Stan’s Obligatory Blog

It’s been about a month since we went to see the Childless Cat Ladies Art Project in Burbank, so I thought we should go back and see if they’d added more to it. So that was the ride today, along with a plan to go through Griffith Park and see where the city closed off a stretch of Griffith Park Blvd to cars.

When we got there, we saw that there were indeed a few new pieces up on the fence, including a kitty asking not to be eaten. Heh.

There’s still about a month to go before the election, so I think we’ll have to go back one more time

43 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

46 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

A few days ago, there was an item on the local TV news about an artist in Burbank who decided to make a pop-up art project dedicated to the ‘Childless Cat Ladies’.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlZhvjMUw10

So, of course my instant thought was, “we need to go see this!” So that was the bike club ride for today.

It was a very nice day for riding. The heat wave of the last few weeks had broken, and I actually needed a little Hoover Blanket under my jersey to be warm when we started out. Nice problem to have in August.

Route map and elevation profile

On Friday, I heard that “The Daily Show” had set up another art project honoring “Heroes of the Freedomsurrection” for all the brave patriots who fought against the United States. And after displaying it in New York, they were bring it it to Los Angeles. So of course we had to go see. Heh… “Lion Ted”…

This was another “Daily Show” stunt along the lines of the “Presidential Twitter Library” they did a few years ago. And as that was, this one was pretty funny, since the actual underlying reality of it is pretty horrifying.

Today’s bike ride was a visit to USC and the Fisher Museum to see the art project in front of the museum commemorating the Hollywood Blacklist of the 1950s. We did this before, but it was several years ago. Besides, it seems that people doing un-American things is more in the news again lately for some reason…

It had been long enough since we did this ride that I had to make a few adjustments to the route, but that wasn’t a bad thing. We rode the usual route into downtown, and then south to USC. Along the way, we stopped to see the old Parker Center, which was the long-time headquarters for the Los Angeles Police. It’s slated to be torn down soon, so I wanted to see the building again before it’s gone. Besides, I still remember going to the Street Scene in downtown L.A. back in the ’80s. They had stages set up all over the Civic Center area, and I always wanted to know what rocket scientist thought it was a good idea to put the hardcore punk stage on the street in front of Parker Center. And of course, everyone was shocked – shocked, I tell you – that a riot broke out.

Riding through downtown, it was a misty sort of morning, which made for some nice sunlight reflecting off the buildings. We haven’t seen that since we did “Down for the Count” in 2009.

We stopped at USC to see the garden and the art installation there, and then continued on to Larchmont Village and bagels at Noah’s. Then we rode home through Silver Lake, and up Benton Way, which we haven’t done in a while.

44 miles.

Route map and elevation profile.

This afternoon I went to a tour of the Wende Museum in Culver City. This is a museum that preserves artifacts from the Cold War. It began as a collection of things from the former East Germany, and has broadened to collect things from all the Eastern Bloc countries. I’d gone there once before, but that was before they had a real location.

They are still in the process of setting up the museum. A good bit of the collection has not yet been catalogued. But they did have two big exhibits out today. One was about Hungary before and after the 1956 attempted revolution. The other was about hippies and the counterculture in the former Soviet Union. Apparently, hippies were a thing there, starting about 1968, and all the way through until the fall of communism.

At the end of the tour, they had a tray of snacks for us, as well as some samples of vodka to try. They had regular Smirnoff, and then a bottle of Polish potato vodka, and a bottle of Russian vodka. And on the way out, I got a photo-op with an East German Wartburg 353 car. Apparently, this was the ‘nice’ car in East Germany. A step up from the Trabant, which was apparently the only other option.

This past week, I saw a small item in the L.A. Times about an artist who has been making funny fake street signs, which are currently installed at various parks around Glendale. He has a Facebook page for the project, and I was able to contact him there, and to get a map showing where the different signs are installed. So that was our ride for today.

We rode out across Pasadena and Eagle Rock, and then into Glendale. The first one we saw was the “START” sign in Maple Park. Heading off to the next sign, we passed Mission Wine and Spirits. Funny thing is, back in 2006, that same store was called Hammered Liquor Store.

Continuing on, we came to the “BREATHE” sign at Glendale Central Park. Then we rode a little side trip to Pacific Park, and the heart-shaped “ONE WAY” sign. After that, we headed up almost to Burbank to see “RELAX” at Griffith Manor Park. We liked the placement of that one. Seeing the mountains behind it did give it a peaceful air. At least now that those mountains aren’t on fire any more…

We stopped for snacks at Paradise Bakery in Glendale. Then we started on the return leg of the trip. We took a short side trip to see the “Peace Signs” at Casa Adobe de San Rafael. Then we started up the long hill into La Crescenta. We stopped at the skate park to see the ‘SHRED” sign installed there.

Finally, we stopped off at Montrose Community Park to see “Infinte Clearance”. That one turned out to be the hardest to find, largely because that park was much larger than all the others we’d visited.

This was a very entertaining street art project. We liked seeing it, and it kind of reminded me of the time when Richard Ankrom made and installed a freeway sign as an art project in downtown Los Angeles. In the end, it was a fun ride, but as sometimes happens when I make up a completely new route to see something, this one came up a little short. But that’s all right once in a while.

35 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

A few weeks ago, we went to an event at the Museum of Broken Relationships in Hollywood. Part of the event was a brief presentation by the Atlas Obscura people about a few odd things they know about in Los Angeles. One of the slides showed a person peering into a little hole in a wall in an alley behind a building. They said it was a miniature cinema that is continuously showing a few short films made by local artists. And GPS coordinates for it were in the footer of the email reminder about the event. So that night, I looked up where it was, and it turned out to be in an alley in Chinatown. So I figured that was going to be a bike ride one day. And today was the day.

We started out across Eagle Rock and Glendale, and then down the L.A. River bike path to Elysian Park. We rode up and over the hill to get to Echo Park and Chango Coffee. And after the stop there, we went back over the hill to get to Chinatown. Then we went in to Chung King Way to get to the little alleyway where we saw the small sign for the Peephole Cinema. We took turns standing up on the little step stool to be able to peer into the hole. It’s an odd little art project.

The route home took us back by way of Huntington Drive. This is usually our route to go into downtown, but this time we were riding the other direction, which felt a little odd.

36 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

Today’s bike club ride was yet another art tour. We’ve been to Downey to see the Columbia Space Center, and also to see the Carpenters, but I recently heard about the Wall of (Un)Fame.

Every Metro Rail station has some sort of art in it. And it turns out the Green Line station in Downey is home to a piece called the Wall of (Un)Fame. The piece features something like 650 concrete panels, each with hand and footprints and names, much like the Walk of Fame at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood, but each is a random, not-famous local person who was chosen in a lottery.

So we started out going south, and we went through the part of Downey that has the oldest operating McDonald’s. Then we went a bit farther south and came do the Green Line station and the Wall of (Un)Fame. We go to see a lot of public artworks, and this one was very entertaining. It’s a funny idea, and it’s a bit of social commentary at the same time.

Leaving the Metro station, we headed back into Downey and our snack stop at 3rd Street Coffee. Then it was back up the Rio Hondo bike path to Temple City, and then home through Arcadia.

47 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

Last week, I found an article about Current: LA, which is sponsoring a set of art installations around the city, all intended to have a water theme. So today, we rode to Studio City to see one of them. And to go for gelato, too.

It was a prefect morning for riding. Cool, with the marine layer keeping the sun hidden. We rode out across Eagle Rock and Glendale to Studio City. The entrance to the park was right across the street from Universal Studios, and the actual art installation was all the way at the back of the park. Three fiberglass horses embedded in the ground. “…the horses are empty slates onto which viewers can project meaning.”

As I always say, anything can be art if you say it is and can get other people to agree that it’s art.

Leaving the park, we made a brief stop at the little park with the foundations of Campo de Cahuenga. This is a little piece of history that was unearthed during construction of the Red Line Universal subway station. Then we took some little side streets to make our way over to Tujunga Ave and the gelato place.

The route home went down the L.A. River bike path, and then up the Arroyo Seco path to take us back to Pasadena.

46 miles.

Route map and elevation profile