Tag Archives: Rainbow

A Rainbow, A View, and A Merry-Go-Round: Christmas In Griffith Park.

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Christmas Da:y requires a mid-day constitutional, to burn off the champagne and eggnog. This year the time between showers was short. Thus handy, boring old Griffith Park was the chosen venue. I expected little but a trudge through wet sagebrush, but the old Park showed it still has the power to charm even the most jaded holiday hiker. First there was the rainbow:

Then there was the extravagant display of toyon berries on all the hillsides. The View has never seen so much happy, cheerful toyon. LA’s native city tree is berrying-out everywhere across the LA Basin, but here, it graces the view of the San Gabriels.

Finally, there was the Merry-Go-Round. I never knew Griffith Park had a carousel. But cloud cover in the hills and canyons creates a well-known natural acoustical effect: like a lid on a pot, it bounces sound around the landscape. At the top of a canyon trail, I heard music. Faint but distinct, a calliope was playing Christmas Carols. So I followed my ears, winding all down the trail into a little grove I’d never seen before, and found this delightful contraption. COOL.

Click on the link for two minutes of humbug-banishing, Grinch-defying, Ho Ho Ho-provoking delight.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PqOmMc9dStEtvi2b-GYdFhgiXTlYQ_SK/view?usp=sharing

The Griffith Park Merry-Go-Round was built in 1926 by the Spillman Engineering Company. Commissioned by the Spreckels family, it was originally housed at the Mission Beach Amusement Center in San Diego but was moved to its current location in 1937. The merry-go-round is comprised of 68 hand-made horses, all of which jump, and a custom-built Stinson 165 Military Band Organ that plays more than 1,500 songs. It’s the only full-size Spillman carousel still in operation today. The small carousel, which is tucked away into a quiet corner of the park, served as Walt Disney’s inspiration for Disneyland. When his children were young, Walt, a Los Feliz denizen, took them to the merry-go-round on weekends. During one visit, while sitting on a bench watching his kids circle round and round, he was inspired to create a large scale gathering site that the whole family could enjoy. His dream was realized on July 17, 1955, when Disneyland opened to the public.

— LA Magazine web article on the Merry-Go-Round

Rainbow’s End…

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Treasure lies at the end of the rainbow: the NoHo branch of California’s beloved In-N-Out Burger. Imagine how many hot, steamy 1970’s Boogie Nights cruising Lankershim Blvd. with the top down, ended up at this hamburger stand.

N.B., the skydusters (planted in the outdoor seating area). A symbol of oasis, of abundance, visible from blocks away for the automobile culture. Fan palms are in fact one of the key style elements of Googie architecture, beautiful ambassadors from the restaurant to the community, anchoring the site in memory and nostalgia, along one of LA’s most ghastly placeless boulevards. The welcoming palms are as necessary to the design as the sign (not lit) with its atomic dog’s-leg vector logo. In-N-Out has embraced their palms, showcasing them on their branded merchandise.

After a long impasse that divided the founding family, the company has recently compromised: In-N-Out’s planning to expand, but slowly, to other markets; still the goal will be retaining the fresh, local sourcing that has been the key to success of the brand. The View wishes them luck.

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It’s Green-Uo Time. Valley Village after the first rain of the season; Jan. 2018. The luchtschaap here, the sky and light-scape, sky on a massive scale, is as magnificent to me as the Dutch North Sea coast, the Old New Jersey Shore, or the soft Canaletto light of Venice, CA. 

The cities with their suburban districts that I I know best,  L.A., New York,, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Amsterdam, London, Edinburgh, maintain and preserve fine neighborhoods where views are protected, and treated as serious amenities. These districts inevitably benefit, in terms of real estate value, from treating the commons as common.

The contrast between those streets in my neighborhood where trees and green growth and orange trees prevail, and the streets where nature appears to have been obliterated, and the luchtschaap given over to concrete and walls, are  a pattern repeated throughout Valley Village. Different development patterns and styles over several decades, may reflect the attraction of different types of residents at different times, or different crime rate distributions. There are harsh, gritty streets in Valley Village, though the housing stock and fertile soil is all the same. I would love to know more about why particular areas remain idyllic, and other adjacent areas look like bombed-out urban nighmares in transition to a sterile condo-rific Future-shock.