Now that we're on a roll...
We're going on vacation! We love LA, but we're winging east for the fourth of July weekend. Family, fireworks, mosquitos, oh my.kuaptic will be back on July 7th. Yeah, we can't wait either!
Walk like An Egyptian
While we have this gorgeous picture of the Grauman's Egyptian Theater up, we thought we might supply a little history to go with it. It was designed by architects Meyer & Holler for Sid Grauman. It was example of the Egyptian Revival Style. The original emergence of the style was in the 1850s but it became a fad in the 20s, inspired by the discovery of King Tut's tomb in 1922. In fact, originally, the plans were for a Spanish style theater, but when King Tut's tomb was discovered, the plans were changed.The Theater cost $800k and took 18 months to build. The first movie shown there was Robin Hood, starring Douglas Fairbanks. It opened on October 18, 1922 and the movie wasn't shown anywhere else. Grauman abandoned the theater for the more famous Grauman's Chinese in 1927.In 1996, The American Cinematheque purchased the Egyptian from the city of Los Angeles, for $1 and a promise to restore it to it's original glory. It reopened the theater in 1998. To check showtimes click here.Unlike it's unsubtle brother, the Grauman's Chinese, The Egyptian is set back from the street. You just might miss it if you aren't paying attention. It's a delicate place, a secret from the roar of Hollywood. Instead of being taken over by some mall, it has been carefully restored. You can feel the past of the city there.
Los Angeles Artists
Patricia Chidlaw has been making herself known as a promenant LA artist. Though she lives in Santa Babara, her images cut to the heart of LA life with startling clarity. She invokes the timelessness of the places she paints, rendering them both nostalgic and very contemporary at once. Few other artists capture the solitary beauty of Los Angeles, with it's stark light, it's vast skies.
This post never would have happened without Terrance Rogers of the Terrance Rogers Art Gallery in Santa Monica, a champion of many of Patricia Chidlaw and many other LA artists. He died last Friday. He will be missed.
A Tale of Two Sushi Bars
Being sushi fans, we at kuaptic have many opportunities to sample our favorite cuisine in Los Angeles. In the past week, we have been to two new sushi places, and have marvelled at their differences.Tengu 10853 Lindbrook Dr, Los Angeles, CA
This is one of those super trendy places where they have a dj playing too-loud three year old techno to a crowd of people who are too good looking for themselves. Presumably, they aren't eating there either, as then they would discover that, while the sushi is decent (though not exceptional) the special dishes are severely lacking, most notably the filet wrapped asparagus, which is sausage-like, and not tastey. Tengu is obviously all slick deisign -- a carefully set trap to seperate the fashionable and foolish from their money.Azami Sushi Cafe 7160 Melrose Ave, Los Angeles, CAAzami Cafe is a gem. Located on Melrose it's not pretentious, nor pretentiously priced. The sushi is great, well cut and served on rice that is still warm, served up by female sushi chefs, something of a novelty in the industry. The seared tuna wrapped asparagus was delicious and we understand they have great tempura too.
Water in the Desert
Imagine, writing a book about a city where no one reads! Here is a list of the best of them, from Wikipedia. Thanks Wikipedia! It's just fun to say, really. - Charles Bukowski, Hollywood
- James M. Cain, Serenade
- Raymond Chandler, The Little Sister
- Jackie Collins, Hollywood Wives
- Joan Didion, Play It As It Lays
- Bret Easton Ellis, Less Than Zero
- James Ellroy, L.A. Confidential
- Henry Farrell, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
- Peter Farrelly, The Comedy Writer
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Last Tycoon
- Richard Hallas, You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up
- Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan
- Elmore Leonard, Get Shorty
- Norman Mailer, Deer Park
- David Mamet, Speed-the-Plow (play)
- Horace McCoy, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
- Harold Robbins, The Carpetbaggers
- Thomas Sanchez, The Zoot Suit Murders
- Budd Schulberg, What Makes Sammy Run? (1941)
- Gore Vidal, Myra Breckinridge
- Evelyn Waugh, The Loved One
- Nathanael West, The Day of the Locust
- P.G. Wodehouse, Laughing Gas (1936)
- Gary K. Wolf Who Censored Roger Rabbit? (1981)
Whose Fault is it?
Earthquakes. After last week, they're on everyone's mind. Though the Los Angeles area hasn't had a particularly notable earthquake since the Northridge quake in 1994, we're always expecting the big one, that 8 on the Richter scale (which, by the way, will be strong enough to knock you off your feet if you're standing.)Los Angeles sits on the border of the Pacific and North American techtonic plates. The place where the motion of the plates causes the earth to crack is called a fault. The San Andreas fault is a transform fault, meaning that the motion of the plates is sliding and grinding against each, in this case in a north-south direction. To use a term the describes the motion of the San Andreas fault, it is a right-lateral strike-slip fault. This movement can be seen in the displacement of the bedrock in places like a cutout of the fault in Palmdale where the Antelope Valley Highway runs.At one time, shortly after the Northridge quake, one of our writers drove this particular section of highway on the San Andreas Fault and spotted a billboard which read, "Tired of Earthquakes? Move to Palmdale!" Which is exactly what you shouldn't do.People ask, "Why do you live California? They have so many earthquakes there!" Every place has its deadly hazards -- Florida has hurricanes, Minnesota has blizzards, and from what I understand, in North Dakota, you can literally be bored to death. It's good that we have earthquakes, because at least we're prepared for it. They're supposed to have a 6 or greater in New York. None of their buildings are up to code. Now that would be disastrous.I can think of better reasons not to want to live in CA -- like Arnold Schwarzernegger.
The Mountain, Part 2
The dried out plants lash at my arms, but it smells like home -- sage, sand. The dense quiet is broken only by lizards skittering out of our way into the bushes and the sound of the wind. Suddenly, there's a burst of whooping and laughter. My companion looks off into the distance. "Kids," he says."No," I return, "Coyotes." We hear more peels of laughter. They come closer. "Really?" he asks. "Yeah," I reply, "They do that to cover the screams of whatever they're killing." "Sounds like my bosses," he says, then, "You scared?" The sound does make my blood run a little cold. But reason prevails. "Nah. I've never heard of them killing adults, even in packs. Sometimes families take them in. They might kill a little kid then." I rake my eyes across the hillsides for them, knowing I'll see nothing. "They wake you up at night sometimes," I say lamely. "Creepy," he mutters. "Like your bosses."I don't tell the story he's heard a bunch of times before, how a coyote climbed a grapefruit tree that came up through our deck -- probably 9 or 10 feet up and almost ate our dog. My dad had been in the shower and had heard the dog scream. He came out naked and soaking, flailing around with a stick and scared it off. My dog, a small, white, West Highland terrier, was trembling uncontrollably. He knelt beside her and felt the wet place on her back where it had it's mouth on her. Her skin was unbroken.The trail veers to the left and I know we're almost there. In a few minutes, I can see sky on the other side of the ridge. We pass through some purple, waste-high shrubs. Was it always so overgrown? I remember the top being bare, with an LA city marker. Just you and the whole city. Then, the groundcover breaks open -- I was right. Though I had forgotten a small pine tree rising above the scrub, providing enough shade to sit and rest in.It's a place made sacred with its pristine views. In the distance is the blue band between the city and the horizon that marks the ocean. Just in front are the domes and occasional flares of Universal Studios, the shimmering threads of the 101 and the 170 as they glide through the valley, and the otherside opens up toward the San Gabriel Mountains. In the distance, you can even see the mountains beyond them. We were lucky today; some days it would all be brown. Off to the side, under an enormous radio tower, studded with satellite dishes, I can see the back of the edge of first letter of the Hollywood sign. And local signage says you can't see the Hollywood sign...In my mind, my child self runs ahead, scrambling over rocks, pushing out to the very edges, only to run back to my mother. My brother and I pose for pictures and play hide and seek. We poke at large black beetles with a stick, peer into small holes after tarantulas. Now, I run my hand over a branch of sage, breathe in it's dusty smell on my skin. On this mountain, untouched by all that's happened, I am welcomed back to a place I haven't lived in a long time. On this shattered foundation, I will build my house and live my life in it.
Chaparral
A popular misconception about Los Angeles is that it's a desert. It gets more rainfall than the desert. Its ecological designation is chaparral, characterized low shrubs or scrub brush, long dry summers, moist winters and susceptability to wildfires. Chaparral is fairly fire resistant, and in fact, old growth chaparral is very unlikely to burn. However, once it gets going, everything is incinerated. The word chaparral comes from the Spanish word chaparro, the name of a dwarf evergreen oak. Though Southern California is the most well known example of chaparral, others are chaparral are the Mediterranean, Chile, South Africa and parts of Australia.Now when celebrities add chaparral to their list of ridiculous names they give their children, you'll know what it means (even if they don't.)
The Mountain
Sometimes, it takes being above it all to put it in perspective. I was never sure on the way up that we would even get through the overgrown trail, which didn't so much switchback as go pretty much straight up the ridge. Some parts had washed out and there this plant -- well, I guess it wasn't poison oak, because none has turned up.I had looked at this mountain my whole childhood. It had loomed above, constant and comforting. Once, it burned, coming alive in the night, the smoke filling the house. It hadn't been so much frightening as wrong, horribly wrong looking. A harbinger of all the wrongs to come.As we rose up, I stopped and looked back across the basin. The buildings downtown were clear and the Wilshire corridor rose behind Hollywood, I can barely make out the corner of the Fox building in Century City over the hills. At my feet, Lake Hollywood interrupts the brown and olive the sage dry hills with a shocking blue green. It's more of an exclamation than a color, banked by the white, antique folds of one of Mulholland's surviving dams.I turn back to the dirt in front of me. The rhythm of my feet and my lungs. The shape of the mountain against the sky occurred to me again. The slant look of it as it rose the Saturday morning my mother stood talking to the police man about the body of a young naked woman they had found near the resevoir. There was a lot of open land around and it invited the imaginations of those touched by darkness. We never found what happened to her, but, I was as sure now as I had been then, the mountain knew.to be continued...
kuaptic tricks fate
It seems that fate has attempted to put a spanner in the works -- our computer holding all of our notes and ideas is out of commission. However, fate cannot take our brains! (Well, it can, but...) So we will continue to bring kuaptic (or perhaps start would be a better turn of phrase) to you.
Mission Statement: Sunken Treasure
Los Angeles isn't all glamorous starlets, expensive cars, gleaming beaches. It has a secret life; a quiet one of land, of history (recent, perhaps, but so instense that it seems almost like legend) of people who aren't splattered across the glossy pages of magazines. kuaptic is dedicated to the other Los Angeles. We intend to explore it through characterizations of neighborhoods, history and fiction. We're diving beneath the warm, sundrenched shallows of the city, going to the cool depths in search of the giant squid, the sunken ships, the castles of coral reefs. Join us, won't you?
It's coming...
Welcome to kuaptic, a blog exploring the Los Angeles area, both in reality and in fiction. This site will start having content on June 19, 2005.
Patricia Chidlaw has been making herself known as a promenant LA artist. Though she lives in Santa Babara, her images cut to the heart of LA life with startling clarity. She invokes the timelessness of the places she paints, rendering them both nostalgic and very contemporary at once. Few other artists capture the solitary beauty of Los Angeles, with it's stark light, it's vast skies.