September 2009 Archives

It was a sea of red (one hoped it would never part) for a few nights in August at the Scarlet Tea Room. A sultry, live theatrical revue took up residence there for Scarlet Passion, with music, cabaret and burlesque performances amid the tea-room tables and rounds of fire-engine-red raspberry lemon drop shots.

Oh, yeah, there was food, too. Selections from the new menu debuted, and are represented in the photos below. Also check out the photo spread, above, in Rose Magazine.

From top: Guests wore red to gain entry to the affair. Heirloom Capri salad. DelMonico grilled pork chop. Banana hazelnut chocolate strudel. (Photos by Sarah Reingewirtz/Staff)

The Pasadena Model Railroad Club puts the model town in "Beetlejuice" to shame, shame, shame.

First of all, it's one of the largest operating model railroads in the whole world and covers almost 5,000 square feet. Second, those itty-bitty steel rails -- more than 30,000 feet of them -- were all hand-laid.

Get a look at the details on these babies, below, and scope it out in person at one of the club's open houses or the twice-monthly operational meetings.

As an aside, is it wrong to think the lilliputian peeps in the second-to-last photo are skinny-dipping?

(Photos by Keith Birmingham/Staff)

Art Center College of Design students have been thinking a lot lately about how to give the Pasadena symphony-going experience a fresh, visionary appeal.

Students in Mikio Osaki's "The Agency" advertising class came up with a quirky "Magritte meets Dali" marketing campaign for the Pasadena Symphony that's getting a lot of attention. It involves a fiberglass ear that measures more than 3 feet tall; The ear last week made its YouTube debut, and you can check out the video at Culture Monster.

Rob Ball's environmental-design class also took on "The Symphony Project" to give symphony officials some light-bulb-brilliant ideas for attracting a younger audience and enhancing the musical experience as a whole. Their presentations proved to be chock full of that whimsical stuff only Art Center students would dream up. Read the full story on "The Symphony Project," above, in Rose Magazine.

Below is a photo gallery, courtesy of Art Center, of the environmental-design students' symphony presentation.

THE PLACE: Noir Food and Wine Bar opened not so long ago on North Mentor Avenue, a top-drawer addition to the developing wine scene in Pasadena. Noir is owned by Michael Farwell (also of Vertical Wine Bistro) and serves up small plates for noshing -- the yin to the yang of its prodigious (and I mean, to be clear, mammoth) wine list.

It's the kind of place you thank your lucky stars, as I did, to find open late on a Monday night.

THE PRICE: It varies widely, but it's not hard to find a glass or bottle to meet your demands. You might imagine it should be so, considering the 14-page wine list.

Urged on by a sense of noncommittal adventure, my companion and I decided to choose two wine flights -- a sauvignon blanc series and a rosé series, $13 and $11 respectively. With the sauvs, we ventured through California, New Zealand and France, all for a price fitting a single, quality glass at most watering holes.

A highlight was the discovery of an exquisite rosé -- Pink Girl, Syrah Rosé (Napa) -- a crisp, juicy bouquet of fruit billed appealingly by the vintners to envelop, among many tastes, the hint of watermelon Jolly Rancher. Such sweet talk.

THE SOUNDS: There's nothing quite like ordering two flights of wine, followed quickly by quiet -- but not imagined -- rounds of cheering and applause.

That was my auditory experience sitting at one of Noir's sidewalk tables and listening to the ambient noise drift over from the Ice House Comedy Club just next door. It felt felicitous, as though my selection had so pleased the carousing masses that I was given a hand.

Otherwise, it was a serenely quiet evening -- a vacation of sorts -- punctuated only by the conversations of people straggling out of the Ice House. If you were attentive, you could catch bits of their conversations, most reviewing the comedy acts they had just taken in.

On the opposite side of Noir is Boston Court Performing Arts Complex. If ever there were distinct crowds destined from both Boston Court and the Ice House mingling around Noir, it would be a most interesting cross-section of the city -- and a quick way to overhear a handful of honest reviews on the latest performances at both.

THE FOOD: I quite despise sampler platters -- unless they are of cheese, and so I found myself ordering yet another fromage board and devouring mostly the whole thing, with little help from my dining partner.

For $9, we sampled Explorateur, Humboldt Fog and Bucheron cheeses. I've already shouted my love of The Fog from rooftops here to NorCal (and in this column), but I was delighted by the other two, also powerful soft cheeses, which are now added to my dairy repertoire. Perhaps now I will sound less like a broken record. Elevating that platter to mouthwatering heights were the accoutrements du fromage, including tiny rectangles of date bread and an oozing honeycomb.

Seared scallops with corn and shitake ragout ($16) were also shared, a lightly sweet savory -- each mollusk divided tenderly again and again to prolong the pleasure.

THE VIBE: A tasting note: While you scour the wine list for your Duckhorn, your Sea Smoke, your Caymus -- the familiars you give away as tasteful gifts at parties and weddings -- you may overlook a little-known or unexpected surprise.

At Noir, the accent lies on boutique and hard-to-find wines in a come-at-able setting where novice and master can toast together and explore.

AGE GROUP: The reach, like the wine list, is wide: mid-20s and up, with a sophisticated but adventurous palate.

BEWARE: Noir is quite small; intimately so, and not stifling in the least. Although the place was quite deserted on my late, Monday night visit, I could envision people spilling out the door on a busier evening while waiting to nab one of a handful of tables. If business takes off here, as I hope it will, you may find yourself coveting a reservation in addition to the wine list.

GO: Noir Food and Wine Bar is located at 40 N. Mentor Ave. in Pasadena. Hours are 5 p.m.-11 p.m. Monday through Saturday. (626) 795-7199, www.noirfoodandwine.com

MY RATING: 4 -- I am normally loathe to distribute "hot" ratings for wine bars and lounges. To me, the express purpose of their existence is to be smooth, slow, easy -- set at more of a "simmering" level. And while Noir is all of those desirable things, I found the service (ask for Shyla) to be beyond exceptional and couldn't bear to hand down a mid-range numeral. My guest and I were even treated to service by back-of-house staffers, including a causal encounter with Chef Claud Beltran. I suggest you, too, accept the invitation.

evelyn.barge@sgvn.com

RATINGS: 5: Really, really hot; 4: Hot; 3: Fun, loose, low pressure; 2: Cool; 1: Just OK.

Photos, from top: A Sauvignon blanc wine flight at Noir Food and Wine Bar. Noir has been open for about a month-and-a-half at its 40 N. Mentor Ave. location between Boston Court and the Ice House Comedy Club. A Rosé wine flight accompanying a fromage board with Explorateur, Humboldt Fog and Bucheron cheeses. Seared scallops with corn and shitake ragout. (Staff photos)

Scott Burleigh of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is one among a consortium of scientists and computer programmers working to turn interplanetary Internet from science fiction to reality.

The deep-space Internet, which had to be specially designed to withstand the tumult of extraterrestrial existence, has already been tested by NASA and may be up and running for practical use on real missions in the blink of a Space Eye.

The new networking protocols that make up this Internet are delay-tolerant, so as to protect and pass on data even amid the regular transmission glitches that happen, for example, when a spacecraft moves behind a celestial body or a solar storm flares up.

The interplanetary Internet even has potential terrestrial applications that could benefit life here on Earth. Read more about them -- and Burleigh -- in Rose Magazine, below.

Kjerstin Williams is the second of three geniuses featured in Rose Magazine's cover story. If you're not green with envy over her day job -- working with robots at Applied Minds -- then her night job ought to do the trick: she's a jazz singer, and a good one, at that.

With her pixie-blond hair and bubbly personality (we dubbed her a RoboVixen) Williams resides somewhere on the bridge between science and art -- a spectrum that's often at play on the Caltech campus, where science reigns supreme, but a musical subculture has thrived.

Williams has even performed at Carnegie Hall with the Caltech-Occidental Concert Band.

She harmonizes regularly around town with The Conspirators, a quartet of Caltech musicians. At top and below is a photo series by Jonathan Prentice of a recent session at the Pasadena Jazz Institute.

Swing along and read the full story on Williams in Rose Magazine.

Also check out Williams' Web site for a performance calendar and to listen to some of her tunes. She's already rolled out the red carpet for you.

For a firsthand glimpse into the playful duality of Williams' life, follow her on Twitter.

Portrait by Walt Mancini. Performance photos by Jonathan Prentice: Kjerstin Williams and The Conspirators perform at the Pasadena Jazz Institute in July. Laurence Yeung on guitar, Jim Van Deventer on tenor sax, Jimi Hawes on upright bass, Michael Ferrara on drums and special guest Bill Watrous on the trombone.

Theater marquee, below, and comic work, above, by artist Zack Morrissette.


Los-Angeles based artist and designer Zack Morrissette created the Rose Magazine cover look, based on a photo shoot of Caltech's John Dabiri, as captured by staff photographer Walt Mancini.

Morrissette has been working in the L.A. art and design scene since 1996 in a variety of mediums and styles -- charcoal, watercolor, acrylic, pastel, ink and computer graphics, among them.

He studied at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York.

Rose Magazine cover subject John Dabiri is only 29, and he's already racking up serious accolades, like this one from the White House, for his research on jellyfish. Dabiri isn't a biologist -- he's an associate professor of aeronautics at Caltech, where he and his team study the movement of jellies for inspiration that has some surprising potential to change the way we live.

If you think the 650-million-year-old creatures only matter when they've got their stinging tentacles wrapped around your leg, Dabiri's research would solidly suggest otherwise.

His analysis on the way creatures swim, pump and propel themselves underwater includes human-oriented applications in:

• Underwater vehicles, particularly military uses
• Wind energy and how it is harnessed
• Mass mixing and movement of the oceans, connected to climate change
• Human heart diagnostics, with potential for treating heart disease
  

Visit the Caltech Biological Propulsion Laboratory Web site to see some of the research tools that allow Dabiri and team to study jellyfish, both in the lab and out in the ocean, including a 40-meter tilting water channel (that generates waves) and some really fancy underwater camera and laser systems.

The animation below, courtesy of Dabiri, shows the movement and forces of water created by a moon jellyfish as it interacts with the ocean around it. (Photo above by Walt Mancini / Staff)

An L.A. Times piece yesterday examined the undetermined but almost certainly gloomy fate of the Michael White Adobe in San Marino. The structure is unusually situated on the San Marino High School campus, which sprung up around the adobe.

The intro to the Times' piece gives you an idea what the high-schoolers think -- or think not -- of the adobe. (Although, if you read through the whole thing, you'll see that at least a handful do care about preserving its history.)

"Which way to the Michael White Adobe?
'The what?'
'Is that, like, a classroom or something?'
'I have no idea.'"

The 164-year-old adobe has gone without much care or attention by the school and school district. Last year, school officials proposed removing the adobe so that they might expand the swimming pool that, literally, butts up against it.

"It would cost more than $1 million to move the house and roughly the same to make it fit for campus use, environmental documents show.

"Knocking down the adobe, the only option covered by the school district's insurance, comes with a much lower price tag: $176,000. The school board is expected to decide the house's fate Oct. 27 and is taking public comments through (today)."

You can see from the photos taken early this year how the adobe is enmeshed with the campus in a rather awkward way. (Photos by Walt Mancini / Staff)

RELATED: There will be a story by Janette Williams in tomorrow's Pasadena Star-News about another historic adobe -- this one in Arcadia -- that has been crumbling while preservation plans were bogged down for years. The future looks brighter for that structure, the Hugo Reid Adobe, and the push is on to get a restoration underway.

Pete Siberell, Santa Anita Park's director of community service, gave an interview to the Star-News about the recent airing of an "America's Next Top Model" episode that featured the model-contestants posing "topless" with a racing horse and jockey.

"I was hoping no one in America was watching -- I've had a rough day today," Siberell said of the calls that flooded in after the latest episode of supermodel/talkshow host Tyra Banks' campy reality show aired. "It's something I regret. It was awful."

Poor Pete. While you can feel the heat of his blushing over the head-desk moment just by reading his comments, we really don't think the photo shoot is worth the hubbub.

The models' relevant anatomy is all decently covered in the photos, a la a long-locked Lady Godiva. After all, this was a professional fashion shoot suitable for 8 o'clock, prime time television -- not Skinemax.

It's much less of a travesty than, say, this dreadful ANTM shoot.

Hello, world! Meet Rose Magazine's fall 2009 issue -- just in time for the changing seasons, and ripe for the picking tomorrow, Sept. 23. The magazine goes out with regular delivery to Pasadena Star-News subscribers, and is also available for free on many stands around town, including:

• Pasadena Convention and Visitor's Bureau, 300 E. Green St.

• Westin Pasadena, 191 N. Los Robles Ave.

• Langham, Huntington Hotel & Spa, 1401 S. Oak Knoll Ave.

• Pasadena Chamber of Commerce, 865 E. Del Mar Blvd.

• Most hotels and motels

Copies will also be available for a nominal fee at the Pasadena Star-News office, 911 E. Colorado Blvd. (Soon, our future issues will be available in bookstores and at traditional magazine stands.)

For queries, send us a message.

Related: The Smith brothers, Bob and Gregg, opened up about the economic realities of the restaurant biz in Rose Magazine's summer issue. (PDF)

"Tuesday's shows provided an object lesson in how to play the Scorecard rankings game. Here's a tip: avoid showing on the same day as wool cobweb-cheesecloth-macramé creating, CFDA Women's Wear Designer of the Year award-winning duos. If you don't, even the finest djellaba draping can come across as, well, a little merchy."

>>SHOP

Locals Kate and Laura Mulleavy are the dynamic powerhouses behind Rodarte, the high-fashion line founded right here in Pasadena. Los Angeles Magazine calls Rodarte "the most conceptual and couture-level label out of Southern California right now."

"... Rodarte is sui generis. Of course, they still live in their parents' house in Pasadena. It may be a long way, both geographically and psychologically, from New York, but on a good day it's a 20-minute drive from downtown L.A., a place where much of the brass-tacks work of fashion gets done ..."

"The Rodarte show was one of many hopeful auguries this week, signs that New York fashion has already started to regenerate itself through improvisation, experiment, collaboration and the locally prized habit of taking risks."

Even more than the other photos we've seen so far of Saturday's skywriting work over the Arroyo, we love this action shot by Keith Birmingham of people in a Rose Bowl parking lot experiencing the overhead display from the ground. Looks like a message written in the heavens is still out-of-the-ordinary enough to stop people in their tracks.

If you missed it, the image below is of what they were looking at. The skywriting piece was part of the Armory Center for the Arts' ongoing 20th anniversary celebration.

And in case the message has left you scratching your head, it helps to read up on the context behind the larger-than-life installation. (Artist Bruce Nauman first proposed the work in 1969.) Petrea Burchard over at Pasadena Daily Photo has a good explainer for that a-ha! moment.

We're back! This blog and our Twitter feed fell dormant these last few weeks, because -- well -- we were making a magazine (the real, print edition you can actually hold in your hands).

Now that the fall issue of Rose Mag has been sent to press, we're excited to be back in action here. We'll be posting bits and pieces from the upcoming issue (it hits the streets Sept. 23) and all our regular online goodies.

The Station Fire has claimed the historic Hidden Springs Cafe, a treasured stopping point and java spot for anyone passing through the Angeles National Forest. Owner Jim Lewis ran the business for 32 years.

From the L.A. Times' L.A. Now:

"Lewis ... said a number of his customers and friends had called him to say they saw the cafe site on a television broadcast Tuesday morning. People recognized the lone, old-fashioned phone booth standing amid ashes because it is the only one in the Angeles National Forest, he said."

In memoriam, Los Angeles Magazine has resurrected its 2001 review, which dubbed Hidden Springs "the ultimate rest stop":

"On a dry day the drive from La Canada takes about 15 minutes, but by the time the cafe comes into view, a couple of curves north of the Big Tujunga tunnel, civilization seems to have been left behind. But then, commercial establishments of any sort are rarer than rattlesnake bites within national forest boundaries."

These photos from our sister publication, the Los Angeles Daily News, show all that remains of the cafe that was obliterated by flames Tuesday. (Photos by Gene Blevins / Staff)

Lying among the charred ruins of a kiosk, a sign warns Tuesday morning of critical fire danger at the entrance to Vogel Flats campground. This area is known as Stonyvale in Big Tujunga Canyon in the Angeles National Forest. (Reed Saxon / Associated Press)