Christmas Eve

Fotografias

Saturday Snaps

To There and Back

Video Paper

Between the Blogs

The Day's Details

The Sleeping Kitty

Imagefest

Arches

Arches?  Not just any arches, multi-foil cusped arches.

Can you believe those elaborated cuspings?  Crazy.  Check out the stilted arch in the gable, wherein the center is higher than the impost.

The Shrine Auditorium and more cusped arches.  A lot more, an arcade.

Leftovers

No Words

Maybeck Lives in Venice?

Architect Bernard Maybeck's best known work may be the Goslinsky house (1909) in San Francisco's Pacific Heights, with its irreverent, broken, tilde-like pediment (image left and previously exhibited in Subterfuge 1/28/2009).

Craftsman bungalow with contemporary second floor addition in Venice. Also sporting an exaggerated, discontiguous pediment or cornice. Perhaps too weighty, but a fascinating attempt at abstraction, or geometric reductionism.

Monday Montage

Los Detalles

Sunday Montage

Curb Address Numbers

Curb numbers in Los Angeles are without standard. Many are faded--obliterated even, others employ reflective paint, still others are embellished with specialty stencils.


Raider stencil on Menlo, in the shadow of the Los Angeles Coliseum.

Those that refresh their numbers regularly are often concerned with nighttime visibility, visitors, deliveries, or emergency services; and some, mark both planes.


The flags of the United States and Mexico from E. 40th ST.


A cross surrounded by stars from Jefferson Park.

Oftentimes, charity groups refresh the curb numbers, usually asking for a donation of $5 - $15, depending on neighborhood.

Wednesday's Image

Darling top knot, on an otherwise unembellished gable, like a single crow step.

Wednesday's Image(s)

I looked up from my buildings and what did I see?
A cloud or two.
Had I seen these clouds before, in a painting by Salvador Dali?

Wednesday's Image (a day late)

I haven't a clue.

Bonus super ellipse for the Big O.

An ellipse within the diamond.

Wednesday's Image (2)

The stairs are real brick. More insanity is exhibited in bathrooms than any other room.

Last week's image came from the grounds of the Durfee Mansion (aka Villa Maria).

Wednesday's Image

Incredible masonry detail

Systems Can be Beautiful Too

Marble lined electrical panel (from a house in the West Adams Avenues). While the property has been completely re-wired, the original (1914) panel with copper connectors remains in the basement stairway. Note the insulation (asbestos) on the back of the panel door.

Quickie Details

Hubba, hubba: molded decorative brickwork. This fireplace detail, from a 1910 Craftsman home in Harvard Heights, features an egg-and-dart molding, a widely used pattern of classical origins. The egg-and-dart pattern enriches an ovolo molding or quarter round, a simple convex shape, applied here to a niche or recess, over the firebox. These glazed bricks, a beautiful orange-brown color are freckled with round to irregular shaped brown to black iron spots (some with blister holes).

Household Tips

Before, I had problems in my medicine cabinet.

The vanity door was booby-trapped. Shave cream tubes would launch, like an invading force, toward a fragile, defenseless sink basin. Grain moths would appear (uninvited, harrumph). Dental floss would disappear.

Then I installed a monster.
Now it's like Solla Sollew. Troubles, I haven't any. The cabinet is clean and orderly at all times.

I'm thinking about another monster for the corner unit.

Left Over Material #1

With the arrival of 2007, I've begun cleaning out the RecenteringElPueblo edit files, loaded with abandoned writings, unaccompanied photos, and unrealized ditties.





I had hoped to write a piece comparing real estate agents to forcados (a group of eight who seek, without weapons or props, to engage, surround and stymie the bull). I took digital stills at a bullfight at the Portuguese Community Center in Artesia. I can't at all remember the point, nor do I think it was clever.




I may have also became uncomfortable with the comparison after one of the curanderos (the second in line), was knocked unconscious, trampled, and taken by stretcher to a local hospital.



Still, it'd be a shame not to use the snaps, eh?

Guessing Game

1. Guess the location:

a) Studio City
b) South Los Angeles
c) Monrovia
















The answer is: b
(Location: 64th & Cimarron, Canterbury Knolls)




2. Guess the location:

a) South Carthay
b) South Los Angeles
c) Burbank

















The answer is b
(Location: Leimert Park)





3. Guess the location:

a) East Los Angeles
b) South Los Angeles
c) Mar Vista















The answer is: c
Location: Mar Vista (Allin St. & Marionwood Dr.)


Thanks for playing!

The Outhouse

No foolin'. Behind a modest Spanish Eclectic in the Faircrest Heights neighborhood. Just past the brick cook-out.




In point of fact, this ain't no outhouse (sometimes also called a backhouse), or unsewered outbuilding. There's no "dunny", crescent moon cutout, or peat moss stash; more exactly, it's a detached bathroom. A "one holer".








A thing like this could save a relationship.

Second Banana

Wonder why the Valley gets a bad name? It's banners like these, along Ventura Boulevard. A great boulevard, Ventura Boulevard.


Does Hoover Avenue seek billing as a "Poor Man's Vermont"?
Does Cesar Chavez advertise itself as "The East Side's Abbott Kinney"?
Does Brand Boulevard bear banners which read "Glendale's Westwood"?

Day Two

Can I keep the blog going? In a desperate search for material, I reviewed my photo files--The Archives!

Mostly shots of my kid. And salvaged plumbing.

Ok, there were a few others. A mailbox in Pasadena, likely original to a house built in 1915. What a stunner!






A bathroom for pre-school age children, with an ingenous linoleum wainscot.

Which brings me to one of my peeves, bathroom design for persons under 40" tall. All your public buildings have a lowered urinal, natch. But almost never is the sink within reach (the second photo from Elysian Park is typical), nor are the towels, nor the soap.



Here's one last slap in the face of human decency. Jalousy windows set into a transom--a jalousy transom!! Yeah I bet that louvered slit really cools things off in August/September. Probably works about as well as a screened mail slot, or a slatted peek-a-boo, or an uncovered milk pass-through.



Anyhow, I'll be back tomorrow. But what in the blazes with?