Still Going

OK, it's a little weak to keep putting this same tree on here.  But it is a very cool tree, and I have been really busy!  Plus I'm somewhat amazed at how long it has remained colorful.

My New Year's resolution is to go back to updating this every day.  We will see how that goes...

Here are some of this tree's other neighbors:

After That

After

Before

Mt. Wilson Trail

I was going to make Mt. Wilson Trail the next group hike.  Very glad I did not because I forgot how STEEP it is.  This is the picture I took of the map at the trail's start.

It is a pretty interesting trail, though, so let's hear the story.

Firstly, this trail was created by Gabrielino Indians (originally called Tongva Indians) hundreds, maybe thousands of years ago.

A fellow named Wilson was looking for lumber, and developed and expanded this trail in his quest for it.   This Wilson was actually the second mayor of Los Angeles, which at the time had about 1500 people.

Halfway up he built a "halfway" house which was a sort of rest stop.  At this spot was a very old oak tree.  It's still there, and is now 500 years old.  I think this may be it:

When the hiking craze (circa 1900) began, this became a resort that people hiked to, complete with tennis courts, a restaurant....  The stop was then known as Old Orchard Camp, because a number of fruit trees were planted there.

Note this is from an old book.  The dance pavilion definitely does not "still exist today." In fact the picture above this (that I took) shows the rock foundations, which are all that remains.  The campground fell out of favor in the second World War once Angeles Crest was built and it was easier to just drive up the mountain.  I think the 500 year old oak is visible on the right, I am not sure.

But getting back to 1900, around this time, a race began, the second oldest trail race in the country.  (The oldest is Dipsea in Marin.)  This race follows the insanely steep trail up to this halfway point, which is 3.5 miles up.   You then have to touch the 500 year old oak, then run back down.

Even hiking this trail, you feel you will slip on the sandy surface.  I cannot imagine running down it.

However, people were even running up and down it the day I visited.

The race is still held today.  Here are a couple pictures:

Of course they hold it in May so it will be hot on the shadeless trail!

Here are some people further up the trail.  This was just after the big fire a few years back.

These days the trail chaparral has grown back, and much was never touched by the fire.   There is often great foliage along the trail, and in the springtime, waterfalls.  This trip I saw some foliage, but it was a little early.

If you're hiking it for the first time, just getting to this spot, First Water, is hard.  This is 1.5 miles up.  It's called First Water because it's the first spot where you'll cross the stream.

If you keep hiking the trail, you get all the way to Mt. Wilson, where there is often snow. You have to devote the entire day, and be prepared to shift from 70 degree weather to 40 or 50 degree weather.  I've never done this but will someday.

When you finish, you can get some ravioli and chicken at Lizzie's Trail Inn at the base of the trail.  That is, if you have a time machine.  It's no longer a restaurant, but a museum.

The small town feel of Sierra Madre is evident with these avocados being sold on the honor system.

To finish off, here are the winners of the first trail race in 1908.

Freshly Installed Palm Trees

Did Not Make It Far

My quest to not know who won the election did not make it far.  At 9pm, I accidentally typed a "y" into the search bar, Yahoo News came up, and I saw the winner....

Election Challenge

Never a fan of the Superbowl, one year I noticed that a month had gone by and I still did not really know who had won the Superbowl, nor who the two teams were.

From then on, it became a personal contest to see how long I could go without knowing who had won the Superbowl.

One year I went an entire year - essentially never finding out.

Of course, this was pre-internet, and today you can simply be pumping gas and be bombarded by some kind of unwanted news from a tiny monitor.  Just checking your email is dangerous.

This year, I am of course dreading election coverage.  Just tell me who won tomorrow, thanks.

So I've decided to see how long I can go before I know who the next president is.

Of course, I may be tempted to watch the Colbert Report tonight, but......

The Last Bookstore

So here is the last bookstore.  It's in downtown LA near Pershing Square.

Inside they are very creative with their displays.

There are a large number of used books - I think almost all used.

This is a kind of tunnel made out of books.

Some of the books in the tunnel.

Some of the books upstairs are organized by color.  There are red, white, and yellow sections too.  The subjects, authors, and titles are all mixed - but the colors are all the same.

The Last Record Store

Aron's, Platterpuss, Rhino, Penny Lane, Second Chance Vinyl, Bleeker Bob's, House of Records, Moby Disc, Tower, Poo-Bah, Rockaway, and Record Surplus.

These were the places to pick up used records back in the day.  You used to be able to drive around town on a Saturday afternoon and scoop up all kinds of records for $1.98 each.

Of that list, only the last three remain.  Of course, the best store of all time, Amoeba, was added to the mix about 10 years ago.

What's happened since then is kind of odd.  99 percent of the population would never play a record, or even a CD.  But the 1 percent that likes records has decided they are valuable, and thus a good quality copy of a vintage record is no longer $1.98, but $20 or even more.

But it's still fun to go around and scoop up records.  They still sound warmer than any mp3 or flac you're going to buy, you get the sleeve and the artwork, and of course the pride of ownership.   You just have to be more selective since it's going to cost you.

I was driving down Santa Monica Blvd in Santa Monica and noticed that Record Surplus, long a fixture on Pico, had moved!   I recognized this graphic of an exalted guy playing records from the old shop:

For years, they had the "last record store" tagline, and it actually came close (before Amoeba) to them actually being the last one.  They were never the best spot (they had a lot of worn down records and lacked the quality selection of Rhino or Poo-Bah) but they had turntables and it was easy to park.   Plus it was kind of massive in there.

Well the new Record Surplus is much, much smaller.  It's cool it's still there, but kind of depressing that it's so diminished.

I did, though, pick out three pretty good LPs, and they were less than I would have paid at Amoeba.  A Prince record (too risque a cover to put on here), a Duke Ellington album, and a Buddy Holly record.

All three sounded great - especially the Prince record which had amazing fidelity and appeared to be hardly played.  

Sound Cover Day

While 100.3 The Sound might be, most of the time, a slightly less boring version of KLOS, sometimes they have some cool special features.

Today is one of those days.  Every song is a cover song.  The link with Halloween is tenuous - the station is "under the covers" for Halloween (as in it's scared.)  And for some stations (like KRTH) these concepts are merely the same old songs as usual, just grouped by theme.

However today's little departure from the norm is bringing some cool tunes that normally do not get on the air, and some pretty weird stuff.  Examples:

Dave Mason doing Hendrix's All Along the Watchtower
Green Day doing Lennon's Working Man's Hero
William Shatner doing Elton John's Rocket Man (as awful as it sounds, but so bad it's good....sort of)
Cranberries doing Fleetwood Mac's Go Your Own Way
Jose Feliciano doing The Doors' Light My Fire

Would have been more interesting IMO if they played the original next to the cover - maybe next time.

Meanwhile in Florida...

It's always trunk season in Florida, and also always shark season, but it's almost never good wave season.  But the hurricane gave them some waves.  Of course good luck getting one with all those other guys.

Check out this cool moving map of the storm moving toward NY and NJ.  Click on link to see it moving:  http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/templates/loop_directory.asp?data_folder=dev%2Flindsey%2Floops%2Fgoes14&image_width=1020&image_height=720&number_of_images_to_display=50

And here is a cool moving link that shows all the wind in the U.S.  http://hint.fm/wind/

Who Turned Off the Heater?

Wednesday, the water was 70 degrees, which is about as warm as it gets around here. For late October, that is ridiculously warm.  Wetsuits not required!

I guess the wind churned up some cold water, because today, Friday, though the air was hot, the water was ICY!  61 is only 9 degrees colder than 70, but feels like swimming in ice cubes.

Perhaps we'll get last blast of warm water, but it seems doubtful.  Wetsuit season is sadly upon us.

Today's Theme Song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcH8F6Lxqa4

Brothers Comatose

This is a great bluegrass / folk band from San Francisco that occasionally makes their way down here.  They did a short set at the Troubadour last night that was outstanding.

Fab Faux

The Fab Faux are a Beatles tribute band, which sounds like something to avoid, and yes most tribute bands are in fact pretty corny.  (In case you don't know, a tribute band dresses up like the band in question and pretends to "be" the band.)

However this band is not so much a tribute band as a group of talented session musicians who love the Beatles, and play their music the way an orchestra might play Beethoven.

The band was formed by Will Lee, the bassist from David Letterman's band, and oddly includes the guitarist from Conan O Brien's band.  All five members are quite talented session musicians.

What makes the Fab Faux so strong is how accurately they recreate the music - right down to the specific tone on a guitar or tiniest sound effect, they make sure everything is exactly the way it sounds on record.  Well, mostly.  At other times, they will do some interpreting and expanding - always in a way that seems perfectly right.  For instance extending the end of Strawberry Fields Forever with a wild drum duet.

For this outing, the band did the entire Magical Mystery Tour album.  It wasn't quite as ambitious (and amazing) as The White Album, which they'd done in this same theater a few years back, but it was excellent nonetheless.

While discussing the Beatles, I must mention this cool story about a guy who stole the head of Paul McCartney off an Abbey Road Sunset Blvd. billboard way back in 1969.

http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2012/10/bring_me_the_head_of_paul.php

World's Cheapest Phone

Back when cellphones were really huge (physically), before there were even flip phones, I had a cell phone.

I really did not like it.  Having it ring, feeling obliged to answer it, having people call me to say "I'm on my way" when I kind of knew that already, or to say "I'm two blocks away," or "I'm 5 minutes late...." It's fine.  I can wait another five minutes....

One day it broke.  And it was $85 to fix it.

Instead of spending that money, I tossed it in a garbage can on Wilshire Blvd outside the Sprint store in Santa Monica.

I then went 10 years with no cell phone.  It was a glorious time.

However, about three years ago, after many complaints from people who could not call me, and a couple times needing to call AAA without a phone, I decided I needed a phone.

I had two thoughts:  One was to buy the coolest, newest, most gadgety phone I could. This would be because it is fun to have a new toy - the most modern one you can have.

The other was to buy the cheapest phone in the world.  This would be because the other phone was a waste of money.

After looking into the iPhone, I discovered it cost a fortune per month to have one, that they broke, that the camera was mediocre, and that it was basically an inferior version of your laptop.

So I googled "world's cheapest phone" and discovered the Virgin Mobile.

It cost $10.

Of course there were the per month charges.

They were $20.

Every three months.

(Granted you get very few calls for that, but I did not plan to make anything but emergency calls with it.)

This sounded super cheap.

So how is the world's cheapest phone?

It works perfectly fine.  It makes calls, it takes messages, it receives calls.  What more do you really need?

I like the little screen on the front for some reason.

This how it looks when you open it up.

Note it says "Web."  Yes, the world's cheapest phone can surf the web.  Have I ever tried?   No, and I imagine it would not be the greatest experience, but still.....

Of course, I know you want to now ditch your "smart" phone and get one of these.  Well too late.  They don't make them anymore.  Which is why I live in constant fear of losing it.

On a recent hike, one of the hikers noticed my phone.

He proudly pulled out his own phone.  The exact same one.  Of course, he loved it.

And he also gave me a tip.  If you call up, you can get a rate of $15 every three months, not $20.  That saves you $1.60 every month.

At the end of the hike, he reminded me: call them up and get that $5.  I haven't made that call yet, but if I'm ever trying to really save.....

Palms Art

I was thinking of taking a picture of these interesting electrical boxes that have been painted all over Palms, but somebody beat me to it and emailed me one.  So.....here it is!

Spaceship

Coliseum Clouds

Thomas Guides

Does anyone use these anymore besides me?  The litmus test of whether you were an Angeleno used to be if you had a dog-eared copy of one of these lying around in your car.

To those who moved here in the last 10 years, you may not even know what these are. They were (I guess still are) really thick, detailed maps that took up hundreds of pages. They took a little getting used to, but were really outstanding maps - so precise in their depiction of every minute detail.   Everyone had one sitting in the car, and many had certain page numbers memorized, for example page 634 was Downtown LA.

I am sure Thomas Bros. deeply laments the coming of the internet, on-board navigation, and Google Maps, which have essentially made these printed maps totally obsolete.  I wonder if they are even still in business.

Of course since I use a cheap cell phone that is an actual phone (or actually don't use it really) I do not have any "smart" navigation or whatever, so I still will sometimes dig this out just like the old days, and it still sits in the back seat of the car.

On a recent trip to San Diego, I still did what I always do: brought my old San Diego one with me:

One day in a used bookstore, I found an old one from 1982.  When you go back that far, you really see some changes.  Entire towns did not exist at that time, and many of the road names or freeway names have changed.  (The 110 for example was called the 11.)