Imagine Trolleys on Third Street Promenade

A streetcar would whisk you up 3rd, all the way from the Starbucks at Santa Monica Place to the … Starbucks … at 7th and Montana.

EDIT: I guess this ties in with my post on Steampunk Santa Monica.

I don’t want to get bogged down in the history of “Third Street”, (a.k.a. “The Promenade”); it’s too vast and it’s well been documented to great detail. In short, one could argue that this property was Santa Monica’s original “main street” long before the first “Southern California Railroad” would arrive in Ocean Park in (1899). To be fair, there was a light public transit service along 4th and Main Streets between Pico Boulevard and Hill Street. This “south loop” was for some period known as the “Los Angeles & Santa Monica Electric Railway”. At one point, this line had been served by a horse trolley, then converted to traction motors of some kind. Poor horsies. Oh, damn it – I’ve gotten all bogged down anyway.

Below, I’ve included a section of the map of downtown Santa Monica from late (December) 1910.

In this map, you can see that the “3rd Street Line” starts at Montana and 7th. From there it heads west to 3rd Street. It then runs downhill (south-ish) on 3rd all the way to Broadway, crossing a junction with an “east-west” line on Santa Monica Boulevard. For the last two blocks it turns west to merge with the southbound flow of Los Angeles-Pacific traffic from the line down Ocean Avenue. There is an adjacent building called the “L.A.P. Depot”

This map of downtown Santa Monica has inscriptions in the lower-left corner:
“Map of Santa Monica and vicinity, Los Angeles County, Cal.”
“Compiled and copyrighted by W. W. Phelps, C. E.”
“December, 1910”

I’d like to do a series on subjects like this. I guess this line is part of what was sometimes called the “North Loop”.

Here are some subjects to cover:

  • The Santa Monica “South Loop” in Ocean Park.
  • The “Nevada Avenue” line to the Old Soldier’s Home (the West L.A. VA property).
  • The miniature railway in Venice.
  • The short-lived “Eighth Street Line” that ran down Lincoln to Pearl.

As a footnote, here are the original street names for the major west-east thoroughfares:

Wilshire Boulevard was “Nevada Avenue”

Santa Monica Boulevard was “Oregon Avenue”

Broadway was “Utah Avenue”

TL;DR

I’ve sat on this draft for years now. Time to just publish what I’ve got and finish/fix it later.

I’m Thrilled

And I’ll tell you why.

Let me explain.

On occasion I feel nostalgic for a radio station I discovered in 1988.

The music programming on KROQ (106.7 FM) in the Los Angeles area back then was, shall we say, top notch.

Personally, it was a major influence on my musical tastes. And likely some of my cultural attitudes as well. Sometimes I have to wonder if I’d ever even had any inherent taste in music at all prior to that.

I guess you could say that the radio brainwashed me.

Actual bumper sticker I got from Richard Blade, no later than 1992 (I think).

Sadly, my love affair with KROQ came to a halt a few years later. We moved to a place just outside the county line. And that FM radio signal was just a bit too weak to reach me.

Maybe it was the mighty mountains surrounding the Conejo Valley. Perhaps the peaks of the Santa Monica Mountains were too tall for the repeater atop Mount Baldy. The radio signal would sometimes get a little stronger after dark. But the frequency was always washed out when I’d get home from school. It was a nice treat when the days began to grow shorter that first winter out there.

Parenthetically, none of that mattered to my new schoolmates. Few of them had ever even heard of KROQ, let alone the bands I liked to listen to. And the few that had the slightest familiarity with “that type” of music? They were pretty much all kind of outsiders.

Even someone looking like me was subject to xenophobic attitudes. I can recall that feeling. It’s tough when most of the school has grown up together. But most people just try to blend in.

I didn’t try to stand out. But I’d be damned if I was just going to try to blend in.

All in all? It was weird.

At Buckley, around 1990, KROQ was very much a mainstream radio station. Almost to the point of being boring. My big sister listened to it. Even back when she was still a senior there. Even my mom put up with it most of the time.

Ultimately, the parent company of the radio station, sold the station to Clear Channel Communications. Infinity Broadcasting had been the steward to guide musical tastes into the twenty-first century. But they had to bail. And I don’t blame them for that.

A new style of management took the programming in a different direction at 106.7 KROQ. But, that is another story for another time.

In conclusion, I want to say something about the “Roq of the 80s” station on Audacy, please accept my heartfelt thanks for making this happen.

PS: I’m looking forward to seeing a full “Roq of the (80s and) 90s” playlist as well some day soon.

If it isn’t too much to ask, may we also have a station for Roq Bloq Weekends and Rodney on the Roq? You may as well add one for Swedish Egil as well.

Any hoo, here’s the link:

KROQ “Roq of the 80s” via Audacy (WARNING: May induce Flashback Fridays)

Here’s the link on Audacy:

https://www.audacy.com/stations/roqofthe80s?action=AUTOPLAY_FULL&actionContentId=101-349

On Apple Music:

https://embed.music.apple.com/us/station/kroq-roq-of-the-80s/ra.1461899536

I’m going to see if I can embed the stream here.

You’re welcome.

*END COMMUNICATION*

Reminds me of Bonfire of the Vanities

CNN reports:

EXCLUSIVE: Trump captured on tape talking about classified document he kept after leaving the White House

This can’t be real.

Federal prosecutors have obtained an audio recording of a summer 2021 meeting in which former President Donald Trump acknowledges he held onto a classified Pentagon document about a potential attack on Iran, multiple sources told CNN, undercutting his argument that he declassified everything.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/31/politics/trump-tape-classified-document-iran-milley

Leo on the Sunny Pod

I think we really need to get Leo on the Podcast.

Glenn certainly seems to think so.

I don’t know how we’re going to make this happen, though.

You tell me you don’t see any similarities.

Oh, and by the way: they’re all in the same age range, too.

I know it’s never going to happen. But I feel like Signore di Caprio might actually get along with Charlie Day.

I’m not talking about deep, meaningful friendship or anything. Just, let’s say, a common frame of reference.

What are your thoughts?