Around Town - A Day In LA

For the last 20 years I have been reading that downtown Los Angeles has under gone a renaissance.
Refurbishment of old architecture into loft residences, hip new galleries and restaurants, classy hotels and concert venues, you know...the whole bit.
But from what I could tell after my day spent in jury duty this week at the criminal courthouse on Temple Street
I didn't really see the renaissance in action.
Yes, construction seemed to be going on everywhere,
but Los Angeles, unlike Boston, New York or San Francisco,
is still a city that I wouldn't want to walk around in.
Maybe someday downtown LA will become as desirable as SoHo
but that someday still seems to be a long way off.

She Looks Good For Her Age

100 years of Hollywood royalty: Beverly Hills Hotel celebrates a century as a star-studded hotspot

Like any Grande Dame in Beverly Hills, she's had some nips and tucks over the years
But she's never lost her original charm

Living on the west side of LA where everything is green and lush I've always assumed that it was always this way.

But I was wrong.

Now, when I look at photographs of LA landmarks from 100 years ago, I can see how barren and desert-like the landscape was.

Look, not a tree or shrub in sight, except for the palm trees that were planted. 

Amazing isn't it.

For more on the history of  Beverly Hills Hotel and Los Angeles architecture

check out this great blog

Paradise Leased

Wednesday Weather Miscellany and a Walk On The Wild Side

You might think that it is always sunshine and blue skis around here
like in this photo of Rodeo Drive

This is what it actually looked like this week

only a mile or so west of Beverly Hills in Brentwood

Fog blanketing Santa Monica and Brentwood as seen from the 25th floor

How heavy the fog can get here in Los Angeles

And, when we are not braving le brouillard

we are fighting off wild beasts

Yes people, that is a wild bobcat drinking from a swimming pool in Bel Air
The photo was taken last Friday and posted on the Bel Air blog
OK...so maybe we haven't suffered from Old Testament style weather and conditions...like some people...but the more that we encroach on mother nature, the more that she reminds us that we aren't the only animals in this urban jungle.

My Daughter The Blogger

I suppose that it was only a matter of time before the beautiful Miss de Ville started her own blog chronicling her impressions of life in LA with irreverent commentary and arty photography.

3 Guides and a Girl
Armed with a selection of guide books, good shoes, a collection of cameras and a terrible sense of direction, a single girl decides to see everything worth seeing in Southern California. 
From the bizarre to the beautiful, the quaint to the quackery, no sight is safe.

I love her photography
 

and of course I enjoy reading about Los Angeles from her perspective

The Spadena house on Carmelita in BH is a really superb example of storybook architecture. Also known as the witch’s house, this spooky building is smack dab in the middle of a bunch of colonial and neoclassical monstrosities. I drive by on my way to work and it always makes me smile. As a kid, I lived a few blocks away and I distinctly remember that you couldn’t trick or treat there (they had cops outside the gates) which, frankly, is bullshit. Fun fact: this is the house Alicia Silverstone walks by in her pouty, epiphany scene in “Clueless”.

My beautiful girl turned 26 today....where did the time go....