Angels Flight

Last Saturday, I made a visit to Grand Central Market in Downtown Los Angeles.  Angels Flight - this extremely short funicular railway provides a means of traveling (easier than walking) between Grand Central Market and Bunker Hill.  This is not the very oldest part of Los Angeles, but it's pretty old.  All the very oldest people you can find who still have memories remember visiting Grand Central Market and Angels Flight when they were tiny little kids.  And it hasn't changed all that much.  You can find nearly 100 year-old paintings of it.

After painting, some painters and I rode the railway to the top and down again.  You'll want to do this.  Be sure to request a round-trip ticket, because you'll get a cool souvenir paper ticket.  We then ate at Grand Central.    I usually eat the tortas there, but I heard the pupusas came highly recommended.  The food is very multi-cultural, in addition to being cheap and delicious.  I had a cheese pupusa and fried bananas.  I still had enough left from my ten dollars for shopping.  I got giant oranges, blueberries and a half-pound of mole (Mexican sauce.)  You have to go.  It is one of the best Los Angeles experiences.

I've read that there are plans to redo the market to make it more appealing to the new urban dwelling yupsters - to add sofas and wifi and what ever else they like.  I hope this turns out all right.  You should go soon.

I think the painting turned out lively and fun.  One of the interesting things about the view is that the blue at the top is not the sky.  It's a sea of glass covered high-rises reflecting the sky.

House on Bilike Hill

I painted the Bilike Mansion in South Pasadena last Saturday.  The Bilike House was designed by John Parkinson and G. Edwin Bergstrom in 1906.  Parkinson and Bergstrom  are responsible for a very significant portion of the architectural icons of the City of Los Angeles.  The house was built for Mr. and Mrs. A.C. Bilike.  The house now shares grounds with the South Pasadena United Methodist Church.  It is used by Boy Scouts, Al-anon, and Kinesthetic Learner childcare.  I'm pretty certain I recall reading that Mr. and Mrs. Bilike died on the Lusitania.  Yet at this point I can find no mention of that in the wide deep sea of the internet.  Somewhere around my house I've misplaced my South Pasadena history book.

This is only a small view, and a canted one, of what is easily one of South Pasadena's most significant structures.  The house is surrounded by trees that have been growing for a long time, but you can still make out the views in every direction, and they are wonderful.