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Old News: When Those Freaky Circus People Come to Town
Photo: Cirque Berzerk There’s a certain historical irony in this month’s return of Cirque Berzerk (left) to the Los Angeles State Historic Park with a schedule of weekend performances. Over a century...
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L.A. in Quotes: Wigging Out to the Hollywood Plastics
Hollywood Wig Shop. Photo: M. Imlay “I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They’re beautiful. Everybody’s plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic.” – Andy Warhol (1928-1987). Thanks to...
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Altadena’s Weirdly Mysterious “Gravity Hill”
Amazon.com image Recently your humble blogger picked up a copy of the wondrously offbeat Weird California (left), a “travel guide to California’s local legends and best kept secrets.” Written by...
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Forest Lawn, the Ultimate Celebrity Neverland
Forest Lawn, Glendale. Photos: Michael Imlay This week it was announced that pop-singer Michael Jackson will be laid to rest at Forest Lawn, Glendale, on what would have been his 51st birthday, Aug....
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SoCal Kitsch: Pink Panther Muffler Man
Think pink! Muffler sculptures are a staple of auto garages everywhere, but thanks to our Car Culture, they’re especially ubiquitous here in Southern California. As an art form, more often than not...
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Stowed Baby Mummies Spark Film-Noir-Like LAPD Investigation
StockXchng image. Sometimes it’s best not to snoop through somebody else’s old, abandoned luggage. Still, you can just picture the scenario as it unfolded Tuesday afternoon… Rummaging down in the...
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L.A. Coroner’s Little Shop of Horrors Now a Dying Business
L.A. County Coroner building entrance. Photo: Eric Gonzalez Considering how death rates trend upward during the holiday season, this macabre December 25 New York Times article profiling the L.A....
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Grave Controversy Continues at La Plaza
Remembering the dead at La Placita. (Photos: M. Imlay) Novena candles glow gently in the courtyard of Los Angeles’ Old Plaza Church. They seem a fitting enough symbol, given news a little over a week...
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Caution: Never, Never Wake the Dead!
StockXchng image. Not to beat a dead horse, but having unearthed numerous pioneer skeletons at the abandoned Placita churchyard, LA Plaza officials might want to think twice before messing with the...
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If You’ve Ever Wondered How an Urban Legend Gets Started…
StockXchng image Here at Dateline>City of Angels we love to dissect and examine historic ghostlore and other longstanding urban legends. However, it’s not very often that we get to see a real,...
View ArticleThose Devilish Santa Ana Winds
Whether summery hot or wintry tepid like the ones shown above that are currently ravaging Pasadena and the Greater Los Angeles area, Southern California’s fiendish Santa Ana winds are the stuff of...
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Face From the Past: The Ever-Notorious Judge William G. Dryden
William Dryden (LAPL Digital Archives) Melodramatic as they might be, modern courtroom TV reality shows wouldn’t hold a candle to the legal antics of 19th Century Los Angeles. Throughout the mid- to...
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How Now, Plastic Cow?
My talking cow on a Monrovia street corner. Once upon a time in SoCal history there were, as one author put it, “Cattle on a Thousand Hills.” Nowadays the most any of us suburbanites ever see is a...
View ArticleWeekend Matinee: Buzzing Suicide Bridge
More Pathe Newsreel footage from the Silent Era. This time a plane buzzes Pasadena’s Colorado Street (aka “Suicide”) Bridge. Just imagine anyone trying that stunt today.
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Summer Reruns: Cryptic SoCal Edition
Angeles-Rosedale Cemetery. Like many history buffs, I find old cemeteries profoundly educational. Walking among the plots, statuary and epitaphs, you never know who (or what) you’ll stumble upon. But...
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Detail Shot: Finnish Lines in Pasadena
The Tupa's porch. Porch scene at the Finnish Folk Art Museum on the Pasadena Museum of History grounds. Once a Swiss-chalet style garage, the building was originally designed in 1910 as part of the...
View ArticleWeekend Matinee: Old Town Pasadena “Haunt”
This has got to be some type of Halloween gimmick or hoax. During California’s Mission Era, meticulous records were kept by both civil and Church authorities documenting every phase of a mission’s...
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Hollywood Sign Gets Lit
Hollywood Sign, LAPL Digital Archives A rare sight occurred on Mt. Lee the nights of August 20-21: The Hollywood Sign got lit up. The question is who did it, since lighting the iconic letters is...
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Rudolph Valentino’s Mysterious Ladies in Black
Valentino; Wikimedia Commons Amazingly, 87 years after his death, Rudolph Valentino continues to capture the imagination of cinema fans. Even more incredibly, he still somehow manages to draw veiled...
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Exploring the Strange Origins of the SGV’s Suburban Parrots
Red-Crown Amazon; Wikimedia Commons They squawk. They flock. They forage and roost in fruit and nut trees by the hundreds throughout the San Gabriel Valley. But the raucous Green Amazon parrots aren’t...
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