Public Eye

These guys -- Dave Sams, director of golf operations at Brookside, and Bob Baderian, executive director of the First Tee Pasadena, the great golf-and-study-hall nonprofit -- probably won't ever have to pay to play in the Arroyo Seco. They work there.

But Thursday morning a group of consultants brought in by the city of Pasadena from the Urban Land Institute held a meeting in the Brookside clubhouse with interested Arroyo activists and neighbors, and, after several days of study, one of the notions they floated was the possibility of getting some cash flow out of one of the Southland's premiere recreation areas by beginning to charge for parking.

Monetizing the Arroyo, in other words.

Now, before we go nuts here, I need to emphasize that this is just an idea. One that I'm not quite sure how I feel about, as someone who has lived on one edge, then the other, of the fabulous canyon that runs through the city's west side since 1971. Pay parking has a way of creating those mixed feelings.

But one way to look at it is that we the taxpayers of Pasadena pay lots to keep up this playground of runners, cyclists, hikers, dog walkers, picnic-ers, golfers, Frisbee fliers, radio-controlled aircraft pilots and more ...

People pay to park most everywhere else. And as smart city planners note, there is no such thing as "free" parking anyway, anymore than there is a free lunch. Someone paid for that parking place and its upkeep and the roads you took to get there and the congestion to which you added.

One part of the notion is to have a permit for city residents at let's say $10 a year; non-residents might pay, say, $75. Cheap for what you get: One of the great places to recreate in the world.

Lots more expensive than "free," though. And speaking as a guy who declines to pay for the stupid Adventure Pass in the forest because we already pay taxes for the forest, well, you're speaking to someone conflicted about this idea.

More in my column posted online tonight and in Friday's paper-paper.

Posted by Larry Wilson at 11:28 AM | Permalink

The controlled crash of Richard Jackson's paint-filled radio-controlled airplane went off absolutely swimmingly Sunday in the Arroyo Seco after a half-hour or so of technical delay that only served to whip the huge crowd -- who knew that a thousand or so people were so hungry for performance art? -- into even more of a frenzy. After the problems with the plane's tail were fixed, it took off easily, did a couple of slow turns around Area H south of the Rose Bowl, and, its nose loaded with paint-filled Christmas tree ornaments, smashed directly into its target, as planned, creating this painting, which will be on view at the Armory Center for the Arts in Old Pasadena.

Posted by Larry Wilson at 11:15 AM | Permalink

The late artist Jae Carmichael was a descendant of the Giddings family, which founded Mountain View Cemetery and Mausoleum off Marengo in Altadena in 1882. She made these stained glass windows and installed them there as a kind of complement to the classic Tiffany and other stained glass fixtures in the gorgeous place. I took this pic the other day -- Hipstamatic, my lens of choice, created the images other than in the rear and on top from reflections on the walls and the floor.

We're having a party benefitting LitFest Pasadena, the literary festival coming March 17 to Central Park, there on Sunday, Jan. 29 from 3 to 6 featuring performances from Pasadena drama students and high school jazzters. Interested in attending at this gorgeous venue? Drop me a line at larry.wilson@sgvn.com to get an emailed invitation.

Posted by Larry Wilson at 4:52 PM | Permalink

I always go to the Rose Bowl Game with my friend Elaine.

As both of us are University of California at Berkeley alums, we never get to root for our favorite team.

But she got her master's at USC, and I teach there, so during years when the Trojans aren't caught cheating, we can root for them.

Monday she pledged allegiance to Wisconsin, wearing its sweatshirt, even, on the logic that soon Oregon will be the enemy of both Bears and Trojans.

I always root for the Pac 12 teams on the logic that they are our conference champs and that we have to stand with our West Coast brethren.

Good game. Ducks won.

Posted by Larry Wilson at 3:26 PM | Permalink

A young, recently married woman named Norma Jeane Dougherty is shown in this 1944 photo from a San Fernando Valley aircraft factory. It ran in Yank magazine, and is reproduced in the current Blue Sky Metropolis show at the Huntington Library. Its subject later changed her name to Marilyn Monroe.

Posted by Larry Wilson at 5:26 PM | Permalink

This photo of a Rose Parade float from the 1930s celebrating Albert Einstein in flowers, trumpeting his "achievement" with blooms and angelic little girls, hangs in a hallway of the Courtyard by Marriott hotel in Old Pasadena. The physicist at the time was a frequent visitor to Caltech before he was snatched away by the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, which offered him a tad more money. But no floral tributes, I'd wager.

Can you imagine a Richard Feynman, or Murray Gell-Mann, or David Baltimore, float today?

Posted by Larry Wilson at 6:36 PM | Permalink

This apparently half-joking warning sign is up on the window of a lab at the Oak Crest Institute of Science on Foothill Boulevard in East Pasadena, where President Marc Baum gave me a tour this week. I'll write about in my Friday -- perhaps my Sunday -- column, considering how much great hands-on, high-level work the institute provides for PCC science students.

Posted by Larry Wilson at 3:43 PM | Permalink

After we pulled the branches back from its tailgate, this was how our station wagon looked Thursday morning after the winds knocked several huge oak tree branches down on it it. Later, after hundreds of pounds of good firewood was removed from the front, the report is that there are only superficial scratches on what could have been a total. Miracle car.

Posted by Larry Wilson at 5:36 PM | Permalink

You know it's Nov. 30 in Pasadena when you're driving up Raymond Avenue and have a close encounter with The Odd Fellows & Rebakahs 59th Rose Parade entry "Shining Knights Still Exist." The flakage: "showcases a lone Knight aboard his loyal steed in full gallop above the ancient 17th Century English Crest armed with a menacing twenty foot long, silver lance wrapped in the traditional colors of the Decoration of Chivalry matching the brown horse's blanket...a member of the three link fraternity, Friendship, Love and Truth, The Knight perseveres to protect the elegant castle topped by three turrets with billowing flags surrounded by floral gardens from all that would bring discontent."

Posted by Larry Wilson at 3:26 PM | Permalink

As Occupy Cal protesters wrangle with campus police and Alameda County sheriff's deputies over the hallowed protest grounds of Sproul Plaza at UC Berkeley, I drove by Wednesday this art piece that had been catching my eye on Colorado Boulevard in the Playhouse District. It's Susan Stilton's new piece "Utility" -- posted on a utility box -- with vinyl-wrapped photos from the Free Speech Movement at Sproul in 1964. Great timing! And a great quote on the other side: "Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime" -- Justice Potter Stewart

Posted by Larry Wilson at 5:25 PM | Permalink

On a recent Sunday afternoon in Pasadena the stars of a s'lon chez Sandra Tsing Loh were Vanity Fair Hot Type columnist, co-founder of Tin House and author of the new short-story collection "Blueprints for Building Better Girls" Elissa Schappell in conversation with Henry Alford, the Vanity Fair contributing editor, former Spy humorist, and author of the soon-to-be-released "Would It Kill You to Stop Doing That: A Modern Guide to Manners."

They were very smart and funny.

Posted by Larry Wilson at 3:48 PM | Permalink

USC Annenberg J-school student Rosa Trieu is reporting on the recent spate of tragic deaths among novice hikers in Eaton Canyon, and says she heard from the staff at the Nature Center that I was the go-to guy on musing about how and why it happens.

As in my theory, based on youthful experience -- the canyon mouth is just blocks away from my elementary school, Noyes, and we scrambled up there all the time -- that guys go up ridges and chimney-like crevices and don't realize how hard, how even deadly, it is to try to come down.

Rosa and I hiked up to the Eaton Falls in the light drizzle Tuesday so she could shoot some B-roll by the falls. This young woman was posing in black for a photographer when we got there.

Posted by Larry Wilson at 5:10 PM | Permalink

There are many reasons to get up to Stephen Nowlin's "Worlds" show at Art Center's Williamson Gallery, 1700 Lida St., Pasadena, and Richard Selesnick and Nicholas Kahn's wall-sized projection called "Liftoff, from the Apollo Prophecies," a silent movie about landing on the moon and finding a new world of ineffable objects and creatures, including an elephant wearing a giant Lucite helmet for breathing, big enough for its tusks, is one of them.

Posted by Larry Wilson at 6:18 PM | Permalink

Tuesday night we were in downtown Los Angeles anyway and so drove by the City Hall campground staked out by the young and hearty protesters of Occupy Wall Street, Los Angeles branch.

This mask -- don't buyers really pay a royalty to "Vendetta"'s producers, Fox? -- was on the back of a fellow's head, so that while he was facing in to the crowd, listening to a speaker, the image was going out to the street.

Posted by Larry Wilson at 11:07 AM | Permalink