So after posting about the Sunken City, I began thinking about the various ruins and ruined things scattered acros Southern California. Personally, I only know of three of them, but I am sure that there are many more that I am ignorant of.

Here is what I have so far:

1. Sunken City: Remains of a neighborhood perched upon a cliff in San Pedro, now falling apart more and more with each rainstorm. Many pieces of sidewalk and street are scattered at crazy angles throughout the area.

2. The Dominator: The wreck of the Greek freighter, Dominator, which crashed just off the coast of Palos Verdes. The rusting hull paints the shoreline rocks orange as oxidization takes its inevitable course.

3. Echo Mountain House: The remains of a mountaintop resort above Altadena. A century ago there was transport to the top, and a railway up here. Now we just see hotel’s foundation and giant rusting gears.

UPDATE: 4. Belmont Tunnel: A trolley tunnel cum graffiti yard/tarrasca court, seen in many movies, and recently deceased despite the best efforts to Save Belmont. You can check out the history on Graffiti Archaeology though or the Belmont Tunnel group on Flicka.

UPDATE: 5. Old Zoo: The former site of the Los Angeles Zoo, in Griffith Park, which was closed in 1965 and everything was moved upstream to the current locale. No animals anymore. Just empty cages and picnic tables. Thanks Krazydad!

So what else is there? If you know of any more(and I am sure there plenty), please add em on to the comments, and let’s see what archaeological wonders are in our own backyard!

On Sunday I went over to San Pedro to check out the “Sunken City”, prompted by a little write up Meri found in the LA City Beat.

Cool stuff. Lots of old broken sidewalks and streets, hanging dangerously off of a cliff overlooking the ocean, with a great view of the Port of Los Angeles in the distance.

In 1929 a sizeable section of land in the southern tip of San Pedro began to unexplainably slip into the sea. The 600 block of Paseo Del Mar began moving seaward in 1929 and continued to slip until the mid 1930s. Movement was measured as high as 11 inches a day. Due to quick action, all but two of the houses on the seaward side of the street were moved before toppling into the sea.[via]

According to some, more of this place slips away every time it rains, so I am surprised it lasted this long, and maybe soon it will be gone forever.

Add this – along with the Dominator – to the list of “cool decaying things along the Socal coast”.

I took some pix, naturally. More to come…

I mentioned it on my interweblog already, but I want to make sure that you all know that there is a Cuban Festival today at Echo Park Lake. I really don’t know what to expect, other than music, food, etc. I will eat lunch there, so if you are in the area, come on and check it out.

Been seeing this poster along Cesar Chavez Blvd over the last week or so. It says “I’m Gonna Kill The President”(I can hear the alarm going off as I type this…), which I understand is a great way to get a visit from the Secret Service.

I did not find out what the poster was actually for until I got out of the car to take a picture. It looks like its for some sort of performance or play or whatever.

What I wonder is if it got attention from people in our government. I would guess yes, but I don’t know. Maybe I am just paranoid…

…or Turkish or Tagalog or French or Vietnamese? The Beverly Hills Lingual Institute teaches them, and a bunch of others. I chose Croatian since I will be getting married to a Croatian in the Republika Hrvatska this summer.

BHLI is a private language school in Beverly Hills(unsurprisingly) that offers courses in more than 25 languages, all taught by native speakers, with small class sizes(my Croatian class averages about three people but I think the more popular languages go up to about 10 people give or take).

With more popular languages it is probably easy to find a course at a community college, but for other languages this seems to be one of the only or the only place in Los Angeles available to teach them.

Anyone else gone here? How was your experience?

The lack of “fresh juice delivery” to Trader Joe’s due to Monday’s march underscores the point of how much our economy depends upon the labor of immigrants. It is easy to ignore or take for granted, so when certain things are not available it can come as a little bit of a shock. True, this instance is very small, but an aggregate of intertwined little things is what our modern economy is made out of.

Photo from 7-how-7.

Yesterday I went to the big march from MacArthur Park to Wilshire and La Brea. Me and about half a million others. Mixed into the crowd were plenty of people with cameras, and a certain portion of those have Flickr accounts, giving us the opportunity to see this event from multiple perspectives. Here are some highlights:

If I did not get you, trust me it is nothing personal. Just add your link in the comments.

Also, there is a group that people seem to be posting to – A Day Without Immigrants, or for a more wide ranging and national view check out the adaywithoutimmigrants tag.

El Circo Loco, our dancing friend who was a fixture on Sunset Blvd. for quite some time – has passed on. According to the bulletin we received, he passed on his sleep(peacefully) the day before yesterday. He will be missed.

Right at the border of Echo Park and Silverlake along Sunset Boulevard, there are cliffs. They rise about 60 feet or so on the north side of the street. Now if you look closely, you will see the unusual structure.

I have been told, and I do believe that it is an ancient whale spine, embedded in the rock. It sure looks like it and I cannot think of any other way to explain it. Every time I go by I think, “Yeah, it’s gotta be!”

So I ask – does anyone else know anything about this? I have not found any additional details on line, and every time I bring it up, even to long time residents, many have not even seen it. You can totally miss it if you do not know its there. But its there alright.

Weather permitting, Vandenberg Air Force Base will launch another Minotaur missile this evening, bearing a payload of the most advanced orbital mind control lasers:

Liftoff of the Minotaur rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California is scheduled for 5:10 p.m. PDT (8:10 p.m. EDT; 0010 GMT), the opening of a three-hour launch window. But meteorologists are predicting an 80 percent chance of violating the launch weather rules.

Maybe you caught the last Minotaur launch in September, which was pretty spectacular(see more photos from all along the Cali/Baja coast in the Flickr ‘minotaur’ cluster). I don’t know if tonights would be as bold, since I expect that the sky may not be as dark as it was then. Maybe it will. Either way I will be watching and waiting with my camera.

[Thanks Echo_29!]

Surely we have all seen, or perhaps experienced the joy of eating a hot dog wrapped in bacon from a streetside vendor. They broil to perfection in their casing of bacon, and are topped with onions, mayo, mustard, onions, green peppers and ketchup – and of course a nice grilled chili. A Los Angeles classic.

The population of the street vendors grows as you head east. I have found what I believe to be the biggest concentration in downtown Los Angeles, in the Fashion district. Many people also are familiar with them after a night out in Hollywood, where they are also abundant. They have even shown up at anti-war rallies.

As much as we like them, they are apparently illegal, and busts have occurred before(and have made some vendors squeamish about photos), much to my chagrin. Update: Losanjealous Ryan sends in a report of another bacon wrapped bust that he witnessed…

Despite all that, I think that they are here to stay. And for that I am glad.

KPCC is running a special series discussing the Los Angeles River, and you can listen to it on their site:

When you think of the Los Angeles River, what images come to mind? Concrete? Maybe trash? Dirty water? When some people look at the river, they see willows and waterfowl… and they envision a future where the LA River is at the center of a greener city. All this week, KPCC’s environmental reporter, Ilsa Setziol, explores the dreams — and realities — of revitalizing the Los Angeles River.

[via Echo_29 on the LA River Group]

Last night I was sitting in gridlock on the Interstate 5 southbound, which was highly unusual, normally I fly down that freeway at the time that I go home from work. So it was an anomaly, to say the least. Perturbed, I decided that I would switch on the radio to check some traffic reports.

And listening to the traffic reports, I got the rundown of every two bit piece of pavement in Orange County and maybe one or maybe two freeways in actual Los Angeles County. But no information that was even remotely useful to me as a Los Angeles driver stuck in a random traffic jam. Why? I know that the these stations are Los Angeles based, and that their area of influence probably does extend into the OC, but why were all the traffic reports I heard in that hour period skewed towards our neighbor in the south? Anyone else ever noticed this?

Hey, I am looking to register a DBA/fictitious business name here in Los Angeles County. Last time I did this, I had to drive to Norwalk to set things up. So it’s not a huge deal, but if I can avoid it by registering my name online, I would like to. Anyone done this? My Google search has returned a lot of middling results.

In light of the breaking news of his recently acquired intern/assistant, I thought the time was ripe to make a quick post about a Silverlake mainstay – the Five Dollar Guy(or Silverlake’s Own World Famous Five Dollar Guy according to his murals).

If you have been past Sunset Junction in the past year or so, certainly you have seen his murals, which have decorated the building now currently housing Lovecraft Biofuels, and others in that general vicinity.

Basically the Five Dollar Guy is a character who haunts the area hawking a variety of wares all for the low price of five dollars(“A deal that God can’t beat”). If you have been in the area, you know who I am talking about as he is one of the cast of Silverlake characters which also includes El Circo Loco and the Walking Man.

I have encountered him in a number of different spots: sitting at the counter at Prasadam with teddy bears and beer, at the corner of Sunset and Santa Monica, and outside Good Microbrew. As have others, as evidenced by the small but growing collection of photos tagged with fivedollarguy.

photo via 7-how-7.