Mapping 21 of the Best Places to Watch the Fourth of July Fireworks in Los Angeles in 2015
The Fourth of July is this weekend and the locals in your neighborhood have probably been putting on quite the show for days (or weeks) leading up to the big day. But if you want to celebrate with something a little more professional/legal on Independence Day, you have a tough choice to make: pay to face the crowds at an official show or try to find an off-the-beaten-path spot that affords a cheaper view of those same firework shows? To help make the decision easier, we've mapped this list of 21 spots where you'll find great fireworks views—both at official shows and secondary vantage points scattered across the city. Enjoy!
Church of Scientology Wants to Put Up Another Giant Glowing Sign in Los Feliz
Scientology has put up so many giant glowing signs in East Hollywood and Los Feliz and they are not done yet. They've been working on installing an illuminated version of their logo "on an existing 15-story-tall antenna" at the historic former KCET studios on Sunset Boulevard, which they bought back in 2011, reports the Los Feliz Ledger. (The site is now used to produce media for the church.) Mega-architecture firm Gensler designed the sign, "a metal emblem and a 'halo' ring of LED lighting." The LA Department of Building & Safety and the Planning Department have already signed off on the sign, but suggested the public weigh in a bit more. According to the LFL, the public is not super psyched on the sign; the neighborhood council voted to deny its application (the vote is just advisory, though). A Gensler rep says they'll be making some changes.
Perfect 1907 Murder Mystery Victorian For Sale in Venice
You could have a hell of a murder mystery in this stately mansion in Venice. The Victorian, just a block from the Boardwalk, was built back in 1907 and comes with two bedrooms, two and three-quarter bathrooms, a copper-ceilinged kitchen, front yard, back patio, a garage with an "in-ground car turntable so you never have to back out of your driveway" (!!), and "a secret bonus room hidden behind a built-in bookcase" (!!!!). The butler is definitely going to hide the murder weapon in that secret room before he escapes via the garage where he doesn't even have to take the time to back out. The perfect crime! Asking price is $1.699 million.
Watch Huell Howser Narrate His Pool Demolition in This Amazing Home Movie
This pool demolition out in Twentynine Palms was AMAZING and amazingly for us, one of California's greatest broadcasters was there to document it (because it was his house). Earlier this week, we found out that Huell Howser's "dream home" in the desert has been remodeled just a little and put up for rent for vacations or events. Huell fell in love with the house and bought it in the late nineties, then undertook an extensive restoration/update. Buried on the listing site is this seven-minute home video narrated in his charming-as-ever twang.
10 Cold War-Era US Embassies That Did Modernism Right
The US Interests Section in Havana, originally designed by Harrison & Abramovitz, will regain its embassy status thanks to a recent move to reestablish diplomatic relations with Cuba. Photo by Terry Feuerborn / Creative Commons
Hailed as a huge diplomatic step forward, President Obama's announcement that the United States will reopen its embassy in Havana stands as one more concrete sign that relations between the two countries will be restored. A symbol of US might in a closed Communist country, the building's curious history mirrors the two nations' relationship. "Closed" by Eisenhower in 1961 and demoted to a US Interests Section, the Modernist tower designed by Harrison & Abramovitz, the architects behind the UN Headquarters, has been the site of political gamesmanship. Embassies have always provided a potent way to project US power, especially during the Cold War. Whereas in previous decades, the State Department had purchased existing buildings in foreign capitals, by the '50s, diplomats felt it was in our interest to commission a series of Modernist buildings that presented America as forward-thinking and idealistic. On the occasion of the Fourth of July, here are some of our favorite examples.
LA County Coroner's Office Thinking About Shutting Down Its Whimsical Gift Shop
2000 photo of Skeletons in the Closet via Getty Images
In a city with a history full of famous and infamous deaths, the gift shop at the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner's Office is one of the weirdest, most Los Angeles-y hidden gems in Los Angeles, and it's also kind of tasteless. Skeletons in the Closet opened in 1993 "as a joke," according to the LA Daily News, and today sells chalk outline beach towels, toy crime scene kits, body/garment bags, and all kinds of other LA County Coroner gear in a space off the lobby in the building where people come to identify their loved ones' bodies. (There's only one other coroner's gift shop in the country, in Clark County, NV, where tackiness is the biggest industry.) So the Coroner's office is thinking about changing it up, shutting it down, or at least moving it somewhere where it'll be less tasteless.
Nosy Hollywood Hills Neighbors Horrified to Spy Sex and Drinking at Weird Airbnb
Some enterprising asshole has set up an empty lot in the middle of the rich Lake Hollywood neighborhood as a "camping retreat" Airbnb and the neighbors, having spied on the place, are very upset. "People buck naked, people doing sex out in open. Drinking … Our own backyard, it's scary. Scared to come out," one "resident and father" tells NBC4. Not literally his own backyard. Someone else's backyard, but still. Drinking. In view of mansions. With families in some of them.
Mapping 14 Imperiled Modern Buildings Being Rescued by the Getty Foundation
It hasn't been an easy year for Twentieth Century architecture. The world bid adieu to Tokyo's Hotel Okura, mourned the loss of Paul Rudolph's Orange County Government Center, and said a tearful farewell to Josep LluÃs Sert's Martin Luther King Jr. School. And that doesn't even begin to account for those buildings perishing under the weight of abandonment, neglect, and water damage. So who is going to come to the defense of our many embattled mid-century structures? The Getty Foundation's Keeping It Modern program, of course. According to a recently released announcement pledging over $1.75 million to the conservation of imperiled landmarks, everything from Charles Rennie Mackintosh's Hill House to Walter Gropius's residence can breath a sigh of relief, at least for this year.
Bask in the Enormous Glass Walls and Inviting Blue Pool of This 1962 Modern in Trousdale
Some of the updates in this 1962 Mid-Century Mod by Robert Skinnerare way too trendy, but those bones are intact and yes, they are so fine. Imagine having the $12.5 million required to sit by that double-sided fireplace in winter and gaze out those two-story glass walls in the living room, or—more pressingly—to take a dip in that pool and emerge to cocktails brought by the maid to that sunken pool deck. Ok, stop imagining or you'll get all money crazed and become completely unbearable. The house and its nearly-one-acre spread sit at the end of a cul-de-sac in Beverly Hills's Trousdale Estates; they come with five bedrooms, six bathrooms, dining room, "office loft," and mature trees.
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Los Angeles Working on Plan to Cover City in Digital Billboards
People in Los Angeles love digital billboards!! We can't get enough of them! Give us more!!! Oh, thank god, the LA City Council is ON IT. Lawsuits have tragically darkened so many of those blinky, flashy ads, but yesterday the City Council's Planning and Land Use Management Committee voted to bring them back big time. They want to create about two dozen sign districts spread throughout the city where ad companies could go nuts with the digital billboards, and then also make it possible for digital billboards to go up anywhere in the city through a special permitting process, "giving sign companies more options for placement," as the LA Daily News puts it.
What $2,100 Can Rent You in Los Angeles Right Now
Welcome to Curbed Comparisons, where we explore what you can rent or buy for a certain dollar amount in various LA 'hoods. Is one man's studio another man's townhouse? Let's find out! Our friends at Zumper have helped us out with five listings within $100 of today's price: $2,100.
↑ Take a trip back to Ye Olde Colonial Times, but only for a minute. The exterior of this Hollywood building is old-timey, but inside, it's shiny and newish. The wood floors and decorative fireplace are the oldest looking things in the two-bedroom apartment; the kitchen has a tiled backsplash and fridge (a fridge!!) that look pretty new. The 900-square-foot unit is an upper-level, corner unit, and appears to get some solid light, except in the walk-in closets in each bedroom. One parking spot and on-site laundry are part of the deal. Rent is $2,195.
Mapped: The 17 Cleanest Beaches on the Los Angeles Coast
This summer is shaping up (predictably) to be a scorcher, and an escape to the beach is probably going to be in order several times over the coming months, starting with this holiday weekend. Even though the terrible drought has helped make SoCal beaches a little cleaneroverall this year (less rain equals less polluted runoff), we have only the highest beach standards.
Here we've mapped the 17 cleanest beaches in Los Angeles—they've all scored at least two As and no lower than a B in the three categories on Heal the Bay's 2015 beach report card, so there's no need to hold back (or send in the dogs): jump right in!
Economists: Bel Air and Surroundings Are the Second Most Desirable Neighborhood in the US
The Brentwood/Bel Air/Beverly Crest area in the hills on the Westside of Los Angeles is the second most desirable place in the country, according to a new study by economists David Albouy and Bert Lue, published in the Journal of Urban Economics. They looked at about 2,000 of the US Census's Public Use Microdata Areas (which in cities are essentially neighborhoods) and analyzed the real take-home pay of residents in those areas to see "how much of that pay people are willing to sacrifice to live in the best neighborhoods and to access the best possible services and amenities," as Richard Florida explains at CityLab. So rather than calculating quality of life based on a bunch of amenities selected by the researcher, they calculated it based on its intrinsic desirability, as measured by how much of their incomes people will put toward living there.
Remembering Donald Wexler, the Inventor of Palm Springs Modernism
Architect Donald Wexler (left) with a client.
Although Donald Wexler was raised and educated in Minneapolis, he probably wouldn't want you to know that. It was at the behest of bon vivant socialite William Cody that Wexler begrudgingly decamped to the Coachella Valley for a six-month assignment building the Tamarisk Country Club. And before long he was smitten. In his eyes, the long, inhospitable stretches of California's desert were an irresistible challenge. His architecture—low-hanging eaves, folded-steel roofs, experiments in prefabrication—emerged from the desert nonchalantly and organically. Before his death last Friday, June 26, at the age of 89, Wexler was amused by his idolization. He was astonished when real estate advertorials bandied about "Wexler-like" as an adjective, refusing to brag when his ad hoc architectural innovations became a de rigueur building style, and, whenever possible, attributed his success to others.
Griffith Park Now Has an Illicit Teahouse With Amazing Views
Visit, reflect, loiter. Just north of Dante's View. pic.twitter.com/QSxnwOhLIL
— GriffithParkTeaHouse (@GParkTeaHouse) June 30, 2015
At dawn yesterday morning, a small group of anonymous artists and their friends quietly celebrated the opening the Griffith Park Teahouse, a tiny wood structure high on Mt. Bell made with the wood of trees that burned in the 2007 Griffith Park Fire. The artists "surreptitiously installed" the 80-square-foot structure on Monday night, carrying prefabricated pieces in and bolting them to an existing concrete foundation (probably from an old utility shack), Carolina Miranda reports at the LA Times. The spot "offers breathtaking views of the Verdugos and the San Gabriels, not to mention the 5 Freeway."
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