Just back from Los Angeles and vicinity Sunday night.
Among other things, we went to a Los Angeles Angels-St. Louis Cardinals baseball game, the Laguna Beach Festival of Arts and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
What a great area, Los Angeles. It’s got the mountains, the sea and beaches, the professional sports, the weather and the unheard hum of ceaseless energy. The only bad part, at least from a visitor’s standpoint, is the one- to two-hour commute to just about any special destination. But when you’re on vacation, it’s hard to get real worked up about traffic delays.
Oh…I forgot to mention the Los Angeles Times, which, despite the Tribune Co.’s trip through bankruptcy, remains an outstanding paper.
Speaking of the Times, I noticed an interesting Kansas City connection that turned up on the front page of the Sunday paper.
One of three bylines on the lead story, about the San Francisco airport crash that killed two people, was that of one Laura J. Nelson. Laura is one of two daughters of Michael “O.J.” Nelson, a former assistant managing editor at The Star, and Christie Cater, another former Star employee. (O.J. and I were roommates in the 1970s, before he married Christie and I married Patty.)
Laura, a 2012 graduate of Southern Cal, is the Times’ transportation writer. She’s off to a flying start in journalism, as is her sister, Libby A. Nelson, who covers federal policy for an online publication called Inside Higher Ed. Libby graduated from Northwestern University in 2009. Both are Shawnee Mission East graduates.
It’s a credit to these young ladies’ dedication to journalism — as well as that of their parents — that they are already finding success in a field that has not offered young people a very promising career for about the last decade.
Congratulations to Laura and Libby and to O.J. and Christie.
…And now, if you will look over at the SMART Board, you’ll see some scenes from the Laguna Beach Festival of Arts, an annual event that runs from late June through August. The highlight of the festival is the Pageant of the Masters, where real people, all volunteers, pose to fill the roles of their counterparts in original works of art.
Looking back up Laguna Canyon Road, near Laguna Beach.
The Laguna Beach Festival of Arts is at three separate venues, including this one, which has sawdust for ground cover.
A sampling at one of scores of booths.
A big seller?
A chance conversation led to the discovery that at least one former Kansas Citian was on the grounds. That’s Wes Fielder and his girlfriend, Kim Whiting, of Del Mar, CA. Wes’s father founded the Smaks hamburger chain.
Attitude
A world-famous photographer and his able assistant
For festival goers’ listening pleasure, it’s a hard-driving instrumental band called The Eliminators.
Natives
Arrested…the photographer’s eye, that is.
Quick getaway
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Fitz,
I love California – especially Monterey – but I been through a couple light earthquakes
We have tornadoes, but often we can see the twisters. The ‘quakes are often just felt. In fact my niece told me of a light one they had last week.
Just like other serious parts of Mother Nature, they are hard to explain. When one begins, you do not know what to expect. And there is a second set of plates under downtown Los Angles that the experts fear.
But we have the New Madrid fault line nearby, so what are you going to do?
It is cool that Laura, OJ and Christie have another generation of journalists on the “left coast.”
I like the pictures so much, I almost forgot how much I hated living in LA.
So those are really good pictures.
I clearly remember you saying you loathed LA, Chuck, and I was wondering how my glowing report would go over with you. Of course, it’s probably a lot different living there. We were lucky that we missed much of the traffic because of the holiday week, but I know it would drive me crazy. I much prefer the 20-minute, smooth-flowing trip to Kauffman Stadium than the long haul from Arcadia, east of Pasadena, to Angels Stadium in Anaheim…
“We’ll go down ‘the 605’ and then catch ‘the 5’ to Orange County,” as the Arcadians would say.
…When did you live there, what city and for how long?
I lived in Redondo Beach in the Esplanade Apts for a year in 1999 (ca). The weather was great, the people were all from somewhere else and the traffic was brutal, just brutal.
I remember being at a dead stop on the 405 by the Getty Museum by a 70MPH sign for 20 minutes one day.
The place felt disjointed, contrived and faded to me. I did meet Rick James on Venice Beach, he was a lot taller than he looked on TV. I remember because I had met Telly Savalas (Been to LA many times.) and some other famous people by accident and they all looked so much smaller in person. The ocean is colder than you think. I used to ride north past that water treatment center with the Whales on it to Marina Del Ray on my bike every other day and I went to the gym right there in Redondo. The bars were ok, the beer was cold, I still hated it. Couldn’t wait to get back to KC and get “Flown Over”.
The place was phony and pretentious and I am way too conservative to like Hollywood that much.
:)
Glad you had fun, I liked the pictures!
By the way, I didn’t like Rick James either.
We “flew by” (luckily) the Getty Museum. I’ve been to LA enough times now that I’m starting to know the highways by number. I glimpsed some phoniness and pretentiousness, but the packaging was fantastic.
Ah Fitz, welcome back, your pictures brought a warm smile to my face. Glad you enjoyed your trip. Hope you enjoyed the Reagan Library. Every time I think of my visit there, sitting in the final exhibit that shows the video from the funeral I well up with tears. Got to get back their soon.
If only I could hop in my car and get a Smakieburger and sign up for the Chiefs Wolfpack club it would indeed be the grandest of days for me.
As I’ve said many times, Venice Beach is one of my favorite spots in the US. It combines the best and worst of who we are as Americans and humans. A constant reminder of what we’ve done right, wrong and where we need to improve. In the city proper you will find some of the finest dining in SoCal that runs the range from reasonable to “are you f#cking kidding me”.
California is proof that there is a God, and unfortunately, Satan too.
The Reagan Library is outstanding, just as you said, Smartman. It really captures Reagan’s spirit of individualism and the greatness of America, which, of course, go hand in hand.
We didn’t get to Venice Beach, but we’ve been there before, and I agree, again, that it’s one of the most singular places in the country.
One of the places where we ate was the Napa Valley Grill on Wilshire Boulevard. A nephew of our hosts is an aspiring actor, who also works as a waiter at the grill. A lot of beautiful people were there, and I kept waiting for Jack (Nicholson, of course) to round a corner.
I wish I would have gone to the Reagan Library.
I discovered a long time ago that when dining in LA there are no ugly people. Best of luck to your friends’ nephew! Hopefully he will transition to perspiring actor.
Thanks for the pictures, Jim. That’s about as close to the City of Angels as I’ll ever get. Dad looked up a couple of ex-Star people at the LA Times when he and Mom went out there in the early ’80s, but she found little from her youth that was still recognizable. Smaks – now that brings back some memories! We had a Smaks less than a mile from my parents’ place in Olathe and you could get like six hamburgers for a buck in those days. I’d take Smaks over McDonald’s any day of the week.
Good to hear from you, Rick…I hope things are going well for you over in Leavenworth.
Chuck — More photos, including six from the Reagan Library, are coming at 12:01 a.m.