La Brea Tar Pits and Museum

On July 7, 2017January 26, 2020 By StevenIn Domestic Travel2 Comments

On the Saturday of our LA trip, Amelie and I headed from downtown Los Angeles over to La Brea, because we wanted to see the Tar Pits. This was one of the few places in our plans that public transportation wouldn’t easily reach, but a Lyft got us there easily. On the way in, we passed this amazing looking coffee shop- we never got the chance to check it out, but I researched it when I got back, and here’s what I learned:

This is Johnie’s Coffee Shop. It’s usually vacant, but it was named a historical landmark in November of 2013 by the LA City Council because it’s a perfect example of Googie style architecture from the 1950s. The current decorations are because the place served as a Bernie Sanders campaign headquarters for much of the 2016 election, and the Bernie themed decor was simply left in place. (I’m happy to see this, by the way, because I really dig Googie styled stuff.)

When we arrived at La Brea, our Lyft driver didn’t really know where the best place to drop us off was, so we wound up on the Los Angeles County Museum of Art side.

LACMA wasn’t our intended destination, but that didn’t stop us from goofing off near “Urban Light,” the lightpole column installation at the front.

A short walk past the LACMA doors got us to one of the entrances of the Tar Pits. The La Brea Tar Pits are a large open-air park with many different dig sites and individual pits visible. You can actually walk around much of the park without paying an admission fee- the fee is just for the indoor portions of the museum.

The structure in the previous photograph is the building surrounding the very first and oldest tarpit dig site. It has been reset to show what a typical pit might contain, and there are four or five distinct species of critter represented in the pile at the center.

Some of the pits are active sites, where they are setting up a grid to track where each fossil comes from. In this photo, there are about six species visible, with a tiny colored flag on each one. If you click to expand this photo, you can see a few of them.

Most of the pits at La Brea are fenced off and look more or less like a tarry swamp. In a labeling error that amuses me terribly, the black gooey substance in the La Brea tar pits isn’t actually tar- it’s natural asphalt.

Here’s a fun fact that I learned from Wikipedia: Since la brea can be translated from Spanish as the tar, the modern name “the La Brea Tar Pits” literally means “the the tar tar pits.”

In other news, I cannot resist hugging giant fiberglass sloths.

One of the most interesting things about the tar pits is that you can watch the tar bubbling up from beneath. It’s a constant process. In this photo, a bubble just came up and separated the tar into that round patch you see in the bottom third of the frame. There’s still tar underneath the bubble, though. I can see why so many animals got stuck in what would mostly look like a regular watering hole.

A recreation in the largest tar pit lake of a family of mammoth saying goodbye to one another. It’s historically fascinating, but it’s also really terribly sad.

After a walk through the park on a fairly hot day, we were both happy to see the museum portion of La Brea, because air conditioning.

The paleontologists inside are doing finely detailed work, sifting for bones and micro-fossils. During this part of the day, I could not stop myself from humming the Indiana Jones theme music, even though these are paleontologists, not archaeologists.

Zed’s Left Tusk is my new favorite name for my hypothetical 70s funk band.

A favorite interaction from the visit to La Brea was overheard as we were approaching this display of Dire Wolf skulls from the tar pits. A Game of Thrones fan, talking to her friend, was heard saying, “I didn’t know Dire Wolves were real!”

I’m pretty sure that this skeleton is what comes to mind when most people think of La Brea.

This guy is the giant sloth again. They look dangerous from the skeleton, but they were herbivorous and mostly wanted to have some food and a nap.

There’s a display in the museum with metal rods dipped in asphalt from the tar pits, to demonstrate how viscous the stuff really is.

It is not at all easy to move the rods up or down. Scary stuff.

Have you ever been to the La Brea Tar Pits?

Los Angeles 2: Electric Boogaloo

On July 5, 2017January 26, 2020 By StevenIn Domestic Travel1 Comment

While my first Los Angeles post was about Saturday night, most of what I’m including in this post took place on Friday. We had arrived on Thursday night, and after a bit of sleep, we were ready to go see Los Angeles like proper tourists.

This awesome little Starbucks had just opened next to the hotel, and after briefly caffeinating, we were ready to go see the city. (We sat on that deck once or twice, later in the weekend. It’s really very nice.)

We started out a little before lunch, and Amelie’s friend Wendy met us at the metro station closest to the hotel. We had a short list of things we wanted to see, so we set out on foot. Halfway to our first destination, I realized that we were in front of the Webhosting company I’ve been using since about 2003. Hi, Dreamhost!

We also walked right past The Bradbury Building, a lovely old built in 1893.

If this looks familiar to you, it’s probably because it’s used often in television, movies, literature, and even comics. The Bradbury is where Sebastian’s apartment was located in Blade Runner, and there’s a Blade Runner sign posted near the stairwell detailing the movie’s production at the Bradbury Building.

Later in the day, we went to City Hall to take advantage of the free observation deck on the 27th floor. I wish we had known that the night before this, they were shining the Bat Signal on City Hall in memory of the recently departed Adam West. I would have liked to have seen that. Our visit was mid-afternoon on Friday, so no Bat Signal.

Across the street from City Hall is a signpost showing all of the sister cities of Los Angeles.

Once we went inside the Main Street entrance to City Hall, we went through metal detectors and checked in with the security desk. First we took an express elevator to the 22nd floor, followed by another elevator to go up to 26. On our way up, we saw the Mayor’s office, which in no way tempted us to knock.

After the elevator to floor 26,there’s one flight of stairs up to the observation level. Inside, there’s a lectern set up, which leads to mugging for the camera, of course. The first two are Amelie and her friend Wendy, and the third is me doing my best Shatner. I’m not sure why podiums make me go full-Shat, but there it is.

Once we were done playing with the lectern, we went out to the observation part of the observation deck. While City Hall isn’t the tallest building in LA, the observation deck goes all the way around the building for 360 degree views of Los Angeles. You can even see all the wonderful LA traffic!

City Hall is just a block or two away from the Los Angeles Times, which gave us a pretty great view of that building.

This is the Walt Disney Concert Hall, a Frank Gehry building with a pretty interesting face.

Union Station is the main train station for Los Angeles. We walked through it when we first reached LA the night before, and it’s a very pretty station. It’s also much larger than I realized- the red roof here is all part of the station, along with the many tracks behind it.

Here’s part of the Los Angeles skyline, as seen from City Hall.

The Hollywood sign and Griffith Park observatory are both visible from City Hall, but it was kind of hazy so this was the best shot I got on Friday.

I took a few dozen photos from the observation deck, but mostly it just looks like rambling cityscape. Here’s a nice picture of tall LA buildings from sidewalk level.

During our walk on Friday, we also walked right past the Angel’s Flight funicular. It was originally opened in 1901 about a block away, and was moved to its current location in the mid-1990s. It’s been closed since 2013, but is currently being restored with some safety enhancements and should re-open later this year. I’m sad it wasn’t open- I love a good funicular.

This next picture was not taken on the same day- this was a different part of our visit, where we were at a Hollywood metro station which was closer to the Griffith Observatory. There’s a Dash bus line which runs between this metro station and the Observatory on a regular schedule. You can actually see the very top of the Dash bus in the bottom edge of this photo. Not pictured: A tiny Rocketeer taking off from the Observatory to fight a Nazi zeppelin.

You can always tell where you are in LA by the decorations in the Metro. Not sure you’re in the station closest to the Griffith Observatory? Just look for starfields in the station’s rafters.

The last picture in this post is not related to anything else in the photo- it’s just a Korean restaurant where we had dinner on Sunday night. We all thought the name of the place was pretty entertaining. The food was delicious, if a bit zippy for my tastes. I had Kimchi pancakes, and tried Soju, a clear Korean liquor that was similar to vodka. Tasty stuff.

Have you been to Los Angeles City Hall?

Bob’s Burgers Live, and the Los Angeles Intro.

On June 29, 2017July 18, 2020 By StevenIn Domestic Travel2 Comments

Up until the middle of this month, I’d never set foot in Los Angeles, not counting layovers. When I found out a few months back that Bob’s Burgers was doing a live show, I could not resist. I bought tickets right away. The first night sold out and they added a second night, but we didn’t need to go twice even though I’m sure it was just as awesome on the second night.

The show was on Saturday evening. We flew in Thursday night and out Monday morning, so that gave us a full three days to explore sunny California. We covered Hollywood, Long Beach, and various points in between. I took 810 photographs in three days, and distilled them down to 121 for the blog. 102 of the photos were from the Walk of Fame, but those stars are really all kind of the same, so I’m only going to post one of ’em. There were 118 photos at Madame Tussaud’s, because that place is just fun, but that’ll be one whole post with about seventeen selected pictures. Nobody needs to see every photo I take.

I’m not going to put all 121 of the finally chosen photos in one post though, that’s just nuts. I’ll break it up a bit. This is the first of many California posts. I’m gonna start with the show that initiated our trip to California, Bob’s Burgers Live at the Orpheum Theatre in downtown Los Angeles.

The Orpheum is a lovely old theater 2000 seat theater. It was originally opened February 15, 1926, and was reuilt in 1989. It has a “Mighty Wurlitzer” pipe organ installed, one of the last three pipe organs in Southern California venues. I wish I’d heard it while we were there. I bet that thing sounds cool. I also just learned that Taylor Swift filmed her video for “Mean” at the Orpheum. Neat!

We were there for Bob’s Burgers, and that’s what we saw! Each of the primary cast members is a comedian on their own, so the first half of the show was a series of comedy routines from the cast members. The second half of the show was where it got really good though- they did music from the show, along with Matt Berninger and the National. (Bonus! Now I’ve seen the National in concert!)

All of the primary cast members were present for this gig. The next picture is Eugene Mirman (Gene), Kristen Schaal (Louise), and Dan Mintz (Tina) singing “The Fart Song!”

Eugene did Gene’s masterpiece, “The Snake Song.” I’m so happy they did this one. In the left part of the photo, you can see the giant puppet snake that wound its way through the theater during this song.

Here’s the short version of The Snake Song, for your enjoyment:

On this next photo, sisters Louise (Kristen Schaal) and Tina (Dan Mintz) sang “Bad Girls.” I love the keyboardist from the National to their left. He was having a great time for the entire night.

Near the end of the show, there was a giant puppet Tina and a giant puppet for “Electric Love.” Alas, no Kevin Kline or Megan Mulally were present to do their parts. That would have been quite nifty!

This was the finale, though, with the entire cast on stage. From left to right: H. Jon Benjamin (Bob Belcher) in the yellow and blue shirt to the left, Larry Murphy (Teddy) in the suit, Dan Mintz (Tina), Eugene Mirman (Gene), Kristen Schaal (Louise), John Roberts (Linda Belcher) in the white t-shirt, and Matt Berninger from the National in the red suit. Not visible in the photo, but sitting in with the National, was Loren Bouchard, the creator of the show.

The merchandise line at this show was run by a bunch of people who severely underestimated demand for their wares, and it took a long time to get out of the theater. By the time we left, I had a new t-shirt or two, and Amelie had some official Louise ears. Success!

Who’s your favorite Bob’s Burgers character?

Lost Photo Post: Vaduz, Liechtenstein

On November 18, 2016January 26, 2020 By StevenIn International Travel - Europe1 Comment

It is once again time to add to my series of photo posts where I took a bunch of photographs, intending to make a blog post out of them, and then never got around to actually writing the post.

On April 24th of this year, I joined two colleagues from our German office for a car ride from Regensburg Germany to Zurich Switzerland to attend some meetings. The gentlemen in the car with me were kind enough to allow me to persuade them to detour very slightly, around lunch-time, into my 28th country visited: Liechtenstein.

The Principality of Liechtenstein is a tiny landlocked country that sits between Austria on the northeast and Switzerland on the southwest. The entire country is roughly 62 square miles in size, with an estimated population of about 37,000 people. That’s one-eleventh the population of Miami, Florida!

The fact that Vaduz wasn’t a very lengthy detour helped me to persuade my colleagues. Also beneficial to my request for a detour is the fact that both of them are fond of a good restaurant. We set out to Vaduz to dine. The choice was between Vaduz and neighboring Schaan, and I pushed for Vaduz. The food at Restaurant Adler was just ok, but the decorations were fascinating.

I preferred Vaduz to Schaan because Vaduz is the capital city. In this case, the city is less than seven square miles in size, with a population of a little more than 5,000 people.

Liechtenstein is a very wealthy city, and while walking through the city center, we saw several banks, a Superdry store, and this Botero sculpture:

Lest you think it was all ritz and culture, there was also this giant Weber grill.

Liechtenstein is also a constitutional monarchy, and the most prominent landmark in Vaduz is Vaduz Castle, home of the current reigning prince. The castle is sitting on a steep hill overlooking Vaduz, and you can see it from just about anywhere in the city.

Here’s a slightly more zoomed photo of Vaduz Castle, taken after lunch and just before we continued our drive into Switzerland.

Have you ever been to Liechtenstein?

Editor’s Note: I’m attempting to blog every day in November with CheerPeppers. I don’t expect to succeed because life be crazy, but any blogging in excess of my previous post-free month is a win, right?

Photo Tuesday: Leaving Tokyo

On November 1, 2016November 19, 2016 By StevenIn International Travel - Japan

I wrote a whole slew of posts detailing the things that I saw (and ate) during the five weeks I spent in and around Tokyo last year. I’ve posted dozens of photographs from that trip on this blog, but I don’t think I ever got around to posting this one.

This is one of my favorite photographs from my time in Japan. It was taken from the high speed train ride back to the airport. I took dozens of pictures out of the train window, but at this particular moment, we were passing through a busy street near Tokyo Katsushika. There is so much happening in this photograph, from bike riders patiently waiting for the train to pass so that they can cross the street, to the people going in and out of shops down the street. Plus: a Kirin vending machine!

Every time I look at this photograph, I see some new detail that I hadn’t noticed previously. What do you see when you look?