Top Posts of 2025

Boy, it's been a rough year. Between writing my first book, struggling to manage my celiac disease, and losing my sense of smell and trying to conquer long Covid—all with no health insurance—it's been a lot. 

I tend to thrive in chaos, but at some point I just shut down. And that's what happened after I finished writing my manuscript (while I was sick with Covid, might I add). I just couldn't do anything else.

I've slowly tried to put my apartment back together after two years of neglect. I cleaned under the bed (where my cat hides and sometimes pukes) for the first time in I don't know how long. I still have to change my windshield wipers and put a cover on my car backseat and figure out why my turntable doesn't work and sand down my built-in cutting board. 

Oh and now that I'm 50, I've got to get a pneumonia vaccine and a mammogram. And a follow-up colonoscopy. 

And a permanent job that provides benefits.

With all of this going on, I've managed to blog a little this year—much less than I'd like, and much less than what I have to blog about. Funnily enough, this year also brought some of the highest traffic I've ever had—and, for the first time, to posts that aren't solely about Southern California. 

It's nice to see my Nevada and Northern California posts getting some well-deserved attention!

In case you missed any of them, here are my top posts of 2025—featuring a little architecture, a lot of adventure, and a bit of personal sadness, too.

1. Photo Essay: Wallace Neff's Once-Affordable Bubble House Hits An Inflated Real Estate Market

 

Photo Essay: The Wizard of Oz Gets Weird at the Sphere Vegas

Speaking of The Wizard of Oz, the classic movie offered the perfect opportunity to return to the Sphere in Las Vegas. 

Because after dozens of times seeing it on television and home video (and most recently catching it on the big screen in 3D at Gardena Cinema), why not also experience it on the world's largest spherical structure with the world's largest screen?

It seemed like the perfect thing to do on Thanksgiving night—though not a holiday movie per se, but associated with the holidays after decades of TV broadcasts around the end of the year.

 

Photo Essay: A Wizard of Oz Christmas at Hotel del Coronado

One of the first places I visited when I started coming out to Southern California to visit was the Hotel del Coronado, on Coronado Island in San Diego. 

Hotel Del Coronado postcard (between 1907 and 1914), Baja California and the West Postcard Collection. MSS 235. Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego. [Public Domain]

I fell in love with San Diego right away and tried very hard to get a job there, but fate led me to Los Angeles instead. Still, I've found ways of returning to the city to the south and its grand dame of a Victorian hotel, known simply as "The Del."

   

I've eaten at the restaurant, gotten a hot shell massage in the spa, and taken the historical tour (on a gloomy day during lots of construction, so my photos aren't publishable) and the haunted Halloween tour—but the one thing I was really yearning to do was see the Christmas lights. 

Photo Essay: Christmastime at the Arboretum's Queen Anne Cottage

Of all the world-class botanic gardens in the Los Angeles area, I've probably been to the LA Arboretum the least. 

I don't really know why—be it the distance or simply the absence of a miniature train and a corpse flower. 

But one thing the Arboretum shares with its counterparts, like Descanso Gardens and The Huntington, is that it's located on the grounds of a historic estate. 

This was once the land of pioneer E.J. "Lucky" Baldwin, who came to Northern California in search of gold in 1853. He settled in Southern California in 1875, purchasing the Rancho Santa Anita and later subdividing it to create Arcadia, where the arboretum is now located.

 

Despite his wealth, Baldwin lived quite humbly in a small adobe home. But in 1885, he built a magnificent Queen Anne cottage for the entertaining of guests—and to show off how well he'd done for himself. 

Photo Essay: The Chicken Takeover of a Sweeping Googie Coffee Shop on Ventura Boulevard

I've lived in Los Angeles long enough to see quintessentially quirky Southern Californian architecture either demolished or saved by Corporate America. 

Googie landmarks like the Holiday Bowl coffee shop, Mission Hills Bowl, and Friendly Hills Lanes are now a Starbucks, a Ross Dress for Less, and a BevMo. Norm's has been threatened with a hostile takeover by Raising Cane's. 

Photo taken 2018

And to save Corky's in Sherman Oaks, a.k.a. the former Stanley Burke's and Lamplighter restaurants...

 

 

...it had to be transformed into a Chick-Fil-A. 

Photo Essay: A Station Master's Tour of LA's Monumental Train Terminal

After nearly 15 years of living in Los Angeles, you'd think I've seen everything there is to see. But I'm constantly reminded of how much more there is, hiding beneath all those layers. 

Take Union Station, for instance. I thought my "holy grail" was getting back into the bar space that had become the Streamliner Lounge—which I finally got to do during this year's TrainFest in September.

But as it turns out, this great train station had even more in store for me—revealed to me during a recent tour I took with Los Angeles Railroad Heritage Foundation (LARHF). 

 

Now, all I knew was that it was going to be led my a former station master—so it certainly would be different than the architecturally-focused Los Angeles Conservancy tour I took all the way back in 2012.

Photo Essay: Holiday Bells and Whistles at the Bellagio Conservatory

This was my fourth time spending Thanksgiving in Las Vegas on a solo trip—and after taking myself out to dinner, I decided to head to the Bellagio for the Christmas display in its Conservatory & Botanical Garden.

I'd never seen the Conservatory displays at night—and I thought it might be a little less crowded, since Vegas itself is pretty quiet on Thanksgiving. 

Photo Essay: The Life and Career of Elvis Presley, As Seen Through Graceland's Costume, Car, and Airplane Collections

It actually never really occurred to me that going to Graceland would mean more than just visiting the mansion that Elvis Presley lived in until his death in 1977. 

 

But actually there's more—a lot more—across the street, including the "Elvis: The Entertainer Career Museum."

Photo Essay: An Emotional Visit to Graceland, A Trippy Voyage Back to the 1970s

Memphis had been on my bucket list for a long time—but I kept regretting not going when I was a lot closer to it geographically while I was living in New York City. 

I couldn't fit it in during my trips to Tennessee when I flew to Knoxville for a wedding in Chattanooga in 2005 or Nashville for the Kentucky Bourbon Festival in 2007. And after moving to California in 2011, Memphis has just always felt so far. 

It was the type of trip I hadn't allowed myself to splurge on, which made it the perfect way to celebrate a milestone birthday. 

The lynchpin to my birthday trip was, of course, Graceland—the historic home of Elvis Presley from 1957 until his death in 1977. 

Photo Essay: The Memphis of Elvis, Beyond Graceland

The easy explanation for my recent Memphis trip was that I was celebrating my 50th birthday at Graceland. 

But the truth is, I went to Memphis for Elvis. All of Elvis. 

After all, most casual Elvis fans seem to segregate his career into two eras—young Elvis (à la Jailhouse Rock) and Vegas Elvis—and typically prefer the "earlier" one versus the "late" one. But my favorite Elvis era is a middle era: the '68 Comeback Special, when he was coming out of his Paramount movie career and getting back into performing live, right before he started his Las Vegas residency in 1969. 

And I have much affection for the cape-wearing, lei-laden, karate-chopping Elvis of Aloha from Hawaii, That's the Way It Is, and his final album (a live-and-studio combo) Moody Blue. 

I'd already chased all those Elvises around two states—like at the Honeymoon Hideaway and other sites around Palm Springs, and at the former International Hotel on the Vegas Strip. But now, it was time for me to finally experience what remains of The King in his longtime hometown of Memphis, Tennessee.

And that's more than just Graceland (pictured above, of which at least one photo essay is forthcoming.)