Mt. Wilson Observatory, founded in 1904 by the Carnegie Institution of Washington (CIW) with astronomer George Ellery Hale, sits atop the 5,715-foot summit of Mount Wilson in the San Gabriel Mountains. Since the 1980s, when it decided to restrict deep-sky astronomy research to its Las Campañas Observatory in Chile, CIW now partners with the Mt. [...]
5.4 miles round-trip; moderate Alternate: Eaton Canyon Falls Trails Enter Eaton Canyon through the Pinecrest gate, walk down into the canyon and head up the clearly visible dirt road. Head up to Henninger Flats, site of the L.A. County Experimental Forestry Nursery. The nursery produces tree seedlings (Monterey pine, cedar, Sequoia, knobcone pine) to reforest [...]
The former garage for the Gamble House is jam-packed with enough Arts & Crafts–related books, art and gifts to make an aficionado tremble with joy: limited-edition sets of drawings of Greene & Greene houses; gorgeous books on the Gamble House, the Greene brothers, the Arts & Craft movement, architecture, design and local history; greeting cards; [...]
This has been Pasadena’s blue-blood philanthropic organization since its founding in 1926—but it ain’t your mother’s Junior League. While today’s group still has plenty of country-club gals as members, it also has working women, and Junior Leaguers are increasingly diverse. Famed for its superb cookbooks (like the classic California Heritage), this group also raises money [...]
Writers both famous and undeservedly little-known have lived in, or passed through, Pasadena and her sister towns, and we’ve collected some of their bot mots about these towns. Recently we posted Part 1; here’s Part 2. Tiny ramshackle houses gave way to stores, and then again to houses, albeit nicer, as they crossed into Alhambra, and nicer [...]
We are upstairs at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena, and the folding chairs are filling fast. Somebody has thoughtfully placed a cooler of cheap beer toward the back of the space, and the hospitality is gratefully received by the crowd gathered to hear several experts discuss the work of the late Los Angeles poet and novelist Charles Bukowski.
The event is billed “An Evening with Bukowski’s Friends,” and the night’s speakers have been chosen by the author’s widow, Linda Lee Bukowski. The woman at the podium, though, does not look like the usual Bukowski connoisseur.
The taqueria is taken to a new level here—true, you order at the counter, but you can have a superb margarita (a mere $4) while you wait, the setting is upscale, the tortillas are handmade on-site, and the food is better than at its fancier parent restaurant, the Pasadena El Cholo. It’s a panaderia, so [...]
Hardcover Fiction Sentry, Robert Crais Clara and Mr Tiffany, Susan Vreeland While Mortals Sleep, Kurt Vonnegut Swamplandia, Karen Russell Border Lords, T. Jefferson Parker Sherlockian, Graham Moore Object of Beauty, Steve Martin Fatal Error, J A Jance Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, Aimee Bender The Help, Kathryn Stockett Hardcover Non-Fiction How I Killed Pluto and [...]
How lucky am I? Yesterday afternoon I walked a fraction of a block to the grand opening of the Flintridge Bookstore & Coffeehouse. Just when I had given up hope that anything would be built on the site of the long-abandoned service station at the top of the street, Peter and Lenora Wannier purchased the property and fought hard to fulfill their dream of creating a first-class independent bookstore.
Writers both famous and undeservedly little-known have lived in, or passed through, Pasadena and her sister towns, and we’ve collected some of their bot mots about these towns. Here’s Part 1 of our favorites; stay tuned for Part 2 soon. Now I was truly in “God’s country”—the real Southern California which is peerless…. Next day, [...]
