STL DPB IN THE AIR - GOODBYE LOS ANGELES

It still amazes me that I can upload a post from 38,000 feet in the air, which is what I'm doing now. I could have said farewell Los Angeles but with periods of extreme heat, the worsening drought, wildfires, earthquakes and Trump still around, that might might sound sarcastic.

This is the iconic LA City Hall. Americans of my age remember it from the opening of the old Los Angeles police detective show, Dragnet. We recall Sgt. Friday: Just the facts, ma'am, just the facts. The fact is that it's going to be chilly and wet at the next stop.           

STL DPB ON THE ROAD - THE HUNTINGTON

Metro Los Angeles is so vast there are many areas we have not visited before. Northeast of the city center near Pasadena is The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, a 120 acre / 49 hectare opulent estate that I think had something to do with railroad money. Opulent is too weak a word. https://www.huntington.org/ They have a Gutenberg Bible, Gainsboroughs out to here and overwhelming gardens. I'm getting too old for all the up and down steep hillsides so we couldn't get to all of it. However, just the rose garden could occupy a photographer for a long time.               

STL DPB ON THE ROAD - AT THE GETTY CENTER

We spent Saturday at The Getty Center in the super-expensive Bel Air district of Los Angeles. J. Paul Getty made his fortune in oil and was in his time considered the richest man in America. He had a great interest in art  and left a very large amount of money to create a multi-building museum and scholarship complex, https://www.getty.edu/visit/center/.  It was uncharacteristically overcast in LA and the light wasn't great for outdoor shooting but this is part of the main garden.  

By the way, if you are in LA or may be here in the next couple of months, the large retrospective of the work of photographer Imogen Cunningham is a knockout, the most powerful show I've seen in this medium in a long time. Go. https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/cunningham/index.html  

STL DPB IN THE AIR - APPROACHING LOS ANGELES

I should have posted this just after we arrived. From the airplane, 15 or 20 minutes out of LAX.   

STL DPB ON THE ROAD - BARBARA KRUGER HAS QUESTIONS

The LA Museum of Contemporary Art has an outpost for large installations and special shows funded by the zillionaire David Geffen. The show inside was fascinating but we won't get to that now. One of the outer walls has had this - could you call it a mural? - by Barbara Kruger for some time. This is her style, provocative statements, almost always in the same typeface. It's interesting but also, at least for me, repetitive. She needs a new idea.             

En Route

The first leg of the trip is done. Obviously, we're heading west but about 90 degrees off course. 

Got some good pix of the Grand Canyon from the air, plus crop circles, I don't know what (space aliens tracings in the desert?), a big city and the next airline. A longer leg coming up.

These photos have lots of color distortion from the plane windows.                         

Mulholland Drive

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A mountain ridge runs between central Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley. Mulholland Drive winds along the crest. People around the world know it for the movie of the same name.

It seemed to me there was some famous overlook where you could see the lights of the LA grid as the sun set, but where was it? The first place I pulled into turned out to be the biggest dog park I'd ever seen, a mountainside of mutts. Eventually I found Runyon Canyon Park. You could walk down paths from the road to several viewpoints and eventually a path leading all the way down to the valley floor. There were views of downtown (LA has one but the city is so polycentric you would never know) and the famous Hollywood sign.

And so we bid good night and farewell to Los Angeles. We'll be back one day. For now - briefly - home to The Lou and photos of our magnificent symphony hall. Then we're on to Kansas City Wednesday and Marysville, Kansas, for the Thanksgiving holiday. Seems like I'm hardly ever home.

La Mode

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A walk down Rodeo Drive is a sociology field trip. These stores attempt to dictate the right way to look to women with more money than sense, then let it trickle down to the rest of the population. It goes without saying that the mannequins look skinny to the point of ill health, but I noticed a twist last weekend. A lot of them were bald, or almost so. How do you parse that? Madam, if you are not sufficiently skeletal, perhaps a few rounds of chemotherapy would do the trick. Sheesh.

TOMORROW: let's take a ride up to Mulholland Drive at sunset before we leave LA.

Wretched Excess

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Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills, California. This may have been the place where the saying about a fool and his money was coined.  It was quiet on a Sunday afternoon. Every manner of conspicuous consumption was at hand but they were not well patronized. Must be the economy.

As I walked along Rodeo I passed two men on a corner who might have been homeless. They had a small table in front of them. A rabbit - I'm pretty sure it was a real, live one - sat still on the table, upright on its haunches, wearing a little vest, still as could be. It would have been a great picture but I don't like to pay for them and I was sure it would be expected. I kept going.

As I waited for the traffic light a young man came up beside me. So slim, so very fashionably dressed, such perfectly sculpted artificially blond hair. He carried a shopping bag from Barney's New York, an expensive men's clothing store. He turned my way and said "they're asking for $15 to help feed the rabbit and then $10 for themselves. Hmmmppphh." I nodded knowingly. His expression made it clear that he was sure I understood. But then why not ask those kind of prices on Rodeo Drive?

Above, the Louis Vuitton store. Note the statue, whose angles and proportions aren't quite right. Look closely and you can see that it's not a solid casting but made up of blocks. But mannequins are a foundation of Rodeo Drive. Interpret it as you like.

Below, Bulgari and Gucci. The jewelry store insists on using the letter V in the second place, rather than U. It's based on Latin, which used this letter for both sounds. A group of common folk waited outside Gucci, perhaps hoping for alms from the rich shoppers.

It was too late for breakfast at Tiffany's but you could have a late lunch there. I didn't look at the menu. I didn't want to know.

Chanel, of course, sells clothing as well as its famous perfume. I wondered what the largest size dress they carried might be.

I saw three Maseratis just parked along the street in less than an hour's walk in the area. There may not be three Maseratis in all of metropolitan St. Louis.

NOTE ON YESTERDAY'S POST: for those who asked, I'm almost certain that the Marilyn Monroe figure was a statue. The reference is to stars leaving their hand prints in wet cement on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Note the way the platform is shaped, with a cutout to MM's left for a tourist to slide into for pictures.

 

Seen On Hollywood Boulevard

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Images from Hollywood Boulevard in the two blocks immediately east and west of Highland Avenue. They are self-explanatory.

By the way, all these LA pictures were taken with the little Olympus Micro Four-Thirds camera I picked up last summer. It is only kind of camera that my teacher in Maine last summer uses these days. Very small, light, inconspicuous on the street but terrific quality. Perfect for old joints that travel.

TOMORROW: on to Beverly Hills.

Filipino Veterans

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It's almost midnight my time and I just got home from the airport. These pictures were edited on the plane.

At one point on Sunday afternoon I was shooting around the intersection of Hollywood and Highland in LA when this parade came down the street. I asked one of the marchers what it was about. The details weren't clear but it had something to do with Filipinos who fought for the US - in World War II, I think - being denied American military veterans' benefits. But there can hard to be any of those people still alive. Maybe I missed something. Good opportunity for street portraits, if nothing else.

Hooray For Hollywood

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Some snaps around the tourist heart of Hollywood. The middle picture is Hollywood High School. Can you name all the people?

Short text here and probably no comments yesterday. Long meeting followed by dinner with my colleagues. 7 AM start today. I'll have some time to kill at the airport before my flight so maybe I can get caught up but there are so many more photos to edit.

I just found out that a big Caravaggio show opened Sunday at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and I won't have time to go. Rats.

That's Entertainment

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I spent yesterday afternoon driving around Los Angeles (now that's entertainment) out shooting for fun. First stop, the tourist center of Hollywood. This is everybody's favorite star on the walk of fame. Work today. I can edit pictures if the meeting is boring.

Today's Destination

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I'm in the air this morning, heading for sunny southern California. I've got a business meeting in Los Angeles all day Monday and Tuesday morning. The plane arrives at LAX at 11:30 AM today. I'll pick up a rental car and spend a happy half day shooting around the city of the angels. The weather should be perfect. Maybe I'll run into my favorite LA character, Nick Danger.

With luck, some pix should be up tomorrow.

The top photo is a new painting on the graffiti-okay part of the Mississippi River flood wall. The bottom is of Disney Hall, home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, a photo I took a year and a half ago.

I love to explore Los Angeles. As the saying goes, it's an nice place - no, a great place - to visit but I wouldn't want to live there.

STL DPB Leaving Los Angeles

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Got home late last night. Farewell crazy Los Angeles. I’ve never seen so many Jaguars or so many women with dangerous heels anywhere. Style over substance.

I’m ending the series with some shots from a room full of Jeff Koons’ stuff in the contemporary building of the LA County Museum of Art. Not for everyone but I think he’s funny and witty (not exactly the same thing). Above, a bust of Louis XIV. Below, John the Baptist, followed by Michael Jackson and his pet chimp Bubbles. At the bottom, a view of the famous Hollywood sign from the balcony of the just outside this room.

The Thursday Arch Series will return next week.

Downtown St. Louis 365 is hustling the rent today.

STL DPB In Los Angeles: Disneyland

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The Los Angeles Philharmonic plays in the Walt Disney Concert Hall, a creation of architect Frank Gehry. The big poster on the left pictures the 30 year old Venezuelan music director, Gustavo Dudamel. We attended the performance Sunday afternoon. Both the outside and inside of the hall are wonders. Dudamel led the orchestra with great economy through most of the concert but became airborne in the grand moments of the Bruckner 7th.

There's an Arch photo today on Downtown St. Louis 365 today. I mean, why not?

STL DPB In Los Angeles: Kids And Jackson Pollock

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At the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. A class of school children Were studying Rothkos and this Jackson Pollock. Some were into it, some were bored. One little boy was trying to copy a Rothko with colored pencils, moving intense attention from painting and paper. When a teacher told him it was time to go he barked "I am not finished."

Contemporary art museums in this country all seem to have similar acronyms, like MOCA (LA Museum of Contemporary Art), MCA (Museum of Contemporart Art, Chicago) and MOMA (Museum of Modern Art, New York. If I had the money to start an art museum, I might establish the Center Of Modern Art, or COMA.

Actual work to do today in Los Angeles. I'll try to get Downtown St. Louis 365 posted later today.

Downtown St. Louis 365 is on the run today.

STL DPB In Los Angeles: At The Getty

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A couple of shots from our too-brief run through the Getty Center on Saturday. One of the things I like about LA is its cultural and ethnic variety. Sure, New York has plenty of that but the flavors are different here. Just from an eyeball survey there are a lot more East Asian people and fewer South Asian people. NY has a big Hispanic population but LA's is far larger. You hear Spanish at every turn. In the picture above, a young woman reads a Chinese newspaper on a terrace at the Getty. Below, the passageway to the area where she was sitting. The place is bursting with architectural oh wows.

I got some good pictures from the air flying out here and edited a half dozen yesterday. They are in the set for this trip I started on Flickr. Click here.

You can be cursed by a black swan, if you like, on Downtown St. Louis 365 today.