Down for the Count
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Today’s ride was one that I’ve been thinking about for several years. And since this is the weekend before Halloween, the time was right for a trip out to Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City to visit the grave of Bela Lugosi.
(If you want, you can cue the song by Bauhaus.)
The route out there was basically the same as when we rode to visit Moe Howard’s grave, and also when we went to the bike race at West L.A. College.
It was a nice day for riding. We headed down Huntington Drive and Mission Road into downtown L.A. Then south almost to USC before we turned on Adams for the ride out to the west side. That was where we saw the somewhat odd-looking house. It was reminiscent of the Witch’s House in Beverly Hills, and also the Viking house we saw in Tujunga.
When we got to the cemetery, I got out the map I’d downloaded and we went looking. Bela Lugosi’s grave is pretty easy to find. He’s in The Grotto, and not far away, we found Bing Crosby, too. The next stop was Barney Oldfield. He’s best remembered as the first great race-car driver, but not many people know that he was a professional bicycle racer in the 1890s.
We went over by the big crucifixion statue to fine Eadie and Elena Del Rubio. Years ago, we saw the Del Rubio Triplets in the Gay Pride Parade in West Hollywood. Today, Eadie and Elena are buried right near each other, with one more space between them, presumably for Milly when the time comes.
The last stop was to see Darby Crash from the seminal punk band, The Germs. Be sure to go read the story of the band. They had a lot of influence and really made their mark, even though they were only active for a short time.
Heading back, we went up to Venice Blvd. I got a flat. We stopped at a little French bakery in the Helms Bakery complex. The eclair there was pretty good, but we were kind of annoyed by the fact that they wouldn’t let us sit at the outside tables unless we ordered from the menu.
The rest of the ride was pretty straightforward. We took Venice all the way back into downtown, and then north on San Pedro and Alameda to get to North Main. Then back home the way we’d gone out in the morning.
It was a fairly nice ride, although the traffic on Venice was kind of heavy on the way back.
As always, I put the pictures in my Graves photo album. And yes, so far I’m quite happy with my new camera.
55 miles.
