Repo Van

I saw the Repo Home Tour bus heading east on Colorado Blvd. yesterday and had to make a quick turn to follow it. I probably looked strange hanging my camera out the window and hoping for the best. I did that because I found it shocking. Like a vulture to carrion, at first thought.

Then again, maybe not. If reasonable people can buy a home at a reasonable price in the Pasadena area, how can that be bad? It's just that real estate has been so unreasonable in southern California for so long, I was starting to get used to it.

I'd just like to make one thing clear: I do not want to see this bus on my block.

Blues Alley

I've mentioned before what pretty alleys we have around here, and not just in Old Town. We have ugly ones, too, but I admit I'm a Pasadena chauvinist and I haven't photographed them. (Yet. I'm sure I will.)

I think this one, off Mentor Avenue near Boston Court, is ravishing.

Zona Rosa Caffe

The website of Zona Rosa Caffe boasts "a relaxing, unhurried and intimate experience." They mean it.

Have you ever sat at a coffee shop with your book or laptop, and soon felt like the staff (ahem) needed the table? At Zona Rosa you're welcome to linger over your coffee (imported from Mexico or Latin America, most likely). If you sit upstairs you can listen to music and examine the artwork. Outside, enjoy your conversation or the breeze.

The other day we drank iced lattes and watched a limousine wait outside the Pasadena Playhouse next door. If we'd lingered a while longer we might have seen someone get in it. It didn't matter. The weather was lovely and the lattes were perfect.

Hugo Reid Adobe

I think it'd be nice to mosey across this porch and have a sit-down after a long day's ride. I'd kick the dust from my boots, politely ask the lady of the house for a glass of iced tea and drink it under the wisteria.

When this adobe was built in 1839, the lady might not have had ice. Then again she might have, because that particular lady, Victoria Bartolomea Reid, was pretty well off, seeing as she and her husband owned the 13,319-acre Rancho Santa Anita.

Right now the Hugo Reid Adobe is closed so you can't poke around inside, but you can mosey across the porch. The house is one of several historic buildings on the property of the Los Angeles County Arboretum, which totals 127 acres. Doesn't sound like much compared to the whole Rancho, but believe me, it's plenty good for a day's mosey.

Après Easter

Someone didn't like grape.

Naked

My March 11th photo of North Lake Avenue showed a patch of hillside that was burned in a brush fire last August. That patch remained bare throughout the winter.

To get a different look at the burn, you don't have to go far up the Sam Merrill Trail before you face the area head-on across the canyon. The picture to the left was taken February 18th (not a good day for breathing). I took the picture below about a month later, March 17th. No doctoring, no Photoshop.



Click on the photos to enlarge them and you
can clearly see the difference between the two: we had rain. Things grew, and they didn't waste
any time doing it.

Rain could have meant mudslides in the burned area, where no plants had survived to hold onto the dirt and keep it there. The hillside could have come down onto that I-don't-know-what-you-call-it part of Pasadena's water-catching and -treating system you see at the bottom center.

But the hill held up and the brush is growing again. It won't be bright green for long, but that doesn't mean it's not healthy. Around here it's all scrub, chaparral and sage brush. By summer, the muted brown, gray and sage palette will dress the hills. Maybe that bare patch won't look so naked then.

Happy

Happiness, love, prosperity, serenity. Um...what else? Peace. Peace would be good. Understanding would also be nice, but in lieu of that I'll take tolerance. Anything else?

Cooperation

I don't take Boz across the dam.

Beyond the Devil's Gate Dam is a footbridge. You can walk from Pasadena to La Cañada Flintridge. Or, less intimidating, from the Dam to the frisbee golf course. Excuse me—Disc Golf Course. The world's first Disc Golf Course, to be exact.

Boz and his friend Sprocket got excited when they heard about the Frisbee Golf Course. But they aren't allowed on the course, with good reason. We told them to stay, and they did. Whew.

Easter Bonnet

So I was up in Altadena the other day. I stopped off at Steve's Pets to pick up a chew-bone for Boz. There was some construction going on and no place to park in front, so I drove around back down Marcheta Street to that parking lot behind the store and...

Was that a dress shop? Behind the pet store? I bought the dog his bone and grabbed my camera.

Well! At the back end of a parking lot you might expect—what, resale? Oh, no no no. Clear your mind and allow it to fill with all things fancy.

If you like to dress up—and I do mean UP—Winsome's Pretty Woman is your shop. In this hiding place, Charmaine Boyd stocks sequined suits, studded denim, sparkling purses, and hats, hats, hats. Mens clothing, too. And did I mention hats? Pretty enough to wear to the Royal Ascot races.

I hadn't even known the shop was there. When I said that, Charmaine said it with me. But she likes the quiet atmosphere of her location. She doesn't care to rush her customers. They come to browse through the catalogues over a cup of coffee, consider their purchases and place special orders for Donna Vinci and Lisa Rene dresses (at the best prices anywhere, says Charmaine, and I believe her). She can get them from petites to size 36, get you alterations if you need them, and find you a fabulous purse to go with it.

And did I mention hats?

First Amendment Rites

Yesterday, twice as many people as expected showed up at the corner of Orange Grove and Hill to protest five years of war in Iraq.

Grandparents came with adult children and grandchildren. Ronda (above) brought her sons. Everyone came to have their say, in hopes that we never have to attend another anti-war demonstration.

The atmosphere was more hopeful than angry. One reason might have been the overwhelming support from passing motorists; the cacophony of honking was at times almost too much.

I said "almost." This is a post I wish you could hear.

To see more photos from the event, click here. To check out Democracy for America's Pasadena Chapter ('cause they organized this shindig), click here.

Anniversary

On October 31, 2004, mere days before the presidential election, the Reverend Dr. George F. Regas, Rector Emeritus, gave a sermon at All Saints Episcopal Church entitled "If Jesus Debated Senator Kerry and President Bush." In it the Reverend declared such incendiary truths as, "Mr. President, your doctrine of pre-emptive war is a failed doctrine" and "...Jesus has been hijacked and turned into the guardian of privilege instead of a champion of the dispossessed." (These comments are necessarily taken out of context, so I encourage you to read the sermon. It's six pages, large type.)

Soon after the election, All Saints found itself in the international news when its tax-exempt status was threatened by the IRS on a charge of "campaign intervention." (Guess they couldn't charge 'em with "free speech.") It's a long story. To make it short: the IRS picked on the wrong church. As of this writing, the investigation's been dropped.

This garden near the cloisters at All Saints looks so serene, you'd never guess at the activism inside.

Today marks five years of war in Iraq. If you're looking for activism in Pasadena today, try the 5:30 vigil at Orange Grove Blvd. & N. Hill Ave. (wear white, bring a candle and a friend). Or if you're a desktop activist, how about checking out a blog from an unfamiliar place? Make a friend in Lahore. Or Iraq. or Iran. Something tells me this internet thingy has healing potential.

Filing Cabinet

I heard a story on the radio the other day about a town in the Inland Empire where the homeless live in an area designated for their use. But now the local government is kicking out people who can't show proof of their "connection" to the town--like a driver's license or a utility bill. The city can't handle everyone. They don't have the resources.

I know I paint Pasadena as perfect. I do that because I love it here. But like any town in SoCal, we have homeless citizens to care for. I knew about Pasadena's Union Station Foundation, an agency serving the poor and homeless. It's about a quarter mile from where I took this photo. With a bit of research I found Pasadena Social Services, which led me to this site about Pasadena's ten-year strategy to end homelessness.

To me that seems a better approach than getting rid of people by asking them into producing orderly paperwork from chaotic lives. A homeless person with a utility bill!

Galore

Clouds. Galore! Yesterday I went walking just to marvel at them. This sky is unusual for southern California; we normally don't have enough moisture to sustain much in the way of clouds. If not for the mountains, I might have thought I was in Illinois in the spring.

Then last night: wind. (Galore!) There's not a cloud in the sky today.

Apéritif

The Pasadena Symphony, conductor Jorge Mester and pianist Howard Shelley staged an "open, working rehearsal of music by Mozart" Friday night for Art Night.

I wasn't allowed to take pictures inside the Pasadena Civic Auditorium but it was okay to shoot in the lobby, where this video presentation showed the rehearsal going on inside. I was disappointed, but I contented myself to photograph a particular lamp above the stairwell twenty or thirty times when I discovered I could hear the orchestra especially well while standing beneath it.

If that was a rehearsal, surely a performance will transport me higher than the stairs.

Art's Big Night Out

Everybody was out last night for Art Night. Pasadena was lit up and showing off with free museum entry, art exhibits and performances all over town. At Paseo Colorado (above), folks turned out to hear Carl "Sonny" Leyland and his swinging trio at the Pasadena Jazz Institute.

Art Night is part of Pasadena Art Weekend, sponsored by the Arts & Culture Commission. Events continue today with Art Talk at the Boston Court Performing Arts Complex and Sunday with Art Market at One Colorado. It's a biannual event, so if you missed it you get another shot at it this fall.

(Goodness. There's a link for everything, isn't there? I'm exhausted.)

As Palm Axis predicted in yesterday's comments, I had trouble getting folks to let me take pictures of the art itself. But I got a couple of good (legal) ones. I'm loading new software today and hope to have those up soon.

Nobody Coming

This little shack stands at the intersection of Green Street and Chester Avenue. From this angle, it looks like not much goes on there. Then you come around the front and see this:

I couldn't find much about it on the web except this, which is fascinating enough for me. The Karmann Ghia's gone and now they're selling an SUV. The place is still "maintained, but not used," as Mr. Wray says. And he's right; the place looks like a designer has fixed it up to be a painting--or a movie set.

Waiting

This old beauty has been sitting behind Robin's BBQ restaurant on Rosemead Blvd. for quite a while.

I don't think it's going anywhere. I think it's waiting, like an old wolf who knows its time is up, and this is the spot it has chosen for dying.

The Long View

This is the view of downtown Los Angeles from the Sam Merrill Trail yesterday. When you're down in the smog and you look directly up, the sky looks clear blue. You have to get some distance on it to see it.

Our air is markedly better now than it was when I moved to southern California 20 years ago, but there's still room for improvement. California tends to lead the nation in environmental protection and air quality legislation. Maybe this (undoctored) photo tells you why we keep trying so hard.

North Lake Avenue

I'm in Pasadena, facing south. The mirror looks north on Lake Avenue. It's about three miles to the foothills in Altadena. I took the photo for fun, messing around. Later I realized the dominant feature in the reflection is the swath of land laid bare by last August's brush fire in the Angeles National Forest.

Click on the photo to enlarge it and you get an idea of what the locals see passing through on the freeway, or heading north on local roads. You can see the scar from everywhere.

It was a minor fire of 12 acres. Firefighters got to it immediately and put it out fast. Since the area is mere yards from homes, that's a fine thing.

Zen One

This building at the corner of Foothill and Daisy is for sale. I'd guess it was built in the early- to mid-20th century, despite the 19th century look. The fact that the builders took the trouble to make a mundane thing such as a vent into an attractive detail may speak about the rest of the building. It may not. I didn't notice the missing flashing until I blew up the photo. That just makes me like it more.