
A couple of weeks after I moved to Los Angeles I met up with a friend of a friend whom I knew casually back in New York. She had moved here a few months prior. Upon spotting me she threw her…
Legendary Los Angeles Irish bar/restaurant Tom Bergin’s abruptly announced Wednesday night that it is closing its doors for good on Sunday. How is this possible? Without giving a reason for the closure, the restaurant posted on its Facebook page: We…
This photo popped up on the fine Facebook page Mid Century Modern and Historical Los Angeles in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s and I just needed to share it because I had never seen it before. It depicts the beautiful…
LACMA is set to reveal its grand plan next week to destroy the original three classic mid-century buildings and replace them with a self-described “ink blot.” The museum gave a sneak peak to the Los Angeles Times, and while it’s…
Did you ever want to live like an ultra rich celebrity for a day and lounge on their luxurious Malibu beaches only to find that beach access was restricted, under the guise that they are private? Well, they are not…
Los Angeles elected a new mayor on Tuesday — Eric Garcetti, by a 54-46 margin over Wendy Greuel. But if the appallingly low voter turnout numbers are any indication, odds are you couldn’t care less. Around 19{12171f546f383b1da81aa82b1e35665b3c81186ec331252ad3a3d17392a193cf} of the city’s…
A few years ago a so called “starchitect” proposed a dramatic, drastic plan for LACMA — knock down everything and start new. The scheme was ultimately defeated with help from preservationists who were determined to save LACMA’s original buildings. Now…
I think it is great that a bicycling wave is hitting Los Angeles; after all, our weather is perfect for year-round cycling as a way of commuting. The city has responded by installing miles and miles of bike lanes. However,…
So I was out of town when, with the flick of a switch a couple of weeks ago, Mayor Villaraigosa allegedly synced every traffic light in our fair city. My first reaction was “I’ll believe it when I seen it.”…
It is a sad day in the Los Angeles sports world — Lakers owner Jerry Buss has died. Buss died Monday morning at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he was being treated for cancer. He was 80 years old. Buss bought…
When I first moved to Los Angeles I was waiting on a corner to cross the street when the light turned green, but the crosswalk signal did not. I waited, figured it was a delayed walk signal. Much to my…
I don’t venture into the Valley very often; I mean, what’s there to see? But I did go on Friday to pay my respects to Henry’s Tacos, which is set to close on December 31. Henry’s and its Googie sign…
The boulder at the center of LACMA’s “Levitated Mass” was billed as the largest thing transported since, like, medieval times or whatever they said. At 340-tons it is indestructible. Unless it rains a little, of course. Would-be visitors to the…
Megabus and its insanely low fares are back in Los Angeles. Now you will be able to get to Las Vegas or San Francisco for just one dollar. Megabus was dubbed “megabust” during its first incarnation in the Southland in…
When you are booking one of those $9 Spirit Airlines flights from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, you can’t pick your seat unless you want to pay an additional $5. I refuse to do this for moral reasons (read, cheap),…
With all the momentum gaining towards construction of an NFL stadium in Downtown Los Angeles, the league is now saying it prefers Dodger Stadium as the ideal home for one or two football teams. CBSSports.com reports that at a league…
Here’s one intersection to avoid — 6th Street and Fairfax, specifically if you are going East on 6th. It is a nightmare. A few years ago apparently as part of The Grove Traffic Mitigation Plan, the city installed a short median…
I have made no secret on this site that I not a fan of the new buildings at LACMA — they are not bad, but they are uninspired, in my opinion. The more I see them the more my opinion…
There has been much hand-wringing over the past week or so after it was announced that AEG would be put up for sale. People fear that it could jeopardize the effort to bring the NFL back to Los Angeles. I…
There will be thousands of photos out there of the space shuttle Endeavour as it passed over Los Angeles on Friday. Here are a few from the vantage point of my balcony:
I have raved about the Culver City Steps several times in these pages. I was back there last weekend and I realized that something major is missing — a crosswalk. There is plenty of street parking on Jefferson, but you…
In the fall of 2010, LACMA opened the Resnick Exhibition Pavilion, complete with a lush lawn behind it. Just a few short months later, crews began ripping up the lawn to prepare for the arrival of Levitated Mass. It was…
I paid a visit to Downtown’s new Grand Park on Saturday, and it definitely lives up to its name. It is brilliantly conceived and executed and is a welcome addition to the burgeoning Downtown scene. The park is a 12-acre…
I have written before about the Culver City Steps. In addition to a good workout, you get sweeping views of the entire city.
In my six-plus years in Los Angeles I have pondered the question of mass transit in the city — a problem city officials have been working on for decades now. They have decided that more mass transit is the answer.…
So I’ve walked under the giant rock at LACMA several times and I’ve run past it every day for the past couple of weeks. I know you’ve been waiting with bated breath, and now my verdict is in: Meh. I…
On Friday the California state Senate approved $8 billion to fund the first segment of the bullet train from Southern California to San Francisco. “I think what we did today is going to be seen over many years as a…
I have a soft spot for this view. When I first moved to Los Angeles I lived across the street from Pan Pacific Park, and during my first run in the park I turned a corner on a path and…
I recently ventured into the Valley (for a former New Yorker, that’s like going to New Jersey!) to check out the Joseph Eichler tract of houses in Granada Hills. Eichler was a developer who had a taste for modern architecture.…
While people debate the merits of LACMA’s giant “Levitated Mass” rock (Is it art? It sits on metal shelves — it’s not levitating at all! $10 million for this?), I will throw one more question into the equation — why…
Decades in the making (apparently), the giant rock at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is now open to the public. Dozens of people were walking under the suspended 340-ton boulder at about noon Sunday, an hour after it…
It is rare that I am in rush hour traffic, but I found myself driving back from Santa Monica at about 3:30 one recent afternoon. The 10 was already jammed when I tried to get on at Lincoln, so I…
I don’t care what anybody says — Los Angeles is a beautiful city. Critics say there are too many billboards and too many parking lots, but we know the truth about our town. Because the city has elevation in places,…
The Trader Joe’s/Mendocino Farms complex on Fairfax and 3rd opened a few weeks ago. They did a really nice job. But… Let’s get to the positives first. They are really nice buildings — kind of mid century looking, the colors…
While writing about parking issues in the past I have quoted excerpts I found online from the book “The High Cost of Free Parking” by Donald Shoup, disagreeing with virtually everything he has to say. Shoup seems to think free…
Longtime Los Angeles resident and legendary science fiction writer Ray Bradbury died Tuesday night at his home in the city. He was 91. Bradbury moved to Los Angeles with his family in 1934 when he was 13 years old, and…
I nominate this building as the ugliest building in Los Angeles. This monstrosity sits on Wilshire Blvd., just west of Fairfax. If features lovely black permanent scaffolding. I guess they assumed the building would always need constant work. Then there…
This is one of those stories you think has to be a joke, but then it turns out it is all too real — superstar boxer Manny Pacquiao has been banned from stepping foot into The Grove because of anti-gay…
The board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority on Thursday approved the final environmental impact report for the first 3.9 miles of what used to be called the “Subway to the Sea” but what is now called the Westside Subway Extension…
LACMA flung open its doors on Saturday for the final weekend of Pacific Standard Time. It’s entry into the massive 60+ museum and gallery show was called “California Design 1930-1965: Living in a Modern Way,” featuring mid-century furniture, artifacts, photos,…
The group headed by Lakers legend Magic Johnson has been chosen to buy the Dodgers, multiple reports said Tuesday night. Guggenheim Partners — headed by Johnson and long-time baseball executive Stan Kasten — will reportedly pay $2 billion for the…
Under the cover of darkness early Saturday morning, a giant rig carrying an equally giant rock finally made its way to LACMA — only seven months behind schedule; not bad by Los Angeles standards. And in a few (alleged) short…
It’s official — St. Patrick’s Day boozers will not get to do their drinking at the venerable Irish pub Tom Bergin’s. Renovations are taking far longer than anyone expected, so for the first time in three quarters of a century,…
So this weekend I decided it was time to upgrade my sheets and towels (long past time actually, as my fraying bath towel could attest). That left me with the problem of what to do with my old stuff. I…
A really cool sculpture is on display at LACMA that presents one possible future of Los Angeles. It features moving cars and everything! If you can’t make it down to the museum, here is a video of it:
After a more than six-month delay, the giant boulder that will be the centerpiece of a likely very permanent art installation at LACMA began its journey to the museum Tuesday night. The 21-foot high, 340-ton boulder that has spent the…
Way back when, when they decided for better or for worse that the car would be king in Los Angeles, the need arose for places to clean the smoggy filth off of those cars. As was the style in the…
Can’t get a dinner reservation for Valentine’s Day? Then grab your lucky date by the hand and run, don’t walk, to Five Guys Burgers at 5550 Wilshire. Sources tell I Love Los Angeles, But… that the burger joint will have…
One of my pet peeves about our fair city are all of the varying parking restrictions around town. I have written in the past that something needs to be done about them — I think they are anti-business; people need…
Last night I spent my seventh New Year’s Eve here in sunny Los Angeles, and my mind is still boggled by the fact that there is no public celebration anywhere in town. New York City has the famous ball drop…
Where have I been?! I only noticed a couple of week’s ago that legendary Irish bar Tom Bergin’s is closed for renovations — since July! So, when will the Guinness be flowing again? Well, initially it was supposed to reopen…
There are many things about transportation in Los Angeles that are puzzling — the lack of left turn lights at major intersections, unnecessary parking restrictions, the Subway-to-the-Sea that does not reach the sea — but this sign I stumbled upon on…
If you drive around Los Angeles, and all of us who live here spend plenty of time doing that, you will see that the landscape is dotted with empty lots and abandoned buildings waiting for the wrecking ball. It is…
Where will you be spending your Thanksgiving? With family? With friends because it is just too damn expensive to fly home to see your family? Home alone with a turkey sandwich and the Dallas Cowboys? Whichever it is, it could…
It is the end of a quirky era in Los Angeles — the David House is no more. Well, the house is still there, but the 19 infamous statues that gave the Hancock Park home its name are gone. They…
So it turns out Five Guys Burgers is indeed coming to 5550 Wilshire on the Miracle Mile. I Love Los Angeles, But… reported in August that the East Coast Burger joint’s website said a restaurant there was “coming soon” and…
Just like movies have a taglines (classic example, “Weekend at Bernie’s — He’s the Life of the Party… Well, Almost), the tagline for Los Angeles should be “Out with the Old, in with the New,” and I’m not referring to…
When visitors come to Los Angeles, it is common to take them to gaze at the stars on Hollywood Blvd., or maybe take a hike to the Hollywood sign, and of course, you’ve got to take them to the beach.…
It seems that it takes years and years to build anything in Los Angeles. Are workers slower? It is hot here, after all. Is money an issue? We may or may not still be in a recession. Or is it…
About a year ago on that crazy early November day when it was 97 degrees, a friend of mine from Alaska (she nearly melted) was in town. Gazing at the Hollywood sign from my balcony, she spotted something on the…
The “good hands” people at Allstate have made official what anyone who has spent any time in Los Angeles already knows — Angelenos are among the worst drivers in the nation. The insurance company’s “America’s Best Drivers Report” released last…
I was going to stop writing about my objections to the Wilshire subway — I really had nothing more to say. I think it will cost too much precious money, will take too long to build and will not impact…
Five Guys Burgers and Fries, the hurricane and earthquake-ravaged East Coast’s attempt at being In-N-Out, is invading the turf of its inspiration, with a location in Culver City and one coming to Downtown (there were reports earlier this year that…
I was recently standing on a balcony at LACMA looking North when my friend said “Yuck, so ugly” She was referring to Park La Brea. I don’t necessarily agree with that assessment, but there is no argument that the facility’s…
I’ve made no secret on this blog that I am against the subway under Wilshire that for some reason does not reach the sea. To reiterate, I am not against public transportation; I’m just against this public transportation. People seem…
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is a travesty, architecturally speaking, that is. It is a random collection of buildings that have no relation to each other. But it wasn’t always this way, and it doesn’t have to be…
Did you check out the Gilmore Heritage Auto Show at the Farmers Market on Saturday like I suggested? If not, here are some photos. The show this year was heavy on 1950s cars –not many muscle cars which is what…
Don’t you hate it when you read about an event after it has already happened? You would have gone had you only known. Well, I’m giving you advance notice of one of my favorite annual events in Los Angeles —…
There has been a lot of buzz recently in the Los Angeles blogging world about Allison Martino’s excellent “Lost” Angeles Time Table website, which features tons of old pictures of L.A., focusing on Googie and mid-century signs and buildings. She…
How would you like to come home every day and feel like you are smack dab in the middle of the 1950s? You could if you live in the historic Mar Vista Tract in West Los Angeles. Designed by mid-century master…
There are two white skyscrapers on Miracle Mile. As a fan of architecture, one meets all of my criteria for a building that I would like, and the other has all of characteristics of a building that I would not…
Reyner Banham’s 1971 book “Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies” should be required reading for all residents of our fair city. I will write about him at length soon, but in brief, Banham was a Brit who first visited…
Until I moved to the Miracle Mile area last spring, I used to take my daily runs in Pan Pacific Park. In the fall of 2008, ground was broken on the new Holocaust museum at the north end of the…
I’ve written before about Johnie’s, the Googie masterpiece on the corner of Wilshire and Fairfax. It is one of the few mid-century coffee shops in Los Angeles that has avoided the wrecking ball. It closed its doors to diners in 2000…
How many times have you driven down a narrow one-way street here in Los Angeles when another car comes barrelling down the street towards you, you begin to pull over, but the other driver doesn’t seem to be slowing down, and…
Every wonder about the history of the Hollywood sign? Well, wonder no more:
I was at LAX recently, waiting for the shuttle bus to take me to my parking lot, waiting and waiting and waiting, watching other shuttles pass me by until mine finally came. The one thing that jumped out at me…
I found myself driving on Beachwood Drive last week when I saw a sign that read “Hollywood Sign Scenic View,” with an arrow directing me up Ledgewood Drive. I don’t drive on Beachwood very often, but I don’t remember seeing…
After living for more than four years behind the iron bars of the Palazzo West, I was very happy to be moving to a regular, less secure building on Miracle Mile, where I would actually have a relationship with the…
In this video, some actor whose name may or may not be Richard Kaufman, and who for some reason has custody of two children for the weekend, takes them and us on a tour of Los Angeles in the 1940s. It’s…
This transportation proposal is dedicated to left turns. Now, left turns are a good thing — in fact in a recent survey it was voted the second favorite turn among drivers, just trailing the venerable right turn. However, a city has to…
After five years, I would still be considered a relative newcomer to Los Angeles, so I am still discovering things that natives and long-time residents of the city have known about for years. But there are some things I’ll bet…
At 298 feet, it is dubbed “The Short Railway in the World.” But as short as it is, Angels Flight is one of the jewels of Los Angeles. The funicular downtown reopened to passengers last March, and if you haven’t…
I recently became aware of the 1988 movie “Miracle Mile.” It’s about a nuclear attack on the U.S. with our own Miracle Mile on Wilshire as ground zero. I don’t know what Hollywood has against this neighborhood. First it was bombed…
As a football fan, I am in favor of building a stadium in Los Angeles and luring a team here. I am also in favor of putting that stadium downtown next to the Staples Center rather than in the City of…
My Transportation Proposal #2 dealt with parking (you mean you didn’t read it?!). One of my issues was that parking restrictions are bad for business. I have a little parking story to illustrate that point. Last Saturday I wanted to go…
Some cool old film of Los Angeles in the 1940s, including “The Brown Derby” and shots of Hollywood Boulevard. Skip the Communist stuff at the end.
On Monday the Associated Press ran a story about the Blue Line and its dubious history of of accidents with pedestrians and vehicles. The story is a shining example of why trains, cars and people should not share the road,…
Sure the rain has been miserable, what with the mudslides and the flooding and the wet shoes. But when it all ended Wednesday afternoon, it left behind a double rainbow. The first, brighter arc of light seemed to begin at Hollywood…
So you’ve driven to where you need to go, now you just have to find a place to park. In some areas, that’s easier said than done. Since the people of Los Angeles rely on cars, for better or worse, to…
Electric street cars criss-crossed Los Angeles for decades until 1963 when the last line was retired. That ushered in an era of gridlock that exists to this day. Here is some great video of the final years of the street…
For a city that revolves around the automobile, it can be very difficult to get around town by car — and I’m not even talking about the traffic. I’m talking about decisions (or lack of them) made by our transportation…
In addition to being a great time-waster, YouTube is a treasure trove of old videos about Los Angeles. I will be featuring them from time to time. This one is a World War II era film called “Our Town Today,” highlighting…
As a guy who likes history and architecture, I love before and after photos, seeing how areas have changed over the years. I found this really great website called Yesterday LA, which promises “a tour of LA through vintage postcards.”…
One of the first things I noticed about my new Miracle Mile neighborhood when I moved here in June was all of the food trucks that lined Wilshire Boulevard at lunchtime. There were at least ten every day. It was…
A couple of years ago Los Angeles magazine held an NCAA-like bracket competition to determine what readers thought the best thing about Los Angeles was. In a brilliant marketing move, Amoeba Records basically hijacked the contest and urged people to…
As I mentioned in my previous post about a monorail system for Los Angeles, connecting the Valley to the system is crucial. I found this video that advocates building a monorail in the Los Angeles River. It sounds ridiculous, but…
Yes, monorails. I have been obsessed with monorails since I road the one at Disney World as a kid. A recent trip to Seattle convinced me that they are a feasible option for mass transit. I read somewhere that every…
After decades of debate, last week the MTA finally chose a route for the long awaited and much heralded “Subway-to-the-Sea.” One problem (well, there are many, many problems) is that the subway doesn’t go to the sea at all. It dead ends…
If you’ve stumbled onto this website and thought, “Yes! Another site to trash the crappy city that Los Angeles truly is,” then you might want to keep moving on. That is not what this site is all about. I Love…