Cafe Society

It's probably better known for freeways and fast food, but LA has pockets of street society. Los Feliz is touted as 'walkable'.

Early on a Sunday morning, sidewalk seating awaits customers...

Moved

We've moved to Los Feliz, the center of Los Angeles' film industry in the Silent Era. A typical street:

Charlie Chaplin lived about 2 o'clock in the direction this photograph faces several streets away, next door to Cecil B. DeMille. Walt Disney first drew Mickey Mouse in his uncle and aunt's house down the hill to the left and a bit over, in what is now a photocopy shop.

Realtors describe this area as 'New York walkable'. You can encounter sidewalk cafes, cinemas and theaters on an evening stroll. But I always think of Los Angeles as a series of villages dotted around the place and this is 1920s LA, conceived before cars took over. To the east (10 o'clock in this photograph) is Little Armenia and Thai Town. No wonder John Adams described Los Angeles as one of the most ethnically-diverse cities in the world.   

But we seem to have left behind the intense Hispanic-ness of the San Fernando Valley, the bilingual signage (if you don't take the bus and train). As a tribute to the Valley, I'll finish this blog with a photographic sequence. America's Religious Right considers Los Angeles "Sodom and Gomorrah". But I noticed a lot of Catholicism over there.

In the Valley, you could almost become an expert in images of Our Lady of Guadalupe

The patron saint of Mexico is everywhere

Even on supermarket shelves

 

Los Feliz

As an Australian in Los Angeles, I actually feel as if I'm only over the other side of the drink. Admittedly that's got a lot to do with the gum trees everywhere. But I also love the fact that Los Angeles is a similar age to Sydney. The Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles was founded in 1781, in the decade which saw the First Fleet sail into Sydney Harbour.

And a lot of the Spanish land grants date around the same time as land was being granted to soldiers of the Crown in New South Wales. Part of Newtown in Sydney's inner west, the area lying south of King Street, was granted to the Superintendent of Convicts, Nicholas Devine, by Governor Phillip in 1794 and 1799. Part of the area lying to the north of King Street, was granted in 1806 to Governor William Bligh (yes, the Bligh of Mutiny on the Bounty fame), who named it Camperdown and passed it to his daughter and son-in-law on his return to England in 1810. This marker at Montrose commemorates the Rancho San Rafael, the first of California's Spanish land grants made to Don Jose Maria Verdugo in 1784.

The rancho covered what is, these days, Glendale, Eagle Rock,La Cañada, Montrose and Verdugo City. From the south one of its boundaries went north along the east bank of the Los Angeles River and wrapped around the western side of Griffith Park. On the southern side of Griffith Park is Los Feliz, which was once a Spanish land concession made out to Cpl Jose Vicente Feliz in 1795 (See? Similar period). I've even seen a street directory which showed the borders of these old ranches.

I enjoy Los Feliz. It's one of those areas in Los Angeles that is described as 'walkable'.

You come out of the Metro Underground at Vermont and Sunset and, looking up Vermont, get a good sense of where you are in relation to the rest of the city.

Looking up Vermont Ave, the Hollywood sign in the west and Griffith Park with its observatory to the right

Los Feliz has bookshops, restaurants, street life...

and in the distance, glimpses of Frank Lloyd Wright houses

Or at least buildings in the style of Frank Lloyd Wright, because the museum up here, in Barnsdall Park, is in keeping with the actual house, Hollyhock, further back on the hill

But this house, up in the hills, is the actual Wright, Ennis House, known by some as 'the Bladerunner house'