Remember when I thought that I recognized the house in the 1959 film The House on Haunted Hill? It turns out that the house is famous for a few reasons. Although it has appeared in a ton of films, including Bladerunner and L.A. Confidential to name but two, I “recognized” it because it looks like the Hollyhock House, which I toured with Sarah and my mom in May 2010. The Hollyhock House and Ennis House, the house from Haunted Hill, were both designed by Frank Lloyd Wright are both sited in Hollywood.

Since seeing House on Haunted Hill, I made visiting Ennis House one of my priorities when visiting Los Angeles. On the day after Christmas, my parents, Sarah, and I drove to the Hollywood Hills to see the house. Regrettably, one cannot tour the house. It was sold to a private owner in July 2011. The house needs a lot of work, but it’s not clear when the house will be open to the public once the new owner takes possession.

Visiting the house is easy with a car. Take Vermont Avenue north past Los Feliz Boulevard. Turn left on Cromwell Ave, then a quick right onto Glendower Ave. Follow the winding road up, up, and up, and then after about a quarter mile you will see the house. Mind the parking signs and take a walk around the house and, obviously, don’t disturb the adjacent properties.

After gawking at Ennis House, we drove back down the hill and stopped at Barnsdall Park to show my dad Hollyhock House because he had not seen it.

A day after we visited the Ennis and Hollyhock Houses, we stumbled on another Frank Lloyd Wright property. This was the Kundert Medical Clinic in San Luis Obispo. Unlike the other two properties, this was still in full operation. It sits along a creek on Santa Rosa Avenue, which was a main road connecting some important towns in San Luis Obispo County. After running around Hollywood looking at two (of many, many) Frank Lloyd Wright homes in Los Angeles, it was nice to find one by accident en route to our next destination.

One of the novel things about this trip was that we took the train instead of driving. We surprised everyone when we told people we met at the inn that we got there by just taking two buses. You can do it, too.

We took the 7:45 AM Pacific Surfliner from Los Angeles to San Luis Obispo. The train arrived just before 1:00 PM. We walked to the transit center, which is about five blocks away. If you take Santa Rosa Road, you can see a Frank Lloyd Wright house along the way. We had about an hour layover between our arrival in San Luis Obispo and ate lunch at Luna Red in town.

At the Transit Center, you can take the 12 bus to Morro Bay’s transit center, which takes about 20 minutes. From there, connect to the 13 bus that goes to Los Osos. The stop on Santa Maria Ave and 2nd St stops about two blocks from the inn.

Getting back is just as easy. You have to catch the 11 bus from Los Osos, which becomes the 12 bus and continues to San Luis Obispo. From there, we caught the northbound Coast Starlight. We had about an hour layover and ate lunch in town. Also, if your train is late, you can go to Meze, a wine and cheese shop, that is about a five-minute walk if you follow the rail tracks in the southbound direction.

This was my first time taking this trip with the train, and you can count me as a convert. Yes, the schedules are limited and it takes a lot more time to ride than it does to drive, but I’m on vacation. I’m not in a hurry.

The fine folks at the Loew’s Jersey in Jersey City launched their annual tribute to Halloween with a Friday night screening of the William Castle classic, The House on Haunted Hill (1956). The tribute continues tonight with separate-admission screenings of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). The latter film, a German silent expressionist masterpiece, will be screened with live organ accompaniment.

Last night’s screening had two treats for architectural nerds. The first is the building itself at the Loews Jersey. It opened in 1929 as an outpost of the MGM-Loews movie empire and at a reported cost of $2 million, it was an example of the picture palaces that not only screened movies but sought to give audiences a transformative experience. The architectural style appears a little behind the times, as it borrows heavily from Gothic, cathedral structures that were common at the turn of the century. By the 1920s, it was more common to see Art Deco as the dominant style, but aside from old Radio City Music Hall, which opened a few short years later, most movie theater architecture remained unchanged since the end of the 1910s.

The second treat came from the movie itself. Sarah and I found that the exterior of the titular house looked familiar, and very similar to the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Hollyhock House in Hollywood. Poking around the Internet Commons, I found that the exterior shots were of Ennis House, a Lloyd Wright work and has been compared to Hollyhock (below).

The house has also been used in several movies, including Blade Runner and L.A. Confidential, and it has often been the home and lair of movie villains, an assessment I remember encountering in Thom Anderson’s essay film, Los Angeles Plays Itself. It seems a bit odd that the trip to Jersey City really seem to evoke sentimental feelings to L.A. Maybe it’s time I take a trip to L.A. for more than four hours.

Perhaps it is a bad sign that Sarah and I didn’t get to ride our bikes to Montauk this year, but we are taking our first mileage run this weekend. We will be going to Seattle, by way of Los Angeles, leaving at 7:00 AM on Saturday morning and landing at JFK just 24 hours later.

I upgraded our seats to business class on the westbound JFK-LAX segment so we will have a very comfortable place to sleep and a little breakfast once airborne. Unfortunately, we won’t have the sundae bar, which is one of my favorite parts of flying United’s JFK-LAX/SFO business class service, but we will have an almost lie-flat bed. We have a long layover in Los Angeles on the outbound portion and will be having breakfast with my dad at Pann’s Restaurant near LAX. On the turnaround in Seattle, which begins about three hours after we land in Seattle, we will be having dinner with Sarah’s friend Grace at Thirteen Coins, what Sarah calls an old man restaurant near the Seattle Airport.

The inbound portion of the run will be pretty streamlined with no long connections so there won’t be much time for any more visiting. At best, we will have time to hang out at the club, get a nightcap, board our flight, and get some sleep after a long day and almost 6,900 butt-in-seat miles.

My dad had been wanting to buy a camera for a few months now since his existing point-and-shoot was insufficient for taking photos of the nephew. On the Saturday, we drove down to the Fairfax district to Samy’s Camera for a little camera shopping. He settled on the Canon EOS 60D, the kit with the 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS UD Zoom Lens and the very popular Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 prime lens. We got to try out the camera right away, taking photos of my nephew at his home in Sylmar but also in Santa Barbara, where I was interviewed for the KCSB Documentary, currently in production.

As I’ve traveled to visit my family over the last couple of years, I’ve resisted renting a car and relying on the Southland’s somewhat limited transportation system. To get to Santa Barbara, my dad and I took Amtrak from Union Station, which we had to drive to reach, to Santa Barbara, on both the commuter-like Pacific Surfliner and the Coast Starlight, akin to a more canonical passenger rail. It was a first for both of us.

The trip was also memorable because it was the first time since I left home for college that I saw my mom for two consecutive weeks. She was here for an eight-day span, from August 23 to August 31, extended because Hurricane Irene had cancelled all flights in and out of New York for an entire weekend. The following day, I boarded my flight bound for LAX, and I saw there until I left on Tuesday, September 6.

Despite begin able to fly for almost free, my mom has been hesitant to travel all the way from Los Angeles to visit. It’s understandable. Between having to work, babysitting Alex, and resting on the days in between, flying cross-country does not seem all that appealing.

Last night, mom finally arrived, and I couldn’t drive fast enough to pick her up. Unfortunately, I have to work today so she’ll be on her own in the big city today until this afternoon. But it’s not like there’s not anything to do here, and the late August weather has arrived with crisp warm days and little humidity. Is there a better time of the year?

Now if I can only get my dad to visit, too!

Sarah is a huge fan of the Amazing Race, and I like to eat so since we were going to be in Los Angeles, we signed up for this event. Sarah persuaded her friends Brooke and Ben to come to this. I was hoping that Brooke would drive, but I ended up renting a Zipcar for the occasion. I wasn’t thrilled with the after party, and neither were the other participants, but eating our way around West LA was a lot of fun. I was very pleased with Naan Stop Truck and Lardon (and its “Baco”), and I’m glad that Coolhaus has a New York truck so I can have it when I want.

The only thing that sucked was the difficulty of the challenge. I appreciate that the clues needed to be hard, but it was basically tailored for those people who participate in the other events staged by these people.

(Via Thrillist.com.)

This is a few weeks overdue, but I finally had a chance to edit and post a few photos from my early-March trip to LA. The basic premise behind that trip was to go to my nephew, Alex’s first birthday party. It was initially supposed to be at the local Shakey’s, which believe me was exciting because I miss mojo potatoes. But his parents, God bless ‘em, took itupon to themselves to do it at Alex’s maternal grandpa’s house, which needed a lot of preparation.

The party was a success. And there was an even a keg, which did not go to waste, I assure you. Alex opened about 200 presents. And everyone had plenty to eat.

At the end of it, I said “good bye” to Alex, knowing that I wasn’t going to see him again before I flew out the next day. As if he understood me, I said to him, “Bye nephew. I had a good time seeing you, and I’m glad I got to see you so much this year. I’ll try to come out around Easter, but I can’t promise that.” Sarah and my mom saw me say my goodbyes, and they both almost cried watching it.

After I got back, I have to admit that I did miss everyone. Man, I’m getting sappy in my older days.

This happened in late last year, during the Christmas–New Year’s break.

Right after Christmas, Sarah and I took a two-day trip to San Diego. We elected to take the train from Los Angeles to San Diego, figuring that it would be a little cheaper and a lot more pleasant than driving. And, certainly, it was a great way to get down to San Diego. The views from the train are pretty great, at least during the day. There’s free beverages, WiFi and power ports, if you upgrade to business class. That gave me the opportunity to go through and publish the nearly 1,000 photos I took. And it only takes about two and a half hours, which isn’t bad considering the distance.

On the return trip, we checked our bags, and sure enough, there was almost no problem. It wasn’t delayed. It didn’t take a detour to Albuquerque. But it didn’t come back in the same condition. As you can see in the picture, the handle was torn. Not completely torn, however. It was hanging on by a thread, and it didn’t take much to rip it off completely.

In our haste to catch the connecting light rail train to Little Tokyo, we didn’t notice the damage until we arrived at the hotel. Since we left the station’s premises and didn’t raise a stink, we couldn’t make a claim against Amtrak for the damage. Oh well. That’s yet another travel lesson learned.

With all the hype of the Lost series finale on May 23, Sarah and I went to Los Angeles to see the finale with 2,000 other Lost fans who packed the Orpheum Theater downtown.

The finale party was bankrolled by Global Cash Card’s founder Michael Purcell, an admittedly “crazy” Lost fan, and hosted by Jay and Jack, a father-and-son podcasting duo who host my favorite Lost podcast.

The party was held in the eighty-four year-old former vaudeville and motion picture palace, which recently underwent top-to-bottom restoration. In addition to screening the 153-minute finale of the series, Michael Emerson entertained the audience for over an hour with a very courteous question-and-answer session.

Pictures of the event are available in the gallery section of this website.