Just Above Sunset Photography

Saturday, 3 June 2006

Not Hollywood: More of Encinitas on a Quiet Afternoon
Topic: Oddities

Not Hollywood: More of Encinitas on a Quiet Afternoon

More of that sad little movie theater in downtown Encinitas, the La Paloma Theatre, a Spanish Mission thing built in the twenties. As mentioned in the previous post, it opened with the film The Cohens And Kellys in Paris - February 11, 1928, and the rumor is that Mary Pickford rode her bicycle all the way to the La Paloma from Fairbanks Ranch for the opening. And she wasn't even in the film. It seats four or five hundred, and still has the Kilgen Wonder Organ from the days of the silent films and the opening vaudeville stage act. The stage is still in use. Jerry Garcia played here. So did Eddie Vedder. They show offbeat films, and, of course, show The Rocky Picture Horror Show every Friday night.

Frankly, it looks like something from a Hitchcock film, where Jimmy Stewart goes slowly mad and the well-lit everyday suddenly looks dangerous and menacing, and Grace Kelly or some other ice-blond looks simultaneously worried and flawless, and Stewart’s nightmares are designed by Salvador Dali - like in Spellbound, where there was a major point of contention between Alfred Hitchcock and David O. Selznick. Selznick had Hitchcock under contract, and directed him to make a movie based upon Selznick's experiences in psychoanalysis. Selznick even hired his therapist as the technical advisor. She and Hitchcock clashed frequently, and Hitchcock brought in artist Salvador Dali “to conceive certain scenes of mental delusion,” which Selznick hated. Miklós Rózsa added the score with the spooky theremin, long before the Beach Boys used the thing.

This theater gives you that Dali nightmare feeling.

The lobby.

La Paloma Theatre - Encinitas, California

Posted by Alan at 9:25 PM PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
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Updated: Sunday, 4 June 2006 1:12 PM PDT

Friday, 2 June 2006

Not Hollywood: Encinitas on a Quiet Afternoon
Topic: Oddities

Not Hollywood: Encinitas on a Quiet Afternoon

A taste of the strangeness of Southern California, on Friday, June 2, 2006 - seen driving down the coast toward San Diego, a traffic sign you won't find in Ohio, a "Surfers Crossing" warning on the coast road, Highway 101, in Encinitas, at the Self-Realization Fellowship Ashram Center.

What? That's this -

"Paramahansa Yogananda established the Self-Realization Fellowship Ashram Center in Encinitas in 1937. Here, at the Hermitage where he lived for many years, he wrote his Autobiography of a Yogi, widely regarded today as a modern spiritual classic. The Ashram Center and nearby Temple are located on the Pacific Coast, 100 miles south of Los Angeles and 25 miles north of San Diego."

The gardens are nice. And the City of Encinitas has a nice park on the south side of the ashram, Swami Park.

Far below the gardens there are the surfers of course.

Surfers - Encinitas, California

Drive south to downtown Encinitas, and you will find the La Paloma Theatre, a Spanish Mission thing built in the twenties. It opened with the film The Cohens And Kellys in Paris - February 11, 1928, and the rumor is that Mary Pickford rode her bicycle all the way to the La Paloma from Fairbanks Ranch for the opening. And she wasn't even in the film. It seats four or five hundred, and still has the Kilgen Wonder Organ from the days of the silent films and the opening vaudeville stage act. The stage is still in use. Jerry Garcia played here. So did Eddie Vedder. They show offbeat films, and, of course, show The Rocky Picture Horror Show every Friday night.

La Paloma Theatre - Encinitas, California

Encinitas, California

Posted by Alan at 6:10 PM PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
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Updated: Friday, 2 June 2006 6:17 PM PDT

Thursday, 1 June 2006

June Opens
Topic: Color Studies

June Opens

In exile in Carlsbad, California, on the Pacific just north of San Diego. It's not Hollywood. Tomorrow, beach pictures. This is from the garden here. It's very June.

Simple Bloom, Carlsbad, California, on the Pacific just north of San Diego, Thursday, June 1, 2006

Simple Bloom, Carlsbad, California, on the Pacific just north of San Diego, Thursday, June 1, 2006

Posted by Alan at 4:28 PM PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
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Wednesday, 31 May 2006

System Failure

Offline: System Failure

Mid-afternoon on Wednesday, May 31, 2006, the computer used to create the weekly, Just Above Sunset, and this daily web log, and the daily commentary site, failed. The system is now in the shop of the people who built the whole thing, over in Westwood. If all goes well they should have everything all straightened out by June 5 or so, and the more than three years of archives and the massive collection of web photographs and master photos will still be there.

While the system is being repaired, operations have been moved from Hollywood to Carlsbad, California, on the Pacific just north of San Diego. Postings to the web logs will resume soon, but the weekly site may not publish this Sunday. It's a matter of installing some special software and that sort of thing.

Visit again in twelve hours. Some new material should be here by then.

Posted by Alan at 9:41 PM PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
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Tuesday, 30 May 2006

Mediations on the Past, in Color
Topic: Color Studies

Mediations on the Past, in Color

Color studies from the Travel Town Museum, an outdoor transportation museum on the other side of Griffith Park, beside Forest Lawn, and across the bone-dry Los Angeles River from Warner Brothers and Disney studios - the Burbank side of the park. The focus here is the history of railroad transportation in the western United States from 1880 to the 1930s. The place opened on December 14, 1952, and now has fourteen steam locomotives and twenty-six other pieces of rolling stock. The website is here, with history of how the museum came to be there here, and a list of what's on display here.

The locomotives, and more, will appear in these pages later, and in next weekend's Just Above Sunset. These are a few of the color studies. They were taken at noon, Monday, May 29, 2006, a dry hot day with harsh sun.

To the right, the side of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe caboose, number 999110, built in 1928 by American and Foundry.

Trivia: "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe" - music by Harry Warren, lyrics by Johnny Mercer - was written for the 1946 movie, The Harvey Girls and won the Academy Award that year for Best Song in a Movie. There were versions in the late forties by Mercer, Bing Crosby, the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, and Judy Garland and the Merry Macs, and now even one by Harry Connick, Jr. Add John Denver and Frank Sinatra too. You can find the lyrics here, including the French version (Jacques Plante) and the German version (Knud Schwielow). You can listen to a clip of the song from the soundtrack of The Harvey Girls here, but those days are long gone.
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Pink: Detail of Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority 1543, built in 1911 by American Car and Foundry -

Color study, Travel Town Museum, Griffith Park, Los Angeles

Western Pacific Caboose, number 754, built in 1910 by Haskell & Barker -

Color study, Travel Town Museum, Griffith Park, Los Angeles

Locomotive detail -

Color study, Travel Town Museum, Griffith Park, Los Angeles

Posted by Alan at 7:21 PM PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
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Updated: Tuesday, 30 May 2006 7:24 PM PDT

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