Funny soap box racers tear down a hilly street in Elysian Park

After the wild ride down the hill, the handmade race cars were parked nearby. Children, especially little boys, loved getting into the battered racers.

Red Bull has sponsored 19 soap box races around the world in recent years, but this was the first in Los Angeles I think.

In addition to the requirement that all the vehicles in the amateur category be handmade, each ‘racing team’ had to perform a dance at the starting line and they were judged on the quality of the performance. For those of us at the finish line, the silly and hilarious dances were shown on a huge jumbotron.

I have no idea why a tall, skinny white guy brought a Will Smith head to a soap box derby. Hmmm. Maybe he was part of one of the racing teams?  Maybe a dancer?

After the brief performances came the timed runs down the narrow winding street where almost every one of the handmade racers suffered damage. Pieces of the cars fell off along the way or the race car driver ran into the straw bale barriers lining the route or crashed into the bales at the finish line.  Fastest time was under one minute.

Okay.  Here is some of what I saw.

This “mule team’ racer didn’t get up enough speed to make it all the way down the hill. It stalled at one flat curve and got human assistance to continue its run. I like the design even if it wasn’t a speedy one.

Two of the handmade race cars parked on the sidelines after each finished its run.  The rocket ship racer was damaged at the end when it crashed in the hay bales.

Even a ‘big boy’ got a kick out of sitting in the pizza racer after the event.  His girlfriend was taking a picture of him.

Cameras at the start line and along the way allowed viewers at the finish line to see the start-line dances and wobbly runs downhill.

Thousands of people lined the narrow street in Elysian Park to watch the races.  The ‘official’ record of the finish came from the cameraman stationed at the end, behind the hay bales.

 

There was free parking for the event at Dodger Stadium and a dozen shuttle buses took the thousands of people over the hill to the event. Red Bull Mini-Coopers had the best parking spots.

 

 

Yes, you can visit the Bradbury building where ‘Blade Runner’ was filmed

Marble stairs and black ironwork plus the golden color bricks are throughout the Bradbury building.

Last evening I saw ‘Blade Runner’ on TV and, once again, realized how the Bradbury Bldg. in downtown Los Angeles was almost a character in that movie.  In real life the building is very interesting architecturally, but not quite like the one portrayed in the film.

The Bradbury Building in Los Angeles. No huge pillars out front.

There are no huge columns on the front. No ornate obstacles at the roof for Roy Batty and Decker to climb over.

Visitors can come into the building, which is filled with offices, but only on the first floor.

The cage elevator original to the building still is operated by the building’s security guard. Only tenants can go upstairs.

In Blade Runner, ads shown through this skylight as Decker climbed the stairs to Sebastian’s home.

Visitors can come to the ground floor and many do to take photos.

Ironwork on a railing in the Bradbury building in downtown Los Angeles.

In the back hallway is this statue of Charlie Chaplin.

Art along Big Bang Theory Way in Pasadena

‘Better As a Color’ was the name of this work by Asli Tusavu. The artwork is made of colored straws  which were blowing in the breeze that whistled along Big Bang Theory Way.

Yes! There really is an alley called ‘Big Bang Theory’ in Pasadena and on Saturday it was filled with temporary art installations as part of a promotion called “Bold Pas” for Old Town Pasadena.

Close up you can see that this piece was created with colorful plastic straws

Or, more accurately, the art work was installed as an attempt to get more people into the retail stores in Old Town which has seen the same sag in traffic as retail stores, large and small, across the nation.

The art was mostly whimsical which I really enjoy. The world is very serious now so light-hearted art was perfect for a very very hot Saturday afternoon.

So here is some of what I saw:

The light reflecting through the colored water in cut glass bowls was almost magical to see! This installation was called Crystal Lucida by Sarah Umles.

Here it is. The street sign for the Big Bang Theory Way in Pasadena. This is the only outdoor dining area along this alley, but along Mercantile Alley and many other old alleyways in Old Town there are dozens of restaurants. My next post is going to be about the alleyways and hidden courtyards in Old Town.

Rounding a corner onto Big Bang Theory Way I came across these ladders which once were used for the orange harvest. Pasadena was founded by a group of Indiana farmers back in the 1870s to be a city of churches and orange groves. The city shortly became a tourist destination.  This installation was entitled ‘Displacement of Working Objects’ by Viviana Palacio.

This installation by Anali Gharakhani was entitled “Blister” and certainly looked a lot like woven chairs. Passersby thought so too because they sat right down in them.

Andrew Hem moved into the shade in Mercantile Alley where he worked on his paintings as part of the Bold Pas event.

The little girl was puzzled by these two “pets” in the installation by Lo Yan Leung called “Walking the Pets”.  After looking at these animals for a while she cautiously reached out and  petted the hair.

 

New Artwork at Union Station in Los Angeles

This appears to me to be a representation of a parade…maybe.  It is one of many new art works lining the passage to the trains in Union Station, Los Angeles.

Yesterday (Saturday July 15) the annual Train Festival was held at Union Station.  When I arrived about 15 minutes before the Festival was scheduled to open, the lines were huge!  Easily over 300 people plus their children were lined up for the train tours.  Another 100 lined up to see the model trains.  And those lines were growing longer by the minute.

I decided to forego the Train Festival and took photos of the artwork newly installed in the triptych light boxes that line the passage between the station and the trains.

This artwork reminds me of the Serbian cemetary in East Los Angeles. But it may be an Armenian one.

A man stopped to admire the artwork. Sadly, most people rushed right on by.

 

Suburban life, possibly in the 1970s. An image of how Los Angeles really was back then.

Palm trees lining a road to the mountains. It’s an image of how I perceived L.A. before I moved here.

The Yoko Ono Wish Tree garden in Pasadena

Two Crape myrtles stand on either side of the main path. They’ve been designated as ‘wish trees’

Inspired by Yoko Ono, a ‘wish tree’ garden is in the heart of the beautiful Arlington Garden in Pasadena. Two Crape Myrtle trees in full mid-summer bloom are ladened with wishes from people of all ages.  Seeing the wishes I was reminded of the wishes tucked in gravestones in Europe.  I was told it was an Italian custom.

Here are some of the wishes.

I hope her Daddy returns safely, too.

Funny!

A wish for happiness, peace and improved health for an aunt. That is definitely a universal wish!

Was this wish placed here by someone philosophic?

“I wish for a socialist government’ Maybe this writer is a Bernie Sanders supporter.

One of only a very few political wishes. Most are personal and about family.

Another view of Arlington Gardens where Crape myrtle trees line the pathways. There are Adirondack chairs tucked away in shady spots all over the garden. The Arlington Garden is open to everyone. No entry fee. 

South Pasadena’s Fourth of July parade

The South Pasadena annual July 4th parade is called the ‘Festival of Balloons’ and this year the theme was something about honoring Route 66 which ran right through South Pas.

All the pancakes and sausages youi can eat plus melon.

The morning began with that All-American classic: the pancake breakfast at the local firehouse.

And while it was definitely a small town event, there wasn’t even a queen or a princess or a Statue of Liberty riding on a float, although I saw one ‘Uncle Sam’ walking by.

Stars and stripes shoes. Stars and stripes hat and shirt. She was in the spirit of the day!

 

 

Instead it was dozens upon dozens of Boy and Girl Scout troops and a lot of politicians riding in antique cars.  Only one mounted  group of riders were in the parade.  From the nearby Arroyo Seco stables, they brought up the end.

Here is some of what I saw.

‘Uncle Sam’ didn’t seem to be marching in the parade. Maybe he was part of the entertainment at Garfield Park where the parade ended.

The South Pasadena High School marching band in their official Festival of Balloons t-shirt uniforms.

This group was celebrating the defeat of the 710 tunnel project. After decades of local opposition Cal Trans finally gave up on digging a tunnel under South Pasadena and Pasadena to extend the 710 freeway to the 210.

There is a poster contest every year in conjunction with the parade theme. This year’s winners rode in a classic surfers’ Woody.

A float! I’m not sure what group sponsored it.

 

We all got a sneak peek of the Rose Parade float for 2018 on the side of this truck.

DUDES stands for Dads Uniting Dads for Education and Service. They danced in front of the reviewing stand.

Riders from the Arroyo Seco Stables came next to last in the parade. Fire engines were last.

 

The epitome of Americana. A South Pasdena bungalow with a flag on the front porch.

The Armenian genocide memorial in Glendale under cloudy skies

I’ve heard it said that there are more people who call themselves “Armenians” in Glendale, than in the country of Armenia.  While that is actually not accurate (Armenia’s population is 3 million. Glendale about 200,000) it is true that people of Armenian ancestry are a dominant force in the city.

In honor of those who died in the Armenian genocide in 1915, a memorial has been erected in the Central Paseo Park in Glendale. Here are a few photos of it.

Faces of survivors. I was particularly struck by the old woman’s face in the middle.

The faces of people who survived the genocide and told of what happened. The man walking on the right side of the memorial, paced around it for the entire time I spent taking photos. He gives a sense of the scale of these art works.

The photo of lost ancestors during happier times in an Armenian town in Turkey.