Photo Essay: Temple Isaiah, Where A Modernist Chapel Is Hidden Underneath a Giant, Brutalist Boat

Temple Isaiah in Palm Springs, California isn't just one temple—but two. 

And it's not just a synagogue—but also a Jewish Community Center, performing arts center, concert hall, and screening room for the Palm Springs Jewish Film Festival. 

Photo Essay: A Hot Time at the Date Orchard, Where Sex and God Collide

When I first started spending time in the Palm Springs area in 2009, I took a tour of Oasis Date Gardens—and I thought that was enough. 

I didn't realize how absolutely baffling and curious the nearby Shields Date Garden was. 

Photo Essay: Caddy Cars, Grocery Getters, and Marketeers at A Museum of Vintage Golf Carts

I'm almost always up for visiting any kind of car museum—and in Palm Springs last week, that meant making a stop to the National Museum of Golf Cars. 

 

Photo Essay: A Former YMCA in Pomona, California Is Getting Ready to Rise Once Again, Ahead of Its 100th Birthday (Updated for 2023)

[Last updated 11/7/23 10:06 AM PT—changed name of the new development and added link to in-progress photos.]

In 2018, I had the opportunity to explore the historic YMCA building in Pomona, California, as renovation efforts had begun to convert it into an 80,000-square-foot mixed-use space called The Village Pomona The Union on Garey. 

Postcard image: Springfield College Archives and Special Collections, Cliff Smith YMCA Postcard Collection [CC BY-NC-SA]

Four years later, the project still isn't complete—even though it was projected to open in early 2019. 

 

So, instead of waiting to do a "before and after" photo essay, I thought it was time I finally shared the "before" look. 

Photo Essay: Exploring A Little-Known Inland Stretch of the Second Transcontinental Railroad (In a Locomotive Cab)

In the 1880s, Southern Pacific Railroad led the charge in creating the nation's Second Transcontinental Railroad line—the first having been completed between the San Francisco Bay and Omaha, Nebraska in 1869, with the ceremonial "Golden Spike" (or "Last Spike") being driven at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory.

The second one was considered the "southern" one. 

By 1881, it had connected Atchison, Kansas to Los Angeles, California. And by 1883, it had connected Los Angeles to New Orleans. 

Last month, I had the chance to visit a little-known section of the second TCR—and see it from a perspective most passengers never get to experience—in the Inland Empire city of Perris, California. 

 

Photo Essay: The Happy Trails Highway Hideaway Where Roy Rogers & Dale Evans Retired From Hollywood

Roy Rogers was such a big deal in the High Desert communities of California that there used to be a museum devoted to him there—first in Apple Valley (opened 1967), then in Victorville from 1976 to 2003, when it moved to Branson, Missouri. 

It closed for good in 2009 and its items were either sold at auction or donated (like to the Autry Museum in LA).

 

A statue of his golden palomino stallion Trigger once stood outside of the California version of the museum—now relocated to the entrance of the Spirit River Center in Apple Valley. 

   

Nowadays, the only place open to the public where you can really dive into the history of Roy Rogers and his partner (in work and life) Dale Evans is the Apple Valley Inn, the hotel they leased after moving to Apple Valley in 1965. 

Photo Essay: The 91-Year-Old Bakersfield Fox Theatre Glitters Just As Brightly As In 1953

It really says something about the city of Bakersfield, California that it was, at one time, on the radar enough to receive one of the Fox theatre chain's movie palaces...

   

 ...and also that it fell off the radar enough for that palace to be left alone for over 90 years and be spared from the wrecking ball and development.

Photo Essay: America's Last Woolworth's Luncheonette Has Closed (But It's Supposed to Reopen Sometime Later) (Updated)

[Last updated 1/31/22 9:33 AM PT—The Woolworth Diner's last operating day was Sunday, January 30, 2022.]

I have some vague memory of going to a Woolworth's as a child—though perhaps only for shopping, and not for lunching. 

Indeed, there was a Woolworth's store and lunch counter on Salina Street in Downtown Syracuse that closed in 1979 (when I was 4 years old)—and the building still stands, having housed a Rite Aid pharmacy on its street level until 2018. 

But I feel a certain nostalgia for it regardless. I often feel the loss of things I don't really remember experiencing myself. 

circa 2022

So, after having visited the former Woolworth's building and restaurant in Oxnard in 2015, I didn't even think about grabbing lunch anywhere but the extant Woolworth's lunch counter when I was in Bakersfield for just a few hours in 2019. 

Photo Essay: Buck Owens' Crystal Palace, Home of the Bakersfield Sound [Updated for 2025—Closed]

[Last updated 8/12/25 11:30 AM PT—The Owens family has permanently closed the Buck Owens Crystal Palace.]

[Updated 8/29/24 12:29 PM PT—A July 3, 2024 Facebook post announced that the Buck Owens Private Foundation is listing Buck Owens Crystal Palace for sale, citing rising costs of food and labor. All events will continue as planned until a sale goes through. ] 

I explored Bakersfield twice in 2012—and then not again for nearly another 10 years. (I figure the tiki bus trip with Tonga Hut to Tiki Ko in October 2019 doesn't exactly count.)

The biggest draw for my return was Buck Owens' Crystal Palace, located right next to the historic Bakersfield sign.  

Photo Essay: Discovering 50 Years of Magic Mountain History in 9 Months' Worth of Visits

Six Flags Magic Mountain in the Santa Clarita Valley community of Valencia turned 50 years old in May 2021. 

It opened as just "Magic Mountain" on Memorial Day weekend 1971 as a joint project of Sea World, Inc. and The Newhall Land and Farming Company

Building the $20 million amusement park on the 44,000-acre Rancho San Francisco—renamed Newhall Ranch after its purchase by Henry Mayo Newhall in 1875—was a feat that the original director of engineering likened to "building an entire city" in just 70 acres.

Newhall Land and Farming company sold the park in 1979 to a company that actually knew how to operate amusement parks—Six Flags, then a Pennsylvania Railroad subsidiary. And in the decades that followed, Six Flags changed hands multiple times and even declared bankruptcy. 

But through it all, Magic Mountain has survived—and grown to 260 acres.

Today, it's known as the "Thrill Capital of the World." But I'd suspected that there might be some earlier remnants from its 50-year history—some that might be considered less thrilling by today's standards, but that would be of real historical interest to me.