sha in LA

Last Remaining Seats

The Los Angeles Conservancy has released the line-up for Last Remaining Seats. Take a look here.

For those of you not in the know, every summer The Los Angeles Conservancy hosts a program of films that are shown in the historic movie palaces in Downtown Los Angeles. It takes place only on Wednesday nights, starting in June, for 6 weeks. This is a great opportunity to see these spectacular movie palaces and enjoy a classic movie as well.

If you go to one of the movies at The Orpheum, make sure you hit The Golden Gopher afterwards for a drink. It's about 2 blocks away on 8th Street between Hill and Olive.

I'm thinking about attending Cover Girl at the Pacific and volunteering for To Have and Have Not at The Alex and The Son of the Sheik at The Orpheum.

Tickets go on sale on May 6th to the general public. Be sure to get your tickets early as these movies tend to sell-out quickly. Especially Cover Girl as it will be in a theatre that is much smaller than the others.

On a side note, when I was searching for a picture to attach to this post I found what appears to be a book by the same name, Last Remaining Seats: Movie Palaces of Tinseltown. It's mainly a picture book of most of the old historic theatres that dot the landscape of Los Angeles. I think I need to purchase this....it looks amazing.

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State Building

Bingo! A fellow blogger, Eric Richarson, over at blogdowntown read my posting on urban exploration and was interested enough to do some research on the history of that particular plot of land. It turns out it's the site of the old State Building built in 1931. He researched and found wonderful historical information from the Los Angeles Times, you can read the specific info here.

With that information I went back to the Los Angeles Public Library website and the Photo Collection Database and searched for "State Building." Low and behold I found some wonderful pictures of the groundbreaking, construction, interior murals and final outcome. Here's the entire album for your viewing pleasure.

The architect was John C. Austin who was a major architect in Los Angeles at the time, having worked on numerous high profile projects that the average Joe would know about; City Hall, Griffith Observatory and the Shrine Auditorium, just to name a few.

The murals in the Assembly Hall of the State Building were done by Lucile Lloyd with Benjamin Messick and were WPA projects.

Enjoy! And once again, a big THANK YOU to Eric for unlocking this mystery for me.

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NEVER TELL

I'm back in the saddle again. After a 3-week hiatus I'm opening another show this weekend. NEVER TELL, written by James Christy Jr. and Directed by Lindsay Allbaugh. All the gory details will be listed below.

Once again, I am horrible at explaining what the show is about so I'm gonna cut and paste some nice promo stuff that others have written:

NEVER TELL is an ensemble drama that centers around two enigmatic creations: a controversial video installation that includes footage of a teen-age girl being raped and a personal profile computer program with limitless potential.. Two best friends, an art dealer and a computer programmer, are pulled in opposite directions. The art dealer who presents the installation becomes a media celebrity while the circumstances of the "rape" are questioned while the computer programmer’s life’s passion is stolen by another friend in a surreal corporate power play. Reflections of adolescent sexuality permeate throughout, as these adults learn just how much to trust their friends.

Tickets are available through plays411.com or by calling the reservation number on the postcard and paying cash at the door.

NEVER TELL
Friday & Saturday at 8pm
Sunday at 7pm
April 30th - June 5th

Elephant Theatre
6322 Santa Monica Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90038
(SOUTH side of SANTA MONICA between Cahuenga and Vine)
Reservations: (323) 962-0046

go!

urban exploration

I had to chuckle last night when I heard that Shaq has a deep thigh bruise. HA! That's nothing compared to MY deep thigh bruise. Trust me, you don't want to see pictures.

It all began about a year ago. I give tours of City Hall. The highlight of the tour is when we go up to the 27th floor observation deck and get a 360º view of Downtown. One day I noticed that across the street from City Hall there was a fenced off empty lot where some kids were skateboarding. Then I noticed that they were skateboarding on something that resembled old marble flooring. It was the footprint of a building that had been demolished. Nothing remained except the original interior marble floor. WOW. My interest was peaked.

This past Saturday afternoon, with digital camera in hand, I decided to go investigate. I climbed over this tall, spike-riddled fence rather easily. There were some skateboarders around doing their thing and I snapped a few photos. Apparently there was underground parking because you could still see the ramp leading down to the closed entrance. It was a little eerie and I wondered about the building that was originally there and when it had been demolished.

The fun part came when I tried to hop the fence to leave. Somehow I didn't have as easy of a time getting out as I did getting in and I got stuck at the top of the fence. Now mind you, there were really sharp points on this fence every 5 inches or so and one got caught on my jeans and was essentially stabbing me in the thigh. A very friendly local homeless man who was nearby came running up to help me and, with his assistance, I was able to jump to safety. He's probably seen that happen one too many times.

This morning I decided to do some photographic investigation on this building. I searced on The Los Angeles Public Library's website in the photo database and came up with this picture. This picture was taken in the 60's and the building was demolished by the mid 80's. If anyone has insight I'd love to know more information.

Now, whenever I sit down, I think fondly back to my adventures this past weekend. A word of advice to others...use the big pink blanket that you have in your trunk to lay over the spike riddled fence and prevent such injuries in the future.

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RFP

I'm a well run dry. I have no witty thoughts, no interesting ideas anymore. I think it's a temporary thing. Gotta get back in the saddle again and start investigating stuff. Until then I am taking requests for proposals. Tell me what you want me to write about. Who knows, you just may get lucky.

Until Monday, have a great weekend!

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oft overlooked museum

If you didn't know about it you'd completely miss the Museum of Neon Art, located in a non-descript building on the corner of Hope and Olympic in Downtown.

This place holds a lot of historic neon signs that once graced some of Los Angeles' historic, long gone buildings. They also show contemporary works of neon influenced art by local artists.

Also, be sure not to miss out on the "Neon Cruise." In the summer months, on Saturday nights, they lead a nighttime bus tour of neon signs throughout the greater Los Angeles and Downtown area. You ride on the top of an open-air, double-decker bus! It's a ton of fun. You get to look at the local landscape from a different perspective and walk away with a new appreciation of neon and flicker bulbs! Also, you didn't hear it from me, but if you bring a brown paper bag (BYOB/W) and share with the tour guide, the evening will be MUCH more enjoyable.

A visit to the museum is a reasonable $5. FREE for members. Neon Cruises are $45 for non-members and $35 for members. It's worth keeping this on your radar as a cool thing to show out of town guests or even for the occasional party, whenever a new exhibit opens they usually throw one hell of a shindig.

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deja vu?

So today I'm driving around, doing errands, listening to the Dodgers / Milwaukee game on the radio, thinking to myself "this seems oddly familiar." It was just last week, to the day, that I reported on the Dodgers miraculous opening day win.

There I am in the car, listening to the game...the Dodgers were down 6-0 in the 5th or something. Things didn't look good but the way these guys are playing I'm not as worried as usual. Grabowski homers! OK, that's a start.

Later on in the day I go back out to do more errands and guess what? All tied up at 6-6 and we're going to extra innings. DAMN! I listen further and as Milton Bradley comes up to the plate I mumble under my breath "how about a little home run." Well, I'm either psychic or psychotic because that's exactly what happens....HOME RUN!! We're up 8-6. Thankfully we closed it out with a win.

Never fear, next Tuesday is a night game so there's not much of a chance for a triple posting on the same subject.

Go Blue.

...to be a trojan

This past weekend was a busy one for me. My cousin, Kevin, was accepted to USC. He and his parents came out to attend a new Student Orientation. These are the folks that live in New Orleans and with whom I spent Christmas with last year. Kevin is also the bastard that beat me by a measly 3 points in the championship fantasy football game, which I am apparently still bitter about. Damn him. :)

They landed at LAX at 10am on Saturday morning. We proceeded to hang out for a bit in Venice and Santa Monica enjoying the freakiness of all that traverse the boardwalk. I like the ocean sea breeze but am much happier on the Eastside. I then proceeded to drive them across town via the grand boulevards of Wilshire and Sunset to my hip-happening pad in Los Feliz. We hung out for a few minutes then plugged on to their hotel near USC. Later on in the evening we went to the Dodgers/Padres game. Read about my experience here if you haven't already.

On Sunday I went with then to the new student orientation at USC. Wow do they have a lot of school pride there. Makes me wish I had done the whole college thing a bit differently. Although my parents are probably happy I chose the very affordable Cal State Long Bitch over a USC type of school. My first year of residency at CSULB, tuition was a mere $356 for a semester. Granted this was back in the late 80's but still. Maybe I got what I paid for though...you see, I should have been very afraid of the quality of school that I chose because my acceptance letter was printed on letterhead....upside down.

But I digress, back to orientation at USC. It was a fun filled day with tours of Annenberg School for Communications, the local area surrounding the school and the DORMS! woo woo! Community living, ain't nothing else like it.

As I stated earlier, the day made me wish I could go back and do my college years all over again...then I think, no I'm happy to have had my experience and kind of glad it's over and done with. Now I can live vicariously through Kevin! I've already told him that he needs to introduce me to all his friends and specifically requested that he try and meet some seniors and/or graduate students.

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thoughts on Dodger Stadium

Went to my first Dodger game of the season last night. Thankfully I did not serve as the usual bad luck charm and they came away with a win over the San Diego Padres and Adam Eaton who, up until last night, had the Dodgers number with a 1.something ERA over the previous 8 starts at Dodgertown.

There have been a few alterations to the stadium, most notably the insane amount of adverts all over the place. None of which inspire me to get Adelphia cable, bank at US Bank or shop at Albertsons. Also there's a flicker bulb advert strip band that runs the length of the stadium just under the Loge Boxes, similar to what's in the Staples Center to those of you familiar with the set-up there. Seating wise there are new seats located behind the 1st and 3rd base lines into outfield. It seriously cuts into the foul ball area which depending on what side of the ball you're on can be either a good or a bad thing. A caller to Dodger Talk on KFWB 980 after the game said those new seats had a horrible sight line and are a complete waste of money...$80 worth of money if you're interested in finding out on your own. No thanks, I'll stick with my nice $17 Inner Reserve seats. And finally, the increase in parking fees to $10 per car.

Love you too McBankrupt. What? Advert revenue not paying all the bills?

Remember, if you do decide to go to a game, bring in a factory sealed bottle of water (under 1 liter) and your own bag of peanuts. Splurge on the yummy, buttery Wetzels pretzels and Dodger Dogs, sit back and enjoy California Baseball.

Think Blue.

don't mind the mess

As frequent visitors can see I've been changing the look of things around here lately. Still futzing with the design and all and just today have started to go through old posts and assign categories. It will take a while but one day I shall be done.

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