Welcome to the blog of writer and musician Andrew Martin. Here I'll post original photographs and observations as I encounter the history and culture of the San Fernando Valley, the City of the Angels, Alta California and the far-flung Pacific Rim… but mostly the Valley.
The Frugal Tippler drinks local. We are lucky in California, for local means Lodi wines at popular prices.
I loved the label, you can’t imagine why.
Happily, the hip graphic style matches the wine, breezy and crisp, verbena, almost sharply green; very refreshing on a (suddenly) hot day, the FIrst Day of the Dry Season, spent Safer At Home, trying not to go mad, listening to the air conditioner whine and whirr, whine and whirr, hour after hour, hour after…(sips) Ahhhhhhh, that’s better. Thank you, clever Bear.
Patient Reader, what are you drinking? Write to the View. Your vice is expensive and ruinous to the health, but it’s no shame. Don’t drink alone. Only drink, and connect. Also Sprach Der Baer.
To soothe you with distractions during the anxious hours before Midnight, the Valley Village View offers a look at photos that never made the editor’s cut. Good pictures, interesting subjects, and maybe I intended to blog about them, but never found the right angle, or didn’t have the time to research. Or conversely, I felt I had so MUCH to say about a subject that I set the whole thing on the back burner, and forgot. So fill the fireplace with enough wood to last until 12:00, curl up with your bottle of Korbel Brut, and enjoy the re-View!
LA’s City Hall shines in dark times; an incorruptible beacon aloof from the tawdry commerce of the streets.
In February, 2018, I went to Rome. I wanted to write about how Roman history affected the civic development of modern cities like Los Angeles. I still do.
Mother’s Day brunch at the Scientology Celebrity Center. It’s a thing.
The blog doesn’t need more photos of cacti. But note that they are frequently the victims of graffiti.
Alan Chapman and Gail Eichenthal, stalwart hosts of America’s number ONE classical music station, and America’s number ONE most popular NPR station, in any format. Go KUSC!So I went to Lodi….here it is.Lovely mid-century memorial mosaic in Valley Village Preesbyterian.The atrium at the Central Library.
LA has fascinating cemeteries, but it seems morbid to highlight them more than once a year at Days of the Dead. One day I’ll get to Hollywood Forever, which has more famous stars than any other. Till then, taste eternity. The reflecting pool is the double grave of Douglas Fairbanks, Senior and Junior.
The campus at Los Angeles Valley College has been re-designed. You get the idea: “Old and New at Valley College.”
Saved from destruction, happily installed on the patio of the Idle Hour in NoHo.
Some curiosities of California vernacular architecture. A) Replacing a 100-year old redwood roof by scraping the old shingles off with pitchforks. B) The porch of a gorgeous Craftsman in Placerita Canyon, minus the Craftsman. C) The fascinating double-roofed cold storage house at Los Encinos, which turns out to be storing… D) A load of adobe bricks! Jackpot!
Corredore at NoHo High, forlorn during a school break.L.A.’s replica of the Mexican bell that rang out the “Grito de Dolores”. This holiday, November 19, is celebrated as the beginning of Mexican independence from Spain.
I have no idea what this bell is — but it’s outside the Central Library.
Caution: Robot at Work. NoHo Station.
Every Labor Day, a little traveling fun fair still enlivens NoHo Park.Local celebrity Angelyne, spotted in Valley Village.
Walk streets near the Southwest Museum, one of LA’s most historic neighborhoods. I came upon a memorial shrine in the staircase; and another to the Black Virgin of Guadalupe, whose apparition to Juan Diego is celebrated on December 12.
The Valley Village View 