Photo Essay: A Daylight Exploration of the Variety Arts Theatre

Back in 2012, I didn't have the lay of the land in Los Angeles yet—so, I just tried to take every opportunity to go anywhere that seemed cool, even if I'd never heard of it before. 

That's how I ended up at Variety Arts Theatre in Downtown Los Angeles, thanks to a haunted house/immersive theater show for Halloween by horror movie producer Jason Blum called Blumhouse of Horrors. 

I only had one photo of the night, and I could barely recall any real details, so I was thrilled to be able to return for Julia Stoschek Foundation's six-week run of "What a Wonderful World: An Audiovisual Poem" video art installation during its opening weekend last month.

Only thing was, it was pretty dark in there. I didn't feel like I could really see the building (which was the main reason I went in the first place).

 

So I scheduled myself on another day, after Spring Forward, right when the place opens at 5 p.m., so I could partake in the playhouse under some daylight illumination. 

Photo Essay: A Final Look at the Stahl House Before It's Sold (For the First Time Ever)

"Nothing important ever happened here," our docent told us on a recent tour of the Stahl House, which I got a last-minute ticket to so I could finally see it in daylight before it gets sold. 

 

Photo Essay: Bonnie Claire Ghost Town's Inspirational House of Quotes

Since my accommodations during my recent superbloom trip to Death Valley National Park were in Beatty, Nevada—and not inside the park or in one of the surrounding towns in California—my geography gave me the opportunity to explore some of the environs east of and in the eastern end of the park for the first time in a long time.

 

Photo Essay: A Superbloom Brings Death Valley to Life

For all the times I've visited Death Valley National Park—starting way back in 2008—I don't think I've ever seen any wildflowers there. 

I remember hearing about wildflower blooms there during the springtime, but Death Valley isn't the kind of place that you can just decide to visit on a whim. It takes some planning ahead to get a room for the night, and some significant driving to get there from Los Angeles.

I missed the "superbloom" that occurred in 2016, having just started a new job and still bouncing back financially from years of unemployment. I've regretted that for 10 years. 

Now, there's a once-in-a-decade bloom happening in Death Valley again—and this time, I was prepared. All the way back in January of this year, I started booking hotels in anticipation of a very good wildflower bloom about the occur. I wasn't sure when it would hit, so just to be safe I reserved a room for every weekend in March, and the first weekend in April. 

Usually wildflower season hits Death Valley later in the spring, following the burst of color that occurs annually—to varying degrees every year—in Anza-Borrego and the Antelope Valley. But this year, the desert environs much farther north of LA caught up to the Southern California floral explosion timing-wise. 

And on the first weekend of March 2026, I'm pretty sure I got pretty close to the peak of the best wildflower bloom that Death Valley has had in a decade. 

 

Photo Essay: An Anti-Frieze Art Gallery Takeover of the 99 Cent Store

The chain of 99 Cents Only Stores went belly-up in 2024, filing bankruptcy and closing and selling off all of its stores. 

But the famed location in the Miracle Mile community of Los Angeles has been reactivated—as a pop-up gallery lasting just one week. 

Photo Essay: A Long-Neglected Playhouse for Variety Acts Gets Some Much-Needed Attention from the Art World

Back in 2012, I didn't have the lay of the land in Los Angeles yet—so, I just tried to take every opportunity to go anywhere that seemed cool, even if I'd never heard of it before. 

That's how I ended up at Variety Arts Theatre in Downtown Los Angeles, thanks to a haunted house/immersive theater show for Halloween by horror movie producer Jason Blum called Blumhouse of Horrors. 

I remember being led through an auditorium with seats—at one point, through one of those squeeze tubes that make it feel like you're traveling through a birth canal. And I remember someone in costume—maybe an usher? or a bellhop?—taking a group of us up the elevator to an upper level that felt more like a hotel than a theater.

But it was so long ago—and I only have one photo of the night, taken outside with a scare actor (jump to the photo ↓)—that I barely can recall any real details.

 

The Variety Arts Theatre has been open to the public very rarely since then, including for the Delusion haunt in Fall 2025—but it's had construction fencing up out front for years. Thankfully, that finally came down, and the theater doors swung open once again. 

Photo Essay: A Tour of The Jonathan Club for the Common People

The Jonathan Club always seemed like one of those LA places I'd never get into—so unlikely, in fact, that I never tried and never even added it to my bucket list.

But then the Los Angeles Conservancy hosted public tours at the end of January—and finally, my ship came in.

Photo Essay: The Reopened Vista Theatre, In Its Tarantino Era

If I hadn't let the geography of my new job determine where I'd live when I moved to LA back in 2011, I would've made the neighborhood of Los Feliz my home. 

Of course, its walkability and nightlife offerings would've made it an easy transition for an incoming New Yorker. And it sits nestled in the cradle of Griffith Park, a vast urban wilderness that I'd been long fascinated with before making the big move. 

Los Feliz also has a long history with the movies.

Los Feliz was really Hollywood before Hollywood was Hollywood—and the junction of Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood Boulevard, and Hillhurst Avenue was a giant backlot for monumental productions like the Babylon set from D.W. Griffith's problematic feature film Intolerance.

circa 2015 

That's the same intersection where the Vista Theatre was built, opening in October 1923 as Bard’s Hollywood Theatre. It got the name "Vista," a 1985 Los Angeles Times article says, when Fox West Coast took over in 1927.

Photo Essay: The Peabody, A Grand Hotel of Marching Ducks and Memphis Royalty

When we were planning our Memphis trip months ahead of when we'd actually travel for my birthday, our hotel options always boiled down to one clear choice: The Peabody. 

 

I'd heard of it from a friend who'd stayed there several years ago for a work conference, and who'd been delighted by the daily duck parade. That was enough to seal the deal for me. 

 

But then I also realized that it also fit the theme of my destination birthday celebration—that is, Elvis, whose manager Colonel Parker closed a record deal for the rising star with RCA Victor right there in the lobby in 1955. (The budding performer had previously visited the Peabody to attend his senior prom there.)

Photo Essay: John Lautner's Salkin House Emerges From the Lost and Found [Updated]

[Last updated 1/24/25 8:45 PM PT—Made some corrections based on an email from the real estate agent behind the 2014 sale—Steven Gutierrez-Kovner, who also grew up in the home—and a photo received from a friend who visited the home during its pre-2014 ownership.]

Back in October, I heard about an opportunity to visit a "Lost Lautner"—that is, a house designed by architect John Lautner that was missing from the official record of his works. 

circa April 2009, via Google Street View

It was the Salkin House, located on Avon Terrace and tucked into the crook of the neck of upper Elysian Park. Completed in 1948, somehow it had disappeared from public memory for decades—until it was "discovered" again in 2014, when it hit the market for the first time basically ever, confirming the rumors of its existence to be true. 

 

circa March 2018, via Google Street View

Fashion designer Trina Turk and her (now late) husband Jonathan Skow purchased it for $1.2 million (with the adjacent lot, $1.5 million) and embarked on a preservation-minded restoration. They secured its designation as a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 2016.