Westward Ho!

Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea

Playing through the end of the week at the Laemmle Grande 4-Plex on Figueroa: Chris Metzler and Jeff Springer's documentary Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea (not to be confused with the 2002 fictional crime drama The Salton Sea, which I haven't seen yet either although it's been in my Netflix queue for months). I'm looking forward to this, but I hope the filmmakers' attempt at providing local color and humor doesn't result in over-kitschifying a pretty bleak situation. The warning signs are there: narration by John Waters, score by spaghetti-western-lounge Calexico side-project The Friends of Dean Martinez, jokes about the proximity to Palm Springs, a Hungarian old guy who's the unofficial "mayor," and a nudist old guy whose lifelong dream was to stand in his full, god-given glory before a session of the United Nations. Wacky.

Various and Sundry

My first year (well, my first two semesters) of grad school is over, and I'm still recuperating. Here lies Westward Ho, who blames Cedd Moses for her early demise, particularly these past few nights.

Thursday ended at Seven Grand, Moses' great new whiskey bar. I love its small size and its quiet, private feel. It's on the second floor with an open-air deck out back that faces an eerie-looking vacant office building. The DJ right on the floor reminded me of bars back home in NYC, where DJs are much more part of the nightlife even in spite of New York's weird cabaret laws. I danced, sloppily, to the sloppy country & western cover of Dylan's "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" that this guy was spinning.

Seven Grand is sited where one of the original Clifton's locations used to stand, but that's not all, according to one blogdowntown commenter:

The beautiful building Seven Grand is in was originally built as the corporate headquarters, manufacturing center and flagship store of Brock Jewelry which at the time was the nations largest jeweler. Celebrity customers included Mary Pickford. Brock Jewelry company seems to have gone under sometime during the Great Depression. Sure, Clifford Clinton came along later, basterdised the architecture, and thew a cafeteria on the first floor, Clifton's offices on the third, bakery on the fourth, and a "Soupeasy" in the basement. Clinton traveled the world as a missionary and the soup easy which sat just three floor below his feet was not going to be spared of his true love Jesus Christ. Alas the "Soupeasy" featured a life sized diorama which took up an entire room and included a very large effigy of Christ himself. If they wanted to eat the homeless were apparently forced to hit a button at which point in time a speaker in the Jesus effigy would play and a recording of Cliford Clinton pretending to be Jesus Christ demanding the individual to pray with the bizzare effigy before they were allowed to proceed to the free soup and bread. My point in all this? I think we should refere to the building as the Brock Jewelry Building rather than the "old Clifton's Silver Spoon building" as everyone does.

After Friday's big banquet at the San Antonio Winery (more on that in a bit), a bunch of us carpooled over to Cedd Moses Watering Hole #2, the Golden Gopher. I drank Maker's Mark Manhattans and played Galaga (badly) and Ms. Pac-Man (excellently). Then we stumbled through the downtown night and danced to the Punky Reggae Party at La Cita.

I don't have much to say on the San Antonio Winery itself -- it was nice enough, although for our banquet they only provided Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon, my two least-favorite kinds of wine. It is in a pretty inaccessible location, way down an obscure street called Lamar off N. Main, in that gnarly industrial/Cornfields/L.A. River part of the city between Chinatown and Lincoln Heights. I tried to walk there from Union Station and got lost, because I kept going up Spring instead of Main, and had to step over lots of broken glass and outrun a couple of guard dogs (in high heels). I did get to walk past Nick's, which was closed.

APA '07

The nor'easter is in full swing -- with wind, rain, and ice bearing down on Philadelphia, and conference attendees who've been promised a most "walkable" city are lining up in droves to catch a taxi five blocks back to their hotel. I just left early because my toasty room at the Sheraton suddenly seemed very inviting; I nearly fell asleep in the comforting darkness of a convention center screening room where an Ed Bacon film festival was going on (mostly his 1983 ULI documentaries), having dosed myself up on Robitussin a few hours prior. I bought a t-shirt before I took off.

Conference is going OK; the highlight so far was RFK Jr.'s keynote address, crucifying the Bush administration and all the corporate polluters that Dubya hired to run the various federal environmental offices (run them into the ground, that is). Kennedy is very clear on who his enemies are and he's not afraid to name names. Frankly, I worry for his safety.

Over the past few days I've been gravitating towards the transportation/infrastructure sessions, including panels on airports, bus shelters, short-haul rail travel across megaregions, and sidewalk building and maintenance. There's been a nice assortment of of planning books on sale -- some of which I'll make a mental note to look for used on Amazon, although I did order a copy of a former professor's book through the on-site APA display.

We've been eating well too: last night was a reception where the Yuengling and Tastykakes flowed freely, and on Friday night we had great Senegalese food near the Penn campus. Thumbs way up on the Reading Terminal Market -- which, incidentally, is across from the erstwhile Reading Railroad station, now the convention center.

I'm In An Airport

LAX, Gate 42A, 5:02 a.m., and I can't believe I just paid for a T-Mobile wireless day pass... well, it was a better deal than the one-hour access. I'm on my way to the big-kahuna APA Conference in Philly. See ya there. I may forge a pathetic attempt at liveblogging.

Descanso

If you've ever passed a place with "Descanso" in the name (such as L.A.'s Descanso Drive) and wondered what that meant, here's a rather depressing explanation:

Descanso is the word given to a roadside memorial that commemorates the site where a person was killed, typically as the result of a vehicle-related accident. The descanso is often marked by a cross with an inscription of the person's name and brief biographical information. The descanso is usually created and maintained by family members or friends of the person who was killed. Unlike a grave site headstone, which marks the place where the body is laid, a descanso marks the last place on earth where the person was alive. A descanso symbolizes a loved one whose life was taken in a violent and unexpected death.

The origination of the practice of erecting roadside crosses in the United States is uncertain. One possibility, born perhaps from American folklore, is that pioneer travelers were forced to hurriedly bury their deceased companions in graves close to the trails or roads, and they erected simple crosses to mark the graves. The origin of descansos as a term that denotes a roadside cross or memorial is more certain.

You Learn Something New Every Day

I don't know whether it's because of the namesake waxes, the curvaceous women, or the reputation of the country as a place where good times are to be had, but it seems to me somehow fitting that the Brazilian Consulate is located in the (Larry) Flynt Publications building.

(I was at the Consulate to hand in my visa application -- I'll be visiting Rio for a few weeks in June.)

This Was Me Last Night