kuaptic.: September 2005

kuaptic October

October is a month of secrets. In LA, everyone's secret is that they wish it was cool enough to wear sweaters. Everyone is worn out by the heat. You feel like you can't even look at a tank top anymore.

October is a month where we welcome the idea of cooler weather, and the coming darkness of winter. They say that December is more about the celebration of darkness. We disagree. Winter, near the solstice, is the celebration of light in the darkness, the knowledge that the end is coming. But in October, that's when things are just getting started. Halloween has become the celebration of darkness -- monsters and ghouls being just cartoon representations of the unknown, of the things we fear.

Los Angelenos know that we don't only fear the unknown -- we have every right to fear what walks the streets of our fair city every day. So in October kuaptic is exploring the city's dark side, not only the strange and the haunted, but also the bloody. Time to start sleeping with the lights on.

Hollyhock House, pt 2.

Like all Wright houses in Los Angeles, Hollyhock House is a mystery. There's a vast, ancient feeling to it, as a structure, it lies open to the elements, with its broad, flat rooves, its windows are small and deep, keeping the heat of the sun out (especially in a week like this!) But inside, under deep overhangs are walls of windows leading out to fountains and gardens. You can feel the Mayan and Aztec influences, in the squareness of the structures and the geometric nature of the motifs.

Wright was attempting to find a style that fit the landscape of Southern California. He called these "Califonia Romanza" (romanza is a musical term, which means "freedom to make ones own form.") Though they may look like reinforced concrete, the bearing walls are actually hollow, then covered in terra cotta tile. The decorative effects are from a kind of proto-concrete poured into molds.

The house reopened to the public this year. Virginia Kazor, the city's historic curator for the house, told The San Diego Union-Tribune, "I've been in this house 100 times, and I'm still seeing things I've never seen before."

Hollyhock House
4800 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA
(cross-streets Vermont Ave. and Edgemont Ave.)

Hollyhock House

Hollyhock House is another wonder wrought by Frank Lloyd Wright for our fair city. Though old Frank was a dick in person, he was unquestionably one of the more promenant architects of the twentieth century. Usually associated with his midwestern "Prairie Houses" (very influential in the arts and crafts movement, they were extended, low buildings with sloping roofs and deep terrances and overhangs. These, incidently, were also an early example of "open plan" homes, the obsession that has driven many a Los Angeleno to alter fine old homes for the worse), or his later usonic homes which made middle class housing out of geomtric shapes, he also believed in organic homes, that were in harmony with the land and other natural features that surrounded them.

Hollyhock House was the first LA home designed by Wright. He was commissioned by unconventional oil heiress, Aline Barnsdall in Chicago, where she was studying the American stage. After a trip to California in 1915, she decided to make her residence here in order to develop arts and theater. She bought 11 acres between Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards, just west of Vermont. She named it after her favorite flower, a motif repeated throughout the structure. It was built between 1919 and 1923. Wright was spending most of his time in Tokyo, building the Imperial Hotel (one of the few structures to survive the earthquake of 1923) and left the construction under the watchful eyes of his son, Lloyd Wright and his apprentice, Rudolph Schindler. The house was supposed to be a private residence in the center of an arts park -- there were plans for theaters, dormitories and studios for artists and actors, shops and two guest houses. Due to artistic and financial troubles (Wright and Barnsdall, both strong willed, disagreed), only the main residence and the guest houses were built.

In 1927, after living there for four years, Aline Barnsdall gave the house and its surrounding acreage to the city of Los Angeles for use as an "art park." After years being leased to various organizations, (including a stint in 1946 as a USO tavern) it went through two renovations, one in 1974 and another in 1989, which restored the orginal Wright designed furniture and color scheme. It's now the centerpiece of Barnsdall Park, surrounded by galleries and a theater.

To be continued...

Wilshire Boulevard

You know what's a cool concept? Curating the City. You know, curating is what museums do. They take care of the past. Merriam-Webster Dictionary claims that it also has a religious connotation, namely that a curate is a clergyman in charge of a parish.

No one is in better charge of Los Angeles than the Los Angeles Conservency. The LA Conservency fights for our right to the past, largely by keeping it around. And it is they who've started a series of events they refer to as "Curating the City." Right now, their focus is on Wilshire Boulevard.

Starting this Sunday, they intend to put on a series of events celebrating what they refer to as "Califonia's Most Famous Thoroughfaire." You may think of Wilshire as a traffic-y, dingy looking way of getting from the west side to downtown, but Wilshire has lots of cool stuff, including our oft mentioned Ambassador Hotel, the Museums of Miracle Mile, the Wiltern, and perhaps most stupendously, the Bullocks Wilshire.

There's a bunch of stuff going on, including coffee and pie at Johnie's the now closed (and rented out for filming by the $.99 store next door), tours of churches, the Bullocks Wilshire, and, the oldest building on Wilshire, the Wadsworth chapel -- you know, that old Victorian building near the Veteran's hospital just after the 405. All very cool stuff! Unfortunately, though it seems most of this stuff is available on October 2nd, it remains unclear whether these sites will be open all day.

Los Angeles is Burning

You can tell when it's fire season. The dry heat. The grass is too desicated to deserve the name. The palm trees, usually shining and green, look stiff and brown. Even though the nights are cool, we're ripe for flames.

Two years ago was a bad one. The entire month of October was over 100 degrees, every day. The relentlessness of it was exhausting. The Santa Anas blew in from the desert, their unholy breath leaving you swearing at traffic more often than usual. They left you feeling prickly but thick headed, oddly prescient -- something terrible was going to happen. And for some people it did. There was fire everywhere. People were forced from their homes by the hundreds. From Big Bear to Calabasas, snakes of fire writhed along the hillsides, leaving crumbling blackness in their wake. Even miles away, the ash came down like snow.

It was a season in hell. We discovered that like the Bad Religion song, palm trees really do go up like candles (it's almost like they explode). There was no relief until Halloween (traditionally the time of year when we might get a little cooler), when the skies broke open and it poured all night. Woe to trick-or-treaters!

Let's hope this year runs a little cooler, a little more forgiving.

Joan's

Joan's is nothing short of a delight. An eatery in the vein of Dean and DeLuca (though more individual), Joan's is chock full of delicious secrets -- everything from soups, cheeses, gourmet salads and sides, delicious meats, even gelato. Take it home or eat in (though it can be crowded). The service is impeccable. Take out wonders include hummus and handmade pastas and sauces.

It can be confusing; you order at the second register and pay at the first, either after you eat or before, jam yourself into a table, among the crowded lines with your number, wait for the waiters to bring it to you along with, if you ask, a tall bottle of house water and a cup. But when the food arrives, it's often sublime -- sandwiches and fresh vegetables, excellent cheese plates, served with fig paste and almonds. Though occasionally a bit undersalted, it tends to be fabulous. Prosciutto, a salad of butter lettuce, feta, cranberries and Joan's vinegrette, lentil soup, squash and pear soup. We could go on and on.

Though if we did, there would be no room for dessert, and we can't have that! Joan's cupcakes are widely known for being among the finest in LA. they have the standard chocolate and vanilla, with coconut if you so choose, as well as with marshmallow creme filling and a spice one with maple frosting and even chocolate-peanut butter. They have cookies too, and muffins, rustic apple pies and some sort of free standing concoction we haven't tried yet that they refer to as "french toast" (we intrigued!) The long and short of it is, however, that when it comes to Joan's we're in! And we're taking home a few things, and maybe a couple more for friends and family too.

Joan's on Third 8350 W Third St, Los Angeles, CA

Escape from Palms

Here's a couch with a plan -- a plan for escape. Instead of being relegated to the curb to be picked up by any passing garbage truck, this couch has stowed away (couches, not being very bright themselves, don't think we're so smart either.) Perhaps it will make it out, maybe even creep its way into another living room, to watch tv, support conversations and cuddling, all the things these sweet tempered creatures enjoy. It's avoided the street. For now.

Forbidden Fruit

Apparently if fruit trees hang off the owners property, the fruit isn't owned by them and can be taken by anyone. Fallen fruit keeps an active map on where such fruit is available around LA. Help yourself!

They Didn't Waste Any Time

The Ambassador is coming down. So bust on down there and put your eyeball on it before it's gone for good.

The Ambassador Hotel, 3400 Wilshire Boulevard between Normandie and Vermont

Love LA, Love Our Smog

Los Angeles is looking for some kind of big disaster. Something splashy, that'll make the national wires. Something where a lot of people die, with gruesome visuals, someone to blame, and some heroes. Something tragic. You can tell by the tenor of the news stories. Suddenly, a black out, an emergency landing, rain -- they all smack of a kind of panic. Even in a city where when it rains, people start freaking out, things feel a little over the top. Los Angeles, drama capital of the US, is experiencing disaster envy.

Los Angeles is also a city that, after 50 years of smog control feels like we're getting a handle on it. Neophytes complain about the stain on our sky, while old timers, real Los Angelenos claim that it makes beautiful sunsets (they're not wrong) and that people who complain about it should shut up or get out. But smog kills nine thousand people a year -- a lot more than have died in Katrina so far. Smog isn't a sexy natural disaster. It doesn't strike suddenly, and there's definitely things we can do to stop it. Cutting ozone by a third would save four thousand lives, but buying new cars, changing the standards so it's more expensive for big business isn't what politicians or even people are interested in.

The LA Weekly is doing a special issue on it this week, an important read for anyone who cares about the city and its inhabitants:

A Special Issue
Clear and Present Danger: What You Can't See Can Kill You

Los Angeles' skies sure look better than they did decades ago. Less lung-stinging ozone hangs over downtown and the deep bourbon hues of summertime skies are fainter than ever before. But looks are deceiving. A new threat haunts the air we breathe-- particles tinier than a virus; so small that, in the diesel-belching ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, more than a million of them fit in a marble-sized chunk of air. These ultrafine particles become lodged in our lungs and hearts and are the culprit behind growing cancer rates. Some 9,600 people will die this year in California because of a smog-related disease. This amounts to a public-health emergency. Why, then, are only a handful or scientists, doctors and public officials responding to the challenge?

So take a few minutes and read up. Then head out to price some hybrids!

Space Aliens

You're driving along in your car. It's fall, it's getting dark earlier, but you still get out of work in Burbank at seven, so by the time you're in Brentwood, it's about seven-thirty. Even though it's dark, the sky is filled with light and something has left a crazy, bright trail in the sky. It's huge -- looks like it'll take up the whole sky. Your chest is tight with a feeling you can't name. You know better than to let your imagination run away with you, but it's so beautiful and so weird. It could be angels, space aliens, stunt for the next Spielberg movie.

It's a missle from Vandenberg Airforce Base, located outside of Lompoc -- which seems far away, but still makes for stunning tableaus in Los Angeles. It's a little disappointing that the source isn't as crazy as the spectacle. But still, it's uplifting that it gave you something to wonder at and made the world full of such possibilities.

Tonight, Vandenberg is sending up a Minotaur missle at 7:24 pm. Keep your eyes peeled.

The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.

The internet is good for lots of things. It's great for finding information. You can find everything about almost anything. But there are some things that there's hardly any information about. They're usually too old or too little talked about -- rarely are they too obscure. The Original Spanish Kitchen is one of those things.

Since we're so excited to share it (the myth, the legend, the reality) with you, we're going to start with this anecdotally driven (cough poorly researched cough, cough) version and report more thoroughly as the evidence comes in. There is a restaurant in existence called the Spanish Kitchen. It's decorated like South America Land in Disneyland and is located on La Cienega. This is not the Spanish Kitchen we're talking about. However, it has a sign that is an authentic reproduction of the sign at the Original Spanish Kitchen. (Only in Los Angeles has the landmark been destroyed but there is some kind of authentic reproduction hanging around.)

The Spanish Kitchen was a diner-esque restaurant opened in the 1940s at 7373 Beverly Boulevard. In 1961, the restaurant was still doing a brisk business when one day, it simply never opened up again. Peeking in the window, one could see nothing amiss. The menus, the napkins the forks knives and spoons. Everything in its right place to open the next day -- even twenty years later.

Myths sprung up around the place the way they do around the unexplained. There was a story that the couple who had run the place had been murdered by the mob in their upstairs apartment. It was an object of wonder -- a place left exactly the same as it had been the day it closed (except for the motes of dust.)

It turned out that the husband of the couple died and the wife couldn't bring herself to open it again, though she lived above the restaurant for years. The place was eventually torn down and they put up a fancy salon there.

The Stink

We thought we'd jump on the blog bandwagon and mention the random stink that's haunting the westside over the last few days. Usually, we'd have some mild interest, but having experienced it ourselves yesterday (one kuaptic-ite kept waking up night before last feeling like she was smelling garbage, thought it was something in the apartment, but in fact it was everywhere outside the apartment and tried closing some windows).

The Stink has been witnessed as far east as La Brea, but has mostly stuck to the Marina, ranging through Venice and up into Westwood. So far, only blogs have reported on the The Stink, there's no word of it on any civic website or in the papers.

Let's hope it's something that goes away!

Lucques

Every week the chefs at Lucques go to the farmer's market and pick the best fresh vegetables of the season and they plan a menu for their Sunday Supper ($35 a person. About as reasonable as it gets at this trendy but delicious restaurant. Wine is an additional laying down of cash as they don't have the carafe deals many restaurants offer on their prix fixe evenings) .

This last Sunday, the Cal-Med restaurant was offering an Asian themed menu. There were concerns that the faire would be too spicy, but everyone enjoyed it; there was a detectable heat to the heirloom tomato salad (garnished with mint, lime and creme fraiche -- a nice take on the usual tomatos with basil dish, with the mint adding its own fresh coolness).

Though people enjoyed the halibut, the pork was a real hit; cooked falling-apart tender and served with black rice and supposedly curried greens, (though we couldn't tell). The dish was a wonderful combination of flavors.

Dessert was something of a disappointment. The locally grown keitt mangos were lovely, but the puff pastery with lime custard reminded us of the colored sprinkle sugar cookies from Weby's (formerly in Studio City for you Westsiders) that we enjoyed so. Not quite food for a more sophisticated palate.

We had a blast though a great place to have interesting food that takes chances -- Lucques Sunday Supper is defintely not a secret, as the joint was packed! So make a res if you want to go.

Lucques 8474 Melrose Avenue Los Angeles, CA

Construction Couch

Do you remember how your mama always told you not to play in constrution sites when you were a kid? Well, it looks like these couches ignored such sage advice. And they have the scrapes to prove it. They're covered in detrius, from what was doubtless a number of contruction lunches. One has been turned on its back (like turtles, when turned on their backs, couches can do little to defend themselves.)

Rain, Rain come and stay

Weather reports today say to expect thunderstorms tomorrow. Crazy! We're at least a month and a half early for this sort of thing. Still, it sounds like we're in for a little wet weather. It could be a good thing.

Yarr!

Avast ye! It be talk like a pirate day, ye bilious scallywags!! We should get the day off work, have parades and get pinched for not wearing eyepatches! Arrr!

Running Out of Time

The coolness of the week has reminded us all that though Los Angeles is prone to Indian Summer, that the chillier weather is on its way. The next couple of weeks see our final opportunities of this year to see movies outside.

Next weekend is Cinespia's last movie. They're showing The Shining. This week they're showing Bringing Up Baby.

If your mood runs more towards Westerns, you can go to the Museum of the American West and see Once Upon a Time in the West.

Grab some beanies, blankets and sweatshirts (and a bottle of wine) and hit the grass one more time!

MacArthur Park

To go to MacArthur Park is to take a trip back in time. There are a lot of old buildings -- beautiful old homes, art deco apartments and even the Bullocks Wilshire, rising eerily over 7th street as you head away from the park. Unlike Bullocks (now owned and spectacularly maintained by Southwestern Law School), most of these buildings are run down and the people who live here are poor.

Where there are poor people, unusual methods of commerce pop up. While in the area, we saw two women selling the flowering part of the yucca plant along the side of the road. Later, doing a websearch, we came across one person advising someone looking for drugs to go to MacArthur Park and ask around. Another was a site where someone made a post warning women not to walk in LA alone at night as it is "one of the most dangerous cities in the world." There was also mutterings of gang activity, but nothing as concrete.

Every teenager knows that you can get fake I.D.s on 6th and Alvarado, where they are proffered by men holding their hand as if they are holding a carcard out to you. If you pull over, you agree on a price, then go to a nearby photo shop where they take your picture and half the money. Afterward, you agree to meet in the Jack-in-the-Box where they bring you the finished product, complete with holograms. We were curious if this was still a practice in our security obsessed (and somewhat xenophobic) times, but driving by the infamous corner, we noticed only one man making the symbol. Still, he was there.

MacArthur Park isn't a place that occurs to the jet-set, the soccer moms or the indie kids, but it's a place we should all think of, especially with the object lesson of New Orleans before us. It's value to us isn't only in its history and architecture.

Thursday Night

A Thursday night in September...nothing to do... ...except see kuaptic friends Bernhauser play the Knitting Factory with Anchors for Architects, Seven Times On The Sea, Sticky Children and El Ten Eleven. The show starts at 8 PM. Tickets are $5.

When Ostriches Ruled Los Angeles

Yes. Ostriches. It only gets more unbelievable. Griffith Park (formerly called Rancho Los Feliz) was purchased by Colonel Griffith J. Griffith (His parents must have hated him) in 1882. He had made his money in coal mining, and he started an ostrich ranch on the property, where thirty of the birds lived. Though ostrich feathers were popular in fashions at the time, Griffith's primary interest in the farm was to draw people to his nearby holdings. People would come by and watch the animals be plucked.

Apparently Griffith (we can call him by both his first name and his last!), was something of an eccentric. He would give long speeches at his exclusive men's club. They were very dull, but people would put up with it because he had donated so much money. While on vacation with his wife, he became consumed by the notion that she was colluding with the Pope to poison him and shot her. Through pure chance, he missed and she survived, though disfigured and blind in one eye. At some point he believed he saw the ghost of Antonio Feliz, previous owner of the property, which spurred him to give some 3015 acres tothe City of Los Angeles.

Los Angeles decided to use the property to build an observatory, planetarium and an amphitheater. After the shooting of his wife, he was jailed and on his release, he decided to donate one hundred acres to the study of flight, and the aerodrome was built. It had a runway (basically, it was an airport, but in the early times of flying, it was the recreation of those who could afford it), and eventually passed to the National Guard until the 1930s when it was determined that the military presence violated the terms of Griffith's deed and then it was destroyed. Now the LA Zoo and the Museum of the American West (formerly the Gene Autry Museum) occupy the space.

When Griffith died in 1919, most of the property passed to the City of Los Angeles, and his money, also left in trust to the city was used to fund their projects.

Griffith Park now includes two golf courses, Travel Town (where they have old trains), the Greek Amphitheater, The Observatory, the Hollywood Sign, the LA Zoo and the Museum of the American West, as well as lots of open park space for games, horseback riding and hiking. Now, when you enjoy the many and varied pleasures of the park, you can think, not only does it have nothing to do with D.W. Griffith, but it all started with a crazy guy. And ostriches! Don't forget the ostriches.

Mugged

This couch, and its accompanying loveseat are understandbly scared; they were mugged! Some guy came up and rifled through the cucushions in an obvious search for lose change! It was an obvious adding of insult to injury, as couches do not value money and so would gladly have turned over any change they possessed, if they had hands.

Have you had it animal style?

Once, online at In-N-Out, one kuapticite asked her date, "Have you had it animal style?" He looked mortified until she red-facedly explained that "animal style" referred to a manner in which burgers were served. (By many, it's said to be the best way to have an In-N-Out burger.) The "Animal Style" burger is served with grilled onions, special sauce, pickles, mustard fried right onto the meat and, of course, the requisite lettuce and tomato. It's delicious and boy, is it messy! They also serve fries animal style (though they don't come with mustard.)

On their website, In-N-Out lists their secret menu as having six items -- Double Meat (two patties, no cheese and all the goodies), Protein style (where your burger is served to you on lettuce instead of bread), Grilled cheese (no meat) and the popular 3x3 (three patties, three slices of cheese) and 4x4 (In-N-Out will, in fact, make a burger to any number x number specifications) as well as Animal Style, but there are, in fact, numerous other menu permutations.

You can get your fries "light" (under fried) or "light well" or "well done" (which makes them crispier.) You can also order them with cheese and with no salt. You can get a chocolate vanilla swirl milkshake or a Neopolitan milkshake (where all three flavors are combined.) You can get a rootbeer float -- a combination of root beer and vanilla milkshake, or you can ask for the shake with extra syrup. For a little extra, you can even order milkshakes in larger sizes. The Flying Dutchman is two patties, two slices of cheese and nothing else. There's the Veggie or "wish" burger which has no meat or cheese. You can even get peppers on your burger, or order a side of sauce for your fries.

Just try that at McDonalds.

Top Secret

Los Angelenos love their In-N-Out. Just ask those of us who have moved outside the California/Arizona/Nevada In-N-Out zone. They cry when they talk about it. Not just a little teary-eyed either. We're talking about open weeping here.

In a time rife with corporate take-overs and dominated by the interests of big business, In-N-Out remains in the hands of the family who originally started it, and they have no desire to franchise it or take it public.

In-N-Out was opened in 1948 in Baldwin Park by Esther and Harry Snyder. They felt that if the offered people sinple fresh food (no freezers or microwaves are involved) that was made to order that people would respond. Though it was 3 years before another In-N-Out opened, today there are over 140 locations.

The menu has remained the same since it opened, just hamburgers, double doubles, fries, shakes and sodas. But to those in the know, the chain has a lot more to offer.

The Last Frank Gehry Post

We realize that we've gone on long enough about Frank Gehry. However, it was difficult to pass up on the opportunity to post so many pictures of beautiful buildings, crazy buildings that make you look twice and think about possibilities. Buildings that are, quite frankly (no pun intended) not Santa Monica Place. So in our last installment on Frank Gehry, we decided we'd discuss the anti-Santa Monica Place -- The Disney Concert Hall.

Downtown LA is an easy place to get lost in. It's a forest of tall, glassy Bauhaus structures, like a series of cemetary stones sprung up in the flat plane between Century City and the horizon. On closer inspection, it's one of the city's richest repositories of art deco architecture and home of many of the oldest and most beautiful theaters (no matter how run down and threadbare they are.) But these attract only the discerning eye. They're easily overlooked.

On the outskirts of the tall buildings, not quite visible from the 110 freeway, you can stumble across the Disney Concert Hall. It's splayed gorgeously over an entire city block, a concrete representation of the art within, the kind of dazzling structure that can change the way you see everything. The Disney Concert Hall is the result of about fifteen years of work. Lillian Disney (widow of Walt Disney) donated the initial contribution of $50 million dollars in 1987. Gehry turned in the finished design in 1991. Contruction on the underground garage began 1992 and was approximated to cost between $90 million and $110 million dollars. The project stalled after that, due to lack of funds, but groundbreaking did take place in 1999, and the Hall opened to the public in 2003.

The Concert Hall is unquestionably one of the most striking and beautiful buildings in Los Angeles. It is home to the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and Los Angeles Master Coral as well as REDCAT, the Los Angeles Opera, and, in what is arguably the most important restaurant space in Los Angeles (and priced to match), Patina. On the outside, the building is rippling and lyrical, so bright that portions of its surface had to be sandblasted last year to mitigate the intense heat and light emmitted by its metal skin. Inside, the material is reddish wood amphitheaters swirl up in surprising ways. Behind is hidden a a jewel like garden, with a fountain shaped like a rose and yet another small amphitheater. It is a jewel in a city of exceptional buildings.

Frank Gehry, pt. 3

Frank Gehry is part of the Deconstructionist movement in architecture, which emphasizes non-linear thinking, controlled chaos and non-Euclidean Geometry, standing opposed to the rationality of modern architecture. It's sometimes referred to as Russian deconstructivism, as it takes its inspiration from the movement of the same name in the 1920s.

What Else Should I Be...

kuaptic would like to apologize. The last couple of days we've had some technical difficulties and been unable to post. We have resolved them and will be back next week with our usual consistency.

Frank Gehry, pt 2

The rule of architecture, since the Bauhaus, has been "form follows function." Frank Gehry's "deconstructivist" (DeCon or Santa Monica School of Architecture) style has been a reaction to that credo. Once, architecture was to reflect social ideas, such as "speed." Gehry adopts a counter philosophy, namely a return to the notion that architecture is art.

Earlier in his career, Gehry was interested inusing unfinished materials, corregated metal juxtaposed with brick and cement. He exploded the idea of permanance though his use of chain link fencing (a material he loathed for "containing" his buildings) to create a "shadow" structure within the space of the building itself, claiming "if you can't beat it, join it." He explored primal geometric forms, unexpected points and angles instead of adhering to the necessary.

He collaborated with Klaus Oldenburg and his wife on the Chiat/Day Building in Venice, CA. Oldenburg designed the whisical entry way (a pair of binoculars) and Gehry created the strange, buttressed brown half of the building.

Frank Gehry

Frank Gehry was born Ephraim Goldberg in Toronto Canada in 1929. At seventeen, he moved to Southern California to attend Los Angeles City College and then the University of Southern California. Immediately afterward, he joined the archtectural firm of Victor Gruen Associates. After a year in the army, he moved briefly to Boston, MA to study city planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design before returning to Los Angeles and becoming a citizen of the U.S. During this time, he worked at both Victor Gruen and Pereira and Luckman.

In 1961, he moved his wife and two daughters to Paris to work at the firm of Adre Remondet, where he studied not only French modernists like le Corbusier but also classical European arichtecture. In 1963, he returned to Los Angeles and began his own firm, Frank O. Gehry and Associates, merging in 1979 to Gehry and Krueger, Inc. Needless to say, Gehry, as perhaps the most famous architect in the world, has recieved numerous awards, honorary doctrates and has taught at both Harvard and Yale.

Hapless Wooden Pieces

The couches continue to remain cagily indoors while hapless wooden pieces swarm the streets of Palms. Often these poor souls are stipped, as we saw with last week's bureau and this week's super rare "sideboard."

Though sadly ravaged by people who once carefully dusted and oiled it (if indeed one oils particleboard with veneer -- which we kind of doubt), this sideboard tries to effect a nonchalance demonstrated by many of the longer surviving pieces (note the soda cup on top of it on the right). Sadly, it didn't work out.

Downtown Weekend

Some people go to the mountains on Labor Day weekend, others go to the sea. kuaptic goes back to where it all began -- downtown.

Though often semi-abandoned, dirty and scary, downtown is undeniably a place where the heartbeat of old LA can be felt. Through a number of circumstances, various kuaptic peeps spent time in the area this week and have come away with come cool places to go.

Aardvark Letterpress 2500 West 7th Street, Los Angeles, CA
Super nice and artistic, the Aardvark Letterpress is a purveyor of that age old discemination of the word, the printing press. Located on a tiny corner near MacArthur Park, the Letterpress does custom invitations, business cards and stationary, at no small price. Its walls have a few pictures of old stars and old jazz is played while this family owned business does what it's done since 1968. Certainly, the Aardvark Letterpress is (as they used to say) a Lollapalooza of its dwindling kind.

Roger Stuart Clothes 729 Los Angeles Street, Los Angeles, CA No frills suits. This place is Old School (capitalization ours) with grumpy old men who have terrible taste in ties, thousands of high quality suits at 60-70% off. They don't cotton to that new fangled business of selling mens suits to women though, so take note.

Ciudad 445 South Figueroa #100, Los Angeles, CA
On Sundays, Ciudad is all tapas all the time. Pretty decent too; highlights include grilled artichokes, lemony and well spiced, cheese and olives and the goat cheese fritters served with raisins and honey. Surprising and tasty.

The Golden Gopher 417 West 8th Street, Los Angeles, CA Stepping into the Gopher is a little like going back in time. Its slick black and crystal decor, replete with cozy boothed corners, the required golden gopher lamps and excellent urban smoking patio is perfect for ordering up anything from a sidecar to a cosmopolitan, enjoying the good jukebox and waiting for that woman with trouble in her eyes to click through the door.

The Broadway Bar 830 South Broadway, Los Angeles, CA
Having just opened recently, the Broadway Bar feels like it hasn't quite grown into itself. It needs a better house red, and though it has all the ingredients -- a huge blue sign that turns traffic outside the same hue, modern lighting created with what looks almost like desk lamps and a splashy central bar, along with a menu of champagne cocktails, the place has yet to accumulate an atmosphere. We look forward to returning to see how it does.

Santa Monica Place

No one starts at the top, not even Frank Gehry, arguably the world's most famous living architect(he was even on the Simpsons. An indication of pop cultural dominance if there ever was one). He had to while away the time somehow while he was waiting to make such fabulous and dreamy structures as the Guggenheim Bilbao and the Disney Concert Hall, and no one should be surprised that he spent that part of his life trying to make money -- designing malls and other industrial buildings throughout Southern California.

Two of them are now slated for demolition. Santa Monica Place, fiercely ugly beige monstrosity that anchors the far more pleasant Third Street Promenade and a building at UC Irvine, also said to be something of an eyesore. Generally, kuaptic sides with preservationists, but Santa Monica Place is hideous and deserves to go. Just because something is made by someone famous doesn't mean it's good.

It's All Around You

Driving along, if you look while you're at a stoplight, you can see the secret art deco architecture all around you. It gets torn down or covered up or run down, but largely, it persists. Like mythological creatures, you can only see it if you really look.

Cocoanut Grove

The Cocoanut Grove, a supper club where the rich and famous dined and danced, opened 3 months after the Ambassador Hotel, in April 1921. It was designed in Moorish style. The palm trees that decorated the room were rumored to have come from the Rudolph Valentino film, The Sheik and they had stuffed monkeys hanging from them. The ceiling was painted midnight blue and sparkling stars were strewn across its firmament.

Joan Crawford won over a hundred dancing contests under those stars. It's said that she was discovered there, while on the dancefloor, as was Carole Lombard and Loretta Young. It was a regular hang out of the Rat Pack in the fifties. In remembrence, Sammy Davis Jr. recorded a live album there. He wasn't the only one. When Judy Garland staged her comeback there, her live album feautured the last night of her appearance. Bing Crosby began his career crooning to the dancers.

The first Academy Awards where they gave the famous "Oscar" statue was held in the Grove in 1930. It was also the home of the first Golden Globe Awards.

Now the ghosts will have to find some place else to dance. Those stars will be extinguished, the whole building, with all its style and history wiped out, the victim of necessity and blindness.

Ambassador Hotel, pt 2

The Ambassador Hotel was opened on New Year's Day in 1921, in what was then the countryside. Its Spanish revival decor, rife with Italian stone fireplaces and tiled floors, replete with an alabaster fountain glowing in the lobby quickly attracted the jet-set. Even its coffee shop, designed by Paul R. Williams, one of the U.S.'s first pre-eminant African American architects, was a spectacular example of high art deco style, with its rounded white banquettes and swirling bar was one of a kind.

A number of stars in the thirties kept permanent apartments there, like Howard Hughs, Jean Harlow, Gloria Swanson and a significant number of 20th Century American Presidents. In fact, Nixon wrote his famous "Checkers" speech there (where he claimed that the only gift he had accepted from supporters was a cocker spaniel named Checkers.) Exotic silent movie star Pola Negri was known to walk through the tropical gardens with her cheetah on a leash. Marilyn Monroe was first signed in the Ambassador office of the Blue Book Modeling Agency. There was a time when if you were having a party, you had it at the Ambassador. Everyone from Mickey Mouse to Tallulah Bankhead was feted there. Even through the sixties, it maintained its relevence -- the Charles Manson jury was put up there during the trial.

Without question, the hotel achieved infamy when Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan in the kitchen beneath the grand ballroom (with it's detailed freezes of charioteers) shortly after giving a speech there in 1968. It was a turning point for the fabulous hotel. The area around it was falling into neglect, and as much as they flocked there at one time, people began staying away in droves.

In 1989, the famous hotel closed its doors to the public. It remained a popular movie location, as it was still a paragon of art deco style. One of its more famous roles was in 1967, as the Taft Hotel, where Anne Bankcroft and Dustin Hoffman famously canoodled in The Graduate. Other films shot there include Pretty Woman, the Mask, Charlie's Angles 2, Catch Me if You Can, Almost Famous, Forest Gump and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Throughout the nineties, the ameneties there were sold off -- some can even be found on Ebay still, and the hotel itself was sold to the LAUSD (after a stint being owned by Donald Trump) in 2001.

kuaptic.

Friday, September 30, 2005

kuaptic October

Hollyhock House, pt 2.

Thursday, September 29, 2005

Hollyhock House

Wilshire Boulevard

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Los Angeles is Burning

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Joan's

Escape from Palms

Monday, September 26, 2005

Forbidden Fruit

Friday, September 23, 2005

They Didn't Waste Any Time

Love LA, Love Our Smog

Thursday, September 22, 2005

Space Aliens

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.

The Stink

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Lucques

Construction Couch

Monday, September 19, 2005

Rain, Rain come and stay

Yarr!

Friday, September 16, 2005

Running Out of Time

Thursday, September 15, 2005

MacArthur Park

Thursday Night

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

When Ostriches Ruled Los Angeles

Mugged

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Have you had it animal style?

Top Secret

Monday, September 12, 2005

The Last Frank Gehry Post

Frank Gehry, pt. 3

Friday, September 09, 2005

What Else Should I Be...

Thursday, September 08, 2005

Frank Gehry, pt 2

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Frank Gehry

Hapless Wooden Pieces

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

Downtown Weekend

Santa Monica Place

Friday, September 02, 2005

It's All Around You

Thursday, September 01, 2005

Cocoanut Grove

Ambassador Hotel, pt 2

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