In 1857, Frenchman Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville patented his invention for recording sound, the phonautograph. Twenty years later, in 1877, someone first realized that his phonautograms could also play back recorded music. It was the same year, coincidentally, that Thomas Edison patented the phonograph and thus the age of recorded music began. In 2015, former Amoebite Matthew Messbarger posted an NME “Best of 1990” on my Facebook timeline and I decided to began reviewing the best songs of each year, from 1877 to the present, in random order.

*****

The demolition of Pruitt-Igoe

1972 was a turbulent year. The violence of the Troubles peaked, claiming the lives of more than 500 people.Though comparatively ignored in the west, the Burundian Genocide also began, which claimed the lives of over 500,000. Ferdinand Marcos placed the Philippines under martial law. Black September invaded the Olympic Village and murdered eight Israeli athletes in Munich.  Members of the German Red Army Faction were arrested in Frankfurt. The Asama-Sansō Incident took place in Japan. Native Americans from the The Trail of Broken Treaties took over buildings belonging to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Angela Davis was found not guilty of murder. Missouri‘s notorious Pruitt–Igoe projects were demolished. Health officials admitted that blacks had been used as guinea pigs in a study of untreated syphilis. Shirley Chisholm became the first black candidate for US president although the American people instead choose to re-elect fascinating nutjob Richard Nixon.

Outside Earth, humans visited the moon for the last time. The Space Shuttle program began. Mariner 9 became the first artificial satellite to orbit another planet (Mars). The Pioneer 10 launched from Cape Kennedy and would become the first human-made object to leave the solar system. In art, Andrei Tarkovsky‘s science-fiction masterpiece Solaris debuted and although perhaps not masterpieces, Eolomea and Silent Running entertained. With all of that space travel its no wonder it was glam rock‘s’ annus mirabilis. Capitalizing on the space craze, David Bowie‘s 1969 song, “Space Oddity” was re-released and Elton John, doing his best Bowie, released “Rocket Man” (which was later covered byWilliam Shatner which was later covered by Chris Elliott).

 

In technology and entertainment news, HBO was launched, Atari was founded and released Pong. The first scientific hand-held calculator, the HP-35, was introduced for the price of $395 (about $1,750 in 2015 dollars). Bands including Creedence Clearwater Revival, Jefferson Airplane, Martha and the Vandellas, MC5, Them, and The Velvet Underground all called it a day. ABBA, Cockney Rebel, Devo, The Jam,Mama’s Pride, The Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Rockets, Rufus, Van Halen and many other bands formed. It was a great year for music, with Neil Young, The Sweet, The Four Tops, Mott the Hoople, Yes, Big Star, Townes Van Zandt, Gentle Giant, Marvin Gaye, Genesis, Lieutenant Pigeon, Lou Reed, Curtis Mayfield, Roxy Music, and Hawkwind all releasing amazing songs that barely missed my Top 10.

*****

10. Bee Gees – Run to Me

Angelenos are known for their obsessions with celebs and without a doubt, one of the hottest trees on the landscape today is “El Pino Famoso,” also known (because its fame is implicit) as “El Pino.” On my way to breakfast at El Mercado de Los Angeles in Boyle Heights this morning, I caught up with this famous tree, whose IMDB credits include a co-starring role in 1993’s cholo epic, Blood in, Blood Out.

DID YOU KNOW?

The Bunya Pine (Araucaria bidwillii), as it is commonly known in English, is not actually a pine (genus “Pinus”). The tree is actually in the same genus as the the Araucaria araucana, which though also not a pine is nevertheless known in English as the Chilean pine. Araucaria do have characteristics in common with pines, though, including the fact that they’re evergreens and coniferous (there are evergreens which aren’t coniferous, by the way, like larches). Although the Bunya was widespread during the Mesozoic era, today its natural range is limited to a few disjunct groves in Queensland Australia near Moreton Bay.

The indigenous Barunggam people traditionally regarded the Bunya Pine with deep spiritual reverence. Bunyas generally fruit once every three years or so, and when they did the Barunggam would invite neighboring indigenous people to their homeland in the aptly-named Bunya Mountains for festivities which involved religious ceremonies, marriages, and of course, Bunya nut feasts.

EL PINO

El Pino stands near the border of Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles, in the Palma Heights tract of the latter. It towers above the house at 3308 Folsom Street which was built in 1915. Bunyas first appeared in the West in 1843, when English botanist John Carne Bidwill sent specimens to English botanist Sir William Hooker. Parts of Southern California and Australia share a similar Chaparral climate and Australian immigrants such as Eucalyptus and Moreton Bay Figs remain common fixtures of the Los Angeles landscape. Bunyas are much more rare.

Bunyas were popular in the 1880s but were already falling from fashion by the following decade. Several continue to stand in parks but few share space with homes. My suspicion is that they fell from favor because of their cones. Bunyas reach heights of 45 meters and produce cones with diameters of 35 centimeters. Roughly the size of watermelons, they weigh up to ten kilograms (22 pounds) and one doesn’t have to be Sir Isaac Newton to imagine what would happen when they fall… although it doesn’t hurt. 

Navy veteran Sean Mace required multiple surgeries when one fell on him as he slept under a Bunya tree. As a result he sued the National Park Service and the Department of the Interior for $5 million and that organization have responded by erecting plastic fences and installing warning signs. Whilst I am sympathetic to Mace’s plight I do think that people should be able to read natures signs as well and if there are giant, heavy cones littering the ground beneath a tree that might serve as a sign that it’s no more safe a place to nap than, say, an alley strewn with broken bottles (which probably has no sign warning against laying in it).

BLOOD IN BLOOD OUT

El Pino’s fame is based almost entirely on Blood In, Blood Out. It’s location doesn’t appear on any star maps but tourists from around the world come there to behold it (and hopefully not to nap underneath it). In that film, when Miklo gets out of prison Paco asks him where he wants to go and without hesitation, Miklo replies, “El Pino.” When Vatos Locos (the fictional gang to which they belong) get there Miklo says “That tree is East Los to me.”

El Pino was chosen by the filmmakers in part for its regional recognizability. There aren’t that many tall structures on the Eastside, and those that there are were built by people (e.g. the Sears, Roebuck & Co. Mail Order Building, the Dependable Logistics Services Building, Fairmount Terrace, the campus of Cal State Los Angeles, and the campus of the LAC + USC Medical Center). Unlike most natural features, El Pino, already tall but perched on top of a hill and surrounded only by homes, is visible from far away. Not long ago, James Rojas led a Latino Urbanism tour of East Los Angeles and Boyle Heights. As we were stood at the far end of Evergreen Cemetery I pointed it out in the distance. As if on cue, a truck rolled up and one of the occupants yelled, “Vatos Locos forever!” 

When Blood In, Blood Out was filmed, El Pino and the property on which it’s situated was owned by Eusebio Ortega, who’d moved to the house in the 1980s. He obviously, given its size, didn’t plant the tree and legend has it that the tree was planted by a Japanese dentist known as Mr. T. Okuno — although I suspect that it was planted before he lived there if he acquired the property in the 1940s.

I’m not sure if it was the same man and I don’t have old census records lying around but I did discover that there was a Thomas Takeo Okuno who studied at the dental school of University of California in Berkeley and later moved to Southern California. He was born in Hawai’i to Hamamura Okuno in 5 November 1902. At Berkley he boarded with the family of Masaaki Honda, who later wrote Suzuki Changed My Life. In 1940, two years before the forced internment of Japanese-Americans, there was a T. Okuno was registered as living in Inglewood with his wife, Haneke, and their two daughters, Nobuko (born in 1936) and Tomoko (born in 1939). I don’t know if this was the same T. Okuno but whatever the case may be, this T. Okuno was sent to the notorious Manzanar concentration camp in the Owens Valley.

Drone footage including El Pino (by Erick M.)

When the Japanese-Americans were freed, most were dispossessed of all they had owned prior to 1942. The version of the legend I’ve most often encountered is that the Okunos that lived beneath El Pino received the house as a gift from Mrs. Okuna’s sympathetic Anglo boss, which seems pretty generous. Casting further doubt on this version, in 1940 the property had been registered to another Japanese-American, one Hide Okuno. Thomas Takeo Okuno died in December 1986 and I know nothing of the rest of the Okunos but if you can clear up the story, I’d be very interested in any information you might provide.

I’d also like to create a listing and map of all known Bunyas in the Southland. Here’s a map of the ones that I know of. If you can help, please send a picture and address and I’ll happily credit you.

*****

Eric Brightwell is an adventurer, writer, rambler, explorer, cartographer, and guerrilla gardener who is always seeking writing, speaking, traveling, and art opportunities — or salaried work. He is not interested in writing advertorials, clickbait, listicles, or other 21st century variations of spam. Brightwell’s written work has appeared in Amoeblog, diaCRITICS, and KCET Departures. His work has been featured by the American Institute of Architects, the Architecture & Design Museum, the Craft & Folk Art Museum, Form Follows Function, Los Angeles County Store, Skid Row Housing Trust, and 1650 Gallery. Brightwell has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Magazine, LAist, Eastsider LA, Boing Boing, Los Angeles, I’m Yours, and on Notebook on Cities and Culture. He has been a guest speaker on KCRW‘s Which Way, LA? and at Emerson College. Art prints of his maps are available from 1650 Gallery and on other products from Cal31. He is currently writing a book about Los Angeles and you can follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Click here to offer financial support and thank you!

Austrian Eurodisco group Joy are scheduled to perform live in Santa Ana on 5 December Saint Nicholas Eve/Krampusnacht) at the Yost Theater. They will perform hits including “Touch By Touch,” “Hello,” “Japanese Girls,” “Valerie,” “Im In Love,” “Countdown of Love,” and more. Buy tickets now as there are only 1,000 and they’re going fast.

If you can’t see the forest for the trees, Los Angeles might only seem like an exclusively horizontal city. The fact of the matter is, however, that no city on earth has greater difference in elevation, from below-sea-level Wilmington to 1,544 meter tall Mount Lukens. Tallest in the county is Mount San Antonio but even the gentlest chains of rolling hills dwarf the tallest artificial structures most “vertical” cities stake their reputations upon.

*****

Radio Hill is a low hill located within Elysian Park and part of the Elysian Hills, a small chain of sandy siltstone landforms with minor imbedded conglomerate that stretch from the Santa Monica Mountains (Hollywood Hills) in Griffith Park down to Downtown’s Bunker Hill.

Radio Hill is located between Solano Canyon to the northeast, Elysian Park and Dodger Stadium to the northwest, Chinatown to the southwest, and Los Angeles State Historic Park (“the Cornfield”) and Dogtown to the southeast.

Before the arrival of humans, Radio Hill and the surrounding area was home to California black walnuts, bobcats, California Kingsnakes, Coastal Whiptails, garter snakes, gopher snakes, grizzly bears, California mountain Kingsnakes, mountain lions, oaks, steelhead, sycamores, Western fence lizards, and other forms of life. At least 13,000 years ago the ancestors of the Chumash arrived in the area, but ultimately settled primarily along the coast and Channel Islands. Some 10,000 years later the Tongva arrived from the Sonoran Desert to the east and became the dominant nation within the Los Angeles Basin.

California was claimed by the Spanish Empire in 1542 but it wasn’t until the 18th Century that the Spanish Conquest really kicked off. In 1769 explorer Gaspar de Portolà embarked an overland exhibition, camping at the base of Buena Vista Hill (located on the other side of Solano Canyon) on 2 August of that year. The Spanish founded El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles de Porciuncula on the banks of the Los Angeles River in 1781 and the pueblo was granted four square leagues of territory. Radio Hill lies within those borders although if it had name, it wasn’t “Radio Hill” as the word “radiophone” wasn’t coined until 1881.

Although it’s location near the center of the growing town made it desirable, its rugged terrain prevented, for the most part, its being developed and on 5 April 1886 it was set aside as the Elysian Park. It is not, as if often stated, either Los Angeles’s oldest park (that would be Pershing Square) nor its second largest (that would be O’Melveny or Griffith, if one excludes these 36 square kilometer Topanga State Park for not being located entirely within the city).

Radio Hill was separated from a large part of Elysian Park by Cemetery Ravine, named after the Calvary and Hebrew cemeteries and now mostly lying under the parking lot of Dodger Stadium. Now it’s separated by the Arroyo Seco Parkway, formerly Figueroa Street (thus the Figueroa Street Tunnels). By the time of its establishment as a park, most of the walnut and oaks had been chopped down. From 1886 until 1892 private organizations working with the city parks commission planted over 150,000 trees in the park and Radio Hill still boasts some dense eucalyptus groves and other species.

The name “Radio Hill” was probably first applied to the landform in the 1930s. In 1929 Los Angeles Police Department Chief of Police James E. Davis began exploring the possibilities of radio as a law enforcement tool. His successor, Roy Edmund Steckel, assumed the office of Chief of Police on 30 December 1929 and it was under his watch that the LAPD was granted its first radio license from the Department of Commerce Radio Bureau.

On 1 May 1931, the LAPD began transmitting with the call letters KGPL. In 1949, the Federal Communications Commission changed the callsign to KMA367. Today the primary callsign is KJC625 and the tower still stands above a small building at 1266 Stadium Way.

In the 1990s, the Radio Hill Gardens were installed atop the hill, supposedly to showcase native plants. Underneath layers and layers of tags, signs name autumn sage, California fuchsia, coastal rosemary, Mexican bush sage, monkey flower, Monterey ceanothus, scrub oak, and Western redbud. I mostly noticed small agave and non-native jade plants, which looked as if they’d been planted by guerrilla gardeners (perhaps members of Save Elysian Park) and recently watered.

Despite these efforts, today Radio Hill feels isolated, degraded, and neglected. I stared at a hole cut into a fence and a well-trodden trail next to some grocery carts and was reminded of Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel, The Road. At that moment my friend Matt remarked that the whole scene reminded him of something out of the television series, The Walking Dead. It’s a shame that it’s in such run-down condition because it is located next to green space-deficient Downtown and affords some nice views.

Getting to Radio Hill wasn’t that easy. There is one sign that I’ve passed heading to the Arroyo Seco Parkway but the nearest parking is on the streets of Solano Canyon or Chinatown. The nearest bus stop to the Stadium entrance is Broadway / Bishops (#11902) and nearest bus stop to the Amador entrance is Broadway / Solano (#11914). Both are served by Metro’s 28, 45, and 83 lines as well as LADOT’s DASH Lincoln Heights/Chinatown bus.

The permanently locked gates are easily enough circumnavigated on bicycle or foot but there’s a huge amount of broken glass and garbage strewn throughout much of the park and especially near the roads, which have no signs stating their names. As we explored the heavily trafficked trails, they all seemed to take us not to butterfly gardens or native plant showcases but rather to one of several shantytowns. I thought about referring to them as homeless “camps” but “camp” implies a temporary shelter and these makeshift slums had drainage ditches, fences, and an overall appearance of semi-permanence.

At the top of the hill an open fire hydrant hemorrhages water into a pool in which a bottle of shampoo and a tube of toothpaste bobbed next to some apples and empty water cooler jugs. At least one of the shanties was guarded by a territorial, off-leash pit bull who persuasively ushered us out of the park.

The sight of these dilapidated homes reminded me of the fact that this hill and hills nearby were the site of the infamous Battle of Chavez Ravine. Under the National Housing Act of 1949 the the Los Angeles Housing Authority received funding to build a public housing development named Elysian Park Heights and designed by noted architects Richard J. Neutra and Robert E. Alexander.

In 1952 and ’53 the makeshift communities in Elysian Park were cleared as the city both purchased property and seized it. Then, in 1953, with the support of the right wing group Citizens Against Socialist Housing (CASH), Republican mayor Norris Poulson was elected on a platform based largely on opposition to providing housing for war veterans, the elderly, and poor on the grounds that to do so would be “un-American.” Elysian Park Heights were never constructed and instead the land set aside for them was covered with a privately owned parking lot and baseball stadium and opponents of socialism can take comfort in the fact that our country still has a population of over 600,000 homeless.

FURTHER READING

• Elysian Transients
• From Worthless Land to Semi-Wild Paradise: The Origins of Elysian Park
• Radio Hill Gardens
• The Road to Radio Hill – Part One
• The Tattered Radio Hill Gardens

*****

Eric Brightwell is an adventurer, writer, rambler, explorer, cartographer, and guerrilla gardener who is always seeking writing, speaking, traveling, and art opportunities — or salaried work. He is not interested in writing advertorials, clickbait, listicles, or other 21st century varieties of spam. Brightwell’s written work has appeared in Amoeblog, diaCRITICS, and KCET Departures. His work has been featured by the American Institute of Architects, the Architecture & Design Museum, the Craft & Folk Art Museum, Form Follows Function, Los Angeles County Store, Skid Row Housing Trust, and 1650 Gallery. Brightwell has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Magazine, LAist, Eastsider LA, Boing Boing, Los Angeles, I’m Yours, and on Notebook on Cities and Culture. He has been a guest speaker on KCRW‘s Which Way, LA? and at Emerson College. Art prints of his maps are available from 1650 Gallery and on other products from Cal31. He is currently writing a book about Los Angeles and you can follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Click here to offer financial support and thank you!

When people find out that I’m vegetarian, about half of them ask me whether or not I eat seafood. I usually reply that I do, as I eat sea vegetables. Most are confused by this response for several reasons. Firstly, they’re used to meeting self-described vegetarians who aren’t actually vegetarians as they make exceptions for bivalves, cephalopods, crustaceans, echinoderms, sea snakes, penguins, dolphins, otters, whales, and any land animal who dares wander too far from the shore.

What I mean is that I do eat seafood as long as it is not animal, because that’s what being vegetarian actually means — not eating animals, not even wet ones. (For the record, were I to make exceptions for any animals, it would be for the chicken and I would tell people that I eat airfood).

In the West, when we think of it at all, we tend to think of all marine life as being unlike life on land. The act of slaughtering marine animals is usually characterized as “harvesting.” In English, when we talk about hunting marine animals, the name for their obliteration is often derived from the animals’ names (e.g. fishing, sealing, and whaling). Compare that to “birding,” which means observing birds through binoculars and consulting guide books, not exterminating them with a rifle — and has the most self-righteous animal rights activist ever looked on a hunting rifle and fishing pole with equal amounts of revulsion?

Another obstacle faced by sea vegetables is the fact that we tend in English to dismiss them all as “seaweed.” We have slightly more specific descriptors like “algae” and “kelp” — both of which are only slightly more appetizing than “pond scum.” It’s probably for that reason, too (and because perhaps no culture has traditionally harvested and consumed sea vegetables as the Japanese) that even in English-speaking countries we more often recognize them by Japanese loan words than their supposed “common names.”

Even though 71% of Earth is covered by water, there has been surprisingly little written about sea vegetables. 96.5% of our water is contained in oceans which are home to perhaps 9 million species of life forms, among them completely herbivorous fish, dugongs, manatees, marine iguanas, sea turtles, sea snails, sea hares, sea cucumbers, and zooplankton. There are thousands of species of edible brown algae, green algae, and red algae out there. Blue-green algae isn’t actually a plant but rather a cyanobacteria. It is edible too and the ancient Aztecs and Chadians both made cakes from it (in Chad they still do and they’re known as dihé). It’s also sold as “Spirulina” and included in many supplements.

In the West we’re more likely to consume sea vegetables as tablets and capsules or in the form of thickening and stabilizing agents in products like gelatin, ice cream, pudding, salad dressings, and whipped toppings

than we are as recognizable ingredients, which I think is a shame. Although sea vegetables have long been used in the cuisines of China, England, France, Greenland, Hawaii, Iceland, Indonesia, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Newfoundland, Norway, Nova Scotia, Scotland, Taiwan, and Wales they’re absent from most people’s pantries.

It’s my hope that some day someone will open the world’s first vegetarian seafood restaurant (you can call it Neptune’s Garden or something like that) and perhaps this introduction will inspire and guide them. With the rise of both foraging and the locavore movement, hopefully it will be somewhere coastal, likesay, Los Angeles. In the mean time I hope it will at least inspire coastal cooks to get a bit more adventurous and to look underwater, not just on land. At the very least it’s going to serve as an inspiration and resource for myself.

*****

ARAME

Eisenia bicyclis is a brown algae better known by its Japanese name, Arame (Japanese: 荒布). It’s most common English name is Sea Oak although I’ve never heard anyone refer to it thus. It grows in dense forests off the coast of Korea and Japan at a depth of two to three meters.

Arame has a mild, sweet flavor which makes it a popular additive to many Korean and Japanese dishes such as miso soup. It’s also traditionally eaten, fresh or cooked, in Greenland, Iceland, Ireland, and Scotland.

BLADDER WRACK

Fucus vesiculosus is known in English as bladder wrack, bladderwrack, black tang, rockweed, bladder fucus, black tany, cut weed, dyers fucus, red fucus, and rock wrack. It’s the most common brown algae found on the coast of the British Isles but also grows along the sheltered shores of the North Sea, the north Atlantic, the western Baltic Sea, and the Pacific Oceans,

Iodine, when discovered in 1811, was first obtained from bladder wrack and used extensively to treat goiter. It is usually eaten fresh, cooked, or pickled.

CAROLA

Callophyllis is a red algae genus in the family Kallymeniaceae. Several edible species (especially Callophyllis variegata) are commonly referred to as carola. It grows along the rocky coasts of Alaska, Australia, Chile, Peru, the Falkland Islands, New Guinea, New Zealand, South Africa, St. Paul Island, Tierra del Fuego, as well as Antarctic and subantarctic islands such as the Graham Land, Kerguelen, Macquarie Island, South Georgia, and the South Orkney islands.

CARRAGEEN MOSS

Mastocarpus stellatus, also called Clúimhín Cait (cats’ puff), carrageen moss, carragheen, false Irish moss, Turkish towel, and Turkish washcloth. It is a species of red algae which is found on the exposed shores and tide pools of the British Isles and the northern New England coast.

It’s a source of carrageenan, an extract widely used in a variety of industries. In Ireland and Scotland it has long been dried and prepared as the basis of a drink consumed to ward of illness. It’s also used as an ingredient in various soups and jellies.

CHANNELED WRACK

Pelvetia canaliculata is a very common brown algae found on the rocky shallows off the coasts of France, Great Britain, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and Spain. It grows in dense tufts to a maximum length of 15 centimeters and requires frequent exposure to the air.

It has traditionally been harvested in Ireland as animal fodder and was usually only eaten by humans during famines. An Irish folk song, “Dúlamán,” tells a tale of two such harvesters. Today it is used in a variety of cosmetic products and included occasionally in seasoning mixes.

CHLORELLA

Chlorella is a microalgae — a single cell plant without leaves, roots, or stems. There are believed to be between 200,000 and 800,000 species of chlorella. The omega-3 fatty acid present in some fish oil turns many a vegetarian into a meat-eating pescatarian is actually derived from the chlorella that the fish eat.

Cutting out the middleman/middlefish is easily possible by consuming chlorella supplement tablets.

COCHAYUYO

Cochayuyo (Durvillaea antarctica) is a large bull kelp species common along the exposed shores of Chile, New Zealand, and and the subantarctic islands. Its scientific name “Durvillaea” is a reference to French explorer Jules Dumont d’Urville.

In Quechua Cuisine, it’s known as hulte and is used salads and stews. In Chile it is traditionally sold dry and then reconstituted — but the expression, “remojar el cochayuyo,” also refers to sexual intercourse. In Peru it is widely used incorporated into ceviche and is a primary ingredient of a soup called chilcano.

DABBERLOCKS

Alaria esculenta is a broad algae known in English as dabberlocks, Atlantic Wakame, badderlocks, honeyware, Irish wakame, Murlins, or winged kelp. In Irish it’s known as Láir or Láracha. It grows in the far north Atlantic Ocean. It grows attached to rocks just below low-watermark and on rocky shores.

It has a mild, semi-sweet flavor and is traditionally eaten fresh or cooked in Greenland, Iceland, Ireland, and Scotland.

DULSE

Dulse (Palmaria palmata) is a red algae also known as creathnach, dulse, duileasg, dillisk, dilsk, red dulse, sea lettuce flakes. It grows on the coasts of the north Atlantic and Pacific.

In Iceland, where it’s known as söl and eaten with butter, it has long been an important source of dietary fiber and protein. It’s popularly eaten dried and uncooked as a snack food but when fried, its salty flavor has been compared to that of bacon.

ECKLONIA CAVA 

Ecklonia cava is a brown algae found off the coasts of Japan and Korea where it’s known as カジメ and 감태, respectively. It grows in dense forests at depths of two to ten meters.

It’s traditionally been used as a fertilizer, herbal remedy, and added to baths. In Kyushu its traditionally added to miso soup.

EUCHEMA

Eucheuma is a red algae found in the tropics of the Indo-Pacific region from eastern Africa to Guam, with the largest concentrations occurring in Southeast Asia. A few species are also located around Lord Howe Island and southwestern Australia. It grows on sand and rocky seafloor areas along coral reefs.

It’s used as a source of carrageenan. The species Eucheuma cottonii is known in the the Philippines as guso and there and in Indonesia it’s often lightly boiled, mixed with spices, and served as a salad.

GUTWEED

Ulva intestinalis is a green algae also known as gutweed and grass kelp. It’s found on intertidal rocks, tide pools, and reef flats of the Baltic, Bering, North Sea, and Mediterranean seas as well as off the coasts of Japan, Korea, and Mexico. It favors brackish areas such as the mouths of rivers.

GELIDIELLA

Gelidiella acerosa is a red algae found mostly in the tropics and subtropics. It’s found on surf-exposed and moderately wave-sheltered rocks and reefs, and tide pools in Hawaii, Asia and the Indo-Pacific — especially Japan, India, and China.

HIJIKI (Sargassum fusiforme)

Sargassum fusiforme is most commonly referred to in English as hijiki, which comes from the Japanese “ヒジキ.” It grows on the rocky shores of Japan, Korea, and China.

Hijiki has a mild, earthy flavor. In Japan it’s often stewed in dashi with soy sauce, sugar, carrots, lotus and fried tofu. Hijiki is also not uncommon in salads, stir-fries, and sushi. It is very high in fiber although some avoid it for its small but measurable amount of inorganic arsenic.

HIROMI

Hiromi (Undaria undarioides) is a brown algae in the same genus as wakame. Its English name is adapted from the Japanese name, ヒロメ. Its range is relatively small and includes coastal areas off Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu.

IRISH MOSS

Irish Moss (Chondrus crispus) (also known as carrageen moss) is a red algae which grows in rocky coastal areas of the North Atlantic in Europe and North America.

In Ireland and Scotland it’s boiled in milk, strained, and then seasoned with ingredients such as brandy, cinnamon, sugar, vanilla, and whiskey. In Venezuela it’s boiled in milk and served with honey to relieve chest congestion and sore throat.

KOMBU

Kombu refers to all members of the Laminariaceae family of kelp (which also includes arame, kurome, giant bladder kelp, and other species). Therefore, to avoid confusion, it’s sometimes differentiated as “Dashi Kombu” (Saccharina japonica). It is native to Japan but also extensively cultivated in China (where it is known as haidai (海帶)) and Korea (where it is known as dashima (다시마)), as well as in France and Russia. It entered the English language as “kombu” in the 1860s.

Kombu has a strong flavor and is used in Ainu and Japanese cuisine to make dashi. It’s also pickled, dried and shredded, eaten fresh in sushi, or steeped to make a tisane known as “kombucha” (昆布茶) — of no relation to the fermented health beverage of the same name.

KUROME

Kurome (Ecklonia kurome) (Japanese: 黒布) is a brown algae which is found along the coasts off of Honshu, Jejudo, Jindo, Kyushu, and in the Seto Inland Sea.

LAVER

Laver (genus Porphyra) is a red algae that grows in shallow seawater and comprises approximately 70 species. In the west the principal variety is purple laver (Porphyra umbilicalis).

In East Asia, the more common varieties are P. yeeziensis and P. tenera, which are used to make nori (海苔) and gim (김), both of which are eaten as snacks and in ingredients for sushi.

Along the coasts of the Irish Sea it’s known as slake, and sometimes cooked with butter and lemon juice, eaten as a salad, or used in a sauce that accompanies mutton, crab, monkfish, or other animals. In Wales it’s used to make laverbread, traditionally eaten fried with bacon and cockles for breakfast. It’s additionally used to make a soup, cawl lafwr. In North Devon it’s traditionally added to oatmeal.

MOZUKU

Mozuku (Cladosiphon okamuranus) (Japanese: モズク) is found in Kagoshima and Okinawa. It grows on calm reef flats at depths of one to three meters.

It’s eaten as both food and in supplements. It’s harvested for a type of sulfated polysaccharide, Fucoidan, which is marketed as a cancer treatment and included in health supplements.

OARWEED

Oarweed (Laminaria digitata) is a large brown algae found in the North Atlantic.

In China and Japan it’s used to make dashi, snacks, and seasonings. In the West it’s primarily used by the food industry as a thickener.

SARGASSUM

Sargassum refers to a genus of brown macroalgae distributed throughout the temperate and tropical oceans and sometimes referred to as gulfweed. The Atlantic Ocean’s Sargasso Sea was named after the algae, as it hosts a large amount of sargassum. Some sargassum is planktonic and generally inhabits shallow water and coral reefs. Other species, such as Sargassum muticum, grows on rocks.

Sargassum is cultivated and used as an herbal remedy in China to reduce excessive phlegm.

SEA GRAPES

Sea grapes (Caulerpa lentillifera) are native to tropical areas of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, though they are found as an invasive species in the coasts of California and Hawaii. They grow in extensive meadows in both shallow lagoons and at depths of over 50 meters.

Also known as green caviar — is primarily cultivated in Okinawa, the Philippines, and Sabah. In Okinawa sea grapes are usually eaten fresh or in a salad. In the Philippines, where they’re known as ar-arosep, l ato, arosep, or ar-arosip, they’re usually eaten either raw or in a salad with onions, tomatoes, vinegar, and fish sauce or paste (bagoong). In Sabah they’re known as latok.

SEA LETTUCE

Sea lettuce refers to various species (of which nearly 100 are known) of the genus Ulva, a widely distributed green algae. Many species of sea lettuce are a consumed as food in China, Great Britain, Ireland, Japan, and Scandinavia.

It’s often eaten raw in salads or cooked in soups. Some species are also used to make Nori (although laver is usually preferred).

SEA MOSS

Sea Moss or seamoss (genus Gracilaria) is a type of red algae which grows in many parts of the world.

In Japan (Japanese: オゴノリ), it’s used as a source of agar or eaten cold, sometimes in sushi. In Hawaii it’s used in poke. In the Philippines, it’s known as “gulaman” and used in cooking.

In Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago, it’s sometimes marketed as Irish Moss (though only distantly related to Chondrus crispus). There it is boiled with milk and honey and purported to be an aphrodisiac.

SUGAR KELP

Sugar kelp (Saccharina latissima) is a brown algae also known as Poor Man’s Weather Glass, Sea Belt, and Devil’s Apron. It is found in the sheltered, rocky seabeds of the Arctic, North Pacific, and North Atlantic, including coasts of Alaska, Canada, the British Isles, the Barents Sea, Galicia, Greenland, Iceland, the Pacific Northwest, and elsewhere.

It’s sometimes referred to as “kombu royale” for its pronounced sweetness which, along with its MSG, makes it a popular ingredient in dashi, a flaked seasoning, or as a pickled snack.

SPIRAL WRACK

Spiral wrack, or flat wrack (Fucus spiralis) grows in the Atlantic Ocean along the coasts of the British Isles, Western Europe, the Northeast US, the Canary Islands, and Svalbard.

THONGWEED

Thongweed (Himanthalia elongata) is a brown algae known by the common names brown buttonweed, leafweed, buttonweed, sea thong, and sea spaghetti (in France it is also sometimes known as haricot de mer). It is found in the northeast Atlantic Ocean, the Baltic, and the North Sea. It is the only classified member of the genus, Himanthalia.

Thongweed has a mild, salty, sweet flavor sometimes compared to that of squid and cuttlefish. In France it is sometimes served as an ingredient in salad or with fish. In Ireland and Scotland it is often used in the preparation of laverbread. In Galicia it is cooked with rice, pasta or fried and served as a snack.

WAKAME

Wakame (Undaria pinnatifida) is supposedly known in English as “sea mustard” although it is far more commonly referred to by it’s Japanese-derived name, which comes from “ワカメ.” In China and Korea it’s known as qúndài cài (裙带菜), and miyeok (미역), respectively. Largely thanks to through shipping and mariculture it has spread beyond it’s natural range as an invasive species.

Wakame’s flavor is subtle and sweet. Its often used in soups (especially miso) and salads, where it’s often paired with cucumber and tofu and dressed with rice vinegar, sesame seeds, and soy sauce. In Korean cuisine, a wakame soup called miyeok guk is popular, especially with new mothers and on birthdays.

FURTHER READING

Books:

Sea Vegetables: Harvesting Guide & Cookbook by Evelyn McConnaughey (1985)

Cooking with Sea Vegetables by Peter Bradford and Montse Bradford (1986)

Sea Vegetable Celebration by Shep Erhart and Leslie Cerier (2001)

Vegetables from the Sea: Everyday Cooking with Sea Greens by Jill Gusman and Adrienne Ingrum (2003)

The New Seaweed Cookbook: A Guide to Discovering the Deep Flavours of the Sea by Crystal June Maderia (2007)

Websites:

The Seaweed Site 

Seaweed Industry Association 

See also: They Sing Sea Songs Down by the Seashore — Vegetarian Sea Shanties of a Sort

*****

Eric Brightwell is an adventurer, writer, rambler, explorer, cartographer, and guerrilla gardener who is always seeking writing, speaking, traveling, and art opportunities — or salaried work. He is not interested in writing advertorials, clickbait, listicles, or other 21st century varieties of spam. Brightwell’s written work has appeared in Amoeblog, diaCRITICS, and KCET Departures. His work has been featured by the American Institute of Architects, the Architecture & Design Museum, the Craft & Folk Art Museum, Form Follows Function, Los Angeles County Store, Skid Row Housing Trust, and 1650 Gallery. Brightwell has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Magazine, LAist, Eastsider LA, Boing Boing, Los Angeles, I’m Yours, and on Notebook on Cities and Culture. He has been a guest speaker on KCRW‘s Which Way, LA? and at Emerson College. Art prints of his maps are available from 1650 Gallery and on other products from Cal31. He is currently writing a book about Los Angeles and you can follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Click here to offer financial support and thank you!

The vinyl LP was introduced by Columbia Records in 1948 but the 45 inch single remained the primary media for recorded music until 1966, when LPs overtook them, marking the dawn of the Album Era.

For a variety of reasons, many bands of the Album Era only released one full-length LP, making them “one album wonders.”

I began the series, One Album Wonders, in July 2014 (the year digital downloads first overtook aluminum discs in sales) and since then have written of about 60 bands whose recorded output was mostly confined to a single album. I had planned on writing about hundreds more but the plug has been pulled so I’ve decided instead to publish my personally compiled directory of them before my time at Amoeba ends in December. Enjoy! 

A

A Passing Fancy (A Passing Fancy – 1968), A Witness (I Am John’s Pancreas – 1986), A-II-Z (The Witch Of Berkeley – Live – 1980), A’La Rock (Indulge – 1990), Aceium (Wicked Metal – 2004), The Aerovons (Resurrection – 2003), The Affair (Yes Yes To You – 2006), Afterlife (Surreality – 1992), Agentz (Stick to Your Guns – 1986), Aidean (Promises – 1988), Alamo (Alamo – 1970), Alien (Cosmic Fantasy – 1983), Alien (The Pleasure of Leisure – 1998), Alistair Terry (Yonge at Heart – 1985), Alkana (Welcome to My Paradise – 1978), Alkatraz (Doing a Moonlight – 1976), Allen Collins Band (Here, There and Back – 1983), Alliance (We Could Get Used To This – 1988), Alonzo Cruz (Blind Troubador of Oaxaca – 1956), Alpha Centauri (Alpha Centauri – 1977), American Noise (American Noise – 1980), Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe (Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe – 1989), The Animated Egg (The Animated Egg – 1967), Andy Rock (Into the Night – 2012), Annihilation Absolute (Cities – 1985), April 16th (Sleepwalking – 1989), Arcadia (So Red the Rose – 1985), Armageddon (Illusion – 1971), Arzachel (Arzachel – 1969), ATC (Planet Pop – 2000), Avalanche (Pray For The Sinner – 1985), The Avalanches ‎(Since I Left You – 2000), Aviator (Aviator – 1986), The Awful Truth (The Awful Truth – 1990), and Axtion (Look Out for the Night – 1985)

B

B-32 & DJ Crack Out (I Need A Bag Of Dope (1993), The B’zz (Get Up – 1982), Baader Meinhoff (Baader Meinhoff – 1996), Baby Grandmothers (Baby Grandmothers – 2007), Bad Axe (Contradiction to the Rule – 1986), The Badge (Touch – 1983), Balloon (Gravity – 1982), Beau Nasty (Dirty, But Well Dressed – 1989), Bedlam (Total Bedlam – 1984), Beowulf (Slice of Life – 1980), Big Gipp (Mutant Mindframe – 2003), Billy Satellite (Billy Satellite – 1984), Billy the Kid (Sworn To Fun – 1985), Bird Nest Roys (Bird Nest Roys – 1987), Bitch’s Brue (We May Not Be American But Still We **ck – 1989), Black Knight (Master of Disaster – 2002), Black Rose (Same – 1980), Black Sheep (Trouble In The Streets – 1985), Blackhorse (Blackhorse – 1979), Blacklist (Midnight of the Century – 2009), Blackthorne (Afterlife – 1993), Blind Faith (Blind Faith – 1969), Blind Fury (Out of Reach – 1985), Bloodlust (Guilty as Sin – 1985), Blue Phantoms (Distortions – 1971), Bobby Barth (Two Hearts – One Beat – 1986), The Bodines (Played – 1987), Booby Trap (Women – 1983), Boss (Born Gangstaz – 1993), Boulder (Boulder – 1979), The Boys in the Bunkhouse (The Boys in the Bunkhouse – 1977), The Boyzz (Too Wild to Tame – 1978), Bradford (Shouting Quietly – 1990), Brett Smiley (Breathlessly Brett – 2003), and Buxx (Knickers Down – 2012)

C

C.A. Quintet (Trip Thru Hell – 1969), Cadallaca (Introducing Cadallaca 1998), Candyflip (Madstock… The Continuing Adventures of Bubblecar Fish – 1990), Chain Reaction (Indebted to You – 1977), Chain Reaction (X-Rated Dream – 1982), Charlie Hanseen (My Enemies – 1997), Charlie ‘Ungry (The Chester Road Album – 2003), Cheese (Cheese – 2009), Cheetah (Rock & Roll Women – 1981), Chevy (The Taker – 1980), Chinatown (Cité D’or – 2009), Chosin Few (Chosin Few – 2009), Christopher Milk (Some People Will Drink Anything! – 1972), Chyld (Conception – 1988), Cities (Annihilation Absolute – 1985), Cold Sun (Dark Shadows – 2008), Concept of God (Visions – 2007), Cool Breeze (East Points Greatest Hit – 1999), Concrete Jungle (Wear and Tear – 1988), Contraband (Contraband – 1991), The Count Five (Psychotic Reaction – 1966), Coverdale Page (Coverdale · Page – 1983), Crash n’ Burn (Fever – 1991), Crowhaven (Emotional Adjustment – 1987), Crush (Kingdom of the Kings – 1993), Crush (Misfortunes of Man – 2000), Crypt (The 9th Circle – 1997), Crystal Knight (Crystal Knight – 1985), Crysys (Hard as Rock – 1981), and Curious (Yellow) (Charms & Blues – 1990)

D 

Da Block Burnaz (Overheated – 2004), Da Mobstas (Tripple Beam – 1994), Da’ Sha Ra’ (Still Bootin’ Up – 1995), Dagger (Not Afraid of the Night – 1985), Daggers Edge (Daggers Edge – 2009), Dammaj (Mutiny – 1986), Dangerfield (Dangerfield – 2004), Danny Green (Night Dog – 1978), Danny Joe Brown And The Danny Joe Brown Band (Danny Joe Brown And The Danny Joe Brown Band – 1981), Dark Age (Dark Age – 1984), The David (Another Day, Another Lifetime – 1968), David McComb (Love of Will – 1994), Deadly Blessing (Ascend from the Cauldron – 1988), Debris’ (Debris’ – 1976), Deep River Band (Rocks – 1981), Delta Rebels (Down in the Dirt – 1989), Demian (Demian – 1970), Demon Flight (Flight of the Demon – 1982), Dennis Wilson (Pacific Ocean Blue – 1977), Derek And The Dominos (Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs – 1970), Desmond Child (Discipline – 1991), Detroit (Detroit – 1971), Device (22B3 – 1986), Diamond Lil (Patron of Hell – 2004), Diane Hildebrand (Early Morning Blues and Greens – 1967), Diesel (Diesel – 1979), Dieuke’s Mandalaband (Leave Goudene Fûgel – 1985), Dirty Water (Drowning – 2004), Dirty White Boy (Bad Reputation – 1990), Distant Thunder (Shelter – 1985), Dolly Mixture (Demonstration Tapes – 1983), Don Bradshaw-Leather (Distance Between Us – 1972), Don Robertson (Heart on My Sleeve – 1965), Donkey Boyz (Bust It Open – 2001), Donnie Miller (One of the Boys – 1989), Drakkar (Drakkar 74 – 2014), Driver (Driver – 1994), Ducks (Ducks – 1973), and Dungeon Family (Even in Darkness – 1991)

E

East Coast (East Coast – 1973), Electric Frankenstein (What Me Worry? – 1976), England (England – 1975), Envy (Ain’t It a Sin – 1987), Essential Logic (Beat Rhythm News – Waddle Ya Play ? – 1979), The Exploding Hearts (Guitar Romantic – 2002), and EZ Livin’ (After the Fire – 1991)

F

Fake (Fake – 1994), Fantasy (Fantasy – 1979), Fapardokly (Fapardokly – 1966), Fast Forward (Ich Und MC Bibabutz – 1996), Fat Truckers (The Fat Truckers First Album is For Sale – 2003), Felony (Gangsta Tail – 1995), Felt (Felt – 1971), Fever Ray (Fever Ray – 2008), Fierce Heart (Fierce Heart – 1985), First Strike (Rock of Offense – 1984), The Five Day Week Straw People (The Five Day Week Straw People – 1968), Flesh & Blood (Flesh & Blood – 1994), Fourth Dimension (Around the World – 2002), Frankie Woodhouse (Something in the Air – 1982), Freddie Salem & the Wildcats (Cat Dance – 1982), The Free Spirits (Out of Sight and Sound – 1967), Funky Junction (Play A Tribute To Deep Purple – 1973), and Fuzzy Duck (Fuzzy Duck – 1971)

G 

G-Force (G-Force – 1980), G-Slimm (Fours Deuces & Trays – 1994), Gamma Ray (If Only Everything – 1996), Gandalf The Grey (The Grey Wizard Am I – 1972), Gargoyle (Gargoyle – 1988), Germs ‎((GI) – 1979), Gilt Trip (Egyptian Register – 2005), The Glove (Blue Sunshine – 1983), The Good, The Bad & The Queen (The Good, The Bad & The Queen – 2006), The Grand Elegance (Warm Summer Nights – 2006), The Great Unwashed (Clean Out of Our Minds – 1983), The Grip (Be Yourself – 1988), The Grown-Ups (Milk Carton – 1997), and Gwen Mars (Magnosheen – 1995)

H

The Happy Family ‎(The Man On Your Street – 1982), Hard Road (No Problem – 1980), Hardhead (Hardhead – 2004), Harlet (25 Get’s a Ride – 1988), Havoc (The Grip – 1985), Hazzard (Hazzard – 1984), Head Over Heels (Don’t You Wonder… – 1983), Headstone (Headstone – 1975), Heavens To Betsy (Calculated – 1994), Hedwig And The Angry Inch (Hedwig And The Angry Inch – 1999), Helen Stellar (If The Stars Could Speak, They Would Have Your Voice… – 2010), Henry Gorman Band (HGB – 1984), Horizon (Master of the Game – 1985), Houston Fearless (Houston Fearless – 1968), HSAS (Through the Fire – 1984), Hughes / Thrall (Hughes / Thrall – 1982), 

I

I-Ten (Taking a Cold Look – 1983), Icecross (Icecross – 1973), Indian Summer (Indian Summer – 1971), Insane (Camp 4 Life – 1995), and International Submarine Band (Safe at Home – 1968)

J

Jackal (Awake – 1973), The Jackofficers (Digital Dump – 1990), Jag Wire (Made in Heaven – 1985), Jeff Buckley (Grace – 1994), Jesse Jaymes (Thirty Footer in Your Face – 1991), Jet (Jet – 1975), Jilted John ‎(True Love Stories – 1978),  Jim Dandy (Ready as Hell – 1984), Jodo (Guts – 1970), John’s Children (Orgasm – 1971), Jojo (Jojo – 1988), Josef K (The Only Fun in Town – 1981), Judy Henske & Jerry Yester (Farewell Aldebaran – 1969), and Junie Bezel ‎(That’s How Mess Get Started – 2001)

K

K.C. Redd (It’s A “G-Thang” – 1999), Kak (Kak – 1969), Keeper of the Flame (Flame Keeper – 2002), Ka$h (Root Of All Evil – 2002), Kilo-G (The Bloody City – 1995), The Koobas (Koobas – 1969), and Kryst the Conqueror (Deliver Us from Evil – 1990)

L

L.A. Jets (L.A. Jets – 1976), The La’s (The La’s – 1990), Larrikin Love ‎(The Freedom Spark – 2007), Last Descendants (One Nation Under God – 1988), Late Of The Pier ‎(Fantasy Black Channel – 2008), Laugh (Sensation No. 1 – 1988), Lauryn Hill (The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill – 1998), The Law (None Escape – 1983), Leather Nunn (Take the Night – 1986), Leif Edling (Songs of Torment, Songs of Joy – 2008), The Lewis & Clark Expedition (Earth, Air, Fire & Water – 1967), Life (Life – 1970), Life (Spring – 1971), Life (Life – 1981), Lionheart (Hot Tonight – 1984), Lions Pride (Breaking Out – 1984), Locust (Alpha Waves – 1976), Locust (Playgue – 1976), Longstocking (Once Upon A Time Called Now – 1997), Look Up (Look Up – 1986), Louis and Bebe Barron (Forbidden Planet – 1976), Louise Huebner (Louise Huebner’s Seduction Through Witchcraft – 1969), Lower Level Organization ‎(Straight From Tha’ Woods – 1994), and Luv Hunter (Luv Hunter – 1989)

M

Mad Axeman (Mad Axeman – 1984), Mad Season (Above – 1995), Madam X (We Reserve the Right – 1984), Magna Carta (Magna Carta – 1990), The Man from Delmonte (Big Noise – 1989), Mannish Boys (Penetration Sensation  – 1985), Marcus (Marcus – 1970), Margo Guryan (Take a Picture – 1968), Mat Sinner (Back to the Bullet – 1990), Mathématiques Modernes (Les Visiteurs Du Soir – 1981), Maxx Warrior (Maxx Warrior – 1985), Medusa (First Step Beyond – 2013), Mental Powers (Fantasy – 1987), Merrilee & The Turnabouts (Angel of the Morning / That Kind of Morning – 1968), The Merry-Go-Round (You’re a Very Lovely Woman • Live (1967) Michaelangelo (One Voice Many – 1970), Mighty Mighty (Sharks – 1988), Milla Jovovich (The Divine Comedy – 1994), Mike Fleming (Mike Fleming – 1980), The Millennium (Begin – 1968), Minor Threat (Minor Threat – 1984), The Mo-Dettes (The Story So Far – 1981), The Modern Lovers (The Modern Lovers – 1976), The Monks (Black Monk Time – 1966), Montage (Montage – 1969), Moonkyte (Count Me Out – 1970), Mother Love Bone (Apple – 1990), Mushroom (Early One Morning – 1973), The Music Machine ((Turn On) The Music Machine – 1966), and Mutiny (…My Ammunition – 2007), 

N

Nation (Ride On – 1985), New Frontier (New Frontier – 1988), No Problem (One For All – 2003), and Northside (Chicken Rhythms – 1991)

O

Oklahoma (Oklahoma – 1977), Omaha Sheriff (Come Hell Or Waters High – 1977), Omega (The Prophet – 1985), Opal (Happy Nightmare Baby – 1987), The Open Mind (The Open Mind – 1969), Organisation (Tone Float – 1969), Organized Rhyme (Huh!? Stiffenin Against The Wall – 1992), Orion the Hunter (Orion the Hunter – 1984), Out Of Reach (Neverending – 2003), Overdose (Overpose – 1992), and Overkill (Triumph of the Will – 1985)

P

The Paley Brothers (The Paley Brothers – 1978), Pariah (Youths of Age – 1983), The Paris Sisters (The Paris Sisters Sing Everything Under the Sun!!! – 1967), The Peppermint Trolley Company (The Peppermint Trolley Company – 1968), Perennial (In My Dreams – 1986), Pidgeon (Pidgeon – 1969), Pig Iron (Pig Iron – 1970), Pimp Daddy (Still Pimpin – 1993), Pink Grease (This Is For Real – 2004), Pipedream (Pipedream – 1979), Planet Patrol (Planet Patrol – 1983), Platinum (Iceman – 1990), The Postal Service ‎(Give Up – 2003), Predator (Easy Prey – 1985), Princess Pang (Princess Pang – 1989), and Private Eye (Private Eye – 1983)

R

The Rain (To the Citadel – 1989), Rainbow Ffolly (Sallies Fforth – 1968), Rat Bat Blue (Squeak – 1990), Raw Silk (Silk Under The Skin – 1990), Raw II Survive featuring Artillery (West Syde Gz – 1994), Rebel (Rebel – 1991), Rellik (Heritage Of Abomination – 2005), Revolution 9 (You Might As Well Live – 1994), Rhoads (Into The Future – 1986), Ricky B. featuring Manny Boo ‎(Dedicating It To You – New Orleans (Let’s Go Gitt’em) – 1995), Riff Raff (Lowlifer – 1995), Riggs (Riggs – 1982), Rites of Spring (Rites of Spring – 1985), Roadhouse (Roadhouse – 1991), Rock Rose (Roke Rose – 1979), Rocks (Combat Zone – 1994), Rod St. James (Has Anybody Seen The Superstar – 1972), Rough Diamond (Rough Diamond – 1977), Roxanne (Roxanne – 1986), Runner (Runner – 1979), Russia (Russia – 1980), Rust (Rust – 1983), Rust (Shoot Them Higher – 1989), and Ruthann Friedman (Constant Companion – 1969)

S

S.A.C. Mafia ‎(Socca Ballin’ – 1998), Sacred Child (Sacred Child – 1987), Sad Iron (Total Damnation – 1983), Saigon (One Must Die – 1985), Sam Thunder (Manoeuvres – 1984), The Savage Resurrection (The Savage Resurrection – 1968), Scandal (Warrior – 1984), Scarlet Rayne (Theater Humanitarian – 1990), Sea Hags (Sea Hags – 1989), Sea of Tranquility (Landed – 1995), The Seahorses (Do It Yourself – 1997), The Sex Pistols (Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols – 1977), Shadow King (Shadow King – 1991), The Shaggs (Philosophy Of The World – 1969), The Sharp Ease (Going Modern – 2004), Sheriff (Sheriff – 1982), Shire (Shire – 1984), Shop Assistants (Shop Assistants – 1990), The Sidewinders (The Sidewinders – 1972), The Sidewinders (Flatfoot Hustlin’ – 1977), Silberbart (4 Times Sound Razing – 1972), Silky (Bouncing In A 6 Tray – 1994), Silver Creek (Silver Creek – 1975), Silver R.I.S.C (Anything She Does – 1993), Slack Alice (Slack Alice – 1974), Sledgehammer (Blood On Their Hands – 1983), Slimm Calhoun (The Skinny – 2001), Slow Bongo Floyd (Brenda Salmonds – 1991), The Smoke (…It’s Smoke Time – 1967), Snatch (Snatch – 1983), Solar Eagle (Charter To Nowhere – 1988), Sonic Boom (Spectrum – 1989), Space Waltz (Space Waltz – 1975), Speedway Blvd. (Speedway Blvd. – 1980), Split Beaver (When Hell Won’t Have You – 1982), Splitcrow (Rockstorm – 1994), St. Lunatics ‎– Free City – 2001), St. Paradise (St. Paradise – 1994), Steeler (Steeler – 1983), Steelover (Glove Me – 1984), Steeltower (Night Of The Dog – 1984), Stonewall (Stonewall – 1976), Stratus (Throwing Shapes – 1984), Street Child (Street Child – 1989), Strike (Strike – 1984), Striker (Striker – 1978), Strongbow (Strongbow – 1975), Suck (Time To Suck – 1970), The Sunrays (Andrea – 1966), Syar (Death Before Dishonour – 1984), and Syrus (Syrus – 2008)

T

Take a Walk (Moving People – 1990), Teaser (Teaser – 1978), The Teddy Bears (The Teddy Bears Sing! – 1959), Teeze (Teeze – 1984), Temple of the Dog (Temple of the Dog – 1991), Tension (Breaking Point – 1986), Thanatos Inc. (Life L.T.D. – 1986), Them Crooked Vultures ‎(Them Crooked Vultures – 2009), 3rd Stage Alert (3rd Stage Alert – 1984), 39 Posse (39 Automatic – 1993), Thorinshield (Thorinshield – 1967), Thunderclap Newman (Hollywood Dream – 1970), Timeless Hall (Timeless Hall – 1994), Tipsy Wit (Songs & Dreams – 1991), Top (Emotion Lotion – 1991), Tora! Tora! (Made In America – 1984), Touch (Energizer – 1977), Toya (Toya – 2001), Trader Horne (Morning Way – 1970), Treasure (Treasure – 1977), Triste Janero (Meet Triste Janero – 1969), Twilight 22 (Twilight 22 – 1984), 2 Blakk (Represent for Life – 1996), 211 (Hustlin Pays Tha Bills – 1996), Two Guns (Balls Out – 1979), II Loaded ‎(Don’t Play No Games – 1998), 2-Sweet ‎(Actin Bad – 1997), and Tytan (Rough Justice – 1985)

U

The United States of America (The United States of America – 1968) and Ursa Major (Ursa Major – 1972)

V

V.A.N. (Out in the Rain – 1992), Valhalla (Return Of The Mystic Warrior – 2001), Vauxdvihl (To Dimension Logic – 1994), The Veil (1000 Dreams Have Told Me – 1984), Velvet Gang (Movers ’N’ Shakers – 1994), Vendetta (Drôle D’Idée – 2004), Visions (Visions – 1988), Voodoo X (Vol. I – The Awakening – 1989), and Vyper (Prepared To Strike – 1984)

W

Wallop (Metallic Alps – 1985), War Machine (Unknown Soldier – 1986), Warpig (Warpig – 1970), Warrior (Trouble Maker – 1980), War Time featuring The Hideout (The Album – 1996), Waxface (The Graves of God – 1986), The Well (Water Rites – 1995), White Noise (An Electric Storm – 1969), White Tiger (White Tiger – 1986), Whitford/St. Holmes (Whitford/St. Holmes – 1981), Who Knows (At Last It’s The First – 1992), Wiggy Bits (Wiggy Bits – 1976), Will and the Kill (Will And The Kill – 1988), Witchkiller (Day Of The Saxons – 1984), Witness (Witness – 1988), Wolfgang Riechmann (Wunderbar – 1978), World of Twist (Quality Street – 1991), World War III (World War III – 1985), and Wyxmer (Feudal Throne – 2005)

X

X-Rated (Who’s In Charge? – 1997)

Y

Yancy Derringer (Openers – 1975), Young Marble Giants (Colossal Youth – 1978), and Y Pants (Beat It Down – 1982)

Z

Zazu (Zazu – 1975), Zions Abyss (T.A.L.E.S. – 1992), The Zippers (The Zippers – 1990), The Zodiac (Cosmic Sounds – 1967), and Zwan (Mary Star of the Sea – 2003)

*****

Eric Brightwell is an adventurer, writer, rambler, explorer, cartographer, and guerrilla gardener who is always seeking writing, speaking, traveling, and art opportunities — or salaried work. He is not interested in writing advertorials, clickbait, listicles, or other 21st century varieties of spam. Brightwell’s written work has appeared in Amoeblog, diaCRITICS, and KCET Departures. His work has been featured by the American Institute of Architects, the Architecture & Design Museum, the Craft & Folk Art Museum, Form Follows Function, Los Angeles County Store, Skid Row Housing Trust, and 1650 Gallery. Brightwell has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Magazine, LAist, Eastsider LA, Boing Boing, Los Angeles, I’m Yours, and on Notebook on Cities and Culture. He has been a guest speaker on KCRW‘s Which Way, LA? and at Emerson College. Art prints of his maps are available from 1650 Gallery and on other products from Cal31. He is currently writing a book about Los Angeles and you can follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Click here to offer financial support and thank you!

There are hundreds of bridges in Los Angeles County. They cross rivers, creeks, ravines, roads, train tracks, and other obstacles. If there’s a bridge you’d like to see me visit for this series, Take ’em to the Bridge, contact me to let me know or leave a comment.Trip, trap, trip, trap!

*****

The Glendale-Hyperion Bridge is an iconic bridge which spans the Los Angeles River. Ideally, it would offer a pleasant between Atwater Village in Northeast Los Angeles and Los Feliz and Silver Lake in the Mideast. Sadly, in its current state it feels less like a complex of bridges than a complex of o on and off-ramps for the Golden State Freeway. It’s due for a seismic retrofit and reconfiguration but whether it will be restored to a pedestrian and cyclist-friendly state or further sacrificed on the altar of car-dependency remains to be seen.

Before the construction of the Glendale-Hyperion Bridge and further downstream, the Fletcher Drive Bridge, Northeast Los Angeles and Glendale were somewhat isolated from Los Angeles proper. In 1904, the Los Angeles Interurban Electric Railway Company began running streetcars from Downtown Los Angeles to Downtown Glendale. In 1908, under new ownership by the Pacific Electric Railway, its route was extended to Downtown Burbank and was re-named the Glendale-Burbank Line. Around 1910, a wooden bridge was built at the present location of the Glendale-Hyperion Bridge.

As a result of disastrous floods in 1914, the Los Angeles County Flood Control District was formed in 1915. Taxpayers approved bond issues in 1917 and 1924 to build dams to control flooding although they rejected funding the construction of recommended infrastructure downstream. A flood in 1927 destroyed the wooden bridge and city engineer Merrill Butler was commissioned to design a sturdier replacement.

Butler had previously designed and built the Fletcher Drive Bridge, which opened in 1927. Butler’s new bridge was named Victory Memorial Bridge and was scheduled to open on Decoration Day (later officially renamed Memorial Day) of 1928. Its design was part of the “city beautiful movement,” a belief that design and monumental construction projects could elevate the lives of city-dwellers.

Construction of the Victory-Memorial Bridge used 27,000 cubic meters of concrete and 2700 metric tons of steel. It cost $2,000,000 to build. The bridge has a closed spandrel concrete deck design and has thirteen sweeping arches. Its large hexagonal posts were meant to distinguish it from other bridges. Northbound Pacific Electric red cars traveled along an adjacent crossing before heading up the center of wide Glendale Boulevard.

Construction of the bridge began on 27 March 1927. Decoration Day 1928 passed and the bridge was still under construction. Already people were referring to it as the Glendale-Hyperion Bridge. It was finally completed in February 1929, almost a year behind schedule. It was officially dedicated on 30 May 1930.

More disastrous floods in the 1930s prompted a request for federal assistance and as a result, the Army Corps of Engineers channelized most of the Los Angeles River. Due to upwelling ground-water in the Glendale Narrows, however, the bottom of the river under the Glendale-Hyperion Bridge remains unpaved and as a result retains a comparatively wild character. Unlike the fully concretized sections, the soft-bottom portion hosts several species of wildlife, including American coots, American white pelicans, black phoebes, black-necked stilts, cinnamon teals, double-crested cormorants, great blue herons, great egrets, greater yellowlegs, killdeers, mallards, northern shovelers, red-winged blackbirds, rock pigeons, snowy egrets, spotted sandpipers, and the non-native Muscovy duck. It’s also a common site to see a local nicknamed the “Atwater Bird Man” tossing out food for them.

Even more destructive to the aesthetics and character of the area than the channelization of the river was the construction of the Golden State Freeway, which now runs along the river and passes under the bridge. Construction of the freeway was first proposed by the California Highway Commission in 1953 and the Interstate Highway System was authorized in 1956. While a nation-wide interstate highway system was a brilliant infrastructure improvement, construction of interstate freeways within cities was far more destructive than any historic floods had been.

Understandably, the planned construction the Golden State Freeway was met with widespread protests but proponents of freeways won out and huge sections of working class Boyle Heights, Frogtown, and Hollenbeck Heights were irrevocably scarred. Thousands of residents were displaced as homes and businesses were destroyed and air quality would never be the same. At first the freeway was six lanes wide, enough to sever Griffith Park from the river. Since then it’s expanded, worsening instead of fixing traffic, and adding pollution to its surroundings.

The Glendale-Burbank Line was decommissioned in 1955 and the last red cars crossed the bridge. The Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority, formed in 1951, replaced it and other rail lines with buses. In the 1988 film, Who Framed Roger Rabbit (based largely on the General Motors streetcar conspiracy), the final scene takes place on the Glendale-Hyperion Bridge. Today the red car bridge supports remain but the bridge itself is traversed by Metro’s 92 and 201 lines. The park through which the train formerly passed is known as Red Car Park.

The phenomenon known as “latent demand” or “induced demand” was first illustrated in the 1960s. In essence, it illustrates that adding traffic lanes, rather than alleviating traffic, actually worsens it by attracting more traffic. Caltrans, the agency responsible for these costly “improvements,” even admits this (“California’s DOT Admits That More Roads Mean More Traffic”).

Atop the bridge, even during rush hour (when I visited the bridge and took these pictures), cars regularly fly over the bridge at 50 mph (80 kmh) (despite signs warning them not to exceed 30). There are benches next to the hexagonal posts and at other areas but I’ve never seen anyone rest at them or stop to enjoy the view. Calming traffic to a reasonable speed might make doing so more enticing. 

A large portion of the eastbound automobile traffic barely enter Atwater Village before making a U-turn and speeding month the 5 (Golden State Freeway). In the island where everyone does a 180, homeless people have carved wooden busts and placed a “coin-toss” bucket for bored motorists sitting at the light.

Sidewalks seem to have been shaved away to sacrifice more space for cars and the first time I crossed the bridge on foot was the third most terrifying experience I’ve had in Los Angeles. When a houseguest visiting from Scotland called me to say that he feared he’d mistakenly wandered onto a bridge which pedestrians weren’t meant to be on and needed my help, I knew exactly where he was.

What sidewalks remain, dead-end in the middle of speeding traffic, without the benefit of crosswalks. There is at least one crosswalk, although it is unmarked and its existence is only evident from the dips in the curb. To cross it I had to wait quite a while for a break in speeding traffic and then run and pray that I didn’t stumble. For anyone unable to run the wait could conceivably go on forever. On the other side is a dark staircase which reeks of urine. 

Although harrowing to cross, it’s still a fundamentally beautiful piece of engineering and architecture. On 20 October 1976 it was designated Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments No. 164. Large parts of the bridge are covered with both murals and graffiti. The biggest mural is Revisit the Red Car, painted by Rafael Escamilla in 2004 with assistance from Roxanne Salazar and Tom Hinds.

A lot of the graffiti is courtesy taggers and members of the gang, Thee Rascals 13 (TRS), who claim the Atwater side of the bridge as part of their turf. Thee Rascals formed in the 1970s as The Atwater Boys and their ranks include several cliques, including Without Sleep (WOS) and the Los Angeles River Drunks (LARD).

In 2008, Heather Wylie, then a project manager at the Ventura field office of the Army Corps of Engineers kayaked with about twelve others down a stretch of the Los Angeles River and as a result was disciplined and resigned. However, having successfully demonstrated the river’s navigability, the US Environmental Protection Agency declared the Los Angeles River a “traditional navigable water.” In May of 2013, the Los Angeles River Expeditions and the Los Angeles Kayak Club pressured government officials created the Los Angeles River Pilot Recreation Zone, a four kilometer zone where kayaking was allowed. It was a success and kayaking continues in the Los Angeles River Recreation Zone.

The Los Angeles River Bicycle Path was added to the west bank of the Los Angeles River in (I believe) 2000. Fifteen years later its broken sections have yet to be connected. The section which runs under the Glendale-Hyperion Bridge is twelve kilometers long and runs from the edge of Downtown Los Angeles to Burbank. Someday it will run the entire length of the 82 kilometer river.

In 2012, a small-scale replica of the Glendale-Hyperion Bridge opened at Disneyland California Adventure Park in Anaheim. It replaced a bridge modeled after another California icon, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge.

Closer to the actual bridge, Sunnynook River Park opened in June 2013, part of a growing network of parks and parklets along the river. It’s construction was co-financed by Caltrans and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, who removed poison oak and weeds and planted fifty native trees.

In December of 2013, thieves stole an over three meter tall historic bronze lamp post. I can’t help but wonder if bronze, an alloy consisting primarily of copper, would be less valuable to copper thieves if we stopped minting pennies, which as of 2014 cost 1.7 cents to make and are accepted in zero vending machines. Even if the penny’s discontinuation has no affect on the demand for copper, it’s a useless coin. I realize I’m getting off topic but consider this, when the half cent coin was discontinued in 1857 it was worth more than the dime is today but its discontinuation left no lasting scars.

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The roots of the Glendale-Hyperion Bridge’s scheduled retrofit and redesign stretch back to 1994, when increased funding was made available for such bridge projects. The Glendale-Hyperion Bridge, technically a six bridge complex, is therefore eligible for six times the funding of a regular bridge. At the center of the debate over the Glendale-Hyperion Bridge is the issue of accessibility. One camp has encouraged adding bicycle lanes and sidewalks which comply with the disabilities act.

In the other corner is Los Angeles City Council. The same politicians who voted unanimously to support the Los Angeles Mobility 2035 Plan unanimously voted for a re-design which actually removes sidewalk from the bridge so that motorists can continue to drive at unsafe speeds well above the posted speed limit. They cite the fact that at present relatively few pedestrians and bicyclists cross the bridge. The funny thing about latent demand is that it works not just for cars but other modes of transportation. Build more sidewalks and more people will walk. Build bicycle lanes and more people will opt to bicycle. Run the 201 after 8:14 and more people will ride it. Better yet, restore train service along the old route instead of creating a segregated bicycle and pedestrian path. Or just hang a sign on the entrances to the bridge (named to honor war dead but colloquially known as “death bridge” for other reasons) stating “Cross at your own risk.”

FUTHER READING

Sahra Sulaiman: “Advocates Push for a More Livable ‘Death Bridge’: The Glendale-Hyperion Bridge Saga Continues“

Big Orange Landmarks: No. 164 – Glendale-Hyperion Bridge

Bridge Hunter: Hyperion Bridge

Carmen Tse: “Glendale-Hyperion Bridge Redesign Is Bad News For Pedestrians“

Joe Linton: “Who Do We Blame for the Next Death on the Glendale-Hyperion Bridge?”

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Eric Brightwell is an adventurer, writer, rambler, explorer, cartographer, and guerrilla gardener who is always seeking writing, speaking, traveling, and art opportunities — or salaried work. He is not interested in writing advertorials, clickbait, listicles, or other 21st century varieties of spam. Brightwell’s written work has appeared in Amoeblog, diaCRITICS, and KCET Departures. His work has been featured by the American Institute of Architects, the Architecture & Design Museum, the Craft & Folk Art Museum, Form Follows Function, Los Angeles County Store, Skid Row Housing Trust, and 1650 Gallery. Brightwell has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Magazine, LAist, Eastsider LA, Boing Boing, Los Angeles, I’m Yours, and on Notebook on Cities and Culture. He has been a guest speaker on KCRW‘s Which Way, LA? and at Emerson College. Art prints of his maps are available from 1650 Gallery and on other products from Cal31. He is currently writing a book about Los Angeles and you can follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Click here to offer financial support and thank you!

I started blogging for Amoeblog on 26 July 2007. In that time I created a few series for the Amoeblog: One Album Wonders (profiles of bands which only released one album), Brightwell’s Top 10 (my favorite tracks from the dawn of the record industry to the present), and Introduction to Subcultural Anthropology, to name a few. I may or may not continue those over at my personal website, so stay tuned and let me know if you’re interested.

In the last eight years I’ve written extensively about holidays, all-female bands, Asian-American Cinema, music history, interplanetary objects, New Orleans hip-hop, Vietnamese New Wave, visual arts, unrecognized nations, old time radio, film festivals, and many other topics… such as creamsicles.

Tom Waits‘s “In the Neighborhood”

FASTFOOD UNDEAD

Discussions of adaptive reuse tend to focus on office buildings converted into residences… but what about fast food franchises converted into actual restaurants?

 

GREATER STREETS

The streets are one of our greatest public assets. I walk them, I read them, I rep them.

B.G. – “Where You Been?”

HIGH RISING

Los Angeles and the Southland is like a sea of suburbs punctuated by pockets of skyscrapers — oh yeah, and mountains. I love a good skyscraper… and a bad one.

Suede‘s “High Rising”

HOMES FIT FOR HEROES

According to the 2010 Census, the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim urban area is the most densely populated in the US. That’s largely on account of the regions housing projects, bungalow courts, garden apartments, luxury highrises, and other multi-family residences.

DJ Jubilee‘s “20 Years in the Jets”

MINI-MALLISM

Malls and strip malls are overabundant and unromanticized — except by the developers who give them lofty, pretentious names.. In Los Angeles they were once the fabled haunts of Valley Girls. Nowadays they’re where one finds the best restaurants and markets.

Supermarket‘s “Supermarket”

MIST & IRON

When people talk about vertical cities they usually point to ones with the most skyscrapers. How 19th century of them. Meanwhile, Los Angeles has — thanks to its hills and mountains — the most varied elevation of any city on earth. Take that Cape Town, Rio de Janeiro, and Tehran!

Some dwarves singing “The Misty Mountains Cold”

 

NO ENCLAVE

Los Angeles is, by several measures, the most diverse city on Earth. That diversity is reflected in the presence of Cambodia Town, Chinatown, Filipinotown, Koreatown, Little Arabia, Little Armenia, Little Bangladesh, Little Brazil, Little Central America, Little Ethiopia, Little India, Little Russia, Little Saigon, Little Seoul, Little Osaka, Tehrangeles, and Thai Town. It’s also home to the largest population of Burmese, Guatemalans, Mexicans, Salvadorans, Samoans, and Taiwanese outside their home countries, in addition to many other ethnicities not represented with an enclave.

Some people in an advertisement singing “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)”

NOBODY DRIVES IN LA

Nobody drives in LA, there’s too much traffic. Why would anyone when there are buses, commuter trains, ferries, light rail, bicycle lanes, kayaks, subways, trails, and about 284 days of sun? Cars are for country folk!

Kraftwerk‘s “Trans Europe Express”

 

OFFICE PARK LIFE

Perhaps it’s only because I’ve never worked in one but I find those shiny, generic, suburban cubicle farms sat on vast, sparingly designed landscapes to be deeply mysterious and absolutely fascinating for reasons which are hard to articulate.

Bill Lumbergh montage from Office Space 

PENDERSLEIGH & SONS CARTOGRAPHY

In the course of my explorations, I draw and paint maps. You can purchase prints of them from 1650 Gallery (or originals from me).

RED DESERTS

Los Angeles has been home to a number of industries. Most of those industries have left and we’re left with a lot of industrial ruins and refineries. Although they have wrought a lot of environmental devastation, they’re often quite beautiful.

 

The trailer for Il Deserto Rosso

 

SOUTHLAND PARKS

 

Los Angeles is home to the largest park located partially within an American city (Topanga State Park), the nation’s largest municipal park (Griffith Park) and a whole lot of other parks, recreation areas, wilderness areas, parklets, and pocket parks.

 

The Small Faces‘ “Itchycoo Park”

 

TAKE ‘EM TO THE BRIDGE

California’s most recognized icon might be San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. However, the Los Angeles area is home to hundreds of equally interesting bridges which span valleys, roads, creeks, rivers, train tracks, and troubled waters.

James Brown‘s “Sex Machine”

 

THERE IT IS, REVITALIZE IT

 

Los Angeles is often wrongly characterized as a desert. That mischaracterization downplays the importance of wetlands, rivers, oceans, and other bodies of water that are so important to the Chaparral metropolis.

 

THOSE USELESS TREES

There are quite a few famous trees in California, including the tallest, the largest, the oldest, and the most photographed. In Los Angeles there are some famous ones too. Come to think of it, People or Us Weekly should do an issue on “celeb trees.”

Pulp – “The Trees”

 

URBAN RAMBLES

 

The best sorts of walks are undertaken without much research or agenda. I notice an interesting area and then I let my nose, eyes, and ears lead my feet.

Alan Partridge’s Country Ramble

WHERE FOOLS FEAR TO TREAD

Sometimes I found myself traveling outside of Southern California. When I do it’s never long enough to get a really deep sense of a place so I like to treat my reflections on these places as snapshots.

Glenn Miller And His Orchestra featuring Ray Eberle ‎– “Fools Rush In (Where Angels Fear To Tread)”

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Also, my Siberian cat, Alan, has a Tumblr, titled What a Dingus!

 

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So as a final not I’d like to say thanks for reading, commenting, the free tickets, and the email and please continue to keep in touch at my website, ericbrightwell.com . Sgt. Brightwellicus signing off!

BUNKER HILL

The story of Bunker Hill is the story of at least three neighborhoods — maybe more. There’s the posh, Victorian neighborhood of the late 19th Century. There’s also the diverse, working class neighborhood celebrated in noir fictions of the early 20th Century. Today, there’s the contemporary neighborhood, a collection of corporate high-rises and high culture. As an explorer of neighborhoods, I’m most interested in the latter. To vote for Los Angeles neighborhoods to be the subject of future episodes of California Fool’s Gold, click here. 

As an explorer of neighborhoods, I feel it my duty to explain that my concern is primarily with the Bunker Hill of today and tomorrow. Bunker Hill’s history is very interesting and there’s much to learn from it, but to focus wholly on things that aren’t here anymore seems a bit akin to walking through a strange museum in which museum tags describe art that was removed half a century ago. The old Bunker Hill lives on in memory, photographs, film, exhibits, &c. If they invent holodeks in my lifetime, I’ll stroll through it, an environment surely as exotic and foreign to me as the villages of the Tongva and one whose redevelopment is no more tragic to me than the displacement of those by the Century Freeway or other projects.

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Bunker Hill is first and foremost, a topographic prominence, a hill named after another in the Charlestown neighborhood Boston, Massachusetts. It’s part of the Elysian Hills,  a chain of sandy siltstone landforms with minor imbedded conglomerate that stretches from Griffith Park to Downtown. Before the arrival of humans, the hills and surrounding area was home to black walnuts, bobcats, California Kingsnakes, Coastal Whiptails, Garter snakes, Gopher snakes, grizzly bears, Mountain Kingsnakes, mountain lions, oaks, steelhead, sycamores, Western fence lizards, and other forms of life.

NATIVE ERA

The first humans entered the picture some 13,000 years ago and were the ancestors of the modern Chumash people. Some 3,500 years ago, they were joined by the ancestors of the Tongva, who arrived from the east. There is evidence of battles between the two on the Channel Islands, but for the most part the Chumash seem to have by then almost entirely abandoned inland Los Angeles for the coast and islands and the Tongva established villages throughout modern Los Angeles. At least two, Maaw’nga and Yaangna, were located near the base of the hill.

SPANISH & MEXICAN ERAS 

The Spanish claimed the hill and everything else for their vast empire in 1542 but it wasn’t until 1769 that they sent an overland expedition across California to cement their claims. The indigenous people were conquered and the Spanish built a series of presidios and missions to control and exploit them. A town, El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles de Porciuncula, was founded in 1781 with Bunker Hill within its original borders. Mexico declared its independence from Spain in 1810 and achieved it in 1821. California remained part of Mexico until the US conquered the land in 1848. California was granted statehood in 1850.

PRUDENT BEAUDRY

Bunker Hill remained almost completely undeveloped before 1867, when a Quebecois named Prudent Beaudry purchased land on the hill. In 1874, the year Beaudry became Los Angeles’s thirteenth mayor (and second Quebecois one), a writer at the Los Angeles Herald wrote: 

Overhanging Los Angeles is a hill similar to Bunker Hill [in Massachusetts]- nay,  it is larger. From it all the city can be seen and the country for miles around. On this hill also, are military marks, the remnants of a fort, which was built for the protection of liberty in this State. This hill has an avenue running along its crest, and our friend Beaudry, through whose influence chiefly it has been opened, has very appropriately named it Bunker Hill avenue. The City Surveyor has been ordered to define the grades and lines of Olive, Charity and Bunker Hill avenue, from Hill to Hope; Second street, and Temple street, from Hill to Hope. This will bring these lands within easy reach of the business part of the city. The distance to the Court House is less than it is from the Turners Hall. Mr. Beaudry being the owner, by perfect and indisputable title, offers the following scheme, believing that it supplies a felt want. His various tracts have been surveyed, and platted 111 lots of convenient size for residences, upwards of two hundred in number, and the maps, together with abstracts of title, are kept for public inspection at his office, opposite the Pico House… The location is very desirable. All that has heretofore been lacking is water, and that want is now fulfilled.

In 1876, Beaudry’s term as mayorship ended. By the following year, most of the Mott lots had sold and Bunker Hill was the most fashionable district in the city. Before long, however, new suburbs like Angeleno Heights, Crown Hill, Pico Heights, West Adams, and Westlake were developed which began to lure the wealthy further from Los Angeles’s core.

 By the early 20th century, apartment buildings, hotels, and other commercial buildings populated the increasingly developed district. Bunker Hill’s hilliness once again came to be seen as an impediment rather than an advantage. One person proposed eroding it out of existence, something which had successfully been done to flatten Portland and Seattle. Ultimately, rather than removing the hill, it was decided to go under it.

3RD STREET TUNNEL

3rd Street Tunnel is likely the oldest extant human-made feature in Bunker Hill. Construction of the 378 meter long tunnel began in 1899 with the aim of better connecting the neighborhood of Crown Hill to the west of Bunker Hill with Downtown to its east. Contractor C. L. Powell oversaw the project. His criminal negligence claimed the lives of John Vicentini and Major W. T. Lambie in 1900 after they were entombed in what was not the project’s first cave-in. The unpaved, unlit tunnel opened to the public in 1901. An unimpressed writer for the Los Angeles Times colorfully described it:

The new Third-street tunnel is a veritable stench in the nostrils of the public. It is a cesspool of filth, a hotbed of disease. Stagnant pools of malaria-infested mud and water are here, there and everywhere throughout the 350 yards of Cimmerian gloom. Filthy seepage water drips over sidewalk and roadway throughout its entire length. At night its Stygian darkness is unlighted by a single ray, while the periodically-falling plaster from the arch overhead is a constant menace to life.

The tunnel was paved in 1902. In part to alleviate traffic in the tunnel, a second tunnel, the 2nd Street Tunnel, opened in 1924. In 1968 its western end was extended an additional 36 meters. In 1981, its eastern end was rebuilt as part of the development of Angelus Plaza. The central part was rebuilt in 1983 along with the development of California Plaza. Much less popular with film crews than its neighbor to the north, it has nonetheless appeared in the films Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment (1985) and Darkman (1990).

ANGELS FLIGHT

Beginning in 1901, the Los Angeles Incline Railway began operating a short funicular railway between Hill Street at 3rd and Olive Street, parallel to and above the 3rd Street Tunnel. The “World’s Shortest Railway” was served by two cars, named Olivet and Sinai and in 1910 a Beaux-Arts archway labeled “Angels Flight,” was added. In 1912 the railway itself was renamed Angels Flight. In 1962 it was designated Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 4 and it continued to operate until 1969, after the residents it had been built to serve had all been displanted or otherwise moved on.

In 1996 Angels Flight was rebuilt and relocated at its present location. At its new spot it connects Hill Street and the historic Grand Central Market below with the California Plaza above. Its primary purpose, though, was as a tourist attraction and the CRA, former overseers of its operation, allowed the subcontractors who restored it to remove safety features including brakes. In its first 68 years of operation, Angels Flight had only been involved in one fatality, when a sailor named John Gaddy mad the never-wise attempt to walk up the tracks, was struck by one car, and crushed by the other. 

The new and improved brakeless Angels Flight killed Leon Praport in 2001 and injured six others, including his wife. As a result the train was closed. Nine years later the 88 meter-long railway reopened. In 2013, however, a minor accident revealed still-unresolved safety issues. Repairs were apparently made, safety tests were passed, but the attraction remains derailed by terminal bureaucracy.

2ND STREET TUNNEL

In 1924, Bunker Hill’s most filmed feature, the 2nd Street Tunnel, opened. Construction of the tunnel began in 1916, and it was supposed to help reduce the gridlock at 3rd Street Tunnel. Its surfaces are lined with imported, German, white glazed tiles which have made it a popular filming location. Filming nearly always takes place at the western end of the tunnel and walking its length reveals that many of the  tiles have fallen away in many areas the holes are sloppily painted or covered with tape or white paper.  

At the east end, the odor of human urine is sometimes unbearable and the lack of efforts to maintain the appearance of the tunnel (which is at the very least ten times more interesting than the Walk of Fame or Hollywood sign) are glaringly obvious.

The 2nd Street Tunnel has been featured in films including The Driver (1978), Blade Runner (1982), One Dark Night (1982), Young Doctors in Love (1982), Flashdance (1983), The Terminator (1984), The Annihilators (1985), Police Story: The Freeway Killings (1987), Jack’s Back (1988), The Case of the Hillside Stranglers (1989), Lethal Weapon 2 (1989), A Time to Die (1991), Sneakers (1992), Demolition Man (1993), The Disappearance of Christina (1993), Firepower (1993), Another Midnight Run (1994), Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct: Lightning (1995), Cyber-Tracker 2 (1995), The Power Within (1995), Independence Day (1996), Con Air (1997), Gattaca (1997), Money Talks (1997), On the Line (1997), Enemy of the State (1998), Kill Bill (2003), The Butcher (2009), The Soloist (2009), Black November (2012), as well as episodes of several television series, music videos, over a hundred car commercials, and more than a few selfies.

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Much of Los Angeles’s growth in the 1900s and 1910s could be attributed to annexations. The towns of Bairdstown, Highland Park, Hollywood, Palms, San Pedro, and Wilmington were during those decades swallowed by the growing city. So too were Rancho Los Felis, most of the San Fernando Valley, and a large portion of land along the Santa Monica Bay. The once fashionable painted ladies of Bunker Hill were subdivided and rented as apartments to the working class, as were newer apartment hotels. 

An episode of Ford Motor Company’s Ford Educational Weekly, designed to promote automobile travel

After 1920 there was little new development in Bunker Hill. In 1924 Los Angeles’s first subway opened, increasing ease of travel between Downtown and its new “toonervilles” (streetcar suburbs so nicknamed because of the popular comic strip, The Toonerville Trolley That Meets All the Trains). In 1925, Los Angeles could for the first time make a lamentable new  boast — that of having the highest car ownership per capita of any city in the world. Not coincidentally, Los Angeles developed a serious smog problem in the 1940s — although the connection wasn’t immediately made. 

For a time, though, people continued to move to Bunker Hill. Many of the new residents were victims of rezoning; in 1907, the area between Main Street and the Los Angeles River went from being residential to industrial. Others of Bunker Hill’s residents were excluded by racist housing covenants from living in Los Angeles’s suburbs. Bunker Hill was home to immigrants from Mexico, Canada, England, Germany, Italy, Russia, and elsewhere. Filipinos began to refer to the area along 2nd Street as “Little Manila.” Most living on Bunker Hill were young and held jobs in Downtown’s service and manufacturing industries but it was also home to a large population of elderly retirees.

A Drive Through Bunker Hill and Downtown Los Angeles, ca. 1940s. Background process plate produced for an unidentified feature film, shot from an automobile driving through Bunker Hill and downtown Los Angeles.

This is the most celebrated and romanticized episode of Bunker Hill’s existence,  the setting of  both John Fante’s 1939 novel, Ask the Dust and Kent Mackenzie’s quasi-documentary, The Exiles.  This is the Bunker Hill preserved in celluloid and on display in Criss Cross (1949), Cry Danger (1951), Joseph Losey‘s M (1951), Kiss Me Deadly (1956), and Angel’s Flight (1965). It’s the Bunker Hill where Philip Marlowe’s business takes him in the episode of the radio drama, The Adventures of Philip Marlowe, titled “The Baton Sinister.” It’s the Bunker Hill in which the great Jack Webb (Dragnet, Jeff Regan, Investigator, Johnny Madero, Pier 23, Murder and Mr. Malone, Pete Kelly’s Blues, One Out of Seven) grew up.

PASADENA FREEWAY

The Pasadena Freeway opened in 1940 and (if one ignores Ramona Boulevard) was the first freeway in the western US. Its construction carved a scar which further cut-off Downtown from its neighbors to the west as it passed through Cypress Park, Lincoln Heights, Mount Washington, Montecito Heights, Highland Park, Garvanza, and South Pasadena on its way to Pasadena — suburbs whose selling point was often that they were located a short car ride from Downtown, or more specifically, Civic Center. By the post-war era, most of Downtown was decidedly unfashionable and the main reason respectable Angelenos would be found there was if they worked in city hall or another government building.

Jewish migration to Los Angeles peaked in the mid-1940s.  Jews, historically prevented from officially participating in Los Angeles politics, had helped to transform Hollywood and create shopping districts in the Miracle Mile and the Fairfax district. Increasingly, from Downtown and Eastside Jewish businesses made an exodus for Midtown and the Westside. In the 1950s, the old picture palaces on Broadway began showing Spanish-language films and the street transformed into a major Mexican-American shopping corridor. Gay bars, cruising spots, and flop houses came to form the backbone of a secret network of spots which formed “the Run.” Massive change, however, was right around the corner.

BUNKER HILL RE-DEVELOPMENT PROJECT

President Harry S. Truman signed the Housing Act of 1949 into law with the aim of creating public housing for Americans living in slum conditions. What was a slum was subject to disagreement, however. One man’s slum was another man’s bustling, working class neighborhood which happened to be situated on highly valued land.  “Huge Bunker Hill Housing Plan Not to Deprive Any of Shelter,” read the headline of a 1949 story in the Los Angeles Herald. despite the fact that The Housing Act mandated that redevelopment had to be predominately residential, in many American cities “slum clearance” was the name given to what were essentially big developers’ land-grabs.

The year before Truman signed into law the Housing Act, the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) was formed, the agency which would oversee the long, slow redevelopment of Bunker Hill.  The CRA instituted the Bunker Hill Redevelopment project in 1955 but it wasn’t until 1959 that Los Angeles adopted it. The city’s 13-story/150-foot (46 meter) height ceiling was repealed in 1956. Over the course of the following decade, Bunker Hill would knock down both its pre-existing structures (including 7,310 residences and home to about 22,000 Angelenos) and to an extent, the hill itself (about ten meters were scrapped off the top).

In the “slum” of Dogtown, displaced residents got new homes built on the former site of an Almagamated Oil refinery and a Wiltco Corporation hazardous waste dump (cleaned up a short 62 years after the fact). In Chavez Ravine and Bunker Hill, housing never came (Chavez Ravine became Dodger Stadium and its ridiculously large parking lot).  A group of capitalists calling themselves the Committee of 25 successfully unseated mayor Fletcher Bowron by running the fear-mongering C. Norris Poulson, a Republican whose mayoral platform was centered on the cessation of all public housing which, being socialist, was un-American.

The last two Victorian homes, known as the Salt Box and the Castle, were designated Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments No. 5 and No. 27 in 1962 and’64, respectively. In 1969 they were moved to Heritage Square Museum in Montecito Heights, where an arsonist promptly reduced both to ash.  With a bit of movie magic the Bunker Hill of old appeared in LA Confidential (1997) and Ask the Dust (2006) but few actual vestiges remain.

DOWNTOWN GHOSTTOWNS

It was a similar story in many American cities. The thriving, residential neighborhoods of downtowns were demolished and replaced with shiny skyscrapers and sports venues in an effort to lure back the middle and upper classes who’d decamped for the suburbs. The result, for decades, was downtowns where few actually lived. After finishing work or closing shop, most returned to the suburbs.

Not only did depopulating Bunker Hill suck the life from that neighborhood but all of downtown. The old businesses, offices, and financial institutions along Broadway, Main, and Spring Street (the “Wall Street of the West”) emptied. The upper floors of old downtown’s skyscrapers were mostly either vacant or housed sweatshops. The ground floors continued to house businesses, albeit ones which generally generated less tax revenue for the city than their preceding tenants. Even the opening of the Los Angeles Mall and Triforium proved insufficient in keeping salarymen and shopkeepers downtown after sundown.

Atop the actual Bunker Hill (but generally thought of as lying within the Civic Center) are two of the first buildings to follow the neighborhood’s redevelopment, the beautiful John Ferraro Building (formerly known as the Department of Water and Power’s General Office Building), completed in 1964, and the Los Angeles Music Center’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion (1964), Ahmanson Theater (1967), and Mark Taper Forum (1967). In the southern end of the redevelopment zone, in what’s typically thought of as the Financial District, the 40-story, 157 meter tall Union Bank Plaza became the first skyscraper to be built as part of the Bunker Hill Redevelopment Project.

The first new building in the Bunker Hill neighborhood was a humblr utility building constructed in 1966 which currently utilized by Veolia Energy. However, putting that aside, the first major project was the residential, 32-story Bunker Hill Tower. Construction of the Robert Evans Alexander-designed towers began in 1966. Bunker Hill Tower, Bunker Hill West, and Bunker Hill South opened opened in 1968.

THE CALVIN S. HAMILTON PEDWAY

The Calvin S. Hamilton Pedway is a series of elevated walkways that were meant to be the first phase of what would become a mechanized people mover squiring people around Bunker Hill and the Financial District. It was first presented in the 1970 Concept Los Angeles: The Concept for the Los Angeles General Plan. Hamilton was the city planning director at the time, having taken the position in 1964. The plan, adopted by the city in 1974, promoted dense commercial developments connected to one another by a rapid transit system. The plan was abandoned in 1981 when federal funding for the project was eliminated.

BANK OF AMERICA CENTER

The 55-story, Corporate International-style, Albert C. Martin and Associates-designed commercial high-rise was completed in 1975, when it opened as the Security Pacific Plaza. On the plaza in front of the building stands “Four Arches,” a large orange piece of plop art designed by artist Alexander Calder and commissioned by the CRA, who required that each commercial development spent 1% of its costs on plop art. As a result, Bunker Hill is something like a gallery — like many downtowns — of big, costly, abstract sculptures. Bank of America Center also includes “Sierra Leone” (1983), “Verdugo” (1986), and “Covina“ — three pieces by Woods Davy (1986).

More appealing to me than any of the public art at the plaza is the large fountain. On Fridays, from 10:00 am – 2:00 pm, the plaza hosts the Bank of America Farmers Market.

There are plenty of marginal spaces on Bunker Hill, such as this dusty escalator, the entrances of which are blocked with plywood. The escalator leads to a large, hardscaped area under 4th Street.

One of the most interesting pieces of the pedestrian infrastructure was this old staircase, perhaps a relic of old Bunker Hill, which has been partially buried, landscaped, and leads to a wall.

FIGUEROA COURTYARD

Figueroa Courtyard is an office complex built in 1978 for the Pacific Stock Exchange, and originally named Exchange Square. As a fan of banal business parks I’m intrigued by this space — especially as it seems rather incongruent with its urban setting. Apparently, in the 1970s, when much of Bunker Hill had yet to be re-developed and probably resembled the lifeless surface of the moon, this gray complex was comparatively lush-enough to be nicknamed “The Garden.”

When it did open it was given a more prosaic name, yet another name had been chosen — the Gilbert W. Lindsay Mall. Today it feels less like an outpost of green on an otherwise lifeless landscape than a lifeless office park better suited for the borderlands of Costa Mesa and Santa Ana.

ANGELUS PLAZA

Angelus Plaza is an affordable housing community for older adults, completed in 1980. Like Cathay Manor, Fairmount Terrace, or Little Tokyo Towers, I’ve long had this strange fantasy about spending my golden years there. 

The buildings — 17-story Dawn, 16-story Evensong, 16-story Jubilate, and 16-story Noontide — remind me in appearnace of a Chinese ghost city like Ordos — but there are people living in these. In fact, Angelus Plaza is the largest affordable housing community of its kind in the nation. Though to me the look older than they are, apparently some find them futuristic. After all, they were prominently featured Steven Spielberg’s deeply silly Minority Report (2002), a film I disliked so much that I was compelled to watch it twice.

PROMENADE PLAZA AND PROMENADE WEST

Promenade Plaza is a plaza, strip mall, and residential building built in 1981. It hosts an untitled sculpture in a by Sheldon Caris (1981) and to its west is the residential Promenade West, also completed in 1981. I’m not aware of who designed them but they’re vaguely Sea Ranch in design.

WELLS FARGO PLAZA

Wells Fargo Center is comprised of two high-rises and a three story atrium designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. The atrium interior of Wells Fargo Plaza was designed by landscape architect Lawrence Halprin. It houses bronze nudes by Robert Graham as well as pools and fountains. It also houses Joan Miró’s ”la caresse d’un oiseau” (1967) and Jean Dubuffet‘s Le Dandy, (1973-1983) — easily my favorite two public art pieces on Bunker Hill.

The 54-story Wells Fargo Tower  was completed in 1983. It’s home to the kid-oriented Wells Fargo History Museum and City Club Los Angeles. Neighboring KPMG Tower — a 45-story high-rise, was also completed in 1983.

Outside the towers are two more pieces of public art. Louise Nevelson‘s aluminum and steel “Night Sail“ was completed in 1985. Nancy Graves‘s “Sequi,” a bronze painted with polychrome sculpture was completed in 1986.

THE LA HOTEL DOWNTOWN

The 13-story LA Hotel Downtown was completed in 1983 as the Sheraton Grande and has since gone through several incarnations. It used to house Laemmle‘s Grande 4-Plex, a much-missed movie house. 

CALIFORNIA PLAZA

California Plaza is a large plaza which contains One California Plaza, Two California Plaza, and the Water Court at California Plaza — the site of Grand Performances. 42-story One California Plaza was designed by Arthur Erickson Architectural Corporation and completed in 1985. The 52-story Two California Plaza was completed in 1992. California Plaza is also home to a Mark di Suvero sculpture titled “Pre-Natal Memories – Sculpture” (1976-1980).

Three California Plaza was never completed. It’s intended location, a one hectare hillside lot, became Angels Knollpark. In 2008, Jacci Den Hartog designed a new landscape and Angel’s Knoll got new benches and trees. The following year it was featured prominently in the film, (500) Days of Summer. The CRA was disbanded in 2012 and that same year artist Calder Greenwood installed a family of papier-mâché deer, one of the few un-sacntioned pieces of public art to have appeared in Bunker Hill. A fence was erected around the parcel in 2013.

PROMENADE TOWERS

The nineteen-story North Tower and the seventeen-story South Tower of Promenade Towers were completed in 1986. At the time they comprised the largest residential colony in Los Angeles. Today they’re only the second largest residential colony — but still perhaps the ugliest.

UPTOWN ROCKER

Lloyd Hamrol’s homage to car culture, “Uptown Rocker” (1986), was commissioned by the defunct CRA and cost $113,000.

MOCA

The Arata Isozaki-designed, Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) opened in 1986. MOCA has three locations with the main branch being the location on Grand. The original space, now known as the Geffen Contemporary, is in Little Tokyo. There’s also the Pacific Design Center facility in West Hollywood. Most of the art exhibited is post-World War II American and European art. 

After the opening of MOCA, a few luxury apartments and an hotel appeared. The 27-story Grand Promenade Apartments opened in 1988. They’ve since been rebranded “255 Grand.” The twenty-story Museum Tower Apartments opened in 1990. The second of Bunker Hill’s two hotels, the seventeen-story Omni Los Angeles Hotel at California Plaza, opened in 1991.

L.A. ANGEL

Perhaps the last piece of commissioned public art on Bunker Hill was “L.A. Angel,” a neon sculpture created by Lili Lakich in 1992. Lakich moved to Los Angeles in 1968 and in 1973 began exhibiting her neon sculptures. She founded the Museum of Neon Art in Los Angeles in 1982 and remained its director until 1999.

COLBURN SCHOOL

The Colburn School was originally part of the USC Thornton School of Music. In 1980, by which time it was known as the Community School of Performing Arts, it split from USC. After receiving an endowment from billionaire Richard D. Colburn it was renamed. It relocated to its present location on Bunker Hill in 1998. In 2007, the thirteen-story  Pfeiffer Partners-designed The Colburn, joined it.

REUSE TO THE RESCUE

The top-down efforts to develop New Downtown lost momentum in the 1990s. Three California Plaza remains unbuilt and in 1999, the 26% vacancy rate of the skyscraper was amongst the highest in the nation. Across the freeway, Westlake (which developers were branding “Central City West” or “City West“), the shiny Rolls Royce Tower, balanced on top of a ridiculous fifteen floors of parking, peaked at 10% occupancy. The huge Metropolis project was put on indefinite hold.

In 1999, the Los Angeles City Council passed the adaptive reuse ordinance which allowed for the conversion of under-used and sometimes completely abandoned office buildings into residences. One of the most important aspects of the ordinance was that it forwent the requirement for the creation of additional parking. That proved far more transformative than all the money and effort put into building a new downtown or developing City West. 

To be clear, Downtown Los Angeles was never abandoned. Even before adaptive reuse there were government officials in the Civic Center, salarymen in the Financial District, Mexican merchants along Broadway, Middle Easterners in the Jewelry District, Persian Jews in the Fashion District, and thousands of residents in Bunker Hill’s residential towers. Most of them were only there in the daytime, though. At night Downtown was the land of people working in the wholesale Flower, Produce, and Seafood Districts. Most of them left during the day. Only the homeless, punks, and artists seemed to actually live Downtown.

After adaptive reuse, a generation of young people moved Downtown. In some cases they were fourth-generation suburbanites whose parents are probably still frightened by the thought of American downtowns. Having grown up in safe but dull, culture-deprived tracts of detached homes, these young people seem to be more interested in access to good public transportation than good schools (maybe that will change when more of their kids reach school age).

WALT DISNEY CONCERT HALL

The Walt Disney was first designed by Frank Gehry in 1987. I have to say, having been introduced to Gehry’s work by his Iowa Advanced Technology Laboratories in Iowa City, I was not a fan. When Walt Disney Concert Hall was finally completed, in 2003, it looked to me like his other designs, as blithely indifferent to its environment as any piece of plop art. Its reflective sheen created 60 °C hotspots on the surrounding sidewalks and melted objects in neighboring buildings. A tarp was draped upon it as a temporary solution and later, most of it was buffed to dull its surface. In 2006, a documentary titled Sketches of Frank Gehry seemed to have been produced primarily so that the talking heads of Bob Geldof, Dennis Hopper, and other celebs respected architectural theorists could win over the doubters just waiting for celebrity endorsements. 

I still regard Walt Disney Concert Hall somewhat ambivalently… but exploring its exterior I succumbed to its charms including amphitheaters tucked away on the roof, hidden walkways which almost make one feel as if one is trespassing, a beautiful garden, and all sorts of interesting nooks, angels, and views.

I also like the hall because it’s home to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, LA Master Chorale, and especially REDCAT, all of which produce a great deal of interesting programming. Finally, no cultural institution along Grand Avenue can claim as much credit for bringing people back to Bunker Hill and spurring another wave of development.

THE EMERSON LA

The nineteen-story Emerson LA, a luxury apartment building designed by Miami-based Arquitectonica, opened in 2014. 

THE BROAD MUSEUM

The Broad opened in 2015. The new, contemporary art museum boasts about 2,000 pieces by the likes of Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman, Ed Ruscha, Jeff Koons, and Roy Lichtenstein — or as a friend put it — pretty much the art collection you’d expect a billionaire to amass. The billionaires in this case being Eli and Edythe Broad.

I haven’t been inside yet but the honeycombed exterior, designed by the New York architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro, seems to have bested Gehry’s neighboring Walt Disney Concert Hall, measured by the all important metric of the Instagram hashtag.

GRAND AVENUE PROJECT

Although nothing is set in stone until it’s set in stone (or sidewalk cooking reflective metal) the Frank Gehry-designed 37-story currently being erected atop an old parking lot is scheduled for completion in 2017. At that time the top floors will be residential, the bottom floors will host the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, and the ground floor will contain a Whole Foods… maybe.

*****

DEMOGRAPHICS

According to City Data, 3,950 people live in the .45 square kilometer Bunker Hill neighborhood today. 49% of residents are California natives, 9% are immigrants from another state, and 42% were born in a foreign country. 53% of Bunker Hill residents are Asian, 27% are white, 11% are Latino, 7% are black, 2% are multi-racial, and less than one percent identify as being of another race (including seven Native Americans).

GETTING AROUND

Even without Angels Flight, Bunker Hill is well-served by public transit. Lines operated by Big Blue Bus, Commuter Express, DASH, Foothill Transit, Metro, OCTA, and Torrance Transit stop at various points within the neighborhood.

The Civic Center Station’s Bunker Hill entrance is served by Los Angeles’s two subway lines, the Purple and Red. The 3 kilometer long Downtown Regional Connector, currently under construction, will add a stop at 2nd/Hope. When complete (sometime around 2020) the lines will be reconfigured. At that time one light rail line will connect Santa Monica (currently the Expo Line) to East Los Angeles (currently the Gold Line) and ultimately beyond (perhaps Whittier). The other line will connect Long Beach (currently the Blue Line) with Azusa (currently the Gold Line) and ultimately beyond (perhaps Ontario). 

EATING AND DRINKING IN BUNKER HILL

Now normally when I explore a neighborhood I make a point of eating and grabbing some drinks  there. This time, however, I (and those who joined me) headed to the newly re-opened Clifton’s Cafeteria. There are a few places to eat in Bunker Hill and they include: Asiago Grilled Cheese, Au Lac DTLA, Blue Cow Kitchen, Colburn Cafe, Concert Hall Café, Courtyard Cafe, Crisp Pasta, Dan’s Deli, George’s Greek Grill, Grand Café, The Happy Inka, Lemonade, Let’s Roll Sushi, Market Café at Wells Fargo Center, Mendocino Farms, MIX Fresh & Natural, Mixt Greens, Ocho Mexican Grill, Nick + Stef’s Steakhouse, Noe Restaurant and Bar, Otium, La Petite Boulangerie, Patina Restaurant, Patinette, Pentolino To Go, Prime Grind Coffee, Promenade Ristorante, Saffron, Salata, Smoke on Hope Street, Tacone, Trimana, Vespaio, Ye Olde Taco House 1, and Ziran.

The only bars, so to speak, that I know of are The Lounge at REDCAT and the Redwood Bar & Grill. I’ve been to the latter a few times. They sometimes have live music and it has a pirate theme but don’t let that scare you. If someone gets “ren fairey” and starts talking like a pirate, no one will mind if you “blow the man down.”

*****

OUTRO

Since 2000, Downtown is commonly described as having experienced a renaissance but, aside from the Music Center and LA Live, the energy seems to be focused almost entirely in Old Downtown — the Historic Core, the Old Bank District, the Broadway Theater District, Gallery Row, and the Arts District. New Downtown — Bunker Hill and the Financial District, are less hip. Today’s young, urban, professionals may have adopted early ’90s fashions and hairstyles but not the corporate aesthetic. Today 25% of the office spaces on Bunker Hill sit empty (as do 18% of those in the Financial District). Cubicles and carpet are out, “creative spaces” characterized by mis-matched furniture and polished concrete floors are in. Rumors are floated of conversions of office space into hotels. Can lofts be far behind? Perhaps the office spaces of New Downtown could benefit from the installation of a few decorative ducts and exposed brick walls. After dark there are pockets of activity away from Grand Avennue but large areas of New Downtown eerily resemble the empty Downtown Los Angeles of Omega Man.

MORE ON BUNKER HILL

Bunker Hill Los Angeles, Reminiscences of Bygone Days (1964) by Leo Polti

The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory (1997) by Norman M. Klein

City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (1990) and “Bunker Hill: Hollywood’s Dark Shadow” (2001) by Mike Davis

Bunker Hill: Pulp Ficition’s Mean Streets and Film Noir’s Ground Zero (2012) by Jim Dawson

A Los Angeles Primer: Bunker Hill by Colin Marshall

Third Street Tunnel: A Primer by Eric Richardson

CityDig: This 1869 Map Is an Antique Blueprint of Bunker Hill by Glen Creason

Laws That Shaped L.A.: How Bunker Hill Lost its Victorians by Jeremy Rosenberg

Nobody Drives in LA — Exploring Downtown’s Calvin S. Hamilton Pedway

Nobody Drives in LA — Exploring the Regional Connector Transit Corridor

Rediscovering Downtown L.A.’s Lost Neighborhood of Bunker Hill by Nathan Masters

Sidewalk Stories: The Photography of William Reagh by Lynell George

Stan, Ollie, and Harold – a Drive Through Bunker Hill

On Bunker Hill

At the Los Angeles Central Library there’s an exhibit, curated by Christina Rice and Emma Roberts, titled Bunker Hill in the Rear-View Mirror: The Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of an Urban Neighborhood.

*****

Eric Brightwell is an adventurer, writer, rambler, explorer, cartographer, and guerrilla gardener who is always seeking writing, speaking, traveling, and art opportunities — or salaried work. He is not interested in writing advertorials, clickbait, listicles, or other 21st century varieties of spam. Brightwell’s written work has appeared in Amoeblog, diaCRITICS, and KCET Departures. His work has been featured by the American Institute of Architects, the Architecture & Design Museum, the Craft & Folk Art Museum, Form Follows Function, Los Angeles County Store, Skid Row Housing Trust, and 1650 Gallery. Brightwell has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Magazine, LAist, Eastsider LA, Boing Boing, Los Angeles, I’m Yours, and on Notebook on Cities and Culture. He has been a guest speaker on KCRW‘s Which Way, LA? and at Emerson College. Art prints of his maps are available from 1650 Gallery and on other products from Cal31. He is currently writing a book about Los Angeles and you can follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Click here to offer financial support and thank you!

Monkey Day is celebrated internationally on 14 December. It was created by American artist Casey Sorrow in 2000. It
began as a in-joke between Sorrow and fellow art students at Michigan State University. Since then it has spread across the globe as a day to raise awareness and concern for the animals. Zoos in Estonia, Pakistan, and presumably elsewhere host Monkey Day events. Even Hallmark has apparently gotten in on the action.

Peter Jackson‘s King Kong was released on Monkey Day 2005 — although no monkeys are featured in the film. King Kong is, of course, a gorilla and as such no more a monkey than his human-costar, Jack Black. According to an article in The Times Leader, Monkey Day parties frequently include viewings of Planet of the Apes, another film which features no monkeys — a fact that should be evident by the fact that it’s not called Planet of the Monkeys.

In 2008, the official Monkey Day celebrations included an art show and silent auction to benefit the Chimps Inc. animal sanctuary. Chimpanzees, like gorillas and humans as well as orangutans, gibbons, gorillas, and bonobos are apes, not monkeys. In fact, the Wikipedia entry on Monkey Day includes exactly zero mentions of Monkey Day events which actually involve monkeys. It seems to me like raising a little awareness about monkeys might be in order.

Monkeys are, like apes, primates. Unlike apes, however, monkeys are usually much smaller and generally posses tales. There are about 260 known species, many of which are arboreal (although baboons live primarily on the ground). Lemurs, lorises, and galagos are not monkeys. Apes are not monkeys. The members of The Monkees are not actual monkeys and neither is Ian Brown. Baboons, capuchins, marmosets, tamarins, titis, sakis, and uakaris are monkeys.

The first astronaut was a rhesus monkey named Albert. He flew in the US V-2 rocket on 11 June 1948 and died of suffocation. Albert II became the first living creature to travel in space which he did during a 14 June 1949 launch. He, however, died during re-entry after a parachute failure . Albert III, a cynomolgus monkey, died in an explosion at 10.7 kilometers altitude. Albert IV died after another parachute failure. So did Albert V. Albert VI and Gordo also died during or shortly after their inaugural space flights and it wasn’t until the 1959 voyage of the JUPITER AM-18, that Able, another rhesus, and Miss Baker, a squirrel monkey, became the first creatures to successfully return to Earth after traveling in space. Baker died at the age of 27 in 1984 and is buried on the grounds of the United States Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Able was taxidermied and his corpse is on display at the Smithsonian Institution‘s National Air and Space Museum.

Today, an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 non-human primates are used in research each year due largely to their psychological and physical similarity to humans. In parts of Africa and Asia their brains are consumed by humans as a delicacy. They are extensively kept as pets and routinely exterminated as agricultural pests.

Some humans, however, revere monkeys. In Hinduism, Hanuman (Sanskrit: हनुमान्) bestows courage, strength and longevity to his worshippers.

In Japan, the three wise monkeys (Japanese: 三猿) represent the proverbial principle “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.” The Tzeltal people of Chiapas revere monkeys are the spirits of dead ancestors. In black American folklore, the Signifying Monkey is a prominent character in folktales. In Chinese mythology, Sun Wukong (Chinese: 孫悟空), is a main character in Journey to the West and other fictional tales.

So that you might observe Monkey Day without resorting to watching Planet of the Apes or some other monkey-less fiction, here are some works which actually feature monkeys…

LITERARY MONKEYS

Ampersand, featured in Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra

An-Nin, featured in Tokyo Mew Mew by Reiko Yoshida
Beppo, featured in Superboy #76, “Introducing the Super-Monkey from Krypton!” by Otto Binder
Curious George, featured in Curious George by Margret Rey and H. A. Rey
Francine Frensky, featured in Arthur’s Valentine by Marc Brown
Gabby, featured in Smash Comics #21, “Midnight meets… Gabby, the Talking Monkey” by Jack Cole
Lichi, featured in Kateikyoushi Hitman Reborn! by Akira Amano
Uncle Gabby, featured in Maakies by Tony Millionaire
Nkima, featured in Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Ozymandias, featured in His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
The unnamed monkey whose hand is featured in “The Monkey’s Paw” by W. W. Jacobs

MONKEYS OF FILM AND TELEVISION

Abu Monkey, featured in Aladdin
Alakazam, featured in Alakazam the Great
Baboon, featured in Skunk Fu

Blip Monkey, featured in Space Ghost

Boots, featured in Dora The Explorer
Bubbles, featured in Dragon Ball Z
Buddhist Monkey, featured in Happy Tree Friends
Captain Huggy Face, featured in WordGirl
Ete-kichi, featured in Jungle King Tar-chan
Evil Monkey, featured in Family Guy
Furge, featured in Seitokai Yakuindomo
Goku, featured in Gokudo

Gleek, featured in Super Friends
I.R. Baboon, featured in I Am Weasel
Jacob P. “Jake” Spidermonkey, featured in My Gym Partner’s a Monkey Adam’s Best Friend
Jonny the Monkey, mentioned in Borat
Kiki, featured in Magical Sentosa
Lazlo, featured in Camp Lazlo
Master Monkey, featured in Kung Fu Panda
Minka Mark, featured in Littlest Pet Shop
Monkey, featured in Dexter’s Laboratory
Miss Lucy Simian, featured in The Amazing World of Gumball
Mother’s Goku, featured in Gokudo
Playful Heart Monkey, featured in Care Bears
Rafiki, featured in The Lion King
Sasuke Sarutobi, featured in Hyakka Ryouran: Samurai Bride
Spike, featured in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
The unnamed female capuchin featured in Raiders of the Lost Ark (but voiced by Frank Welker)

MONKEYS IN MUSIC

Musicians with monkey associations, at the very least in their names, include Arctic Monkeys, The Blow Monkeys, Kid Congo & the Pink Monkey Birds, and frankly far too many others to mention. The most obvious band with monkey name associations would be the aforementioned Monkees, an American rock band formed by Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider for the television series, The Monkees, which aired from 1966 to 1968. Although initially a fictional band, the members of the fictional band soon after formation took a more active role in songwriting and continued to produce new material until 1971.

Ian Brown’s nickname is “King Monkey,” and his debut solo album was called Unfinished Monkey Business. He’s often seen sporting Bathing Ape but, as we all know by now, apes are not monkeys and never were. His second album included a song titled “Dolphins Were Monkeys.”

Anyway, there are actually quite a few songs about monkeys (although sometimes metaphorical or proverbial ones). Anyway, here’s a Monkey Day playlist on Spotify for your enjoyment which includes tracks by Alphaville, The Beat, Bert Jansch, Cal Tjader, Celia Cruz & Tito Puente, The Chameleons, Chuck Berry, Cocteau Twins, Damon Albarn, Echo & the Bunnymen, Fela Kuti, Geils, George Michael, Goodie Mob, Gorillaz, Happy Mondays, Henry Mancini, Hoagy Carmichael, Ian Brown, Jackie Wilson, Julie Ruin, The Kills, Kix, Les Baxter, Lilys, Major Lance, Magnolia Shorty, Meat Puppets, Money Mark, The Monkees, Nick Swardson, Peter Gabriel, The Pixies, Richard Pryor, The Rolling Stones, Rufus Thomas, Skid Row, Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, Stick McGhee, Too $hort, Toots & the Maytals, Los Tucanes de Tijuana, Trans-X, The Tubes, and Willie Dixon.

*****

Eric Brightwell is an adventurer, writer, rambler, explorer, cartographer, and guerrilla gardener who is always seeking writing, speaking, traveling, and art opportunities — or salaried work. He is not interested in writing advertorials, clickbait, listicles, or other 21st century varieties of spam. Brightwell’s written work has appeared in Amoeblog, diaCRITICS, and KCET Departures. His work has been featured by the American Institute of Architects, the Architecture & Design Museum, the Craft & Folk Art Museum, Form Follows Function, Los Angeles County Store, Skid Row Housing Trust, and 1650 Gallery. Brightwell has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Magazine, LAist, Eastsider LA, Boing Boing, Los Angeles, I’m Yours, and on Notebook on Cities and Culture. He has been a guest speaker on KCRW‘s Which Way, LA? and at Emerson College. Art prints of his maps are available from 1650 Gallery and on other products from Cal31. He is currently writing a book about Los Angeles and you can follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Click here to offer financial support and thank you!

California‘s Kern County is located at the southern end of the Central Valley — a flat, expansive valley that dominates the geography of central California. At its widest point, the vast valley is about 100 kilometers wide. It’s roughly 720 kilometers long from south to north. In the northern portion are the cities of Fresno, Redding, and Sacramento. In Kern County the largest city is Bakersfield.

The Kern River Oil Field was discovered in 1899 and there are several oil-related historic sites. Kern County is the site of the biggest oil spill in American history, an event known as the Lakeview Gusher of 1910. There are still visible signs of the event near the town of Maricopa. Near McKittrick are the remains of California Standard Oil Well 1 as well as a series of natural asphalt lakes known as the McKittrick Tar Pits.

Other rural sites of interest include Rogers Dry Lake  — a desert salt pan and site of  the world’s largest compass rose; Robbers Roost/Bandit Rock, an unusual rock formation near Inyokern; and the Last Chance Canyon historic site (near Johannesburg); parts of Carrizo Plain National Monument (the largest single native grassland remaining in California), Giant Sequoia National Monument, Los Padres National Forest, and Sequoia National Forest. Kern County also contains Bitter Creek National Wildlife Refuge (known for its population of California Condors as well as other rare animal species like San Joaquin kit foxes), César E. Chávez National Monument, and Kern National Wildlife Refuge (located on the southern margin of what was once the largest freshwater wetland complex in the western United States and remains an important wintering habitat for waterfowl and water birds).

Although today the Central Valley is dominated by agricultural concerns, the Central Valley grassland was previously a biologically diverse grassland containing areas of desert grassland, prairie, savanna, riparian woodlands, marshland, seasonal vernal pools, and large lakes. The dominant grass of the valley was Purple needlegrass (Nassella pulchra) but today only 1% of the native grassland is original and intact. Other native flora include the California poppy (Eschscholzia californica), lupins, and Purple Owl’s Clover (Castilleja exserta). Remaining riparian woodlands are home to willows, western sycamore (Platanus racemosa), box elder (Acer negundo), Fremont cottonwood (Populus fremontii), and the endemic Valley oak (Quercus lobata).

Kern County is also home to large populations of the endemic Tule Elk, mule deer, San Joaquin kit foxes, California condors, western aquatic garter snakes, California ground squirrels, gophers, mice, hare, rabbits, giant kangaroo rats, blunt-nosed leopard lizards, Gilbert’s skinks, tri-colored blackbirds, western spadefoot toads, western horned lizards, and many invertebrates. Although the pronghorn was driven into local extinction, it was reintroduced in much smaller numbers in the 1980s. The California Grizzly which appears on the state flag was sadly driven to complete extinction. The last known grizzly in Kern was killed in 1918.

Modern Kern County was home to several Native American peoples including the Chumash; the Uto-Aztecan language-speaking Kawaiisu, Kitanemuk, Taaqtam, Tataviam, and Tübatulabal; and the Penutsian language-speaking Yokuts. All lived in the area for thousands of years before the first European, Commander Don Pedro Fages arrived in the area in 1772.  Even after the Spanish Conquest, however, few Europeans settled in the area until after 1821, when Mexico acheived independence from Spain. Three years later, the Chumash rebelled against the Mexicans at the Battle of San Emigdio — a bit south of what’s now Bakersfield. They lost to the Mexican forces they too would fall to conquerors, this time the United States, in 1848.

When California joined the union in 1850, what’s now Kern County was part of Mariposa County, then the largest such division in the state. In 1851, gold was discovered near the Kern River in the southern Sierra Nevadas. In 1865, oil was discovered in the valley. In 1866 Kern County was carved from it. Its name came from the Kern River, named after cartographer Edward Kern but known to the Spanish and Mexicans as Rio Bravo de San Felipe.

The drastic transformation of the land — which included the drainage of lakes and construction of canals — was mostly undertaken by Chinese laborers. In 1874, the county seat moved from Havilah to Bakersfield. The Kern River Oil Field turned out to be the fifth largest oil field in the US and the names of towns like Oil City, Oil Center (located in what’s now Bakersfield), and Oildale all reflect the commodity’s economic importance to the region. Today oil remains important to Kern County’s economy, as does the military industry, and agriculture.

In 2013, Kern County was home to an estimated 874,589 people. 82.9% were white (36.9% Anglo), 6.3% were black, 5.3% were Asian-Pacific Islander, 2.7% were Native American, 3% were of mixed race, and 24.3% were from other races. Latinos of any race comprised 50.9% of the population. The most common heritage is Mexican although there are significant populations of Salvadorans, Colombians, and Guatemalans as well.

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ARVIN

The town of Arvin was named after Arvin Richardson and won out over Bear Mountain and Walnut because the other two names were already in use. The first post office opened in 1914, in the living room of Birdie Heard who was not only the town’s postmaster but its head librarian as the library too was located in the Heard home until a Kern County library was built in 1927.

As of 2010, the town of Arvin had a population of 19,304. In 2007, it had the dubious distinction of being singled out by the EPA for having the highest level of smog in the US although Arvin Transit and Kern Transit offer alternatives to car dependency.

BAKERSFIELD

Bakersfield was known to early pioneers as a reedy, flood-prone, malarial marshland named Kern Island. The original settlement was established by German immigrant Christian Bohna in 1860 and washed away in 1862. Gold prospector Thomas Baker moved to the area in 1863 and his property came to be known to travelers lodging upon it as Baker’s Field. By 1870 it had a population of 600 and was the largest town in the county.

Bakersfield incorporated as a city in 1873 and the following year it was made the new county seat. Motivated primarily by their dislike of the town’s marshall, a cantankerous Kentuckian named Alexander Mills, Bakersfield was disincorporated in 1876 which meant that Mills no longer had a job. It was re-incorporated in 1898.

Today, with a population of roughly 363,630, Bakersfield remains the most populous city in Kern County and is the ninth most populous city in California. Most of Bakersfield’s early residents cam from Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas but a substantial number came from the Basque homeland on the Iberian Peninsula. Their continued presence is reflected by the existence of Basque restaurants like Benji’s, Narducci’s Café, Noriega’s, Pyrenees Café, and Wool Growers.

Bakersfield is also rightly celebrated for the “Bakersfield sound,” a twangy, rockin’ subgenre of country music, exemplified by Merle Haggard (a native of nearby Oildale), Tommy Collins, Wynn Stewart, Jean Shepard, Susan Raye, Lewis Talley, Speedy West, Dennis Payne, Freddie Hart, and the late Buck Owens, who opened the Buck Owens Crystal Palace in 1996.

Historic Bakersfield buildings include the Tevis Block (1893), the Kern Branch Beale Memorial Library (1900), the Jastro Building (1917), the Bakersfield Californian Building (1926), and First Baptist Church (1933). Other sites of possible interest include Buena Vista Museum of Natural History, Kern County Museum, California State University, Bakersfield, the Garces Memorial Traffic Circle (which includes on it John Palo-Kangas’s 1939 statue of Father Francisco Garcés), and the Colonel Thomas Baker Memorial (dedicated in 1944).

BEAR VALLEY SPRINGS

Bear Valley Springs is a census-designated place (CDP) in the Tehachapi Mountains. As of 2010 its population was 5,172. It’s a gated community, developed in 1970 and boasts equestrian trails, a 9-hole golf course, tennis courts, a shooting range, an archery range, camp grounds, and a gym.

BODFISH

Bodfish is a CDP named for George Homer Bodfish, who settled nearby in 1867. In 2010 it reported a population of 1,956. It’s home to the Silver City Ghost Town (a tourist attraction) and Dave’s Sports Bar.

BORON

Boron is a CDP which in 2010 reported a population of 2,253. It is named after the element, Boron and is home to the US Borax Boron Mine, California’s largest open-pit mine and the largest borax mine in the world (the borax deposit was first discovered in 1925). It’s also home to Domingo’s Mexican & Seafood Restaurant, 20 Mule Cafe, Vernon P Saxon Aerospace Museum, Boron Museum, Pioneer Park, and Pilot Truck Stop.

BUTTONWILLOW

Buttonwillow is a CDP in the San Joaquin Valley which in 2010 reported a population of 1,508. Although developed as Buena Vista in 1895, it became named Buttonwillow  after a lone buttonbush, (Cephalanthus occidentalis) which was used as a meeting place by the aboriginal Yokuts and which is now California Historical Landmark No. 492.

CALIENTE

Caliente is an unincorporated community which in 2010 reported a population of 1,019. It was originally developed in the 1870s as Allens Camp, named after rancher Gabriel Allen. It was later known as Agua Caliente, after its hot springs, but that name was already in use and it was shortened to Caliente in 1875. It was served by Southern Pacific Railroad‘s Tehachapi Pass line, the Telegraph Stage Line, and the Cerro Gordo Freighting Co. which prompted the growth of the town. Edward Fitzgerald Beale established a home in this area about 1855 which is now registered as California Historical Landmark #757.

CALIFORNIA CITY

California City is an unincorporated, master-planned resort town from 1958 designed by real estate developer and sociology professor Nat Mendelsohn. It was incorporated in 1965 but remains largely undeveloped, criss-crossed with a huge, crumbling infrastructure. As of 201o it had a population of 14,120. One of its best known attractions is the abandoned Lake Shore Inn, built on the shores of a 11 hectare artificial lake.

CHEROKEE STRIP

Cherokee Strip is a CDP which in 2010 reported a population of 227.

CHINA LAKE ACRES

China Lake Acres is a CDP which in 2010 had a population of 1,761.

DELANO

In 2010 Delano had a population of 53,819, making it the second largest city in Kern County. It’s hardly a metropolis, home to a handful of Chinese, Mexican, and pizza joints. It is an important center for grape growing, however, and was home of Forty Acres — the first headquarters of the United Farm Workers labor union. Today it’s also home to two state prisons, North Kern and Kern Valley.

DERBY ACRES

Derby Acres is a CDP founded in the 1930s and home, in 2010, to 322 people.

DUSTIN ACRES

Dustin Acres is a CDP which in 2010 had a population of 652.

EDMUNDSON ACRES

Edmundson Acres is a CDP which in 2010 had a population of 279.

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE

Edwards Air Force Base is home to the Air Force Test Center, the Air Force Materiel Command, the US Air Force Test Pilot School, and NASA‘s Armstrong Flight Research Center, next to which is painted the world’s largest compass rose. It was built in 1933 as Muroc Air Force Base. Several notable occurrences occurred there including Chuck Yeager‘s flight in the Bell X-1 which broke the sound barrier and the first landings of the Space Shuttle. As of 2010 it had a population of 2,063.

FELLOWS

Fellows is located atop the third largest oil field in the US, the Midway-Sunset Oil Field, to which it owes its existence. The oil field was discovered in 1909 and developement of the town, named after Sunset Western Railroad contractor Charles A. Fellows, followed. As of 2010 is the population of Fellows had dropped to 106.

FORD CITY

Ford City is a CDP which in 2010 had a population of 4,278. According to California’s Geographic Names: A Gazetteer of Historic and Modern Names of the State, its name came from the large number of Fords owned by the towns citizenry.

FORT TEJON

Fort Tejon was an army outpost located in the Tejon Pass and intermittently active from 1854 to 1861. From 1858 it was also used as a stagecoach station by the Butterfield Overland Mail as well as the US Camel Corps. It was again briefly re-occupied from 1863 to ’64 after which it was abandoned.

Today several of the historic buildings remain and the barracks and commanding officer’s quarters are open to visitors, part of the Fort Tejon Historic Park. The grounds also include the grave of Peter Lebecque, after whom nearby Lebec is named.

FRAZIER PARK

Frazier Park is an unincorporated town which in 2010 had a population of 2,691. It is one of the Mountain Communities of the Tejon Pass. It was founded in 1925 by Harry McBain, who named it after nearby Frazier Mountain.

FULLER ACRES

Fuller Acres (formerly, Hilltop) is a CDP which in 2010 had a population of 991.

GARLOCK

Garlock is a ghost town, apparently also known as Cow Wells, El Paso City, and Eugeneville. A post office was in operation from 1896 till 1904 and again from 1923 to 1926. The name Garlock was derived from mill owner Eugene Garlock. The town is registered as California Historical Landmark #671. It’s also home to a 1.3 kilometer long Burro Schmidt Tunnel, dug into the El Paso Mountains by William “Burro” H. Schmidt by 1902 and 1940 and profiled on Episode #509 of California’s Gold with Huell Howser.

GOLDEN HILLS

Golden Hills is a CDP in the Tehachapi Mountains which in 2010 had a population of 8,656

GREENACRES

Greenacres is a CDP which in 2010 had a population of 5,566. It was founded in 1930 as Green Acres. 

GREENFIELD

Greenfield is a CDP which in 2010 had a population of 3,991. It was originally named Delkern, derived from the Kern Delta. There are a handful of Mexican restaurants there and a Chinese place, Peking Express.

HAVILAH

Havilah is an unincorporated town bordered to the east and west by the Sequoia National Forest. “Havilah” is a Biblical name meaning “that suffers pain” and is the land where “Saul smote the Amalekites.” It’s also mentioned in Genesis (γένεσις) as being rich in bdellium, gold, and onyx. Havilah was Kern County’s first county seat and served as such from 1866 until 1872, when it moved to Bakersfield.

INYOKERN

Inyokern is a CDP which in 2010 reported a population of 1,099. It was established first as railroad town along the Southern Pacific railroad Lone Pine Branch and known as Siding 16. With the establishment of a post office in 1913 it took a more traditional name, Magnolia. Unable to resist changing its name once again, it later became Inyokern, an ingenious combination of “Inyo” and “Kern.” It’s home to several steakhouses, burger joints, and the Indian Wells Brewing Company.

JOHANNESBURG

Johannesburg is a CDP in the Rand Mountains. From 1897 to 1933 it was a terminus of the Randsburg Railway. It was founded to support mining operation at Randsburg and named by miners who had previously worked in gold mines in South Africa. As of 2010 its population had shrunk to 172.

KEENE

The small village of Wells was established in the foothills of the Tehachapi Mountains. It’s name was later changed to Keene and in 2010 it reported a population of 431. Keene is home to the César E. Chávez National Monument, the headquarters of the United Farm Workers, and home to (and final resting place of) farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist César Chávez. It’s also home to the Keene Café.

KERNVILLE

The Gold Rush of 1858 led to the formation of a town first known as Rogersville. It was later renamed Williamsburg. After a saloon opened it became known as Whiskey Flat until 1864, when it was renamed Kernville.

In 1948, Kernville was moved to higher ground after construction began of the Isabella Dam. When the water level is low, the foundations of old Kernville are sometimes visible underneath the lake’s surface. The new Kernville has several lodges, cafés, diners, and is home to the Kern River Brewing Company. As of 2010 Kernville had a population of 1,395.

LAKE ISABELLA

Lake Isabella was founded simply as Isabella in 1893. It was named after Queen Isabella of Spain by the town’s founder, Steven Barton. The Lake was added in 1957, after the formation of the Lake Isabella reservoir which also necessitated the relocation of the town to higher ground. The area is popular with campers and kayakers. As of 2010 Lake Isabella had a population of 3,466.

LAKE OF THE WOODS

Lake of the Woods is a small village located in the Cuddy Canyon of the San Emigdio Mountains within Los Padres Forest. It was established in 1925 by Florence Cuddy. The reservoir after which it was named went dry in 1962, when the dam burst. As of 2010 the town had a population of 917.

LAMONT

Lamont is a town which in 2010 reported a population of 15,120. It was founded in 1923 and its population grew during the Great Depression. It’s home to several Mexican restaurants and hamburger joints.

LEBEC

Lebec is named in honor of Peter Lebecque, a French trapper killed by a California grizzly bear. An inscription carved into an oak tree read “PETER LEBECK / KILLED BY A X BEAR / OCTR 17 / 1837.” As of 2010, Lebec had a population of 1,468 people and 0 grizzly bears. Today Lebec is home to several motels and Mexican restaurants.

LORAINE

Loraine is a small village near the mouth of Indian Creek founded by miners from Alsace. It was previously named Paris, a post office bearing that name having opened in 1903. Its name was changed to Loraine in 1912. As of 2010 it had a population of 313.

LOST HILLS

Lost Hills (formerly, Lost Hill) is a small farm town which in 2010 reported a population of 2,412. An Interstate 5 rest stop is located less than 2 kilometers from the town and the area boasts many chain restaurants, gas stations, motels, and a popular taco truck, El Dollar Taqueria.

MARICOPA

Maricopa is a small town located near the junction of Route 166 and Route 33, southeast of the Carrizo Plain. In 2010 it had a population of 1,154. To the northeast is the vast Midway-Sunset Oil Field.

MCFARLAND

McFarland (formerly, Hunt and Lone Pine) is located within the San Joaquin Valley. As of 2015 it had a population of 14,037. It is named after its founder, J.B. McFarland. The first post office opened in 1908 and in incorporated in 1957. It was mentioned on an episode of MacGyver titled “Bitter Harvest.”

MCKITTRICK

McKittrick is a CDP located near the McKittrick Tar Pits.The first post office opened in 1910 and the town, named after rancher Captain William McKittrick, incorporated in 1911.. In the town 2010 had a population of 115.

METTLER

Mettler is a CDP which in 2010 had a population of 136. The town was founded as Mettler Station in the 1940s by William H. Mettler and his two sons. On 30 September, 1955, James Dean was stopped by California Highway Patrol officer O.V. Hunter in Mettler Station for speeding less than two hours before the actor died in an automobile accident.

MEXICAN COLONY

Mexican Colony is a CDP which in 2010 had a population of 281. Approximately 81% of the population is Latino, mostly of Mexican origin.

MOJAVE

Mojave (formerly, Mohave) is a CDP located in the Antelope Valley at the southwestern edge of the Mojave Desert. As of 2010 the population was 4,238. Mojave began in 1875 as a construction camp along the Southern Pacific Railroad and was, from 1884 to 1889, the western terminus of the 266 kilometer twenty-mule team borax wagon route. It was later the headquarters for the construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct. In 1935, the Mojave Airport was established to serve the local gold and silver mining industry.

MOUNTAIN MESA

Mountain Mesa is a CDP located along the south shore of Lake Isabella. As of 2010 it had a population of 777.

NORTH EDWARDS

North Edwards (formerly, Edgemont Acres and North Muroc) is a CDP named after the Edwards Air Force Base, of which it lies 12 kilometers northeast. As of 2010 it had a population of 1,058.

OIL CITY

Oil City is an unincorporated community located adjacent to the Kern River Oil Field.

OILDALE

Oildale is an unincorporated suburb of Bakersfield. As of 2010 it had a population of 32,684.

OLD WEST RANCH

Old West Ranch is a community near Tehachapi. Many of its residents live off-the-grid.

ONYX

Onyx is a CDP which in 2010 had a population of 475. It was originally named Scodie, after William Scodie, who opened a store there in 1861. The Onyx Store opened even earlier, in 1851. The first post office opened in 1889. The ruins of Walker’s Pass Lodge are also in Onyx.

PINE MOUNTAIN CLUB

Pine Mountain Club is an unincorporated private community. It is one of the Mountain Communities of the Tejon Pass. As of 2010 it had a population of 2,315.

PUMPKIN CENTER

Pumpkin Center is unincorporated community. The first post office opened there in 1945. Despite its odd name it is one of three places in California to have been thus known. It’s celebrated in the David Allan Coe song, “Pumpkin Center Barn Dance.”

RANDSBURG

Randsburg is a CDP which in 2010 had a population of 77. It’s home to the ruins of Rand Mining District. It’s located in the Rand Mountains. It was founded as Rand Camp after gold was discovered in 1895. The first post office at Randsburg opened in 1896. South of Suez (1940) was filmed in there, as was the video for Dwight Yoakam‘s “Long White Cadillac.”

RIDGECREST

Ridgecrest is a city which in 2010 had a population of 27,616. Ridgecrest began in 1912 as a farming community called Crumville in 1912, named after local dairyemen James and Robert Crum. The first post office opened in 1941. It was incorporated as a city in 1963. It’s home to the The Maturango Museum, a museum devoted to the northern Mojave Desert’s history and culture.

ROSAMOND

Rosamond is a CDP located in the Antelope Valley. It was established as a stop on the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1877 and was named after a railroad official’s daughter.The Rosamond post office opened in 1885, closed in 1887, and re-opened in 1888. It was primarily a cattle town until gold was discovered in the 1890s. Today its known for being the home of the Exotic Feline Breeding Compound. As of 2010 it had a population of 18,150.

ROSEDALE

Rosedale is a CDP which in 2010 had a population of 14,058. Rosedale was founded in 1891 by English farmers. A post office opened in 1891… and closed in 1913. 

SAND CANYON

Sand Canyon is an unincorporated community which somehow seems not to have even been included in the last census… or at least I can’t find any census data.

SHAFTER

Shafter is a city in which in 2010 had a population of 16,988. The town was founded as a Santa Fe Railroad loading dock, named after Spanish-American War veteran General William Rufus Shafter.The first post office opened in 1898. Shafter incorporated as a city in 1938. Historic attractions include Green Hotel (1913) and the Santa Fe Passenger and Freight Depot (1917), both listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

SMITH CORNER

Smith Corner is a CDP which in 2010 had a population of 524.

SOUTH TAFT

South Taft is a CDP which in 2010 had a population of 1,898.

SQUIRREL MOUNTAIN VALLEY

Squirrel Mountain Valley is a CDP in the southern Sierra Nevadas. As of 2010 it had a population of 547.

STALLION SPRINGS

Stallion Springs is a CDP in the Tehachapi Mountains. In 2010 it had a population of 2,488.

TAFT

Taft is a city in the foothills at the southwestern edge of the San Joaquin Valley. As of 2010 it had a population of 9,327. Taft began as Siding Number Two along the  Sunset Railroad. In 1900 an attempt to designate it Moro was declined due to its similarity to Morro Bay. Instead, it was named Moron. After a fire burned most of Moron down it was renamed Taft after William Howard Taft. It’s home to the West Kern Oil Museum and the historic Works Progress Administration building, The Fort.

TAFT HEIGHTS

Taft Heights  is a CDP which in 2010 had a population of 1,949.  It was founded as Boust City, named in honor of oilman E.J. Boust.

TEHACHAPI

Tehachapi is a city which as of 2010 had a population of 14,414. Though small, Tehachapi is home to several attractions, including its Old Town, built in the 1860s. Homes of note include the Errea House, built between 1870 and 1875, and Donald B. Parkinson’s stone, Colonial Revival Courtlandt Gross House, built in 1942. The Tehachapi Depot Railroad Museum is located in a replica of the historic Tehachapi Depot, which burned down in 2008. The Tehachapi Loop is a 1.17 kilometer long spiral Union Pacific Railroad line through Tehachapi Pass of the Tehachapi Mountains.

TUPMAN

Tupman is a CDP which in 2010 had a reported population of 161. The town was founded in 1920 by the Standard Oil Company on land purchased from H.V. Tupman. The first post office opened in 1921.

TWIN PINES

Twin Pines is an historic mining town.

VALLEY ACRES

Valley Acres is a CDP which in 2010 had a population of 2010. It was founded in 1937.

WASCO

Wasco is a city which in 2010 had a population of 25,545. It was previously known as both Dewey and Deweyville, named after Admiral George Dewey, a veteran of the Spanish-American War. The first post office opened in 1899, the year before its name was changed to Wasco. Wasco is the site of the Fourth Home Extension Colony, founded in 1907, and teh The Wasco Union High School Auditorium is on the National Register of Historic Places.

WEEDPATCH

Weedpatch is an unincorporated community which as of 2010 had a population of 2,658. The area was known as Weed Patch as early as 1874 although the town wasn’t founded until 1922. It was also known as Alexander’s Corner, in honor of a local named Cal Alexander. Just south of town is Weedpatch is the site of the Arvin Federal Government Camp, known colloquially and in the novel The Grapes of Wrath as Weedpatch Camp.

WELDON

Weldon is a CDP located at the southeastern edge of Lake Isabella. As of 2010 it had a population of 2,642. The first post office opened in 1871. It’s named in honor of rancher William B. Weldon.

WILLOW SPRINGS

Willow Springs is an old mining town. The post office opened in 1909 and closed in 1918. The titular springs were utilized first by Native Americans and later but travelers along freight and stagecoach lines. Most of the buildings, now in ruins, were constructed by Ezra Hamilton around 1900 and the site is now registered as California Historical Landmark #103.

WOFFORD HEIGHTS

Wofford Heights is a CDP located on the western shore of Lake Isabella in the southern Sierra Nevadas which in 2010 had a population of 2,200. It was founded as a resort in 1948 by I.L. Wofford. The first post office opened in 1953.

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Hopefully these brief descriptions have piqued your interest in some of the communities of Kern County. If any get sufficient votes, I’ll head out to explore them for my series of Southern California adventures, California Fool’s Gold. If you’d like to vote (and you may vote for as many as interest you), click here.

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Eric Brightwell is an adventurer, writer, rambler, explorer, cartographer, and guerrilla gardener who is always seeking writing, speaking, traveling, and art opportunities — or salaried work. He is not interested in writing advertorials, clickbait, listicles, or other 21st century varieties of spam. Brightwell’s written work has appeared in Amoeblog, diaCRITICS, and KCET Departures. His work has been featured by the American Institute of Architects, the Architecture & Design Museum, the Craft & Folk Art Museum, Form Follows Function, Los Angeles County Store, Skid Row Housing Trust, and 1650 Gallery. Brightwell has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Magazine, LAist, Eastsider LA, Boing Boing, Los Angeles, I’m Yours, and on Notebook on Cities and Culture. He has been a guest speaker on KCRW‘s Which Way, LA? and at Emerson College. Art prints of his maps are available from 1650 Gallery and on other products from Cal31. He is currently writing a book about Los Angeles and you can follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

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San Luis Obispo County is a county in the northwest corner of Southern California, located along the Central Coast. The Central Coast refers to the roughly 600 kilometer coastal region between Point Mugu in the south and Monterey Bay in the north. In Southern California, only Imperial County has a smaller population and no community presently has a population of even 50,000. The San Luis Obispo-Paso Robles-Arroyo Grande, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area, is home to more than a third of the county’s population with the remaining two thirds spread across a mostly rural countryside.