sha in LA

get to know your neighbor night in los feliz

Little did I know today at work when I took this picture that it'd be all over the internet just a few hours later.

I got home around 6:45pm and decided to take a walk up the hill. Yes, the hill that is currently engulfed in flames. I could have walked to the west but that wouldn't be adventurous so I decided to head east. At the top of Woking Way people were beginning to voluntarily evacuate. I was breathing tons of very unhealthy air at this point and had covered the highest hill I could reach so I headed down into the "flatlands" where firechasers had started to congregate.

At that point I heard there was mandatory evacuation for the top part of Commonwealth. I continued down to Los Feliz where eastward traffic was gridlocked due to traffic light outages.

All along the way people were lining the streets to get a look, amazed at how close it was getting to the residential area and how far West it was starting to spread toward the Observatory.

I came back to my place and grabbed my camera, at the same time my neighbor had just jumped up to his rooftop. I asked if he had a ladder available so I could get up there and that's the advantage point of the following picture. The teeny tiny little white dots just to the left of the fire is the Observatory.

I have a feeling we will be hearing sirens and helicopters all night long.

12:45am UPDATE: Looking out from the front of the apartment building there's no orange hue to the sky anymore...and no visible flames. That's a good sign. I do hear helicopters continually in the distance still. Hopefully this is getting under control.

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a new kind of open house

I grew up in the same house for 15 years of my life. From 3 years old until I graduated from high school and got the hell outta dodge. I always wanted to live in a different house growing up. My parents would go to various Open Houses in neighboring developments that popped up near us and I'd dream of living in one of those fancy new places with a bedroom twice the size of mine. That dream never did come true but my love of Open Houses has never waned...cut to today:

Today I had an appointment at the El Dorado for a hard hat tour of the building that's being converted into 65 luxury condominiums. I'm a big fan of seeing the construction process from beginning to end and anytime I can get into a building, legal or otherwise, I jump on the opportunity. CJ accompanied me to this appointment as we both share an abnormal fascination with this stuff.

I immediately made friends with the woman showing us around and what was supposed to be a quickie tour ended up being a thoroughly detailed walk through of both the El Dorado and the Rowan Lofts. Our heads were spinning with so much information that we gathered all our reading material when it was over and headed straight down to The Chapman to get another perspective on life.

We saw The Chapman a few months ago at the Loft Living Tour and immediately fell in deep like with the place. Wanting to know if it was a fleeting infatuation or something much more required another look. Today was our lucky day because they too were having hard hat tours. Go figure. Those hard hat tours are all the rage nowadays in Downtown apparently. We headed upstairs to "the unit" and yes, that loving feeling was still alive and kicking.

OK, so at this point of the day we've seen 3 drastically different places and have really liked them all. My brain is at maximum capacity, but wait, there's more...

CJ just moved into a place at Santee Court so of course I had to go check out the new digs. Those windows. The rooftop. Mr. Potato Head. One word...envious.

And if all that wasn't enough to put us at the pinnacle of conversion euphoria it turns out I have a good friend who is "loft sitting" at the Eastern Columbia...a few phone calls later and we ended up getting a grand tour of the pool deck and a unit on the 3rd floor. 14 foot ceilings (3rd and top floor only) and beautifully decorated, it was a stunning building inside and out.

What was going to be just a quick look at a loft construction site ended up being a wildly fantastic adventure in a multitude of residential buildings. Kinda similar to driving around looking at Open Houses but with a slightly different urban spin on it. I felt like a kid again.

No pictures for the masses, they're all locked up in my brain.

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cavorting at canters

A few weeks ago I spent one of those classic late night/early mornings at Canters with some good friends. Experimentation took place with a borrowed digital camera.

There's something magical about that damn ceiling. I want it in my living space. I never tire of it. It makes me happy. Here's a unique perspective of it....the digital camera I used has a feature where it takes one selected color and focuses on that while muting the others:

And then there's the mustard...

Gotta love the Beaver Sweet Hot Mustard that's Tangy and Made with Honey.

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Bridge Walk recap

15 people and 1 doggie set out to walk 6 of the Los Angeles River Bridges totaling 7 miles…9 people finished the endeavor. That’s advanced math and it took me 2 days to calculate all that in my head.

[The gang, minus two...one's taking the picture. Thanks Ed! And one cut out before 4th Street Bridge. ]

We all gathered at noon on Sunday at Union Station and were eager to begin the adventure. I came prepared with some information for the walkers on Merrill Butler, the City Engineer responsible for most of the Bridges we were about to ascend, and Eric was loaned a book which contained other various information on each Bridge that he shared with the group at appropriate points along the route. Bright eyed and bushy tailed we set out for the Cesar Chavez Bridge which was the shortest of the bunch. A quick, uneventful jaunt down Mission and we were soon heading over the 1st Street Bridge back towards Downtown. This was a wonderful bridge partly due to the fact that there’s currently construction barriers set up for the impending widening of the bridge which allowed us to walk on the roadway itself. Then we walked down Santa Fe in the shadow of SCI-Arc stopping briefly at the Molino Street Lofts for a rooftop view of Downtown and the 4th Street Bridge…next up on our list.

The 4th Street Bridge was, a one walker described, “the bridge most in need of a good scrub down.” On the Boyle Heights side we stopped at a local corner market to grab refreshments and then had a pleasant walk along a stretch of Boyle that consist of lots of lovely Victorian homes as well as the Hollenbeck Park. An oasis in the city with a freeway running through it. 6th Street Bridge was next and by far the longest one of the bunch. Unfortunately the day was hazy so taking pictures of Downtown proved to be not quite as fruitful as I had wished.

The best views on all bridges were to the North and South respectively and of the various trains and graffiti that line the riverfront. Back in Downtown and after the 6th Street Bridge is where we lost a few walkers due to various reasons: a tired puppy and prior commitments. 9 of us continued down Mateo and East over the 7th Street Bridge. From here I was essentially on auto pilot, pacing the rest of the pack by about ¼ of a mile with fellow walker Larry. At that point I just wanted to get out of the hot sun and have it all be over. Seriously, what was I thinking when I put this together?

We ended the day by refueling at Royal Claytons. FYI, you’re allowed to eat fish and chips and beer without any worries about calorie intake after you’ve clocked 7 miles walking. That’s a cold, hard fact. At least in my mind it is…

All in all I think everyone had a good time. One person drove all the way from New Mexico for this outing and since then I’ve received a few requests to do this walk again....although I think next time I’d take out the last 2 bridges, making it a shorter walk and ultimately much more manageable on many levels. Hollenbeck Park could be explored in more detail as well in a shortened version.

There were a handful of local bloggers that attended and have since posted words and pictures from the event: Melanie at Daily Guilt, Ed from View From A Loft, Scott from Go For Locations and Penny from Penny's Playhouse.

My pictures can be seen here.

It’s only a matter of time before I create some other crazy urban exploration adventure…and to think, this all wouldn’t have come about if it weren’t for that darn Wilshire Walk. Thanks Mike.

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