L.A. Anatomía

The famous opening lines of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (in the book by Douglas Adams) informs readers that space is big. Really big. You can’t imagine how mind-boggingly big it is. Now, because so our blog is, apply that idea to Los Angeles.

On Saturday of this lovely Memorial Day weekend, I joined up with a friend who is leaving Los Angeles soon. Having long been a native, she’s now trying to do everything she always planned to get to. I think that’s just the way it is in your native locale. You figure you’ll get to all those famous things eventually.

Our plan? We spent the afternoon wandering around the Griffith Observatory and then we hiked up as close as we could to the Hollywood sign.

The Griffith Observatory was very cool. I’d like to go back in the evening when the telescope is open and available for the public to look through. It’s actually quite a compact museum for such an expansive topic. The upper floor recapped lots of grade school information that I had forgotten: eclipses, tides, sunrise and set. It had a lot of really cool pictures of the sun. I love the idea of the sun as being made up of long tubes with “cool” sunspots. It makes the star seem….pet-able.

In another wing, the Observatory mostly had exhibits on telescopes. There was also a demonstration by a tesla coil, which was no so impressive because it’s only purpose seems to be impressive. In the entrance, there is a Focault’s pendulum, which I did not know was first used to prove the earth rotates. Aside from the big swinging pendulum, the most important part is a row of tubes that the pendulum is supposed to knock down. Depending on your position on earth and nearness to the poles and equator, the pendulum will eventually swing in the direction of the rotation and knock down a tube. In Los Angeles, the Griffith Observatory’s pendulum achieves its goal once every 42 hours.

Underneath the Observatory are exhibits on meteors, the planets and the whole “space is big” idea. The information is pretty up to date because Pluto is no longer a planet but a member of the Kuipur (sp?) belt. The only other object identified in the belt was Sedna, which takes about 10,000 years to make it around the sun.

Oh! A cool video was how the sun looks from various planets. From Earth, it looks pretty big. From Mars, pretty much the same too. When you get to Jupiter, I was actually surprised at how small it was. And from Pluto, it just looked like another star in the sky.

At the planet exhibit, you could weight yourself to see how gravity was different for each planet. I think some of them were broken because I weighed the same on Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Pluto.

Another cool interative video was one about other planets in the Milky Way. The computer showed you where the planets were located compared to Earth, how big their orbits were around the sun compared to Earth and how big they were in comparison to Earth. I liked that. I also liked videos they had of space vehicles landing on different planets and moons. I didn’t know we got an unmanned spacecraft to one of Saturn’s moons. (I want to say Triton?) And apparently there’s one on the way to Pluto. It will really suck if it misses the planet all together.

Oh! Because pluto takes awhile to get around the sun, the Observatory had a little video that showed where it was located during certain points in Earth history. In one rotation, Pluto would have witnessed a lot.

And I loved how it turned out all of Neptune’s moons are named after characters in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. And it was Neptune or Uranus that has “spring” storms that last for years. Down in the sun exhibit, they had really neat videos that showed different features of the sun because of different instruments, and how sun flares can really disrupt things even from far away.

Afterwards, we hiked up to the Hollywood sign. It was a two and a half mile climb upward. We navigated horses and manure and other hikers. We lost a friend. We were reunited with them. We made it back down before dark. But after seeing the vastness of space and then experiencing the vastness of possibility in the confined Griffith Park, we figured the day had been successful indeed.

Sometimes on the weekends, I’ll see motorcycle clubs riding down the freeway together in formation. Today was the first time I saw a racecar convoy zipping through traffic. It was pretty freaky. They would lane change a hair’s breath between cars. I immediately slowed down to let them all by. But it was also funny to think a bunch of fast-car aficionados had gathered to speed down the highway in comaraderie.

As spring brings cherry blossoms to bare branches, so I’ve uploaded a new theme here at L.A. Anatomia! I think it’s a little more readable don’t you?One of the many “housekeeping” items AH and I talk about is really getting into the html coding of this site, ripping it apart and revamping it to our tastes. Alas, life gets in the way. Heck it’s amazing that life can even find a way, a la Jurassic Park. It’s just got a lot of things to juggle.Such has been the case with “Naked,” a scavenger hunt held at the Getty Museum. No, we hunters don’t go au natural. Rather, patrons are sent into the museum to seek out nude statues. Or at least that is what I understand.I found out about these scavenger hunts around August of last year. Instead of going, I participated in a sleepover at the Long Beach Aquarium. I don’t think AH or I ever blogged about it here. But. AWESOME! You learn cool things like octupi are smart, taste with their tentacles…and there is a fish with a fake eye somewhere in there. The whole evening began awesomely when a young family espied me and a friend making our way toward the aquarium with pillows and suitcases.”Are you girls having a sleepover or something?” ”Oh yes!”"Where?”"The aquarium!”And there was such jealousy as would make a dry field green.But anyway, Naked! Not the David Sedaris book, but the cultural event at the Getty. It’s coming around again, and I don’t think I’ll be able to go. But the least I can do is freshen up our little corner of the net.Enjoy! 

The once bedroom community of Glendale has recently been jolted out of its sleepy state with a splashy new outdoor mall centered squarely in the middle of Brand Blvd. known as the Americana.  Some call the structure an ostentatious eye sore. The developers of the Americana, Caruso Affiliates have determined to make the out door “entertainment center” into the “center of town.”
Let’s call it what it for what it really is, shall we? It’s an out door mall. Cap a roof over the 15,5 acres f prime property and you basically have an extension of the Glendale Galleria.
But seriously, many failed attempts have been made to create that nucleus, most recently being the Glendale Market Place, which sits on the other side of the Americana on Brand.  Perhaps hard economic times are to blame, but two major chain stores–Tower Records and Linen and Things–have closed down with no other business stepping up to replace them.
So much for being the center of the community’s attention.
The Empty storefronts sit right across from the newly polished Americana, like some vexed omen.  Will the Americana suffer the same fate?
The local government is gambling that it won’t.  In fact, the local government is depending on the success of the Americana to bring in revenue as well as create new jobs in the community.  They hope that the Americana will do to Glendale what the Grove did to the Fairfax area. Caruso’s construction crazy crew also created/ the Grove and was said to be insane to set up a multi-million shopping center in a predominantly Hassidic neighborhood.
Well Caruso is still crazy to think that he can create a place where families can get “relax” and “lounge” in a safe environment, when you have a community that has a lot of kids.  Even though the place is geared for the 20-30 something’s, anyone in their right mind stay away from that zoo, filled with baby carriages and bratty teens running on the freshly manicured grass. Caruso should know better.
What about the homegrown businesses up and down the rest of Brand Blvd.?
Obviously, they’re not as thrilled.  Some believe it will cause even more traffic on the Boulevard, which will deter visitors from staying to explore other businesses in the area.  Others think that in the long run, the flow of traffic to the Americana will trickle over to their businesses as well.  Either way, the businesses on Mid-Brand, which includes the historic Alex Theatre, are banding together to create more community/family-orientated events to bring people towards the north end of Boulevard.
Local Glendale-ians were also concerned with potential traffic along already overflowing streets.  Structures that tower over the shops create an even more cramped and crammed feeling when you walk through them, by them, or pass them in your car.  Wedged between one of the Gallerias parking lots and the gaudy looking Golden Key Hotel, the Americana has had to squeeze itself on the 15 acre piece of prime property.  (A special thanks goes to the Golden Key hotel, for standing up this manufactured crap.  I’m sure it really pissed off Caruso and Crew).
What has some concerned is the outrageous price of the surrounding apartment buildings and lofts, that range from low $700,000 to $2 million with rents from $2,000 to $5,500 a month.  Nathan Wong, a local resident of the Glendale area was quoted $650,000 for an entry level/one-bedroom condo, when he first inquired about the living spaces.  You could buy a house with that kind of cash.
Over lunch I asked him what his thoughts were about the Americana. After he slammed down his coffee mug, he stated, “you would think that all the foot traffic and the sales from the (high-end) retail stores would be more than enough to lower prices for an entry level home ownership.”
Creating affordable housing for the rich, enforcing an even more rigid divide between the income brackets. But that’s not the case: Caruso believes that the city of Glendale is ripe with disposable income willing to shell out the hefty price of the luxury spaces.
Maybe Caruso and friends should change their motto to “Caruso constructions, keeping social classes where they belong.” Because, I haven’t yet heard of anyone who’s actually moved into the Americana, have you?

On the Hollywood Tower of Terror ride in California Adventure, I sat in my seat, with a seatbelt around my waist, and secured my purse around my shoulders. While the ride shot up and down, I remember noting how my purse rose in the air and seemed to fall at the same rate as my body on the ride. Huh, I thought, physics work.

According to the LA Times, Los Angeles county:

• voted in overwhelming numbers for a Democratic candidate
• agreed by a nose that same-sex unions were unconstitutional and that forcing doctors to notify parents of their underage teen’s choice to have an abortion was just a bad idea
• believed, by more than 30%, that farm animals, specifically chickens, had the right to live fulfilling lives in spacious cages before being slaughtered
• and despite the state’s galactic budget deficit, Angelenos felt nothing could be finer than a fancy bullet train to connect Socal to Norcal—-to be paid over the next 30-40 years.

Oh well, at least we raised the transportation tax by half a cent.

My fellow blogger AH is getting to know all about wines and cheeses. When we met up last week to discuss the “state o’ the blog,” she brought excellent goodies found in the aisles of Whole Foods at a wine tasting seminar. Actually, Whole Foods, the latest and greatest and more expensive organic store hereabouts, sponsors lots of community events. I stumbled across a Single’s Night held in the natural supplements section one evening. Grocery stores: They’re not just about produce anymore.

Another sociable thing to do in Los Angeles (apparently) is to dance. I went to my first lindy hop this month at the Atomic Ballroom in Irvine, which is a small private dance studio in a commercial complex that no one would suspect would be there.

Not only was it a cool, friendly and dynamic place, but the dancers were pretty cool, friendly and dynamic themselves. I was twirled till about 11 pm when my age decided it was past my bedtime. But here’s the interesting “did I know” fact from that night: Socal, specifically Los Angeles, has one of the biggest social dance communities in the country. We apparently brought back swing—specifically at a place called the Derby in Pasadena. I’m on the lookout for more dances!

Coming up: AH brings you news from Comicon in San Diego, and (once I get her set up), we have a new contributor to the blog.

“In 1769, Gaspar de Portolà during his 1769 expedition of Alta California named it El Rio de Nuestra Señora La Reina de Los Angeles de Porciúncula, so translated: The River of Our Lady Queen of the Angels of Porciuncula. It was referred to as the Porciuncula River.” — Wikipedia