian restaurant in another strip mall, this time on Overland near Pico. I'd found it on a blog that highlights good, interesting, little restaurants in LA.




I don't recall ever eating at a Bosnian restaurant call Aroma and it wasn't until last night at SeaTac with eating with my daughter and telling her about the Bosnian immigrant picture I'd posted that I began to wonder whether my brain had perked up at "Bosnian" because of the picture and description I'd read and posted. Any way, it was very good. And we were snuggled into a little corner with nice warming sun as a group of men nearby had a very animated conversation in what I assumed was one of Bosnia's languages. I had the Burek, sort of like a calzone made of phylo dough. Mine had spinach inside. I took one to go for my daughter.



And this doesn't really fit anywhere better than it does here. But at the 99¢ Store, they've kept all the prices at 99¢. But now instead of a dozen eggs for 99¢, you get half a dozen according to my mom.

Venice Beach Spiritual Center

This center is free. Well, if you drive you have to pay to park. But for walkers and bikers there's no charge.

This is one of the places I go in the world to remind me who I am and to get reconnected with the earth. Along this strip of California beach I learned the rhythms of the ocean and spent much of my childhood and young adulthood. The power of the these waves has as much hold on me as the mountains and forests of Alaska.

Run to Venice Beach

Just about two miles from my mom's house is Venice Beach. So here's the halfway point of my run down Rose to the beach. It's early Friday morning so all the hustle and bustle of Venice Beach - the booths, the bikes and skaters, not yet there. The rest are pictures as I complete the return trip.






This funky old neighborhood right up against one of the world great beaches - lots of sand, good surf - is still a mix of all kinds of income groups. The buildings are still mostly old. I think this neighborhood shows the positive effects of Prop 13 which froze property taxes back in 1977. While the freeze seems to have hurt infrastructure, the University, and other public programs and caused real disparity issues between people who have lived in their homes a long time and newer buyers, here it seems to have allowed people of modest means to stay in their homes while the value of their coastal property soared. If they hadn't had the freeze, many of the people here would not have been able to afford the proerty taxes as land values so close to the beach went way up.








The values have tempted a lot of people to sell and there are lots of fixed up places and totally torn down and rebuilt places. And Main Street has become a pricy shopping spot.







But the people I pass are not wealthy people by a long shot. But they do live near the beach which is a spiritual wealth. Many beach communities have no place for the people who live here and that, I think, is a positive by product of Prop. 13. I was running and I didn't feel right taking pictures of the many colorful looking folks, so you'll just have to imagine.


This new condo sign caught my eye. I'm 90% sure this is where the Pioneer Bakery used to be. There was agreat little shop that sold wonderful bread here at reasonable prices, but it was a small part of the bakery that used baked bread for the whole Pioneer Bread Company and it always smelled good here. This should be called the Pioneer Condos and they should have a little bakery - including the aroma of fresh bread - on the grounds.

[UPDATE Feb. 2012:  Here are the condos, four years later, finally getting built.

 Not sure what happened to these photos, I'll have to see if I can find them.  If not I'll delete them.]






A lot of places have just been spiffed up like this one, but the building is still relatively modest by Southern California beach standards.



Now I'm passed Lincoln and nod to this lady caring for her garden as I did the last two days and whenever I'm visiting my mom.






This whole area was swamp when I was growing up here. Just small dirt hills, among wetlands with opportunities limited only by our imaginations. In fact, Rose didn't go through then. Now it's a public golf course - certainly much better than more houses - and relatively ordinary people play golf here.




And now I'm close to Walgrove and almost home. I love the smell of the eucalyptus trees here. I've got a little bowl of leaves at home that I can sniff whenever I need a quick trip to LA.

LA was definitely warmer than here

The sun IS shining and it is above 0 F (it's 6). Let me catch up on some of the LA pictures. Flying in on Tuesday - lots of puffy white clouds but otherwise crystal clear. Here's the Pacific just off LA as we turn in to swoop over the city.









The land is covered with whipped cream clouds. A bit of beach shows through the clouds.







I was struck by how little green I could see. It was all roofs and streets from the air. Except for a couple of parks or golf courses or cemetaries.

Tree Cutting - Another Perspective

When my family moved into this house in the late 1950s, I was taller than the tree (foreground on the right of the picture with the white tape.) Now the trees make a canopy over the street and wreak havoc with the sidewalks and the driveways. The roots cause the sidewalks to lurch up in strange ways.





My parents have paid for the driveway and sidewalks to be repaired a number of times.. When the city asked my mom recently if she would give permission to have it removed, she said yes. She doesn't walk on the sidewalk any more because she's afraid of falling. Here you can see the newest bulge - it hasn't been that long since my mom had to pay for the old sidewalk to be repaired. It had sharper upthrusts and big cracks.


I have mixed feelings about this. The street has been transformed from a barren new subdivision into a tree covered oasis. But my mom's tree does seem to lean way over into the street. I suspect it makes sense to take out a few trees at a time and plant new ones that won't have quite the root problems. Let them grow, and slowly replace them all gradually. That would keep the flavor of the street, and allow for a gradual change over time. We'll see. This is the only street in the subdivision that I know of to have this particular kind of tree.





But when I came back from my run, I saw there was a sign on the tree. I guess the execution is not yet a done deal. The neighbors may have a say. (Apparently one other neighbor also agreed to have their tree cut down.)

Postponing Allen and Smith's Sentencing

[Update Sept. 5, 2010:  Someone pointed out that these links are dead.  This one seems to have both pieces still up.]

From The Anchorage Press website today:

Here's an excerpt from today's filing in Allen’s case, dated Jan. 31, 2008:

"As the court is aware, Mr. Allen has been cooperating with the government in its investigation and he continues to do so. The investigation is exceedingly complex due to a variety of issues and is ongoing. Given the substantial amount of work that remains to be done in the government's investigation, the government requests that sentencing continue to be postponed in order to give the defendant time to fully realize the benefit of his cooperation."

An accompanying story by Tony Hopfinger and Amanda Coyne reports that Anchorage Police Department spokesman Lt. Paul Honeman says they were told to call off an investigation of Bill Allen by the FBI so as not to interfere with the FBI's investigation.

"The feds said that if you go down that road, you'll compromise our investigation," Honeman said. "They said they were working an ongoing case that they couldn't tell us about."

But that conflicts with statements from the FBI. Eric Gonzales, an FBI spokesman in Anchorage, said he has heard rumors about the police investigation, but his agency knows nothing about it. "I've spoken to people here and nobody recalls us telling the police to drop an investigation," he said.

That sounds suspiciously like the kinds of denials Congress has been hearing from the Bush administration people. No one says it didn't actually happen, just that they don't recall it. How can something like telling the the APD to stop an investigation be something they 'don't recall?" The FBI and the prosecutors at the various trials last year seemed to remember every detail and now they can't recall?

The investigation itself was related to the Boehm case where the contractor was convicted of luring runaways into sex parties with crack.

I'm not sure whether there is is any fire here or not. The implication in the article seems to be that Allen was involved in more than the prosecution let on to at the Kott and Kohring trials and their attorneys should have known about it so they could have raised more questions about Allen's credibility as a witness. I'm guessing this story had a tight deadline and that explains why the story itself is not as tight as it could be.