It’s a grab-bag of items. Readers share memories of North Hollywood after my recent column, my praise for a used bookstore that I’d said was the biggest and best is qualified, recollections are sought from anyone who attended the 1966 Rolling Stones concert in San Bernardino, the Fonzie statue in Milwaukee leads to a mention of a TV sitcom film site in Claremont, and a top pop singer hails from Murrieta. All of this — whew! — is in Sunday’s column.
Category Archives: Around L.A.
Column: His holiday weekend in NoHo wasn’t so-so
Hot on the heels of my return from the Midwest, I was invited to housesit for a friend in North Hollywood for Independence Day weekend. This gave me another change of scene, but one closer to home, which I share in Sunday’s column.
Column: For this Cardinals fan, it was time for Dodgers baseball
I attended a Dodgers game to watch them whip my St. Louis Cardinals. Well, that’s not why I went; that’s just the result. I write about seeing a game in 2021, and as someone rooting for the opposition, in Wednesday’s column.
Column: Day trip to LA by transit brought back old feelings
Remember how I used to write now and then about taking public transit to LA and doing something interesting? Sunday’s column is one of those, and the first one in quite some time. I ate lunch at a new restaurant, went to a record store and got frozen custard, while reading newspapers and a novel. It was a nice day.
Column: Remembering an advocate for DTLA, transit
Bob Herman was a Claremont man who loved L.A. (and Claremont too, of course). He wrote the guidebook “Downtown Los Angeles: A Walking Guide.” In 1999 he and I took Metrolink for a five-hour walking tour of downtown, a journey that made a deep impression on me. He died in April at 92. I write about him and about our outing in Sunday’s column.
Column: At this scenic point, you have to take the stairs
For my birthday, I take the stairs, all 282 of ’em, in Culver City, at a famed outdoor hiking spot. Then I eat Nashville hot chicken and stroll Leimert Park, accompanied by a few close — but distanced! — friends. Also, a typo is spotted. I write about the day in Wednesday’s column.
Column: Skipping football made for Super outing in LA
Did you watch the Super Bowl or skip it? I’m perennially in the skip-it category and try to go somewhere that would normally be crowded. This year I went to L.A. to hike in Griffith Park and, near game time, eat at Philippe. That’s the subject of Wednesday’s column.
Column: Westwood ho! UCLA campus is home of sculpture garden
In one of my occasional change-of-pace columns, I drive to LA and walk around the UCLA campus, then break for lunch. That’s Sunday’s column.
Column: Election ends on high note with vote at opera house
After all the sturm und drang of the election, voting at an opera house made perfect sense. So I cast my ballot at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, home of LA Opera, on Sunday after a special Metrolink trip. A $10 round trip ticket was a small price to pay for a memorable experience. I write about it in my Tuesday* column.
*Tuesday, you ask, not Wednesday? In this case, yes. After the March primary, my column ran in print not on A3 as usual, but A10, and without the accompanying photo, all due to a space crunch from a newspaper jam-packed with election results. And that was a primary; I feared the presidential election might be worse.
So my editor let me get out in front of an avalanche of news to avoid getting crushed. And since this column is about voting, it made sense to get it into the Election Day paper rather than wait for my usual day. I’ll be back on my traditional schedule Friday and Sunday. In the meantime, if you haven’t voted, what are you waiting for?
Column: A field trip to the LA Central Library, ‘Library Book’ in hand
I recently read “The Library Book” by Susan Orlean, which made me curious to take a fresh look at the setting, the downtown L.A. Central Library. What the heck, I wrote about it in Sunday’s column. Readers do say they like my Metrolink trips.