Martha Benedict of Montecito Heights captured this morning’s sunrise reflected in the clouds. She calls this photo “It Just Dawned on Me.”
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Trees fall and cops are called to Elysian Heights*
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The Chinese-American architect who broke down Silver Lake racial barriers
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PETA leaves its mark on Echo Park architecture
Montecito Heights
The City Council earlier this month declared Heritage Square, the open-air Montecito Heights museum dotted with fanciful Victorian-era homes and buildings, a city historic cultural monument. While many of the buildings visible from the 110 Freeway are landmarks in their own right, the City Council’s action designates the entire museum grounds, a narrow strip of land leased from the city, a historic landmark. The museum applied for landmark status earlier this year in part to get around building and safety codes that would have required it to construct a parking lot in the middle of museum grounds as part of a new drug store exhibit.
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Martha Benedict captured the above image of the Thanksgiving Day sunset from Montecito Heights looking south to Elysian Park. Happy holiday!
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Photo by Frank Mason/Used with permission
This week’s fog and low clouds have shrouded a mysterious new sight on a Montecito Heights hilltop: six statues of female figures painted pink. John Glueckert, who came across the statues this weekend, said he thinks they might be associated with a breast cancer awareness campaign.But he is not sure who created the statues he wrote about on a neighborhood message group:
Photo by Frank Mason
Out at the intersection of Radio Road and Thomas Street early Saturday morning emerged a rejuvenated artistic sculpture and a reminder of breast cancer awareness. Sometime Sunday the art work progressed further down Thomas although there aren’t any photos of that installation attached.
Earlier today, Glueckert, in an email to The Eastsider, said two of the statues had already been vandalized, with one thrown to the floor and the other left dangling from a pole.
Related Post:
- Pink. Above The City
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Former Highland Park bank turned drug store. Photo courtesy Charles Fisher
Photo by Martha Benedict
By Nicole Possert
In the 1920s, pharmacist George A. Simmons took over a former bank building on what is now Figueroa Street and opened a drug store that would serve the neighborhoods for decades. The drug store, now a Chase bank branch, closed long ago. But a new version of Simmons’ shop will soon rise at the Heritage Square Museum in Montecito Heights to house an exhibit dedicated to the classic drug store. For the first time in its 42-year history, Heritage Square Museum broke ground for the construction of the new building, the Colonial Drug Store, in a ceremony with board, staff, community leaders and the Simmons family who were the impetus for this project.
The new construction was necessary to accommodate a large and unique donation of the drug store interior given by the Simmons family to Heritage Square, which is home to numerous old buildings rescued from other parts of Los Angeles. The project was developed in memory of Simmons, who was a neighborhood pharmacist for more than 60 years.
“Our family and Heritage Square are honoring the memory of my grandpa George, my father Sidney, who is one of the oldest still-practicing pharmacists in California, and the importance of the neighborhood pharmacy as a vital and core community institution,” said Phil Simmons who represented the family and is the project manager.
[Read More…]
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Photo from UC Riverside
The brown widow spider, Latrodectus geometricus, is not as well known as its cousin, the black widow. But the tan and black spider – which sometimes sports a streak or spot of orange – has rapidly spread across Southern California after first being spotted in Torrance in 2003. Now, the brown widows seem to have discovered Montecito Heights, where five residents needed to be treated for spider bites within the past month, according to a story in Patch. Roy Payan, who sits on the Arroyo Seco Neighoborhood Council, reported the spider bites during this week’s meeting. Here is how one man was bitten:
Once incident involved a man who was stricken by dizziness and nausea after bitten by a brown widow that was trapped inside his sock. Payan said that doctors were only able to determine the source of the man’s symptoms after locating the crushed spider inside the man’s sock.
Some studies have shown that brown widow venom may be as toxic as that of a black widow. But a brown widow bite may not be as dangerous “because the brown widow does not have or cannot inject as much venom” as a Black Widow, according to The Center for Invasive Species Research at UC Riverside.
Have you spotted a brown widow in your sock or underneath a patio chair? UC Riverside is collecting the spider egg sacs for a research project. Click here for details.
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The Heritage Square Museum, which operates a cluster of Victorian-era buildings in Montecito Heights, has spent several years preparing to build a corner drug store exhibit on the museum grounds next to the Arroyo Seco Parkway. The Simons Colonial Drug Store would contain the entire contents – everything from cabinets and wall paneling to pill bottles and beakers - one housed in the Simmons family drug store, which operated in Los Angeles during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But after winning approval from various city agencies and groups, the drug store project came to a standstill when plans were submitted to the city’s Building & Safety department.
Planned drug store exhibit building
Under current building codes, the addition of the exhibit structure would require Heritage Square to create a parking lot with about half a dozen disabled parking spaces in the middle of the museum grounds, said Mitzi March Mogul, a museum volunteer who is working on the drug store project. The lot would have to be built even though motor vehicles are normally prohibited on the 10-acre museum grounds, where gravel paths wind their way through lawns and under trees.
“There goes any idea of a 19th century environment because suddenly you come on this parking lot,” said Mogul. Added museum Executive Director Jessica Maria Alicea-Covarrubias: “We are trying to replicate late 19th Century Los Angeles. It [the parking lot] would ruin the look, it would ruin the purpose” of Heritage Square.
As a result, Heritage Square has asked the city’s Cultural Heritage Commission to declare the entire museum grounds a historic landmark in part to avoid building the parking lot.
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With a square dance planned this Saturday at Heritage Square, The Eastsider asked members of the string band Triple Chicken Foot, which will be performing at the Montecito Heights event, for dance floor guidance. Banjo player Mike Heinle wrote up the following piece to help folks overcome square dance fright.
By Mike Heinle
For the past few years Ben, Kelly and I have devoted a lot of our time to organizing and playing for square dances in and around the Los Angeles area. Time and time again we’ve seen folks who seem apprehensive, nervous, or out of place wander into a dance not knowing what to expect. Maybe they were dragged along by a friend. Maybe they felt like trying something new. Perhaps they just ended up being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
After a few dances the results are, without fail, the same: people who were complete strangers an hour earlier now stand flush-faced, smiling broadly, talking and laughing with each other. The fact is that square dancing, like many forms of social dance, has a certain magically quality to it that catches people off guard and allows them to let go and interact with those around them in ways that we aren’t often able to. How often do you take hands with a stranger in L.A? How about seven strangers? You might be amazed by how easy it is and by the sense of connectedness and community you can feel at the end of great dance.
The following is a little run down of questions people often ask us before attending a dance, with any luck any and all worries you might have about coming out to dance will be laid to rest.
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Martha Benedict snapped the above photo of a Corvair – one of the models featured in Ralph Nader’s 1965 book on the dangers of the American automobile – with a colorful paint job (and flat tire) in Montecito Heights. “It’s great to see this gorgeous Corvair, a relic of the 1960s, tarted up with racing stripes on Montecito Drive!”
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Photo by Martha Benedict
Motorists driving near the Arroyo Seco Parkway and Avenue 52 last night were greeted by the sight of a giant, metallic dragon fly shimmering in lights. The sculpture – “Demoiselle” – is the work of an artist known as Lt. Mustardseed, who fabricates sculptures out of auto and machine parts. Lt. Mustardseed had the piece illuminated at the home of architect David Mesa as part of the Second Saturday Gallery Night. “Out of the darkness, this beautiful beaming bug greeted motorists at the south end of the parkway overpass bridge,” said Martha Benedict, who stopped by to snap the above photo. Said Benedict:
The piece had been on loan somewhere else and was not treated well. She had just finished giving it a makeover. Comparing this photo with what’s on her web site, there are have significant changes. I … don’t know if the lighting was turned on just that night or if this will be ongoing. It really is beautiful.
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