Photo Essay: LACMA Parades Down Wilshire Boulevard to Celebrate New Gallery Grand Opening

OK, let's put aside the fact that I'm mad at LACMA for doing the unthinkable in 2020—demolishing its William Pereira-designed buildings of its original campus, immortalized in Ed Rucha's oil painting Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Fire. 

Pereira's Bing Theatre was absolutely lovely. I'll never forgive them for what they did. 

But I did join the museum in celebrating the grand opening of its new David Geffen Galleries, which replaced the demolished buildings and expanded the LACMA footprint to the east with a Brualist, "floating" bridge designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, his first project in the U.S.

Capping off an all-day block party on Saturday was the first-ever—and perhaps annual—Art Parade, a collaboration between LACMA and gallery owner Jeffrey Deitch. Deitch had curated a similar Art Parade in NYC's SoHo neighborhood from 2005 to 2008, but I somehow missed it then. 

I also missed the street procession that brought Michael Heizer's Levitated Mass boulder to LACMA in 2012. So I wasn't going to skip out on this one—despite the grudge I carry. 

Can of Letters, Ben Klevay

Photo Essay: Schindler's Outer Space Architecture in Studio City, The Roxy Roth House

The Roxy Roth House by architect Rudolph M. Schindler was officially completed in 1946—but by the looks of it, it could've been done in 1964 or 2064.

 

This sculptural architectural masterwork—part of Schindler's "Space Architecture" movement—stands on a Studio City hill as though it landed there from a galaxy far, far away.

Swimming Like a Rookie at Fort MacArthur

My swimming tourism thing is nothing new. I tried a lot of different pools when I first moved to Southern California, before I got settled into a routine. And when the old West Hollywood Pool was closed and then demolished during the Covid pandemic, I was forced to find somewhere else to swim my laps (mostly because it was the only thing I wanted to do outdoors, and it wasn't safe to be indoors). 

Once the brand-new West Hollywood aquatic facility opened nearly four years ago, I got lazy and just stuck to my neighborhood. It was so easy. And nice.

But the WeHo pool was closed last week and this week for Pride celebrations—so I've been back on the road, looking for other places to take a dip. 

And today brought me to a pool that's long been on my list: the Hey Rookie Pool at Fort MacArthur.

circa 2023

The historic military pool reopened as a public pool in 2017 following a $7.1 million renovation, which repaired safety concerns that had closed and decommissioned it in 1997.

Photo Essay: Plunging Into the Biltmore Hotel's Tiled Pool Palace

I haven't written about the Biltmore Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles yet—despite having taken a tour with the Los Angeles Conservancy—because I just didn't think I had anything to add to the existing reporting.

Tichnor Brothers, Publisher, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Located opposite of Pershing Square—once Downtown LA's "Central Park"—the Beaux Arts-style hotel by Schultze and Weaver gets a lot of press coverage, and for good reason. Today, this architectural masterpiece provides luxury accommodations much as it did back in 1923, when it was the largest hotel west of Chicago.

An After-Hours Sound Bath Among the Mattresses: Retail Therapy, LA Style

"I love LA," said the woman next to me, as she gathered up her crystals and folded up her sheet. We'd slept next to each other, on two neighboring mattresses, during a sound bath conducted inside the Mattress Central store in Atwater Village. And then we went our separate ways.

 

Griffith Park Ranger Horses Partake in the Sacred Rite of Ham and Eggs

In 1925, the Los Angeles Breakfast Club was founded (as simply The Breakfast Club) by a group of staunch horsemen who took their morning canters along the bridle trails of Griffith Park every Friday morning. 

When they'd had their fill of clip and clop, they'd park their horses at the Griffith Park Riding Academy and breakfast at a horseshoe-shaped table under the shade of eucalyptus trees across the street.

The Riding Academy is gone, but Griffith Park is still open for equestrian activity, for those who prefer to saddle up rather than strapping on their hiking shoes. And The Breakfast Club is still meeting weekly—now on Wednesdays—on that same parcel of land, along a stretch of the Los Angeles River now known as Riverside Drive. (Although they did move around a bit before they could return there in 1965.)

 

I've been a member of the Los Angeles Breakfast Club since 2017—and for over nine years, my only equine experience with the club has been sitting on a sawhorse named Ham for my initiation.

 

That changed last Wednesday, when horses returned to the Shrine of Friendship—and those who'd gathered for an indoor breakfast moved the festivities outside to honor two horses of the City of Los Angeles Park Rangers - Mounted Unit.

Photo Essay: Bob Baker Marionettes' Choo Choo Revue Pulls Into the Station

Bob Baker Marionette Theater has been around for over 60 years—but it's been more than 40 years since it debuted an entirely new production. The last new show was Hooray LA from 1981.

 

That all changed this past weekend with the premiere of Choo Choo Revue. 

Photo Essay: Riding the D (Or, Bringing the D to Beverly Hills)

When you move from New York City to Los Angeles, everybody outside of LA says, "Oh, but you have to drive." 

That's not a bad thing to me. I often wished I had a car when I lived in three of the five boroughs. And by the time I moved from Brooklyn to Manhattan in 2003, I'd been avoiding the subway ride home late at night for years already. At one point when I was making enough money, I took cabs to work every day. 

But living in Beverly Hills since 2011, I have felt the pinch of not even having the option to ride the subway. If I wanted to, say, ride the Expo line to an event at the Coliseum (so as to avoid traffic and high parking fees), I'd still have to drive five miles (or 20 minutes) and park my car in the Metro lot. 

Thank goodness for the bus lines, which have gotten me where I've needed to go many times when my car has been in the shop and I couldn't afford rideshare.

So even though public transit has not been part of my daily routine, I was still excited that the LA subway was finally coming to Beverly Hills, thanks to the Purple Line Extension—or what's now known as "the D." 

Photo Essay: Lloyd Wright's Legacy Lives On at the Henry O. Bollman House

The construction of the Henry O. Bollman house in Los Angeles' Sunset Square Historic District is very much a story of sons. 

Henry's father was a prominent Hollywood man, Otto Bollman, president of the Dial Film Company (perhaps best known for the 1920 film The Tiger's Coat). 

Henry forged his own path as a builder/developer—and when he was planning for his own home to be built on North Ogden Drive in the early 1920s, he commissioned it from the son of one of the most notorious architects of the time. 

Photo Essay: A Promise Kept—Woolworth's Is Serving Lunch Again (And More) in Bakersfield, California

Back in 2019, when I first dined at the Woolworth's lunch counter in Bakersfield...

 

...the adjacent Five & Dime Antique Mall was still open and chock full of vintage wares, from furniture to clothing.