Pink Trashy Walls
Topic: Color Studies
A few color studies -
Location:
Trashy Lingerie
402 North La Cienega Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90048
This is at the intersection of Oakwood, a few books south of Melrose Avenue, and a block north of Beverly Center, the big vertical shopping center where you actually have to pay to park. It's next to the Coronet Theater - now on the main stage, a play called "tick… tick… BOOM!" Make of that what you will.
Late afternoon, Tuesday, August 15, 2006 - the colors are accurate, mostly -
Across the street the walls are red.
Adventures in Backlighting
Topic: Light and Shadow
Adventures in Backlighting
Architecture: Fine Living in Hollywood's Golden Age
Topic: Insider Stuff
Architecture: Fine Living in Hollywood's Golden Age
The establishment alternative paper out here, the LA Weekly, lists it as an LA Classic, and it is the classic Hollywood apartment building from the golden age, and none the worse for wear.
It's the El Mirador Apartments at 1302-1310 North Sweetzer Avenue, West Hollywood. The El Mirador was named for its awesome views of the Los Angeles basin - designed by S. Charles Lee in 1929 for the California Builders of Homes. Lee was a theater designer - Glendale's Alex, Inglewood's Academy, Westwood's Bruin - and this is very theatrical. It's seven stories in a mix of Spanish Colonial Revival and Churrigueresque styles - not bad for a guy who was born and raised in Chicago and graduated from the Armour Institute of Technology. He arrived in Los Angeles in 1922 at the age of twenty-two to open his architectural business out here, and it seems he really got into the Hollywood Glamour thing. He also did the thirties makeover of the Max Factor building in the center of Hollywood.
The El Mirador is an amazing and perhaps rather silly building, but mid-afternoon, Sunday, August 13, the sky was amazingly blue and the lighting right, and the camera was in the car, and there was a parking space open on the street. So here are some details. A full array of shots will be posted this coming Sunday in the weekly Just Above Sunset.
Serenity
Topic: Color Studies
Fairfax Walls
Topic: Color Studies
The Fairfax District is an area of neighborhoods in central Los Angeles - and Fairfax Avenue between Melrose and Beverly is sometimes called Kosher Canyon or "The Bagel District." It's the center of Los Angeles' Jewish community - Kosher delis, restaurants, butcher's and baker's shops, fish markets and that sort of thing. There are lots of signs in Hebrew, of course. Recently arrived Jewish immigrants from Israel and Russia have made the place almost cosmopolitan, although the Russians, Ukrainians and Belarus folks actually settled further north on Fairfax, where it crosses Santa Monica Boulevard, which oddly enough is historic Route 66 from the "get your kicks" song. The signs up that way are in Cyrillic. That's not in the song.
The center of the district on Fairfax Avenue south of Melrose is now a mix of some very seedy stuff, and the trendy. There will be a full photographic tour of the neighborhood in this Sunday's Just Above Sunset, but here are three of the odder façades you will see there, and a reminder. They are, really, color studies. 
