Leering Icons
Topic: Insider Stuff
On Hollywood Boulevard, between Christmas and New Years, the characters are acting up. This fellow from Sesame Street just isn't paying attention to the right thing. 
The Imperial Storm Trooper and Darth Vadar like the lovely young thing. And she enjoys the attention.
After Christmas
Topic: Historic Hollywood
Hollywood and Highland - with all the major stores and the Kodak Theater for the Oscars, and restaurants, from California Pizza Kitchen to the vaguely French Vert run by Wolfgang Puck's brother from Chicago - is the commercial heart of Hollywood. Yes, that's the only kind of heart Hollywood has, of course. The day after Christmas the block was filled with Midwestern tourists, from the Chinese Theater on the west to the seedy bars on the east, to Disney's El Capitan Theater across the street. The Christmas stuff is was all over, although Christmas was all over. The sky was growing quite dark - rain on the way. 
Their Christmas tree and their signature elephant (the complex was designed to look like the sets from D. W. Griffith's Intolerance, a 1916 epic filmed up the coast in Oxnard) -
Tigger
Where to go to get over Tigger -
Christmas Break
Topic: Botanical Studies
There will be no posting here until Tuesday - it's off down the coast for the big family Christmas. Here's a bit of a botanical Christmas tree, from this page in the new issue of Just Above Sunset. 
Out of the Darkness
Topic: Botanical Studies
Christmas roses at the curb, Camden Drive, Beverly Hills - late afternoon, 22 December. 
Christmas Windows
Topic: Seasonal
Christmas displays in department store windows are pretty much a thing of the past. Large department stores may soon be a thing of the past - only the carefully clever will survive the malls and discounters and outlet centers - but that's another matter. Large cities still have the Christmas window displays, for now. Out here they're a little odd. These are the Christmas windows at the big three on Wilshire Boulevard in central Beverly Hills - Sax's, Barney's and Neiman-Marcus.
Neiman-Marcus 
Barney's does Andy Warhol
Sax's Fifth Avenue
