Tagged: Los Angeles

Kids and Trains

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Tomorrow is National Train Day. Why tomorrow? Because that’s the 143rd anniversary of the first transcontinental railroad. I had forgotten about this year’s train day except that last week, while in Los Angeles, Sarah and I took a tour of Union Station since Sarah and her dad were staying nearby. Also, I had to pickup a bunch of t-shirts to print at the American Apparel factory near downtown LA.

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One of the best parts of the visit actually had nothing to do with the tour. We took my two-year-old nephew Alex to the station to see the trains. It’s simply amazing to see how kids are drawn to trains. We took him to the passenger platform, and he was absolutely hypnotized by the locomotives. I took him inside of a Metrolink train scheduled to depart in five minutes, and he was just absorbing all the activity. As other trains arrived and departed, a few of the engineers waved at him as their trains passed by. He loved it!

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At the end of evening, my mom and I took him aboard the Metro Gold Line to ride to the next station in Little Tokyo, where I was meeting Sarah, her dad, and my dad. He was a trooper. He waved the TAP card my mom gave him and waited patiently as two northbound trains passed by our station. (In due time, I’ll teach him to read a route map. We rode the train for one station, and he loved it.) I had feared that he didn’t want to get off, but he was very well-behaved as we disembarked.

I doubt I’ll make it to Train Day events tomorrow because I’ll be doing something else that makes me feel like a kid: playing softball.

Great Seafood 20 Miles from Shore

One of the great ironies of industrialization is that some of the best seafood in Los Angeles is over 20 miles from the sea. It is in the industrial section of the Warehouse District east of downtown Los Angeles.

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Sarah read about Fisherman’s Outlet a few months ago, and we stopped by for breakfast on Saturday with her dad and my parents. It was absolutely delicious.

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We went on Saturday, and there was about a twenty-minute wait for our food. (I can imagine how much worse it is on a weekday around lunch time.) But the wait was worth it. My grilled swordfish belied the industrial setting: it was like eating at a fish shack at the beach/shore. Although I thoroughly enjoyed my swordfish, I wished I had opted for the halibut steak. No matter what I ordered, I would have been disappointed because there were so many delicious alternatives that I would have missed: fried or grilled, fish steak or shellfish, fries or rice, bisque or chowder.

Fisherman’s Outlet is at 529 S. Central Ave.

Alex Turns Two

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It’s been a busy couple of weeks for me, and I have basically abandoned this blog for the time being.

Two weeks ago, I flew to Los Angeles for Alex’s 2nd birthday. You can see some of the photos in my gallery. This year’s festivities featured a lot of the same attractions: food, beverages, lots of presents, and, of course, Alex. However, unlike last year, Sarah did not come with me, there were a few people absent, but Alex did blow out all of his candles.

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My brother and sister-in-law staged the birthday party on the day after his second birthday at a nearby park, Veteran’s Memorial Park in Sylmar. (I should note that we did go to Shakey’s the night of Alex’s actual birthday, which sated my craving for mojo potatoes.) Alex is a popular kid so there were a bunch of his and his parents’ friends at the party, in addition to some of my family. My parents, of course, were in attendance and could hardly keep away from the birthday boy, especially my mother.

I’m not sure when I’ll be back out there, but I’m hoping for another trip before the summer.

Some Frank Lloyd Wright in California

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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.

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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.

Kundert Medical Clinic, Frank Lloyd Wright

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.

Do You Know the Way to Morro Bay?

As part of our Christmas–New Year’s vacation, Sarah and I spent about a week traveling to a few spots in California. One of our stops was in Baywood Park, which is technically in Los Osos and adjacent to the Morro Bay. We stayed at the Back Bay Inn, on a friend’s recommendation, and found a comfortable inn, and our room had a great view of the bay.

View from the Back Bay Inn window

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.

Kundert Medical Clinic, Frank Lloyd Wright

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.

The Way to Morro Bay

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.

One Movie and Two Architectural Gems

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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.

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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 House on Haunted Hill

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).

Chilling at Barnsdall

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.

Our First Mileage Run

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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.

Sandwich at Thirteen Coins

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.

Labor Day Weekend

Much like I did last year for Labor Day Weekend, I had the pleasure of going to Southern California for a long weekend, which ended up for a couple of reasons a little longer than I had originally planned. The weekend was pretty relaxing, in fact, but there was a few things I got to do.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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The Amazing Gourmet Food Truck Race

Gourmet Food Truck Race

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.)

Happy Birthday, Alex!

Happy Birthday, Alex

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.