Vacations Blog

Okay, I need to come clean a bit as I’m already getting some heat for my ‘Los Angeles for The Entitled’ posts and they’ve only been up a day or so.

Look, Los Angeles isn’t a bad place, okay? It’s just the people who make it bad – a lot like Paris.

But the city itself is cloaked in as much wonderful history as it is hauntings- old architecture, unless it gets used as an exterior for a movie, will either be forgotten, torn-down, or both.

So, being car-less, I decided to follow an old book I picked up at a used bookstore some time back, a wonderful pictorial dealing with the amazing old buildings that surround the desperate and self-conscious town.

The first location I went to visit was, much to my chagrin, directly across from MacCarthur Park, which I had once made the mistake of walking to a few years back while on a layover hoping to get involved in a pick-up basketball game – funny how walking there my biggest worry was not being picked for a team and, as I ran away, my biggest regret was being picked…or was it telling them I learned my Spanish in Spain – ‘where it’s spoken properly’?

I digress.

The Asbury immediately tells you it’s something special from the old design and the wise choice by the property owners to keep the original sign.

From the outside, you wouldn’t know how wonderful this building really is, but once you find a way to talk your way into the building, it’s amazing. The floors still hold the Alice In Wonderland black-and-white tile, while the sitting room keeps furniture that has to be worth at least a few thousand dollars.

[Note to self – mentioning that the apartment near where MS-13 holds court has a lot of expensive pieces in the ground floor might get me questioned by the authorities – my bad].

If you walk all the way to the back, you’ll see a few spots that remind you of Clint Eastwood’s ‘Flags of Our Fathers’ – it does this because, well, that’s where a few scenes were filmed. At the time of writing the wonderful old fountain wasn’t working, but should be by the time all 3 of the people who read my writings get around to it.

Now, I don’t want to give away the floor [rhymes with ‘dwelvth’], but all the way down the hall is where one William S. Burroughs once lived and probably drank enough to kill a small horse.

You’re instructed not to go out onto the old fire escapes, but if you can lean, there are some gorgeous views of downtown [should you get there on a non-smoggy day – which is never, so use Photoshop].

It’s old, it’s dirty, but it’s also wonderful – and does a lot for bringing back the good memories of Tinseltown.

All photos are from me. Click here if you like them as much as I do.