Home » southern california (Page 57)

Category Archives: southern california

Tuscany on the Pacific

Posted on by
Erin Hill’s Painting of Montalcino in Tuscany

Erin Hill’s Painting of Montalcino in Tuscany

When I first moved to Los Angeles during the last Ice Age, everything that was classy had a French name: The restaurants, the big real estate developments, and so on. Sometime over the last twenty years, suddenly Tuscany became the measure of all things ritzy. Although it is still filled with empty storefronts with “For Lease” signs, I can see the developers trying to turn it into a little Tuscany.

I can’t think of Italian food in Southern California as being so rarefied if for no other reason than it tends to be pretty mediocre. Take meatballs, for instance: If one is a gourmet chef, one doesn’t make meatballs that are nothing but differently-shaped hamburger patties. It is necessary to mince onion, garlic, parsley, and perhaps a few herbs into the ground meat mixture first. Even my Hungarian Mom knew that when she made hamburgers. But in L.A. that never happens.

I remember a huge meatball at a Buca di Beppo in the San Fernando Valley that was nothing but a large hamburger hockey puck.

So I don’t take Los Angeles’s Tuscan dreams with anything but a grain of salt, and perhaps some minced onion, garlic, parsley, and perhaps a few herbs.

The painting above is from the Erin Hill studio website. It’s quite pretty and a steal at $220.00. Maybe my hijacking the JPG file will make you want to buy the painting.

Through the Streets of Los Angeles

Posted on by

Endeavour Makes Its Way Through 12 Miles of L.A. Traffic

Los Angeles is not a city that has a great sense of community. It is spread out in all four directions, encompassing mountain ranges and flood plains, dense urban concentrations with deserts whose only inhabitants are Joshua Trees. Yet in October, it came together for the most unaccountable of reasons: The space shuttle Endeavour was going to take two to three days to gingerly make its way through twelve miles of L.A. streets beginning at LAX Airport and ending at the California Science Center in Exposition Park.

At first, the impact was negative. Several hundred trees along the route were going to have to be cut down so as not to damage the huge wingspan of the shuttle as it passed by. The City Fathers promised to plant two or more trees for every one that was cut down, but it still left a bad taste in the mouths of many Angelenos.

But that all changed with the majestic progress of the shuttle through the streets. Crowds gathered and cheered while teams of engineers maneuvered the gigantic space vessel past a minefield of trees, wires, buildings, and other potential dangers.

It didn’t all come home to me until I saw a video in stop motion of the Endeavour making its way through Los Angeles and being met with a cheering throng both day and night. The video, on Astronomy Picture of the Day, is well worth watching. Among other things, it showed me a picture of a city celebrating the era of space exploration as one, something that doesn’t happen very often in this sun-drenched clime.