Over the next several days the writers here at Blogging.LA will be sharing with you ideas to help those in need in the Los Angeles Area. We will cover a variety of ways to help from charities to causes that we hold near to our hearts. And giving doesn’t have to be monetary, it can be your labors, your gifts in kind even raiding your pantry to help others out. You don’t have to be religious either, much of what we share will strike a cord at least with your humanist and spiritual side.
Of course, feel free to jump in on the comments with your favorite charity or cause that needs a little extra help this time of year…include links where possible so others can help if they are so inclined.
screen grab with the announcement no Fesitval of Lights
Busy looking for things to do different than the Hastings Ranch or Christmas Tree Lane displays to take the out-of-towners to this year I decided to look for the details on the Festival of Lights. Imagine my surprise to learn that an infrastructure project has it cancelled for this year. More details on the cancellation HERE. With Griffith Park out of the picture am on the hunt for something equally grand…ideas anyone?
If you’re an L.A. lover of the life aquatic, you’re in luck: this weekend, we’ve got two boat parades in a row.
First up, on Saturday, December 10, is the Marina Holiday Boat Parade at the Boat Channel in Marina del Rey. The boat parade, where the vessels are decked out in lit holiday splendor, begins at 6 p.m., preceded by a fireworks show at 5:55, which some people may be eager to see after the annual July 4 fireworks display was canceled due to budget cuts. There will be judging in various categories for the boats. See the first link above for all details.
Its hard to pick out what is “normal” Hollywood Blvd weirdness vs regular stuff on Halloween. A few more in costumes and begging to be photographed videoed for free is probably the only difference. Its sort of Halloween Light compared to the insanity that is WeHo but it is subway easy and still festive enough. His original blog post HERE.
Waiter: Will there be anything else for you this evening? Moon: No thanks. I'm totally full.
Coming in a close second to my deathless obsession with measuring rainfall, is my never-ending crush on the moon, particularly when it hitsa your eye like a bigga pizza pie, such as last night’s full version. So after this morning’s pre-dawn dog walk I situated my 60x spotting scope on the porch (illustrated after the jump), got my point-and-shoot all up in its viewfinder and managed to hold everything steady long enough to land this big fella at 6:31 a.m., juuuust before it got tangled up in the frontyard tree branches and power lines (click to enormify).
Don’t get me wrong the other stuff one expects at the LA County Fair is a lot of fun, but there’s other stuff too one doesn’t really expect to find that turns out to be quite entertaining. People watching during the week is interesting and different than weekends. Yesterday it was hordes of school children being shepherded by harried teachers and chaperones along with quite a large contingent of Seniors.
One of the big finds that I found to be a lot of fun was over in the Home and Garden center. There’s a wine, beer and olive oil tasting room! Of the hundreds of wines submitted for judging in the LA County Fair 436 are available for tasting. Tasting fee for a flight? A very reasonable $11 for 5 tastings. They have a list sorted by suggested tasting order and number your glass to match what you select which also happens to be the order you taste. Loved it.
This video showed up in my email this morning. Not everyone in the SGV, include me among them, think that bears in our yards are a bad thing. This homeowner had them in their Koi pond and enjoyed it tremendously. They have the right idea, give them distance to stay safe and enjoy the visit the best you can. Not all bear visits are bad news.
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):
If something deep fried that shouldn’t be isn’t a big enough hint its time for the LA County Fair I don’t know what is. This years outrageous deep fried thingy is Kool-aid, and it isn’t as bad as you think it might be. Maybe it was coming off of this years Donut Summit that made it all the more palatable but those Kool-aid flavored donut holes are something to behold. Imagine if you will a cherry flavored donut hole that is dusted with a blend of powdered sugar and cherry Kool-aid and you get the flavor profile of this deep fried treat invented by Chicken Charlie.
Last night was the LA County fair hosted local media types to come and get a tasting of the fare offerings this year. We got to graze through a sampling grazing of the biggies at the fair starting with Bubba’s and Chicken Charlies and into food trucks such as Piaggio’s and Crepes Bonapartes. You have to make the jump to get the deets on what I grazed upon as well as on the fair itself. Read the rest of this entry →
Yesterday was my annual pilgrimage to Venice Beach with the kids for their end o’ summer/back to school field trip. (I celebrate the latter).
It is so sad to see the changes going on in Venice right now. Where the sidewalk was once lined with artists and musicians it is now packed with EZ-up tents selling mostly swap meet type crap. To even get to the tent city one has to wade through a gauntlet of a dozen or so “independent musicians” hawking their latest CD in a very aggressive in your face manner.
I can count on my hand the number artists left on the sidewalk of Venice Beach. It was sad to see so few of them left. It was even sadder to see the number musicians has dwindled to less than a handful. I miss them all, they were the heart and soul of the Venice Beach that I have come to love over my years here. Read the rest of this entry →
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.
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:
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.
Marina del Rey 4th of July reveler from apparently cash flush 2009
According to the Los Angeles County Department of Beaches and Harbors (see top link under “News and Press Releases”), “[t]here will be no fireworks display this year in Marina del Rey in celebration of Independence Day on Monday, July 4, 2011 due to budget curtailments.” That has got to be a big disappointment not just to locals who enjoy the big fireworks show from the Marina Boat Channel, Burton Chace Park, Venice Beach, and Playa del Rey, but also to many other Angelenos who braved the local driving and parking nightmares in previous years to see it too.
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