It’s been going something like this for summer after summer after summer: I’m in the backyard. A western tiger swallowtail swoops in and busies itself fluttering along the overgrown bougainvillea, never fully stopping at one bloom. I rush into the house, grab the camera, and by the time I rush back out, the elusive creature is either long gone or it lingers haphazardly just long enough for me to get one reeeeally blurry shot before it leaves.

Today it went exactly like that up until the last part where I got one shot that was as if the gorgeous thing decided it had enough fun playing with me and posed, and I offer it for your pre-Labor Day weekend viewing enjoyment  (click to biggify):

Hope y’all have a great holiday.

It was spray painted onto the sidewalk a few doors down from where I live a week or so ago, and I’ve given it glances passing by it coming and going on easily a half-dozen dog walks, but it wasn’t until this morning on a stroll to the nearest mailbox around the corner that I finally stopped and gave it a scan (click to biggify):

Need an 8-minute frivolous diversion?

With my camera rigged up to the eyepiece of my spotting scope (with duct tape and adhesive putty), from my backyard I pointed it at Sunset Boulevard between Descanso (just out of view at the bottom) and the Maltman bend in Silver Lake (at the top) to timelapse capture the afternoon traffic flow.

As two of the lucky few to score tickets to participate in the historic and quickly sold-out Paddle The LA River pilot program which is testing boating feasibility along a San Fernando Valley section of the waterway, my wife Susan and I showed up at Balboa Park in the Sepulveda Basin this past Sunday morning ready, willing and able to fulfill what for me has been a long-time dream — and to document the roughly two-mile journey from our launch point from beneath Balboa Boulevard to its end along the river’s banks between Burbank Boulevard and the Sepulveda Dam (GPS’d route is viewable here).

I won’t waste space waxing all word-heavy about what a wonderful time we had other than to say it was an absolutely unique and phenomenal opportunity and a program professionally presented and staffed that I hope will graduate from pilot status to one that becomes an annual and permanent recreation option.

If you’ve seen some of my past posts sharing my biking adventures along/in the river (or certain communal donut consumption events), you know I’m a bit of a timelapsing nut, and of course my plans were to chest mount my cam and similarly capture the length of Sunday’s paddle. Unfortunately, my principal camera’s battery all-too-quietly went kaput literally two-minutes after I started recording, so the only condensed clip I have to show for it is the following as Susan and me and the rest of our group are getting acclimated to our various flotation devices and the amazement of being in so serene and compelling a place so few have been before.

The good news is I didn’t come kayaking without also bearing my point-and-shoot, which I used to grab some stills and real-time video along the way, a few of which are available after the jump (or all together in this Flickr photoset) to give you a more well-rounded sense of what an awesome experience it was.

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My friend Stephen Roullier just posted this Super 8 clip he and his fellow-filmmaker John Watson made (and co-starred in) showcasing a nice variety of the quick eateries found in and around the East Hollywood, Los Feliz Village, Silver Lake and Atwater Village area from back in a day when McDonald’s boast wasn’t the boringly general “Billions and billions served,” but rather the relatively paltry and more specific “Over 30 billion served.” Those were the days my friend.

My favorite moment comes when the legendary and still sorely missed Jay’s Jayburgers at Virgil and Santa Monica Boulevard makes an appearance at the 1:34 mark. Dig in:

Coming around a corner at the Atwater Village Costco yesterday, I discovered that the middle of freaking August is never too early to start thinking about the holidays:

Found walking the dog this morning on Occidental Boulevard north of Sunset Boulevard in Silver Lake. I’m titling it “Street Art.”

Glendale’s A Noise Within (ANW) has been the region’s premiere classical repertory theater company for a long time now.  Other than about a year at the end of last century spent at the Luckman Fine Arts Complex at Cal Sate Los Angeles, the company’s home has been the landmark Masonic Temple building at 234 S. Brand Boulevard.

But the company is Glendale’s no longer. It’s leaving its home and heading to its own dedicated space in Pasadena, a move that’s been more than five years in the making. And today as one of its final acts in the Jewel City before beginning its life in the Crown city, the company held a rummage sale to clear out its inventory. Everything from lighting equipment and furniture to props to costumes was priced to move.

But instead of looking for bargains, I took the opportunity to go looking around, sneaking backstage and up the stairs to explorie the 1928 building’s upper levels where I found this jaw-droppingly amazing top-floor space in mid-demolition/arrested decay (click to panoramally enlargify and/or check out this rotate-ready version of the image):

UPDATE (8.26): Where’d the picture go? Short-ish story is that a representative of the building’s owners, Frank DiPietro and Sons, contacted me the day after this post went live wanting to discuss the photograph’s publication. After some further consideration, it was politely requested of me today to remove the above image,  for several reasons. First, it was taken and published without their permission. Second, the picture shows the hall in a condition that doesn’t showcase it in the best light. Third, the company is in the midst of submitting plans and obtaining permits for a renovation/remodel of the space and the company is sensitive about photographs and information about the
building being released as that process progresses. So, basically,  I have agreed to honor their request because the simple fact is that it’s their private property and I was there on those upper floors without their knowledge. Since it’s not OK for them to sneak into my house and take pictures and put ‘em up on the internutz, down comes the pic.

I have no idea what the plans are for this hall and the rest of the building. But in the meantime I’m going to keep my fingers crossed that it doesn’t become a gym..

After the jump, a brief bio on the building’s historical significance excerpted from the Glendale Register of Historic Places.

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For the last couple years goats have been put to excellent use chomping away brush overgrowing Angels Knoll downtown. So after a Sunday matinee movie full of computer generated apes, wife Susan and I went over to check if the herd could still be seen. The knoll itself had been rather thoroughly mowed, but sure enough we found the goats still at work only now situated directly beneath the Angels Flight tracks — and not in the least bit phased by the braying and rattling cars traveling to and fro right over their heads.

There’s about eight miles of Los Angeles River separating its bikeways in Elysian Valley and the city of Maywood. Like most normal people you probably haven’t troubled yourself wondering if that entire stretch of riverbed between those two points is navigable by bike. But if you’re like me and my friend Andrew it was time yesterday to see if we could connect those two dots. We did.

A selection of stills from the trek are viewable here on Flickr, most notable among them is the Bicycle Monument installed below the Olympic Boulevard Bridge, the in-water river chair (full functionality proven by Andrew) south of the 10 Freeway overpass, and best of all: the fellow south of the Washington Boulevard Bridge sitting on a utility cable spool reading a newspaper who looked at us as funny as we looked at him. A map of the entire 22-mile-route we rode is here.

During Wednesday’s bike trek up the Arroyo Seco creek bed and back, ’twas found sprayed under one of the bridges, an urgent call for drastic change, whose typo — whether intentional or not (my vote’s for NOT), made for an entirely unassailable pro-pedagogical position:

It’s not an invalid question to wonder why on earth would one want to pedal the length of the Arroyo Seco Creek bed from the Los Angeles River up under the Colorado Street Bridge in Pasadena and back. The answer is: why not?

This trek yesterday followed up on our Los Angeles River bed ride last week. My friend Errin biked over from Alhambra and and we literally met up at the Arroyo Seco’s confluence with the LA River before heading upstream about 7 miles to its spillway under the Colorado Street Bridge in Pasadena and then back. Errin split off by the stables at the top of the Arroyo’s bikeway to head home, and I continued on solo back to the Los Angeles River Center where I started. Trip total: 15 miles.

And in related news (that proves Errin and I aren’t the only freaks fascinated by our forgotten waterways): The Los Angeles Urban Rangers is hosting an LA River Ramble tonight at 7 p.m., meeting at MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary.

Well, hell yeah: Blogging.la put the DO in donut again with its second annual Donut Summit, taking place in Elysian Park this afternoon. I’m a bit light on most of the details like winners and such, but I do know there was an awesome turnout, an amazing array of excellent donuts to taste, along with games to play and poetry to enjoy. Coveted frosted golden-donut trophies were given out for a variety of donut categories (included the California Donuts Chocolate Chip Bar I submitted that won Best Chocolate Donut) as determined by the eaters and this year the event also welcomed an esteemed panel of foodie experts who voted Stan’s Doughnuts of Westwood its Judge’s Favorite (Stan’s peanut butter-filled chocolate donut is just simply an amazing and inspired confection).

While most of my timelapsing comes from a POV of the front of my bike as I pedal whereever I go, but for Donut Summit 2011 I decided to memorialize the bulk of the afternoon by setting up the cam overlooking our stomping grounds, condensing roughly the three hours between 1:30 and 4:30 p.m. down to about six minutes of donuttiness. Hope you enjoy.

Forklifted a dozen of California Donuts’ famously infamous Chocolate Chip Bars this morning from the Koreatown branch on Third Street to be entered into the unofficial Most Decadently & Unabashedly Chocolatized Donut category  at today’s Donut Summit (only half of the 12 pictured; Ranger dog included for scale):

Crap photo courtesy my iPhone's cam with the Blur This app. Biggably blurable when clicked.

Wanna taste? Make haste!

So a Chowhounder whose screename is “kauma” posted a topic earnestly titled “Donut Summit: Who’s Going?” yesterday. It and the ensuing short if surprisingly snarky and dismissive comment thread was discovered and passed on by one of my fellow B.la contributors.

When I checked it out I found the first commenter, “Mattapoisett in LA” who decided to get critical equating a few typos found in one of our posts as somehow indicative of a lack of organizing skills. His skills at spotting mistakes was promptly applauded by “kauma.” Then commenter “sushigirlie” responded to that saying it seemed “pretty telling that they couldn’t get the donuts shops to donate donuts.”

In defense of the awesomeness of tomorrow’s event and the triple-deckered phenomenality of everyone here at Blogging.la who’s chipped in and pitched in to put this thing on, I posted what I considered to be a fair and untrollish rebuttal, replete with wink at the end in the form of a typo-laden twist on a biblical reference, because, yeah, that’s how I roll. Sometimes.

Checking back awhile later to see if anyone responded I found something magical must have happened because my comment was nowhere to be found in the thread. A dubious poof: had it been a posting failure on my part or had someone in that thread closed to opposing points of view (and/or snarkily cliché’d twists on bible quotes) intentionally deleted it?

So I decided to re-post, trying to get as close as I could to my original thoughts. After it, too, successfully posted, I took a screencap (after the jump; click it for enhanced readability).

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