Photo Essay: Riding Every Carousel, Long Beach Pike Edition

I first remember spotting the carousel at the Pike in Long Beach in 2013, on my way to the Aquarium of the Pacific with a friend—one who was too cool for ferris wheels and merry-go-rounds. 

 

I figured I'd get around to going back—and I'm sure I did at some point, but I also remember getting a good look at it when it wasn't operating in 2021, during Covid shutdowns. 

Photo Essay: Celebrating America's 250th Birthday with Fireworks Over the Long Beach Harbor

I felt a lot of pressure this year to have a really good Fourth of July. 

Maybe it was because of the Semiquincentennial, a.k.a. America's 250th birthday. I don't remember the Bicentennial in 1976, but it's always seemed like it was such a big deal. With that in mind, the stakes felt even higher this year than they usually do. 

Or maybe it was because of the disappointments of July 4ths past—the promise of fireworks that ended up not being all that visible, the house parties with illegal fireworks that I found more scary than thrilling, the bout with Covid in 2022, being stood up at a Ryan Adam concert in Battery Park in 2003. It all piles on, year after year, making each Independence Day even more important—and stressful—than the last. 

This year, I spent hours poring over local listings of parades and fireworks displays, looking for somewhere I'd be guaranteed a seat and a good view without having to, say, arrive super early or even camp out overnight. I wanted something festive without having to drive too far. 

And I wanted real pyrotechnics, not drones. (I understand these are harmful to wildlife and disturbing to pets and sensory-sensitive people, but I have not yet gotten over my unappeased childhood obsession with them.)

 

This year, the place to be seemed to be Long Beach—which had expanded its show to three different launch points along the harbor for America 250. Hoping to get a front seat to all three of them, I booked a boat ride with Harbor Breeze Cruises.

Photo Essay: Riding An Elevator to Hollywood Streets Too Steep to Drive On

Back in 2013, I became fascinated with a tower in the hills behind the Hollywood Bowl, after coming across it on one of Charles Fleming's Secret Stairs walks. I vowed then that someday I would ride the elevator inside that tower. 

And it's been on my bucket list ever since. 

 

Photo Essay: LACMA Parades Down Wilshire Boulevard to Celebrate New Gallery Grand Opening

OK, let's put aside the fact that I'm mad at LACMA for doing the unthinkable in 2020—demolishing its William Pereira-designed buildings of its original campus, immortalized in Ed Rucha's oil painting Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Fire. 

Pereira's Bing Theatre was absolutely lovely. I'll never forgive them for what they did. 

But I did join the museum in celebrating the grand opening of its new David Geffen Galleries, which replaced the demolished buildings and expanded the LACMA footprint to the east with a Brutalist, "floating" bridge designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, his first project in the U.S.

Capping off an all-day block party on Saturday was the first-ever—and perhaps annual—Art Parade, a collaboration between LACMA and gallery owner Jeffrey Deitch. Deitch had curated a similar Art Parade in NYC's SoHo neighborhood from 2005 to 2008, but I somehow missed it then. 

I also missed the street procession that brought Michael Heizer's Levitated Mass boulder to LACMA in 2012. So I wasn't going to skip out on this one—despite the grudge I carry. 

Can of Letters, Ben Klevay

Photo Essay: Schindler's Outer Space Architecture in Studio City, The Roxy Roth House

The Roxy Roth House by architect Rudolph M. Schindler was officially completed in 1946—but by the looks of it, it could've been done in 1964 or 2064.

 

This sculptural architectural masterwork—part of Schindler's "Space Architecture" movement—stands on a Studio City hill as though it landed there from a galaxy far, far away.

Swimming Like a Rookie at Fort MacArthur

My swimming tourism thing is nothing new. I tried a lot of different pools when I first moved to Southern California, before I got settled into a routine. And when the old West Hollywood Pool was closed and then demolished during the Covid pandemic, I was forced to find somewhere else to swim my laps (mostly because it was the only thing I wanted to do outdoors, and it wasn't safe to be indoors). 

Once the brand-new West Hollywood aquatic facility opened nearly four years ago, I got lazy and just stuck to my neighborhood. It was so easy. And nice.

But the WeHo pool was closed last week and this week for Pride celebrations—so I've been back on the road, looking for other places to take a dip. 

And today brought me to a pool that's long been on my list: the Hey Rookie Pool at Fort MacArthur.

circa 2023

The historic military pool reopened as a public pool in 2017 following a $7.1 million renovation, which repaired safety concerns that had closed and decommissioned it in 1997.

Photo Essay: Plunging Into the Biltmore Hotel's Tiled Pool Palace

I haven't written about the Biltmore Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles yet—despite having taken a tour with the Los Angeles Conservancy—because I just didn't think I had anything to add to the existing reporting.

Tichnor Brothers, Publisher, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Located opposite of Pershing Square—once Downtown LA's "Central Park"—the Beaux Arts-style hotel by Schultze and Weaver gets a lot of press coverage, and for good reason. Today, this architectural masterpiece provides luxury accommodations much as it did back in 1923, when it was the largest hotel west of Chicago.

An After-Hours Sound Bath Among the Mattresses: Retail Therapy, LA Style

"I love LA," said the woman next to me, as she gathered up her crystals and folded up her sheet. We'd slept next to each other, on two neighboring mattresses, during a sound bath conducted inside the Mattress Central store in Atwater Village. And then we went our separate ways.

 

Griffith Park Ranger Horses Partake in the Sacred Rite of Ham and Eggs

In 1925, the Los Angeles Breakfast Club was founded (as simply The Breakfast Club) by a group of staunch horsemen who took their morning canters along the bridle trails of Griffith Park every Friday morning. 

When they'd had their fill of clip and clop, they'd park their horses at the Griffith Park Riding Academy and breakfast at a horseshoe-shaped table under the shade of eucalyptus trees across the street.

The Riding Academy is gone, but Griffith Park is still open for equestrian activity, for those who prefer to saddle up rather than strapping on their hiking shoes. And The Breakfast Club is still meeting weekly—now on Wednesdays—on that same parcel of land, along a stretch of the Los Angeles River now known as Riverside Drive. (Although they did move around a bit before they could return there in 1965.)

 

I've been a member of the Los Angeles Breakfast Club since 2017—and for over nine years, my only equine experience with the club has been sitting on a sawhorse named Ham for my initiation.

 

That changed last Wednesday, when horses returned to the Shrine of Friendship—and those who'd gathered for an indoor breakfast moved the festivities outside to honor two horses of the City of Los Angeles Park Rangers - Mounted Unit.

Photo Essay: Bob Baker Marionettes' Choo Choo Revue Pulls Into the Station

Bob Baker Marionette Theater has been around for over 60 years—but it's been more than 40 years since it debuted an entirely new production. The last new show was Hooray LA from 1981.

 

That all changed this past weekend with the premiere of Choo Choo Revue.