Dog Day Afternoon - Downtown Los Angeles

Over 1000 people and 500 dogs attended the fourth annual Dog Day Afternoon event at The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday July 27, 2010. The event sponsored by the Cathedral and the Downtown Business Improvement District brought together the local community of dog owners, local pet supply and service vendors and adoption groups against the backdrop of the beautiful Cathedral of Los Angeles. Every dog was very well behaved with not so much as a bark from any of the dozens of breeds in attendance. The event had designated “potty” areas which were adhered to by our trusty canine friends of the proud downtown neighborhood. These furry creatures brought along their owners who were treated to Dodger Dogs (the stadium version), music, wine and a little social mingling as a reward for a job well done in providing transportation to the event. I hope to see you all next year for a new installment of Dog Day Afternoon in Los Angeles.

Echo Park, Los Angeles - 100 Years Ago

Echo Park Lake - from a family photo album - July 1910

Echo Park Picnic - from a family photo album - July 4, 1910 or 1913

Echo Park Kodachrome slide - from Madge Donohue's photo album - 1959

My friend Madge in front of her Clinton St. house, Kodachrome slide - 1959

Echo Park Lake, digital snapshot from condo across the street - 2010

On a muggy day in July of 1910 friends and family gather at the Echo Park Lake in the city of Los Angeles for an afternoon of conversation, food and celebration. Among the lotus leaves, a three legged dog swims after a stick, propelled into the lake by his owner and just as quickly, returned to him for another go around. Two old men engage in a game of checkers on an old wooden board which is hand colored with black and red squares. They pass a flask back and forth and ponder each other’s next move on the homemade checkerboard. One is an out of work carpenter that will soon be working at the Mack Sennett Studios and the other is a drifter from Muncie, Indiana. On the other side of the lake, a group of girls gather under a palm tree and softly whisper to each other about a young man that is riding his bicycle around the lake. He is but 23 years of age, with a slim build and is wearing a straw hat and the only coat he owns, a wool button-down that is much more suited for the winters of Iowa where he has recently arrived from. The whispers quickly turn to giggles as his straw hat escapes him and blows into the lake where it floats away to the center of the water and away from reach. Off in the distance the humming of the oil derricks that are rich in Echo Park can be heard, as a lone Victorian home barely in its teenage years sits atop of the hill overlooking the festivities of the day. A loud bell is rung by the matriarch of the family that has gathered at the lake this afternoon signaling that food is being served. As two dozen friends and family members make their way to the picnic area, the drifter from Indiana abruptly ends his game of checkers and roams to the site of the picnic where he politely asks to be fed, his breath smells of rye.

It's July 1910 in Echo Park and a few years later the sounds of heavy construction will dominate the neighborhood as Aimee Semple McPherson’s Angelus Temple begins to take shape across the street from the lake on Glendale Blvd. In the mid century decade, the West Coast sounds of Art Pepper’s alto saxophone could be heard in the late evening hours as he plays his horn on the porch of his Echo Park craftsman residence. About the same time, my friend Madge Donohue arrives from Oswego, Kansas and moves into a house on Clinton Street overlooking the lake where she lives alone until her death in 2004. In the early 1990s, the sights and sounds of a film crew fill the conversations at the Pioneer Market located at the intersection of Echo Park Blvd and Sunset Blvd as Allison Anders’ “Mi Vida Loca” is being filmed in the neighborhood. Today, young bohemians transplanted from all over the country line up around the block to hear live music at the popular EchoPlex music venue on Glendale Blvd. It's mid July and the summer heat has arrived.

Post Office - Charles Bukowski Slept Here

A WWII soldier on leave in front of the LA Post Office Terminal Annex, back of the photo reads "March 15, 1943"

Lost in Time - The Los Angeles Post Office Annex Downtown Los Angeles 2010

Bukowski’s bungalow in East Hollywood – I wonder if my writing would improve if I lived here ?

Charles Bukowski, a German born poet, short story author, novelist and Los Angeles High School graduate (class of 1939) is as much an icon as any creative soul of the last century. Once called the “poet laureate of the lowlife”, Bukowski wrote in an auto-biographical style using his alter-ego, Henry Chianski to portray his real life beatnik adventures of wine, women and debauchery in downtown and East Hollywood neighborhoods. His first novel, “Post Office” published in 1971 follows the story of the protagonist Henry Chianski, as he becomes a substitute mail carrier and then later a full time mail clerk at the Los Angeles Post Office Terminal Annex located on Alameda Street in downtown Los Angeles. The story echoes the author’s plunge into the world of punching a clock for a living, allowing him to pay the rent while he put pen to paper, whiskey to lips and producing some of the best literary works of a generation.

A few years ago there was a movement to give historical-cultural landmark status to Buk’s one time Hollywood bungalow located at 5124 De Longpre Ave where he lived from 1963 to 1974. “Post Office” was penned at this location in between stints of womanizing and boozing, paving the way for his 1978 novel, “Woman” which takes place at the funky bohemian Spanish bungalow court. The effort for landmark status was bitterly disputed by passionate Bukowski fans, who did not want his memory commercialized, but they eventually lost the battle and a “Bukowski Court” sign now stands on the street which is also the flagship stop of a bus tour celebrating the late poet’s haunts. I realize I am not the first to think of it but the ultimate and most ironic celebration to his life would be renaming the post office where he worked during some of his many creative peaks to the “Charles Bukowski Los Angeles Post Office Terminal Annex”.

His novel, "BarFly" was made into the 1987 film starring Mickey Rourke as the ever compelling Henry Chianski and Faye Dunaway as his drinking partner and love interest, Wanda. In the opening credits of the film you can see several dive bars that Bukowski frequented in the MacArthur Park and East Wilshire neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Many of these bars are long gone today. Look closely and you will see Buk as he sits at the bar during one of the bar scenes in his only cameo appearance.

Buk…if you are reading this somewhere, your prose continues to inspire me and can you please check my grammar and spelling, the next round is on me.

The Dodger Schedule - Then and Now

My 1976 Union Oil Dodger schedule, more than likely torn up after an aggravating defeat and then immediately taped back together.

Ricky and I - standing to the side of my Sunset Junction house on our way to a Sunday Dodger game - 1979

In the 1970s nothing entertained me more than following the Dodgers and listening to Rock N’ Roll music. My guide to navigating my pre-teen and teen social calendar during those wonderful Summers was a yearly issued Union 76 tri-fold Dodger schedule that I religiously kept in my pocket at all times, assuring me that I would never miss the start of a game.

Homework, friends, teenage rebellion and spinning records on the family’s turntable played second fiddle to listening to the great Vin Scully call the Dodger games night after night on my portable Japanese transistor radio. If the game was televised, I would have the luxury of turning down the volume on the Zenith console television for a an inning or two and play KISS and Rolling Stones records while I watched the visuals of the game and kept the score in my head. Listening to “Detroit Rock City” to the muted whack of a home run or “Cant You Hear Me Knocking” to the silent whiff of a strikeout made watching the game a unique experience.

When we got a little older, my friend Ricky P. and I would catch the 42 Sunset bus just down the street from my Sunset Junction family home and arrive at Elysian Park Ave in less time than it would take to hear The Who‘s “Wont Get Fooled Again“ on the radio. Upon exiting the bus we would gaze up at the foreboding task before us and subsequently eclipse the steep hill leading to the stadium by foot without ever breaking a sweat. After the game ended, we would review it inning by inning as we walked home on one of those cool and breezy Los Angeles nights through neighborhoods that are much different today.

Times change. Today, I still keep one of those Unocal 76 tri-fold Dodger schedules in my car at all times, but the schedule has an entirely different function for me as an adult living in the densely populated metropolis of Los Angeles. In 2010, that tri-fold Dodger schedule acts as my Summer traffic consultant advising me of the dates and start times of Dodger home games so that I can strategically make alternate driving plans around the gridlock that forms on the Golden State and Arroyo Seco Freeways and on Sunset Blvd during game days. Planning ahead and avoiding the gridlock makes my drive to the Westside to visit family and friends or my arrival at a social event in Downtown Los Angeles, EchoParkLand and SilverlakeLand more timely and enjoyable.

On any given night Dodger Stadium still seats 56,000 Angelenos much like it did when it first opened in 1962, but we live in a more congested city today than we did 35 years ago thus making the commute around Dodger Stadium before and after a game much more challenging. I am still a fan of the Dodgers much like I have been my whole life, but at the end of the day whether they win or lose, my life the next morning remains unchanged as I live, work, and play in the great Southern California landscape.

The Sunset Blvd Bowling Alley and KTLA Studios

The stylish Jack and Peggy Ament on their Honeymoon in front of the Sunset Bowling Alley - Hollywood, CA - August 1940.

Back of photo with Peggy's notes.

Longtime KTLA news anchorman, Mr. Hal Fishman

Located at 5858 Sunset Blvd in midtown Hollywood, The Sunset Bowling Alley was once known as the world’s largest bowling alley with 52 lanes to choose from and hundreds of bowling shoes to fit any size imaginable. One could bowl in a different lane every week for an entire year just to avoid the monotony amongst the happy hour social gatherings of struggling screenwriters, union gaffers, studio secretaries and sound stage runners. With its Roman columns, this massive structure was originally built in 1922 for the Warner Brothers to function as their West Coast headquarters. In 1927 this location was used as the filming site for the first “talkie“ film, The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson but when Warner Brothers acquired the First National Pictures property in 1929, Harry, Al, Jack and Sam packed it up and moved their operations from Hollywood to Burbank. The building remained unused until it was purchased in 1939 and turned into the "mother of all bowling alleys", where Jack and Peggy Ament spent part of their Honeymoon knocking down pins almost 70 years ago. In 1964 the singing cowboy Gene Autry purchased the building and made it the home of KTLA studios where it still operates to this day. Today, KTLA and KCET are the only Los Angeles broadcasters that are still based in Hollywood, California. Slowly over the decades, CBS, NBC and even ABC once located in the sleepy Franklin Hills area of Los Feliz have all moved out of the “Wood” and onto greener more suburban pastures.

If you grew up in Los Angeles in the second part of the 20th century, you probably caught the KTLA Channel 5 news at 10pm with its iconic anchorman Mr. Hal Fishman. Hal was one of the most durable and well respected broadcasters of our times delivering the news night after night for 40 plus years with his somewhat dry but very likeable delivery. Hal rarely showed emotions as broadcasters are trained to do but a few times a year at the end of one of those slow news nights, he would come out of his shell as he concluded the evening’s broadcast with the segment of the surfing chihuahua in Santa Monica or the champion who consumed 53 hot dogs at a hot dog eating contest in Malibu. Hal Fishman passed away in 2007 and of course the Los Angeles nightly news has never been the same since.

UCLA Coach John Wooden 1910 - 2010

John Wooden - 1975

When it comes to Southern California Sports figures, legends, icons and personalities there are two lists:

The First List: John Wooden

The Second List: Eveybody else.

Wrong turn at Pickfair Way ? - The Pickfair Estate Beverly Hills

Al and Catherine on vacation in "Hollywood" Feb - 1946

Pickfair - Home of Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford - 1920

For a brief moment in the summer of 1979 I sold maps to stars homes in front of the old Famous Amos Cookie establishment on Sunset Blvd. This chapter in my life lasted about three days as it was much too hot to be standing out on the sizzling concrete selling maps to tourists searching out the homes of Milton Berle, Eve Arden and Shirley Temple. As the now famous (in my blog anyway) 42 Sunset bus would pass by every 20 minutes, I would envy my dear friend Johnny “Mac” as he made his way to Santa Monica Beach for a little surf, sun and girl chasing. On what was to be my last day selling these maps, a vacationing couple from Small Town USA purchased a map and went happily on their way, only to return a couple hours later outraged that the map that I had sold them did not have the correct address for Carl Reiner, the multi-talented actor/producer/director and creator of the Dick Van Dyke Show. I quit this gig about an hour later and headed to the soft sands of Santa Monica never looking back at star chasers again.

I recently raided the vacation photo album of tourists Al and Catherine as they toured Hollywood in February of 1946. Among the many great snapshots of the sharply dressed couple and their friends in front of all the "greatest hits" of that time period; The Brown Derby, The Chinese Theater and CBS Studios, there was an odd photo of them in front of a grassy front yard at 1148 Pickfair Way. I can only assume they were searching out the famous Pickfair Estate of silent film stars Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford located at 1143 Summit Drive, just around the corner from where they were so proudly posing for the camera. Al and Catherine were probably led astray by an outdated map much like that frustrated couple I encountered back in 1979. Built by famed California Architect Charles Neff and purchased by Douglas Fairbanks in 1919, Pickfair (an amalgamation of the names of its original residents Fairbanks and Pickford) was the fairytale home of the Hollywood couple until they divorced in 1936. Over the decades the estate was slowly reduced in acreage and eventually sold to Los Angeles Lakers owner Dr. Jerry Buss and then again to actress and singer Pia Zadora who had it bulldozed to erect the monstrosity that sits their today. Only the pool and the front gate remain from the glamorous original estate.

The Famous Amos store on Sunset Blvd is long gone today, but the vending machine at my work still sells the Famous Amos cookie brand, while I am again working on maps at my job but in a much different capacity. Mary Pickford continued to live at the Pickfair Estate until she passed away that same summer of 1979 leaving her third husband Buddy Rodgers and eventually Dr. Jerry Buss to deal with the hundreds of quirky vacationing couples that would arrive every summer at the famous estate searching out a photo opportunity. Back at home, Al and Catherine’s friends and family were none the wiser of the Pickfair geographical error made that day, as they enviously flipped through that 1946 vacation photo album of their trip to La-La Land.