Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Today’s bike club ride was a trip to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to see the “Urban Light” installation in front of the main building. We’ve been out there before, but it seemed appropriate to go there again this week, since I’d heard earlier in the week that Chris Burden had died. So I dug out the route from last year when we rode out there to see the construction site for the new Purple Line subway station. And as it turned out, we had a special bonus today. The final stage of the Tour of California was starting downtown, right about when we would be passing through there. So we planned on stopping to see a bit of the race before heading out to LACMA.

We rode downtown by our usual route. The bad thing is that they have been doing construction where we pick up Mission Road off of Huntington Drive. We need to find a different way through there now, since they’ve made our old route impossible. So that was annoying. I think I may be feeling a letter coming on about it.

On the final bit into downtown, we saw a Metrolink train going by. This is the first time we’ve ever had to stop for a train at that particular crossing, so that was novel. Then we finished riding into downtown, and we set up at the corner of Main and Temple to watch the race go by. After that, we moved to Main and 1st to watch them go by again. That was a good corner to watch, since it was at the bottom of a small hill, so the pack was going very fast as it went by. Then we moved up to Olive and 1st, which was an even better place to watch from, since the course went both ways down Olive, so we got to see them go by twice on each lap. We watched them go by for each of the next three laps, and then they took off for Pasadena and the finish at the Rose Bowl. And we continued on our way.

It’s always kind of novel to see a bike race now. Watching the peleton go flying by, it’s hard to believe that I used to do that. And riding in a pack was just another day for me. Now I think it looks terrifying, and I can’t believe I used to go that fast. But fortunately, I have photographic evidence.

Using 9th St and later 4th St, we rode all the way out to Hancock Park and LACMA. We had to walk through the museum courtyard, but then, when we got to Wilshire Blvd, there were the streetlights. We read the little plaque in front of the installation and just sort of admired the arrangement of the lights. And on the way back, we stopped to look at “Levitated Mass”, otherwise known as the Big Rock. As I said, anything can be art, as long as the artist can convince other people to agree with him that it’s art.

Coming back, we stopped for bagels at Noah’s in Larchmont Village. Then we took our usual route home through Silver Lake, and then up to York Blvd and home through South Pasadena. It was a nice ride.

45 miles.

Route map and elevation profile.

Last fall, when we went to the Los Angeles County Fair, we stopped in a booth selling metal artwork. That’s where we picked up the little steel squid that hangs on our front door.

Around Christmas time, I noticed a little Santa hat hairclip that was just clipped on the edge of a lampshade. Since it wasn’t doing anything, I took the clip and put it on the squid. And like all manner of silly ideas, this took on a life of its own. We started planning for Valentine’s Day. I made a little heart-magnet, and we decorated the squid again. So now, moving on, we’re ready for St. Patrick’s Day. And we’re on the lookout for some bunny ears.

Yesterday, I saw this article on LAist:

http://laist.com/2014/02/08/dumb_starbucks_thats_the_actual_nam.php

I’m a big fan of funny art installations, and that’s basically what this is. I figured it’s probably not going to last too long, so I made plans to go see it today with the Sunday morning bike club group.

We rode out towards Hollywood by our usual route, only stopping once in Highland Park so Michael could fix his tire after running over a nail. And when we got to Dumb Starbucks, we saw that the word had gotten out. There was a line out the door and across the parking lot. And pretty much everyone thought it was pretty hilarious. Jeff and I even saw our stair-climbing friend Amber there.

As much as we wanted to see inside the place, we didn’t have time to wait in the line. So after a few pictures, we moved on. We rode across Hollywood and then down into Larchmont Village for bagels at Noah’s. After that, we came home by the usual route. It was an amusing ride. Reminiscent of the time we went to see the Kwik-E-Mart, and the time we rode to see Wilshire Boulevard dressed up as Tokyo, or 4th Street dressed as a New York City tunnel toll plaza.

41 miles.

I recently got a new app called “Field Trip” on my phone. It keeps track of where I go, and it pops up notices of interesting things to see and do in the area. So yesterday, it popped up a notice about a piece of art on the wall outside the Los Angeles County Hall of Records in downtown Los Angeles. The piece is called “Topographical Map”, and it is a stylized depiction of Los Angeles County. In the process of reading about this, I found out that the Hall of Records is one of only a very few office buildings designed by Richard Neutra. For some time, I’ve wanted to go see the houses on Neutra Place in Silver Lake, so putting these two together to make a tour seemed like a perfect combination.

We rode into downtown by the usual route, down Huntington Drive. On the bridge over the L.A. River, we had to stop for a Metrolink train. That’s the first time we’ve ever seen a train going by on that particular crossing, which always seemed odd, since it’s right near Union Station.

When we got to downtown, we went to the Hall of Records. “Topographical Map” depicts the geology and geography of Los Angeles County, complete with channels carrying water to represent the Los Angeles Aqueduct and the California Aqueduct. We also took a few minutes to look at the Hall itself. It was built in 1961, and bears all the hallmarks of the modernist style of architecture that Neutra was known for.

Continuing through downtown, we passed Grand Park and “Exxopolis“, across from City Hall. We rode down almost to USC before heading west on Adams.

We made a loop, coming up in Hancock Park for snacks at Noah’s Bagels in Larchmont Village. From there, we headed back east to Silver Lake and Benton Way. A short detour off Silver Lake Blvd brought us to Neutra Place. There were several Neutra houses on that short street.

The final part of the ride was our usual route home by way of Eagle Rock. We were all glad that the heat wave from last week had ended, and it turned out to be a very nice day for riding.

41 miles.

This Saturday was a gallery day for us. We went to A+D to see the “Never Built: Los Angeles” exhibit. This is a show of models, drawing, and other materials from projects that were proposed, but were never built. The projects on display covered a full range from things that might have been pretty useful to things that were clearly absurd. For instance, the model showing proposed development behind Union Station was perhaps a bit grandiose, but it really wasn’t absurd. By comparison, the proposal for an offshore causeway freeway from Santa Monica to Malibu was perhaps the most absurd idea floated there. Most of the others fell somewhere in between. There was a map of the original plan for the freeway system, of which about one-half has been built. There was also a drawing showing Disney’s original plan for Disneyland in Burbank. They said it never made if off the drawing board because the city of Burbank thought it would have too much of a ‘carnival atmosphere’ and not be a good thing for the city. So Disneyland ended up in Anaheim. All told, this was an interesting exhibit.

After “Never Built”, we headed west to the Annenbery Space for Photography in Century City. The exhibit there is “Helmut Newton: White Women – Sleepless Nights – Big Nudes”, which presented a selection of his photography over the years, along with a short documentary film about his life. His style was very distinctive, and has influenced a whole generation of photographers.

This all made for a fun afternoon.

This Sunday’s bike club ride was another art excursion. This time, we rode to the garden in front of the Fisher Art Museum at USC to see Blacklist. This is an art installation about the Hollywood Blacklist from the days of the House Un-American Activities Committee in the late 1940s and early ’50s.

It’s been hot all week, so I thought that going down into Los Angeles might be a bit cooler than Pasadena. So we rode down Huntington Drive and into downtown L.A. From there, we followed alongside the new Metro Expo line down to USC, where we pulled in to the garden in front of the museum. We spent a little time there, walking around and reading all the quotes carved into the stones. On one hand, it’s hard to believe that such things happened in the United States. But on the other hand, a lot of the things they were saying back then are the same things we hear today, only with the word “communism” replaced by “terrorism”.

After taking in the art, we rode out a bit on West Adams, and then north to Larchmont, where we stopped for bagels at Noah’s. Then it was home by way of Silver Lake. The ride back to Pasadena trends uphill, and the temperature went up right along with the elevation. But it was still a fun ride.

44 miles.

This Sunday’s bike club ride was a sightseeing trip to Watts to see the Watts Towers. I’ve always been fascinated by strange things that are the product of someone’s strange obsession. And since the towers were built by Simon Rodia out of junk he found over a period of more than 30 years.

The route was basically straight south to Whittier Narrows, where we got on the southern portion of the Rio Hondo bike path. That took us down through Pico Rivera and Downey to the Los Angeles river. Then we got off on Imperial Highway and rode across Lynwood. We crossed Alameda Blvd, and I took a moment to look down into the trench to see the railroad tracks that they built to carry the freight that is shipped into the port of Los Angeles.

When we crossed into Watts, we saw “111st St”. I presume that is pronounced, “eleventy-first street”.

Then we got to the towers. There is a small park around them, and there are plaques that tell the story. There are docent-led tours there, and Carla said that they are interesting. Someday I’ll have to go see that.

I rode down to the end of the block to see the Blue Line tracks there. I rode the train to Long Beach once, and I didn’t know that the tracks go right by the towers.

On the way home through Montebello, we saw some emus and llamas by the side of the bike path. That was odd. The sign said “Montebello Barnyard Zoo“.

It was a nice ride, with some cultural interest, and almost no hills at all.

49 miles.

Today’s bike club ride was a route out to Hancock Park and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to see the new “Levitated Mass” installation outside the museum. We’ve been reading about this for some time, since it was apparently a major undertaking to bring the rock to LACMA from the quarry in Riverside. The rock was too big to fit under a lot of overpasses, and too heavy for some bridges, so it had to take a very circuitous route to get to the museum. And now it’s installed just outside. So we went to see it.

Starting out, right away, Chris got a flat. Then we continued on, into downtown Los Angeles. When we got to Chinatown, we met up with GT, who had ridden in from Burbank. And he promptly got a flat, too.

While GT was fixing his tire, we got to see the guy pushing the cart with the roasted pig on it. That was an odd sight.

There was a big line outside one of the buildings downtown, but with no outward indication of what could be so popular at 9:00 on a Sunday morning.

Passing L.A. Live, we saw the outside of the X Games, as well as some oddly-dressed people who were on their way to the convention center and the Anime Expo.

When we got to the park, the rock was right there. There was a guard posted by it. He insisted that we could only walk under the rock, and we couldn’t ride our bikes through. I’m not really sure what that was supposed to help, but that’s what we did.

After looking at the rock, we left the park, passing the giant chrome Lenin-head at 4th St and La Brea. Then we rode across Hancock Park to the Noah’s Bagels in Larchmont Village. We had snacks there, and then we headed home by way of Benton Way in Silver Lake.

By the time we got back to Pasadena, it was getting a little hot. But all told, it was a nice ride.

43 miles.

A few years ago, I went to see an exhibit at LACMA about Rene Magritte. When we were there, we saw his famous painting, “The Treachery of Images“:

Magritte is known for sort of teasing the viewer with images that can be self-contradictory, like the pipe with the caption, “This is not a pipe”.

So I thought of this last weekend when I was riding the train to downtown San Diego for the stair climb. I saw this pull into the station:

Who knew that the San Diego MTS had a surrealistic bent?

On Thursday night, Kathleen and I went downtown for the monthly Art Walk again. We’ve gone several times before, and it’s usually a fun time. This is the first time we’ve made it there since March, and it was a nice night for it. It was a pleasant evening and not too chilly.

As always, when we first got there, we set off in search of the food trucks. This time, we got some wrap-things from Cheer Burger. They were quite good. And while we were waiting, we saw the manufacturers plate on the back of the truck. So now we know where food trucks come from.

After eating, we wandered around the galleries. We saw lots of things we liked, a few that we didn’t, and that’s about normal for these things. I do think that someday we will have to get one of those jellyfish-looking lighted sculptures to hang in the house. And we didn’t come home completely empty-handed. We bought one small print from an artist in one of the smaller galleries. It was an odd little drawing of an armadillo with flowers growing out of its back. It’s kind of a weird size, so I need to order a special frame to put it in.

All told, it was a fun evening.