Blog - Page 79

They're filming a movie across the street from my loft, I was watching the production drones scurrying about on the roof of the Hotel Alexandria. The yellow signs say Romco which to me sounds like a play on the infomercial master Ronco, but IMDB turns up nothing. I wonder what Celia's take is on all the action in her building, I'm sure it's nothing new to her.

I remember when I was younger, there used to be a crapload of raves at the Alexandria, and I also recall speaking to my Aunt at one point, mentioning I was heading to a rave in downtown at the Alex, and she told me about when she was young they used to party there in the splendidly decorated ballrooms which are now used solely as music video and movie backdrops.

I wrote a story about the Downtown Art Walk and posted it here on LAist. Here are the photos from the story.

Eric Richardson posted about the walk as well... he had some nice things to say about my photography (thanks) and I kept showing up at different galleries where Eric had just left. A few people whom I met on the art walk have been reading the LA From an "Auto" [part 1 : part 2] series I have been posting and Bert Green was forwarded a photo of the Edison Buliding by Eric, which he said he has always wanted to buy, but didn't know anything about the actual building, not that the photo gave much information.

So I've been playing more with google maps API and have created a page that lists all the Historical Cultural Monuments in Downtown Los Angeles and a few surrounding neighborhoods. This phase is pretty buggy and due to the raw addresses from the HCM database being nonstandard, some of the addresses are ranges. I will have to hack my code up a bit to fix the range listings... also the geocoder I am using doesn't have every address in it, so it is not very precise. The geocoding is still going so not all 600 of the locations are on the map yet, but there are still many points so be careful it may tax your system to view this page. Next I just have to integrate photos and descriptions! [If you have a slow computer try this search for "broadway"]

People seem to be enjoying what I have started here. Tonight I hope to work on some custom icons and the xml-rpc.

If you are in the Downtown area tomorrow, make sure you get out on the street and check out the Art Walk... I missed it last month when we first moved in, but this time I'm going to go to every gallery I can, plus take photos and write about it. Thanks for the reminder Eric.

I just read this post over on LA Cowboy about the engraving I posted of the Hotel Alexandria. I didn't even notice, but it is obviously not a real photo and is actually the architect's drawing... the real thing is much smaller.

Is now online over at LA Voice... check it out! The new buildings are now located on the google map. I will spend even more time tomorrow photographing buildings and this time I will shoot the parking lots where there were once buildings.

Yesterday I posted the first few pages from a book I am scanning on LAvoice.org and last night, as recommended by Mack Reed, I finished a Google Maps API mashup showing the buildings from the scans so far... check it out here.

So last night Penelope and I walked the whole 3 blocks to the Golden Gopher to meet some blogging people from the interweb. We missed the free sushi, which was proven to exist here, but we were there in time for a few stiff drinks. We met and photographed Sean Bonner, Mack Reed, Uccellina and her husband and the losanjealous crew. Uccellina's husband whose name currently escapes me just got a job in the animation department at Disney (in the magicians hat). Penelope and Uccellina talked the whole time about weddings, but I'm pretty sure she didn't feign interest!

Apple just updated Tiger to 10.4.2! Cool a bunch of bug fixes in this one.

UPDATE: Since I ran the update Safari has already crashed once and has just stopped loading pages twice.

I have begun posting a series or scanned engravings and text from Los Angeles From an "Auto", which is an old tourist guide to LA from 1906. The tours took place atop motorized electric coaches and stopped at all the Downtown Hotels. After each installment I plan to follow up with a current photo of the buildings that are mentioned. Here is the first in the series on LAvoice.org, the current photos are coming soon.