A Selection from The Golden Fortress

The following excerpt comes from Chapter 1 of my latest book, The Golden Fortress: California’s Border War on Dust Bowl Refugees, published Aug. 9, 2022, by Chicago Review Press. If you’d like to read the rest of the chapter, and the book, I have a limited number of signed editions available for purchase here, or you can order the book from Bookshop or your favorite retailer. The audio book is also available from Libro.fm and other sellers, and ebooks are available in EPUB, PDF, Kindle, Kobo, Nook, Apple Books and Google Play.

A CLOUDLESS SKY BLANKETED ALTURAS as a string of sedans turned off Highway 299.

Temperatures that afternoon had briefly crept above freezing but dipped again as dusk arrived. From atop a three-story brick building at the other end of Main Street, the word HOTEL blazed against the cloudless sky. On an evening as clear as that one in early February 1936, the beacon of the signage must have been a welcome sight to the cars’ occupants as they drove those last three blocks from the highway to the Niles Hotel, hundreds of miles, two days, and a world away from home. That those last three blocks also composed the entirety of downtown Alturas said everything about how far they’d traveled.

After the men parked their cars, they might have reflexively shivered beneath their polished leather jackboots and thought of the all-year warmth and sun they’d left behind. If any of the men passed beneath the street lamp at the corner of Modoc and Main Streets, its glow might have glinted across the gold-toned badges they carried, illuminating an eagle’s wings spread above the words POLICE OFFICER and LOS ANGELES typed in blue lettering beneath, and the embossed seal that read, CITY OF LOS ANGELES. FOUNDED 1781.

Once inside the Niles Hotel, thirteen Los Angeles police officers waited as their commanding sergeant, R. L. Bergman, checked them into the hotel. The next morning they would officially begin their new assignment here in the seat of Modoc County, six hundred miles away from the City of Angels. Somehow, despite traveling so far, the officers still hadn’t left the Golden State.

A cultural distance matched the physical distance. Alturas was Modoc County’s largest town and still remote from the nearest settlements of any size. The hotel was at the southern end of downtown, which ended a few hundred feet away at a small bridge over the gurgling Pit River. It was surrounded by the kind of businesses typical of a certain mythologized small town in the early twentieth-century American West: a coffee shop next door, a butcher down the block, a liquor store up the street, and an inn across Main Street with signage advertising BUFFALO BEER on tap. The county courthouse was just a couple blocks northeast of the hotel. A few businesses fronted East and West Carlos Street. The rest of the nearby streets were residential. The surrounding sparse, frigid, mostly undeveloped expanse where the men would work for the foresee- able future dramatically contrasted with the bustling, sun-bathed metropolis they’d left two days prior, but their task remained the same as it had been at home: protect and serve the City of Los Angeles.

Soon after the officers arrived at the Niles Hotel, a primly dressed woman walked in and introduced herself to Sergeant Bergman. She was Gertrude Payne French, the publisher of the Alturas Plaindealer. Could she just interview the sergeant for a little bit about why the police had come all the way to Modoc County from Los Angeles?

She could. Bergman knew how highly his boss, Los Angeles police chief James Edgar Davis, valued good publicity. And Homer Cross, Davis’s deputy in charge of crime prevention and this operation’s key architect, had softened the ground throughout the state in the weeks leading up to the deployed officers’ arrival.

French already knew why they were there, of course. Cross had talked to her when he came to Modoc County that January. Even if he hadn’t, French may have known, as she prided herself on how plugged in she was to events transpiring all across California. After all, she was one of the Native Daughters of the Golden West, a member of the Alturas Chamber of Commerce board of directors, and, like her husband, R. A. “Bard” French, a former operative in the state Republican Party. Gertrude and Bard were very encouraged, French told Bergman, that someone—Chief Davis—was finally doing something about the “penniless itinerants and criminals” plaguing the Golden State. Concerns about how out-of-town police might disrupt Modoc County were already spreading. The Plaindealer would diligently downplay these concerns on its pages, but, French told Bergman and would repeat in print the next day, the paper was “reserving our final judgment to see what happens.”

Whatever judgment ensued, numerous scenes like the one taking place at the Niles Hotel likely occurred throughout the remotest corners of California that evening. Davis had sent Bergman, the two seven-officer squads working under him, and 120 other Los Angeles police officers—each handpicked by the chief from a larger pool of volunteers—to seize control of the state’s borders. Each squad was stationed at one of sixteen entry points around the perimeter of California. Some would patrol highways and set up checkpoints to stop incoming cars, while others boarded trains to look for fare evaders and stowaways. All those entering California who appeared unable to support themselves and likely to become public charges or who the officers believed likely to be criminals would be stopped. No one was to get through without permission from the Los Angeles Police Department, even if Los Angeles itself was hundreds of miles away.

Los Angeles police chief James Edgar Davis and Los Angeles County superior court judge Minor Moore present Los Angeles mayor Frank Shaw with a Texas-shaped birthday cake on the eve of Davis’s rollout of his border blockade. Courtesy of Los Angeles Times Photograph Collection, Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA

Perhaps Chief Davis, originally from Texas, thought of the deployment’s launch as a birthday gift for his boss, Los Angeles Mayor Frank Shaw. That Saturday morning, Davis sat down with Shaw, not to celebrate his birthday but to discuss the blockade, just as someone wheeled a sixteen-pound birthday cake into the mayor’s office. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Minor Moore—also a transplant from the Lone Star State, and president of the Texas Society of Southern California—was the enormous dessert’s likely mastermind. Moore, who called Shaw to wish him a happy birthday just as the cake arrived, had conspired with Shaw’s Texas-born wife, Cora; his mayoral counterpart in Dallas, George Sergeant; and officials from the Texas Centennial Exposition, who actually paid for the giant confection.

As mayor and police chief, respectively, Shaw and Davis were among Los Angeles’s most prominent public figures. Before becoming mayor, Shaw, a grocery-chain executive and one of California’s wealthiest politicians, was a Los Angeles County supervisor who led the county board’s efforts to blame Los Angeles’s fiscal woes on poor, unemployed migrants. Davis, a former chief of police who’d been re-elevated to the position when Shaw was elected mayor, made arresting homeless and other visibly poor Angelenos a key plank of his policing strategy. Both men could trace their success in part to the city’s obsession with drawing tourists (and their money) while simultaneously shunning poor migrants (and their need). Like other California cities, Depression-era Los Angeles treated transients as little more than parasitic threats. Indigent relief was burden enough for these cities’ own residents, the argument went. Why should they pay for other cities’ discards?

Reliant as their public rhetoric might have been on antimigrant sentiment, neither Davis nor Shaw were truly of Los Angeles. Between fleeing his native Texas and arriving nearly broke in Los Angeles, Davis spent many of his early years as a drifter, while Shaw was born in Canada and grew up bouncing around the Midwest. Neither likely discussed those backgrounds when they met at city hall three days before Davis’s officers arrived in Alturas.

The day after their meeting, Davis put an exclamation point on declarations that outsiders—or at least, the wrong kind of outsiders—just weren’t welcome in the City of Angeles. Davis deployed his border patrol, confident in a full-throated endorsement from Shaw. The chief also knew he could count on support from the Los Angeles powerbrokers who helped elect the mayor three years earlier and who for years had decried what they believed were “hordes” of transient “ne’er do-wells” invading the city. Now well into his second stint as Los Angeles’s police chief, Davis had Shaw to thank for his job.

Whether Davis conceived the operation as a favor to Shaw or not, the fervor with which he pursued it was hardly surprising. He cared little about misgivings lawmakers expressed about earlier proposed anti-indigent and anti- migrant measures. He also had no qualms that his officers might trample a few constitutional protections in their attack on criminality and the vagrants who he believed embodied it.

And it would make sense if Davis believed he owed something to the mayor. At the outset of 1930 Shaw’s predecessor, John C. Porter, had demoted Davis from chief to deputy chief after a series of high-profile scandals involving his department. After Shaw replaced Porter in 1933, one of his first official acts had been to put Davis back in power. In return, Davis carefully crafted his police department to serve as the primary municipal tool to guard the free-market-cherishing, business-friendly forces cherished by Shaw and responsible for his election.

Amid the economic turmoil and labor unrest of the Great Depression, Davis—while also sparking the Los Angeles Police Department’s inchoate development into a paramilitary force that would serve as the national standard for militarized policing—reveled in using the department’s power to harass and intimidate union organizers, civil libertarians, and political progressives. Now, the chief turned his attention toward the wretched souls washing across California’s borders from barren Dust Bowl farms and Depression-shuttered factories. To hear it from the agenda-setting Los Angeles Times, the city’s chamber of commerce, and Davis himself, these domestic migrants, if not already criminals, were likely to become criminals given enough time loitering on the streets of Los Angeles.

Davis’s plan would neutralize that threat with a phalanx of officers at California’s borders ready to block incoming laborers while the rest of his officers scoured Los Angeles’s streets for indigent transients and “vagrants.” After months of preparation, the plan was finally ready. Beginning that Sunday, February 3—a day after Shaw’s birthday—and continuing into the following afternoon, squad after squad of officers piled into personal cars, drove past the city limits, and continued to the farthest reaches of California, where they would assume their duties as the Golden State’s first line of defense from the uncivilized masses beyond.

The Complete Incomplete Los Angeles Guide

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Los Angeles's Downtown Skyline As Seen From Echo Park Lake (Photo by Bill Lascher)

Though I currently live in Portland, Oregon, I don't hide my love for the city of Los Angeles. My family's roots stretch five generations back through Los Angeles history. It's in my blood. I'm a traveler at heart, but my home will always be California, and as you read last week, I often get nostalgic about Los Angeles.

This appreciation of Los Angeles is no secret. Admittedly, I get defensive of the city. Many of its detractors quickly glance at the film and television industry and dismiss this city as a vapid, shallow, image-obsessed mess of sprawl, but I find it one of the least superficial places I've lived. Los Angeles's beauty often lies many layers deep, visible in an unheralded neighborhood off one of the major traffic arteries, tasted in the melange of its countless subcultures' cusines, or heard in the crackle of hundreds of languages spoken throughout the city. Los Angeles is multi-centric, and beauty seeps between the megalopolis's many cores, often found in the transitional spaces between them firmly rooted in neither source nor destination.

Friends often ask what they should see and do in Los Angeles. This is always tough to answer because the city constantly evolves, as do my own tastes, and that doesn't take into account the unique preferences of the asker. Nevertheless, when a family of Austrian friends planned to stop in Los Angeles last summer, I compiled a list of suggestions based on their interests (seeing the beach, experiencing iconic architecture, and viewing landmarks). With a few changes and updates, I thought I'd share it with you.

Do not expect a complete guide to the city -- again, this guide was based on my experience and this family's interests -- but do expect a starting point. Nevertheless, as I did when I last posted a guide like this in 2009  I'm eager to hear in the comments what suggestions you'd add. Notably, this guide is heavily weighted toward Central L.A. and Downtown, where I've spent most of my time. The East Side (the real East side, not Silverlake or Echo Park), South Los Angeles and much of the West Side are under-represented. It's also worth noting that I wrote this for people traveling by car. However, much, if not all of this can be done via mass transit. I should know. Buses and trains were my preferred modality in Los Angeles and the subject of my graduate studies.

Anyhow, here's the guide.

Eating Los Angeles

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Cole's. Order the Whiskey Sour. (Photo by Bill Lascher)

Let's start with the food, because you could easily structure any tour of Los Angeles hopping from restaurant to taco joint to food truck. Meanwhile, the safest bet is Los Angeles Times food critic Jonathan Gold and his Essential 101. Trust me, just pick something from that list that fits your taste and budget. Gold is a fantastic food writer with a wide range of preferences. I've never been disappointed by anything I've tried from his suggestions, and there's a huge variety of price points from hole-in-the-wall to super-spendy. Be sure to read the fantastic 2009 New Yorker article about Gold before he moved from LA Weekly to the Los Angeles Times.

Downtown and Downtown-Adjacent

Definitely go Downtown and try to get inside building lobbies. If you have time, consider an LA Conservancy walking tour, which has expert, themed tours (and not just for Downtown). Looking at their list of current tours, I'd recommend the Historic Downtown or Downtown Renaissance tours, as well as the Angelino Heights one. Or look at the conservancy's list of self-guided tours. The 1960s architecture one could be a neat way to see town, and Venice Eclectic might be. Here's my own starter list of must-sees Downtown:

The Bradbury Building is a must. It's at 3rd and Broadway. You can go inside on the first floor and up to the first landing, but not higher because it's a private building. Still, that's enough to have you in awe and any trip to Downtown should include time to see it. 

Across Broadway from the Bradbury, Grand Central Market is a large, open-air market that once was full of wonderful wholesale produce vendors, butchers and other grocers with a number of food vendors that made for a great, quick Downtown lunch. I unfortunately have not been for a few years. As I understand it, in recent years the food vendors have turned over as Downtown has gentrified and the place has lost some of its everyday vibe. But I'd still wager it's a pleasant place for a stroll, even if it has suffered the blanding hand of popularity.. 

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The Central Branch of the Los ANgeles Public LIbrary (Photo by bill Lascher)

The central branch of the Los Angeles Public Library is a dream, both for book lovers and architecture fans. It's a great library, but the real draw here is its main rotunda and old card catalog room, which is just stunning. The library also often has additional art exhibits near the Flower Street entrance.

Cole's is probably my favorite bar Downtown. It's one of two places that claims to have invented the French Dip sandwich (Cole's original French Dip is fantastic, but my favorite is the lamb with goat cheese). Other people will tell you that Philippe's has better french dips, but I just don't agree. The bar at Cole's also makes amazing pre-prohibition cocktails. On my 29th birthday, I orchestrated a Red Line bar crawl. I still remember the Whiskey Sour I had at Cole's that day (my first made with traditional frothed egg whites). Cole's bartenders are wonderful, and if you're into the celebrity spotting thing, its seems a good place to encounter famous faces in a non-gawker way. It's also a good place for general Los Angeles people-watching. There's also a speakeasy-ish bar (no password, just a hard-to-see door in the back of the main room) called The Varnish in back. 

Hotel Figueroa at 9th and Figueroa features a quiet, often-overlooked bar with a patio by a pool great for a quiet hangout. It lacks all the clubbiness and douchiness of some other popular downtown bars. I'm not always thrilled by the cocktails there, but its relaxed atmosphere makes it a great place to stop for a bottle of beer or a simple mixed drink. To be honest, I'm out of touch with what's new in Downtown's bar scene, and there are others I know I liked and just can't recall right now, but you'll do fine.

The Redwood Bar & Grill on 2nd isn't just a great pirate-themed bar or the place where I happened to witness Barack Obama's historic election. It's also one of the favorite watering holes for Los Angeles Times reporters, who work just around the corner. Also, if you're interested in catching a symphony performance at the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall you won't have far to walk from here. Really, though, the best reason to go to the Redwood is the house made potato chips. Mmm. Chips.

I've heard great things about the renovation of the United Artists Theater next to the new Ace Hotel.

Little Tokyo should be self-explanatory. I don't have the best knowledge of restaurants and bars there, but as the heart of the largest Japanese population in North America, it's worth a visit and it's easy to access on foot or transit.

The recently-gentrified Arts District can be nice, but like many places, it can be frustrating to watch prices here skyrocket. Those familiar with Portland's own growing pains may be happy to know the Arts District doesn't have the same sterile, fake-seeming atmosphere as the Pearl District. Like adjacent Little Tokyo, I don't know the Arts District very well, but I did have a tremendous -- but spendy -- meal at Church and State, and wurstküche is tasty.

Across the 6th Street Viaduct from Downtown or a few stops on the Gold Line light rail is Boyle Heights, a heavily Latino neighborhood that used to be a major Jewish community and another of the many Los Angeles districts at the heart of gentrification controversies.

Echo Park (ish)

Seen at the Echo Park Time Travel Mart (photo by Bill Lascher)

Echo Park, Silverlake, Los Feliz -- combined with a few smaller districts -- form the nucleus of hte most Portland-y, Brooklyn-y, Mission District-y, maybe hipster-but-still-cool, creative-but-almost-fully-gentrified parts of Los Angeles. The area is characterized by many hills, cafes, bars, restaurants and random shops, but it still features countless wonderful houses, hole-in-the-wall surprises and more. Here are a sampling of the places I love:

Located just south of Sunset and east of Echo Park Lake, Angelino Heights was Downtown Los Angeles's first suburb and is very much worth wandering around. Many attractive Victorian-era and otherwise notable homes remain in Angelino heights. Maybe don't make a special trip to go there, but if you're nearby it's worth a brief tour.

Echo Park Lake is lovely for a stroll or picnic, especially on weekend afternoons when the park is full of families having barbecues and vendors selling many kinds of food. It's an easy stroll from the heart of Echo Park and easy to get to from numerous bus lines, including the 704 Express. Plan to visit the lake yesterday when you combine a visit with a stop at The Echo Park Time Travel Mart, your one-stop-shop for time travel supplies and accessories. It's also a product of 826 LA, Dave Egger's literacy project. \

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Dodger Stadium. (photo by Bill Lascher)

Dodger Stadium. If you're in town during the Dodgers baseball season, consider a game here. Opened in 1962, Dodger Stadium is now the third-oldest stadium in the Major Leagues. There really isn't a bad seat in the house; the reserve or top-deck levels are fairly inexpensive, for example, and they even offer the added benefit of gorgeous views of the San Gabriel Mountains. If you go to a game, the best place to get a pre- or post-game drink is the Shortstop on Sunset Blvd. Fans usually pack the bar before games, and there's often even a tamale vendor there who will bag up cheese or chicken tamales for you to bring to the game. You can then walk 15 minutes up hill from the Shortstop to the stadium. By the way, don't drive to Dodger stadium, where parking is expensive and takes forever. Instead, you can take transit to Union Station (oh, and I haven't even mentioned what a beautiful place that is) and catch the free Dodger Stadium Express, which even has a Dodger-logo-marked lane exclusive to the shuttle on game days. Bus riders can also take the line 2, 4, or 704 buses to Elysian Park or Douglas, especially if they want to stop at the Shortstop.

Griffith Park Vicinity

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The Hollywood Sign as seen from Griffith Park (Photo by Bill Lascher)

You might combine a visit here with Los Feliz, Silverlake, Echo Park or some combination thereof. These neighborhoods are close to one another, but it can get exhausting to try to go to all of them at once.

Los Angeles River Center & Gardens. This is a really pleasant little place to learn more about the LA River, its ecology and recent efforts to restore the waterway. This facility is an old spanish-style complex right by the river with a nice courtyard and a variety of interpretive displays and views of the river.

You've likely seen the view from Griffith Park and Observatory in the movies, but do make a plan to see it for yourself. The park features wonderful hiking trails that show off Southern California's natural landscape and fantastic views of the city simultaneously, and it's all located right in the heart of Los Angeles. Meanwhile, the observatory itself offers  tremendous views itself. Admission and parking is free, as are a number of educational events and star parties, while the planetarium has a reasonable fee for its shows. Even though parking is free at the observatory, it can be tight; on the weekends, consider taking the Los Angeles Department of Transportation's DASH shuttle up to the observatory.

The Greek - This outdoor concert venue is one of the best places to see a show in Los Angeles. If there's an act coming that you want to see, I highly recommend doing so. 

Silverlake

The Neutra VDL House at 2300 Silverlake Blvd. is open for tours highlighting Neutra's modernist architecture. It's one of many great architectural tours one can take in Los Angeles.

Probably not too shockingly, the Silverlake Reservoir is the man-made body of water from which this neighborhood derives its name. The reservoir is always a lovely place for a walk and it offers a great opportunity for people (and dog) watching!

Silverlake, Echo Park and other nearby neighborhoods are home to countless semi-secret staircases that offer a unique way to get some exercise and explore these neighborhoods. While the Music Box Steps made famous by Laurel & Hardy are probably the most notable, many of the other staircases offer even more surprising and interesting views. Couple them with a walk around the reservoir, then get a meal on Hyperion, Silver Lake Blvd. or Glendale Blvd. (I like Gingergrass). Alas, you can't follow up with a show at the Spaceland anymore, but now apparently you can go to the Satellite instead.

Need a coffee? LA Mill can verge on coffee snobbery, but it is nevertheless quite tasty with a huge menu. And though it's a scene, it's not the hipper-than-thou seen I seem to stumble into at nearby Intelligentsia.

Oh, The Red Lion, the memories I have of you. Coming up with excuses not to sing karaoke in that tiny room upstairs, squeezing into a corner for trivia, making out in your parking lot the first time I ever went there. This German bar has a huge, busy upstairs patio, a cozy alcove for the aforesaid karaoke and trivia, and a chill piano lounge downstairs. The beer selection is wonderful. Though the weekend crowd at the Red Lion can get annoying, this is still one of my favorite watering holes in this part of town.

Los Feliz/East Hollywood

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A wine tasting at the Barnsdall Art Park in August, 2013. (Photo by Bill Lascher)

The Barnsdall Art Park is home to the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Hollyhock House, which recently reopened after restoration. Located on a large bluff near Sunset and Vermont, the park provides 360 degree views of the city, while the Hollyhock House is as cool as you'd imagine an FLW design can be. But the most fun way to see it is to go one of the park's Friday evening wine tastings, which combine great wine, lovely views, and beautiful people.  You can either bring a picnic or order from one of the food trucks that come up for the event.

Upper Vermont Ave in Los Feliz features a host of small clothing shops and eateries, a movie theater, and the independent Skylight Books, one of the best book stores in Los Angeles. It's also where you'll find the Dresden Room and its five-nights-a-week jazz duo Marty and Elayne. While you're in the neighborhood, be sure to go down Vermont around around to Hollywood Blvd. for a stop at Wacko Soap Plant. It's a huge store packed with graphic novels, coffee table and photography books, nick nacks and a huge selection of the kind of ephemera that your average Spencers Gifts seems to be shooting for, but constantly misses. Nearby Hillhurst Ave. offers a more low-key, local taste of Los Feliz. Don't forget that all of this is an easy walk from the Sunset/Vermont Red Line Station.

Located at Franklin at Tamarind in the tiny but cute stretch known as Franklin Village, the Bourgeois Pig was one of my favorite places to work on my Master's project. Next door to the Upright Citizens Brigade, the Bourgeois pig's real charm isn't its coffee or pool table, it's its back room, which features a fanciful forest scene, or it did when I was last there. It's a great place to get some writing done and yet another good place for people watching.

Upright Citizens Brigade: I haven't been, but the actors who perform in its improv comedy troupe are everywhere and hilarious. I'd trust a show here to be great.

You like ice cream, don't you? Then get yourself to Scoops at Melrose and Heliotrope post-haste!  There are also scoops locations in Palms and Highland Park, but this is where they got their start. What are you waiting for? Have some ice cream now! These guys were making crazy and amazing ice cream flavors before Salt and Straw was even a a food cart. It is unbelievable. Transit-bound? Take the Subway to Santa Monica/Vermont or one of many bus lines traveling on Vermont, Santa Monica, or Melrose.

Mid City/Wilshire Center/Koreatown/Miracle Mile/La Brea/Fairfax/Hollywood

Hancock Park - Big houses on tree-lined streets that aren't quite as gaudy as Beverly Hills. Kinda fun to see if you're going somewhere else.

Larchmont Village - a little yuppified, but some pleasant places to stop for a walk.

Hollywood Forever Cemetery - Santa Monica Blvd behind the Paramount Studies. In the summer they have movie showings and concerts. It's surprisingly not creepy and it's fun.

The weirdest Kentucky Fried Chicken you've ever seen. No, really, it must be seen. Not eaten at, and I'd only stop if you're in the vicinity, but it must be seen. 

Korean BBQ. Check Jonathan Gold's rec's for the best places, but you can rarely go wrong. Also find a cheap place for bibimbap (generally less expensive than the BBQ places, which can get spicy easily).

The Los Angeles County Museum of Contemporary Art. It's a truly great museum with fantastic exhibits, and I think they have a monthly free day.

La Brea Tar Pits. The museum itself might not be worth admission, but there are big tar pits right outside one can walk around. This is right next door to LACMA.

Largo - probably the best place in LA to see comedy. Check out the list of regulars (Tig Notaro, Sarah Silverman, etc.) and you'll see why I say that: . Any show there would be amazing.

Canter's - an excellent 24-hour Jewish deli in the Fairfax district. Really an awesome, hang-out place. The Kibbutz Room next door is a bar. Go here any time, very possibly see someone famous, definitely have a great traditional Jewish deli meal.

Farmer's Market - This is a different big open-air market that has existed for ages. It's more touristy than Grand Central and it's next to an obnoxious mall, but I still enjoy it. When my mother was a little girl, my great-grandmother used to take her to the Farmer's Market, and from all reports it hasn't changed much.  

Little Ethiopia just south of Wilshire on Fairfax should be self-explanatory. And it certainly is tasty.

Hollywood and Highland is like, but not quite as bad, as Times Square. Some people enjoy see the stars of the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Chinese Theater, and the costumed superheroes, but this place is so, so touristy and tacky. Proceed with caution. There ARE two subway stops in Hollywood for a quick jaunt from Downtown.

The Hollywood Bowl, on the other hand, is worth every bit of hype it receives. This is a primo, amazing outdoor music venue. The LA Philharmonic plays here all summer, and there are often great popular acts playing with orchestras. I can't begin to describe how beautiful a night here is, but it is certainly pricey and a bit of a pain to get to (but not a bad walk from the Red Line at Hollywood and Highland).

Trains and Automobiles

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The Fred Harvey Room at Union Station (Photo by Bill Lascher)

Despite my love of all things mass and active transportation, for short visits, I have to admit that it is easy to get around with a car. And access to a car gives you the chance to drive Mulholland Drive. It's certainly hyped, but worth it. There are beautiful views everywhere, you can see the whole expanse of the city, and there are numerous pullouts from which you can take in the view or do short walks. 

However, one can easily see Los Angeles without a car. Take the Metro Los Angeles Red Line subway between Downtown (from Union Station, itself a gorgeous 1939 example of the great American train station) and North Hollywood, where you can transfer to the Orange Line, a bus rapid transit system operating in an old rail right-of-way that gives you access to the San Fernando Valley, which put the "valley" in "valley girl." Along the Red Line, you can stop in multiple parts of Downtown, MacArthur Park/Westlake, Koreatown, the trendy Los Feliz neighborhood, Thai Town/Little Armenia and Hollywood. One can also take a variety of light rail lines, all but one of which have hubs Downtown. The Gold Line travels to Pasadena, which features a cute downtown, great museums and a number of Craftsman homes; it also passes through Chinatown, the rapidly gentrifying Highland Park and a few other locales in one direction, while the other takes riders through Little Tokyo and on to East L.A.

The new Expo Line goes to USC and nearby Exposition Park, home to many fantastic museums. Most notable among those are the California Science Center (which houses the Space Shuttle Endeavour and the Natural History Museum in particular, as well as a nice rose garden. The Expo Line then continues through South Los Angeles to Culver City, a pleasant little town that, among other features, claims the ABSOLUTE MUST SEE stop that is the Museum of Jurassic Technology. I won't say more about that museum because it's really too insanely weird and it's worth every bit of surprise you'll have there. Next year, the Expo Line will be able to take you all the way to Santa Monica.

The Blue Line, meanwhile, will take you through South Los Angeles to Long Beach, while the Green Line, the only line that doesn't connect to Downtown, travels between the Beach Cities and El Segundo.

Beaches

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A woman walsk her iguana on Venice Beach. (Photo by Bill Lascher)

Speaking of beaches. Most of the beaches right by the actual city of Los Angeles are rather crowded, but may be worth a one-time visit for the experience. Still, the adjacent community of Hermosa Beach has a very nice beachside walkway called The Strand, with the ocean on one side and expensive houses on the other. Manhattan Beach offers a similar promenade. Nearby Redondo Beach is a little shabbier, but not much. Personally, I find each of these communities less interesting than the rest of Los Angeles, but they still have certain lazy charms. The nearby Palos Verdes Peninsula may merit a drive around for expansive views of the ocean, but it's otherwise quite quiet. However, it's worth mentioning that the peninsula holds the remaining wreckage of the ship once known as the SS Melville Jacoby, which was named after the subject of my upcoming book. Later renamed the Dominator, the Jacoby shipwrecked on the north side of the peninsula in 1962. Though its pieces are slowly vanishing, It's a pretty impressive sight to see.

Back in the city proper, Venice Beach received its name from a network of lazy canals that weave behind multi-million-dollar homes. This community also features a trendy and expensive shopping street called Abbot Kinney. Despite its skyrocketing prices, something could be said for a stroll on Abbot Kinney, though it's not without many often valid critiques. On summertime Fridays, the street plays host to many of Los Angeles's iconic food trucks, but as bustling as the district becomes on these nights it also gets mobbed with diners and revelers. But the feature for which Venice Beach is most known is its boardwalk, which is as funky as you've probably heard and worth seeing once. It's certainly touristy, but not in a completely off-putting way. Here you'll find a crazy mix of peddlers, street performers, scam artists, weirdos, bodybuilders, tourists, and any other character you can imagine.

Nearby Santa Monica has great views and a touristy pier. The open-air 3rd Street Promenade is lined mostly by chain stores, but for a shopping street it is nicely-designed. Other districts in the town are far more enjoyable, such as Ocean Beach and Main Street. The beach in Santa Monica certainly has room for lounging, and the city is a nice enough town, but even though I've been through a gazillion times I don't have much to say about it. What I do know is this, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy just north of town is unbelievably gorgeous. There you can find miles and miles of coastal mountains and sagebrush hills to hike, some with ocean views.

Further up Pacific Coast Highway is fabled Malibu, a long stretch of highway with expensive but precariously located homes. It's probably not worth a special visit, but if you're driving north you might consider taking PCH instead of going inland on the 101 or the 5. If you're looking for a great beach, many of the hidden coves and beaches in Malibu and beyond are the region's best. Ones I've heard of or know are good include El Matador and Leo Carrillo, but these are far from the only beaches worth trying. Look for signs that say "beach access," and don't get too discouraged by the gigantic homes. A huge fight has been between waged homeowners and the public about beach access. There's plenty of reading to be done about the conflict, but know that it's your right to visit many of these, so don't let the no-trespassing signs fool you.

Miscellaneous

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A Bicyclist Rides Along the Beach North of Santa Monica. (Photo by Bill lascher)

The Huntington Gardens features a beautiful library and an even more beautiful garden in Pasadena, which is worth a visit itself.

I think this blog post put together by Elizabeth Laime of the wonderful (and lamentably just-ended) podcast Totally Laime has a lot of great ideas. While you're checking that post out out, give a listen to old episodes of Totally Laime or subscribe to their other shows: Totally Married, Totally Mommy and Totally Beverages and Sometimes Hot Sauce (which is about exactly what it sounds like, and is, well, totally rad).

KCRW - great music every morning, night, and weekend, and a wonderful source for current events during the day (notably with its To the Point and Which Way L.A. shows). It's also a good place to listen for local events/happenings/etc. Find it on the air at 89.9 FM.

Where KCRW is the place to turn for new music in the Los Angeles area, KPCC at 89.3/Southern California Public Radio has fairly robust coverage of Los Angeles and Southern California on the radio and online. Even commercial radio in Los Angeles claims quality journalism, from KNX's seemingly ubiquitous Claudia Peschiutta (and the station's earworm of a traffic update alert) to Wendy Carillo's Knowledge is Power show on Power 106.5.

While it has seen troubles at the highest levels of management, the Los Angeles Times remains a tremendous source of journalism, and many of its individual reporters and columnists are among the best in the business.

Nathan Masters's L.A. as Subject blog is a consistently educational and entertaining read about the history of Los Angeles.

The Militant Angeleno, an L.A. native, may or may not provide far better tours of the hidden corners of Los Angeles than I'm attempting here.

Three times a year, major Los Angeles streets are closed for CicLAvia, which gives bicycle riders, pedestrians, skaters and such access to these streets and a fun opportunity to see Los Angeles from a perspective usually only afforded to cars. It is truly a blast to participate in.

I've just realized I've forgotten the Getty Center. Many people are more impressed by this museum's grounds than its collection. For good reasons. This free museum sports some of the best views of Los Angeles. 

There are many, many, many other places I've failed to mention or describe in any worthwhile detail. Likewise, I have neglected areas as varied as Leimart Park, Westwood, the San Fernando Valley, West Hollywood, Atwater Village, Marina Del Rey, the Port of Los Angeles, Crenshaw, Westlake and Laurel Canyon , but I hope this can be a start for your experience of Los Angeles and for my own thoughts about it. Again, I'm eager for your suggestions.

Los Angeles Remembered and Imagined

An Alleyway in Los angeles's Arts District.

This evening with dinner, as I often do with meals, I watched an episode of the television show Parks and Recreation. As this particular episode's resolution neared, Leslie Knope and her merry band of bureaucrats gathered outside a decrepit warehouse in a run-down corner of Pawnee, the imagined small "Indiana" town where the show is set and which always seems to reveal another as-yet uncovered neighborhood.

Taking full advantage of dramatic license, the show's creators take few if any efforts to disguise the show's Los Angeles Basin filming locations as the Midwest. Anyone who has seen the show and has also visited Pasadena instantly recognizes that Los Angeles neighbor's city hall playing Pawnee's on television. Tonight, I recognized Beachview Terrace, the "armpit of Pawnee," as Clarence Street, one of the roads in the district of wholesale food warehouses on the East Bank of the Los Angeles River, beneath Boyle Heights.

It wasn't just that I recognized the pylons of the Six Street Viaduct in the shot's background from other Hollywood productions. Instead, in August 2013, I'd run down that very street on the 12th or 13th mile of a training run for the Portland Marathon. One of the best runs I've ever taken, it took me from my friends' house in Highland Park, down the Arroyo Seco, along the edge of Montecito Heights, around Lincoln Heights, through the USC Keck School of Medicine, past the 10, 5 and 101 freeways, into Boyle Heights, down into the warehouse district, across the river into the Arts District and up to its finale in Little Tokyo (from whence I returned to Highland Park by Los Angeles's Gold Line. Yes, Virginia, there is mass transit in Los Angeles).

That Sunday was glorious. The weather was perfect (Despite unseasonably cool and foggy weather during most of my visit that August), the streets were peaceful and quiet, and there was a festival with traditional drumming -- and Japanese food -- when I stopped in Little Tokyo. That afternoon, my friend and I returned Downtown for a lazy afternoon gazing at the San Gabriel Mountains and watching baseball from the glorious upper infield seats of Dodger Stadium (note: There really isn't a bad seat in the house).

Dodger Stadium. (Photo by Bill Lascher)

Why I mention all this now is that the sight of that alley so quickly brought this memory back to me. One of my favorite past-times when I visit Los Angeles is realizing a particular building or corner or vista is one I recognize from film or television, and when I'm elsewhere, a particular shot in a movie or T.V. show will evoke some memory from childhood trips to see family, meandering dates during grad school, trips with partners, or adventures across town with friends. Some people who visit Los Angeles scan the city for stars, but I gaze beyond the stars to see the city.

Clearly, the confluence of my personal history with the film industry's is responsible for much of this. Many people are familiar with Los Angeles because it has been so many things to so many people. While I explore this phenomena from an informal perspective intertwined with memory, the city's starring role in our imagination was deftly dissected in the 2003 documentary "Los Angeles Plays Itself." Recently remastered and released to the wide public for the first time ever, this movie masterfully chronicles the city and the film industry with a precision and a breadth of knowledge that I cannot approach. Yes, I am often a cheerleader for this city, but even if you don't care for Los Angeles, perhaps particularly if you don't, do give this movie a try. Director Thom Andersen composed a fantastic work. At the very least, it will inspire you to watch any number of films you may have missed, but I suspect it will also provide a new lens with which you might view Los Angeles and the stories it's used to tell.

I'm sure the sense of familiarity I felt watching Parks and Rec tonight doesn't only happen in L.A. Here in Portland people are perhaps a little annoyed, but also thrilled by seeing our city through the nation's lens for the past half-decade. Many people, no doubt, often see New York and remember great nights of their youth, or watch the West Wing or House of Cards and wonder why that summer they interned on Capitol Hill wasn't as fun. Etc.

Whether depicted on the screen, or not, what are the fragments and images that linger of the towns you're from, the towns where you are, or the towns where you've been? Which are the places woven deep into your heart? What about those places far away from towns, those places perhaps only you know? Where have you been that stirs you, and to which you can be brought back in just an instant? What are the triggers that bring you back there? What are the moments you remember from these places? Let me know in the comments.

Stay tuned tomorrow. I'll be sharing my updated personal guide to Los Angeles!

Picture of the Day Starts With a Glance of L.A.

Frank Gehry's iconic style shines through the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. (Photo by Bill Lascher).

Did you know that aside from my writing I shoot many of my own photographs? Beginning today, I'm going to resume regularly sharing examples of my photography. Like what you see? Visit my photoshelter page to see more and order prints or digital copies of your favorite shots. And don't forget that you can always support my work here and follow me on Instagram and Twitter.

Upon an L.A. Arrival

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Downtown Los Angeles

Every one of these valleys houses a story of mine. Everywhere, as far as the eye can see, a recollection. Every hillside crease, every orchard row, every meandering backroad, every freeway lane, every island in the blue distance. Each stirs a memory. 

More than anything else, the expanse below me is familiar, forever within me, whether I want it to be or not. Even the city exploding over the hills and suffocating in the haze is home. Hundreds of miles north above that Bay and over the hills, across that fertile but sweltering valley, I still feel it, this sense in my blood. Down below, the pure Californianess of it all, the golden hues, the marching oaks, the wrinkled mountains and the blankets of concrete. All of it.

Other lands have their airborne beauty. Portland is a welcoming toy wedged between volcanoes and rivers. New York is grand, inspiring and forever, but it simply isn't mine. The Midwest is something hidden on forgotten highways between the quilted fields. 

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The Conejo Valley

 But my heart still eases above California. My mind wanders some line between memory and dreams. California is so very much a place created, remembered, and reconstructed, forever. It's almost as if these towers and ballfields and warehouses store pieces of me, shards of identity shimmering and vibrating as I draw nearer. 

So, it makes sense as I settle in here that I re-imagine myself yet again, that, once more, I reintroduce myself to the world. For nothing is more California than starting over again. Once again.

California isn't everything. California isn't even home. But California is, for me, the beginning.

Again.

Of course, I'd be lying if I said I didn't start my blog, reorganize myself, and begin from scratch again, and again, and again. 

But that's my only option.

Starting Again.

Until I can't.

So, for now, again, here it is, myself as best as I know myself right now, right here.

In California. Right. Back. Where. I started from. 

 Miss the old Lascher at Large or a story from that site? Content from that site will be added here as time allows. Thanks!

Portfolio Pick: Books Remain on My Brain

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Yesterday, I shared a picture from my portfolio of the Seattle Public Library. I'm still thinking about books today, and I'm often thinking about Los Angeles. So why not share another of my favorite pictures? This time, enjoy a glimpse of the Rotunda at the Los Angeles Central Library. Isn't it interesting that two of my favorite shots in my portfolio are of libraries?

Like this image? Though I’m first and foremost a writer, I do shoot pictures when I can. You can see some of my favorite shots and even order prints if you like by visiting my Photoshelter portfolio.

Notes From The Starting Line

A signed photo from Captain Saunders on the S.S. Melville Jacoby

Today brings a bloom of beginnings from a tangle of endings. Perhaps that's not surprising. I suppose beginnings and endings all occupy coterminous space. And as I write, I'm struck by how my own beginnings and my own endings weave around one another and, often, between two places — Los Angeles and Portland.

But I'm writing today to recognize one simple beginning: the redesigned, relaunched version of my website, upon which, presumably, you're reading these words. I do so hoping to re-introduce the world to my own background as a writer and journalist and as a storyteller, and to re-pique your curiosity about Melville Jacoby, whose adventures, romance and experiences as a journalist in World War II-era China and the Philippines will be the subject of a forthcoming book.

Thinking about Mel, I'm reminded that a year ago today, two friends of mine and I clambered across miles of rocky shoreline beneath the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Despite a cloudless sky, sharp breezes whipped our bodies as we strode along the edge of a continent. In search of history, we found rusted strips of metal that nearly fifty years of waves had torn from a ship once known as the S.S. Melville Jacoby. That day last year when I finally climbed atop one of the oxidized hulks left on the shore, I stared across the Pacific and thought I'd reached the culmination of one of my journeys. I thought I would soon finish a Kickstarter campaign in which I'd hoped to raise $25,000 to fund my effort to tell Mel's story. Unfortunately, my deadline arrived five days later and I hadn't met my goal, even if I did raise more than $13,000 in pledges. Not the ending I'd hoped for, but it turned out not to matter. With many of my backers' support I continued to work on making the book happen. Today, as I'll soon explain, I'm far closer to that goal.

Opening Days

Baseball in tree

But there's a more obvious reason to think about beginnings today. This is Major League Baseball's Opening Day. For baseball fans and players, it's the beginning of a new season full of promise and opportunity. As clichéd as it sounds, for a moment, anything is possible.

I'm a lifelong fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers (and of Vin Scully, their magical announcer of 62 years). Opening Day always brings a sense of renewal to me almost more powerful than does the arrival of Spring in the natural world (though the beautiful weekend that just passed in Portland underscores the marvels of seasonal change). Thus, it seems especially fitting to re-launch my website today.

But it wasn't baseball on my mind when I first started writing this post.

Two weeks ago, I accomplished something that I wouldn't have imagined on that rocky beach last year: I ran the Los Angeles marathon.

This was my first marathon. Despite the sore legs immediately afterward and a certain degree of post-race malaise these past two weeks, the experience was, simply, fantastic. Four hours, 22 minutes and 36 seconds brought me from Dodger Stadium (where else?) to Santa Monica's California Incline. Crossing the finish line brought more than the end of a race. The moment brought the culmination of four long, sometimes painful, occasionally tedious, but often revelatory months of training.

Crowds gather at the starting line of the 2013 Los Angeles Marathon.

Just a week before the race a barista asked me how I felt about this training regime. Without thinking I told her "this has been the best four months of my life." As shocked as I was to hear myself say that, I quickly realized I was speaking honestly.

At first, though, that seemed absurd. Those four months were grueling, even when I felt confident in or energized by my running. Shortly before I began training in earnest, I injured the medial collateral ligament of my left knee. I couldn't run for weeks, but it was early enough that I recovered before my first official training run. My knee protested for some time, but I kept running.

Still, other aspects of my life were far from ideal. The same week I kicked off my training, I got dumped, my apartment flooded into the unit below mine, I froze on stage in the middle of a story for a night of mass transit tales, and I got food poisoning. Meanwhile, rejection letters continued to fill my inbox from agents I'd queried regarding Mel's book.

But I kept running. I kept running through more rejections. I kept running as editors turned down freelance pitches. I kept running as romances fizzled as quickly as they sparked. Through pouring rain, plummeting temperatures, and darkening nights, I kept running.

Then, shortly before Christmas, I twisted my ankle and had to suspend my training again. Home for the holiday, I could barely walk up and down the stairs at my mother's house. For weeks, even a short walk around the block — let alone the miles I needed to start adding to my training regime — left me in tremendous pain. The training had sustained me before the injury, had given me a groove into which I could find solace from personal and financial and professional turmoil, and I was jarred by losing so quickly that rhythm and structure I'd built.

But still, I kept running, and the pain subsided. In its place emerged a renewed focus that spilled over from the running into other areas of my life, perhaps most notably into my writing. Indeed, it already had. All those other changes as I began my training — I'd even sold my car in November — coincided with a new focus on my book. Soon I'd re-written my literary proposal, and by the beginning of February — as my long training runs pushed 16, then 18, then 20 miles — I'd found an agent for my book. After four months of rejections, here was someone who recognized how great Mel's story is, and someone confident I'm the one to tell it.

The Cover Page from the first draft of Melville Jacoby's Book

My race isn't over with the book. My agent and I still need to sell the idea, and I still need to write the book. But as we prepare to submit the project to editors, I realize that while I kept running, I also kept writing. Through the disappointments and heartbreak and injuries (not to mention a horrendous allergic reaction I suffered just over a week before the marathon), I kept writing, first in snippets, then in longer stretches. Perhaps it's no coincidence that I signed my agent just as my training reached its peak. Perhaps the proposal revisions and sample chapter overhauls I've just finished are the long runs in the training cycle of writing a book.

One race has ended. Perhaps another starting line is approaching.

Willing to help nudge me along with a dollar or two?

Buy Me Some Typewriter Ribbon

The Thinkingest Heads Home

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In what may be boring or may be genius, I serve as my own guest on the latest edition of the Thinkingest podcast.

This week's topic is "Home." Listen in as I discuss with myself what home means to me, and all the different ways I can identify home. Find out just how much I'm thinking about what might be my next home. It's an amorphous topic, but take a listen for a peek at all the little gears turning around in my mind.

And listen all the way through to find out what kickball, content vending, apartment hunting, books and my love life have in common.

Thanks for listening. Don't forget to check out past episodes of the Thinkingest here at Lascher at Large, subscribe to the feed at Feedburner or iTunes. Like it or hate it, why not leave me a review on iTunes? And if you like it, please share it. My apologies if you hate it. I'll try not to think too hard about it.

Discovering One More Friend of Melville Jacoby's

This world is tiny.

By now, anyone closely following Melville Jacoby's story knows a little bit about Chan Ka Yik. For newcomers, Chan (who later adopted the Americanized "George K.Y. Chan") was Mel's roommate while the two studied at China's Lingnan University during the 1936-37 academic year. Last week, a few members of my family and I met Chan's daughters for something of a reunion between our two families.

As I've already described, the visit was lovely. But it also stirred up a fantastic coincidence, one that could reshape how I tell this story, and which I think will provide a truly unique glimpse on Mel's time as an exchange student in China.

Seeing who steps out of the woodworks has been a big part of this project. Last year I tried to find some hint of Chan Ka Yik during a day-long layover in San Francisco. A few days later, his daughter, Emmy, called me to respond to a longshot email I'd sent to a cousin I'd found a few weeks earlier. That first call put our two families in touch and laid the groundwork for last week's reunion.

This Spring, a man named Darrow Carson reached out to me. Carson's grandfather, Lew, was a fellow passenger on the Doña Nati, the ship that took Mel, Annalee and Clark Lee on the final leg of their escape from the Philippines. As Clark Lee explained in 1943's "They Call it Pacific," with American forces deploying to the Pacific, hotel rooms were scarce when the group arrived in Australia. Lew Carson finally found the group beds after they'd spent weeks sleeping on freighter decks.

But the coincidence in Palo Alto is something else entirely. During our lunch with Chan Ka Yik's daughters, my grandma told the stories she'd heard about her cousin Mel and his time in China, and about the people he knew. One was Chan. Another was a man named George Ta-Min Ching. Many of the photos Mel took in China, including the one attached to this post, featured Ching, a handsome man who often appeared in sharp suits (Of course, who among Mel's contemporaries, himself included, wasn't utterly dashing or stunningly beautiful?).

Chan's daughters all knew about Ching. They called him "Uncle Ching" and had met him multiple times when he'd visit their father's Dim Sum restaurant in San Francisco. George T.M. Ching had moved to Los Angeles in 1951. Indeed, he even called on Elza Meyberg (Melville's mother) multiple times over the years. It was from him that Chan first learned of Mel's tragic death.

George Ching was a success in America. He was a co-founder of Cathay Bank, which the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California says aimed to provide financial services and capital to L.A.'s growing Chinese American community. The bank has grown significantly since then and is the oldest Chinese American bank in the country.

In addition to his professional success, Ching raised two daughters in Silverlake. That fact caught the attention of my aunt's husband Mike, who grew up near Silverlake around the same time. "Was one of them named Debbie?" Mike asked, remembering a high school friend with whom he remains in touch. Sure enough, one was, and Mike emailed a photo to his friend.

The next day Debbie Ching responded, flabbergasted why he'd have a picture of her father as a college student. Mike explained that his mother-in-law Peggy (my grandmother) was a cousin of a good friend of Debbie's father when they were young. Debbie, in turn, recalled her fathers frequent fond stories of a many he referred to always as just "Jacoby."

What's most amazing, though? Three quarters of a century after he and Mel met, Ching is still alive at 97-years-old. Apparently, he has seen the pictures Mike sent to Debbie and he may be willing to speak with me and/or my grandmother about Mel. I'm floored by this news because the chance to speak to one of Mel's contemporaries would be extraordinary. I'll certainly keep you posted about how this goes.

Your support is what made it possible for me to make this discovery. Will you help make it make more discoveries before it's no longer possible? If so, Please make a contribution , and you can always learn more about Mel and my effort to tell his story on my central page about him at lascheratlarge.com/melville.

Sights seen while not writing

As I noted last week, I don't just write: [shashin type="photo" id="279,867,863,865,976,963,941,848" size="medium" columns="2" order="user" position="center"]