“I fix problems,” Collins was recorded saying to an undercover agent, court records show. “I make a lot of things go away.” via L.A. County sheriff’s deputy is charged with selling drugs and offering to hire other cops to protect dealers – LA Times
Photos of the 1983 El Niño beach erosion in Venice Beach, California. Photos show the lifeguards’ “HQ” building featured in the television show Bay Watch.… Read More Venice ’83
Searching the USC digital archives for photos of Venice, I found this in the collection called “Robin Dunitz Slides of Los Angeles Murals, 1925-2002.” It’s a great view from in front of what’s now Menotti’s Cafe on Windward. Based on the striped column, it looks like there was once a barber shop there. What’s now Collage Cafe once… Read More Painted columns along a sidewalk, Venice, Calif., ca. 1973
I just found this astonishing panorama and had to share it. You can find the photo on the website for the Huntington Library’s digital archive project. The subject of the photo is the beach next to the Lick Pier that once straddled the southern border of Santa Monica. The detail captured is quite remarkable. I downloaded… Read More The End of the Boardwalk, 1929
You have to love this. I found this while browsing USC’s digital archives. I can’t believe how empty it all looks. I guess maybe it wasn’t until the space race that LA stopped being such a sleepy beach town. Source: Aerial view of the control tower administration building at the new jet age terminal at Los… Read More LAX, September 1961
Another great print scanned by the USC Digital Library. This one shows the intersection of Westminster Avenue at Abbot Kinney. The perspective is looking to the southeast, in the southerly direction of traffic.… Read More Abbot Kinney at Westminster During Prohibition
So, there’s this little park in Santa Monica. It’s right near the Volkswagen dealership on Santa Monica Boulevard near 26th Street. Anyway, the park is on a street named Park Drive. So the park is named, “Park Drive Park.” There’s this riddle I liked as a kid: “Why do people drive on a parkway and park… Read More The Sunset Cutoff of the Red Car Trolley
As I’ve mentioned before, one can spend quite a bit of time lost in the digitized photography archives hosted by the digital library at the University of Southern California. It’s the single best resource I’ve found for large- and medium- format Los Angeles photography. Wherever possible, I try to look for ways to group photographs together. I… Read More Venice Beach, 1940
They should have named it “Orson” or “Touch of Evil” maybe. RIM really phoned it in on this one. Source: BlackBerry’s Android-powered Venice phone surfaces in the wild
Don’t call it that. This is systematic corruption involving dozens of police officers and prosecutors that went on for well over two decades. At a minimum, there should be mass firings of cops and disbarments of prosecutors, past and present. A system that still retained some integrity would also have the worst offenders in handcuffs. via… Read More The jaw-dropping police/prosecutor scandal in Orange County, Calif. – The Washington Post
