Cecilia gave me the special edition DVD of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers for my birthday and I simply couldn't resist watching it this afternoon (don't worry, Cecilia, my parents lost the remote control to their DVD player so I can't listen to the commentaries, and I won't watch the special features). I very much enjoyed the extended verion after having just read the book a few weeks ago. There were a couple of scenes that obviously didn't add to the story (particularly the scene where Saruman realizes that Aragorn is Isildur's heir. He closes his scene with words to the effect of: "It doesn't matter." Indeed it doesn't, which is why it ended up on the cutting room floor.), but for the most part it was great.

Having just seen Return of the King I was even more interested in watching Gollum's extended role again in The Two Towers. He is simply a stunning achievement. As a conflicted character and as an incredible realization, Gollum's scenes are high points in the movie(s) for me. His face is so expressive, so magical. Of course the digital creation is perfectly executed, but his lines and Andy Serkis' movements and voice-over blur the line between movie "reality" and movie "fiction." The opening of Return of the King is a particular joy to watch because it's all about the "creation" of Gollum and that directorial decision makes it clear to me that Peter Jackson knows that for all the devotees' love of the story, of Sam, of the adventure, it's actually the rendition of Gollum/Smeagol that's going to bring in the new fans. That's the selling point for the movies, in my opinion. Gollum/Smeagol is how Jackson and New Line seem to have planned to bring people to the theaters who have never read the books. As one of those "late bloomers" I certainly was drawn in to the Tolkien mythology after seeing Gollum's character in The Two Towers, and Return of the King only made a great thing better. 

I rarely go to large shopping malls. Perhaps two or three times a year I'll need to go, generally to buy clothes or to visit a certain shop located in a mall. I do visit malls during the Christmas season because I'm frequently at a loss for what to get some people on my list. Usually, my mom and dad turn out to be the hardest to buy for, and for some reason it always helps just to "go to the mall." For me, I think the wandering around bit is what helps to spark my imagination.

So this past Sunday Rhonelle and I went to the mall. And while I did successfully finish my Christmas shopping there, what struck me was how out of touch I must be with current fashions. Of course malls are excellent people-watching locations, and not being a mall rat myself I don't get to experience people-watching at the mall very often. Sunday, though, I was really struck by one overriding concept: retro. By that I mean that I was struck at how much the concept of history has developed, to the point that so many young people really do live in an era when their contemporary culture is so profoundly influenced by ideas, styles, and expressions from previous generations and decades. I know I'm beginning to sound fuddy-duddy, but this isn't a rant.

We ducked in to Macy's so Rhonelle could return something and as she took care of that I looked around. We happened to be in the "young miss" section, and I dare say there were hardly any outfits for sale that hadn't been on sale years ago. At this particular Macy's the 1970s were very much "in." Of course, the 1970s have been "in" since the late 1990s when the cliché about the seventies being a decade of terrible taste (full of browns and greens and horizontal stripes) came into vogue. And with that image of the seventies came a distinct hipness for those people born after that decade. The 1970s were the years that first defined the individual identities of many parents of 1990s young people. In other words, for kids in the late 1990s exploring what it meant to be a teenager meant looking to the styles experienced by their parents' own exploration. So in Macy's on Sunday I saw a lot of flagrant bell bottoms, ivory-buttoned shirts, and tall shoes. Interestingly, these were also mixed with the Brittany Spears extremely low-cut denim jeans on the next rack.

Even more interesting was our visits to Urban Outfitter (which isn't in the mall, but is nearby on the 3rd St. Promenade, where, incidentally we saw a Chinese man flipping bowls and other utensils onto his head by way of his feet. He closed his act by first placing a tea pot on his head [with his hands] then flipping the lid up to the pot with his feet, followed immediately by his leaning forward to pour the tea into a cup he held in his mouth via a little contraption. Most impressive!) and Hot Topic. Urban Outfitter is a semiotician's dream because of how it constantly redefines what it means by the concept of "urban." More to the point at hand, "urban" seems recently to have come to mean "retro." Not only did we see ladies hats and purses from the 1920s through the 1950s, but the entire store was filled with t-shirts from the 1970s. Of course the store carried the ubiquitous trucker hats, which appeal to a combination of appropriated social class and decade, but it was the t-shirts that most interested me. And then I remembered reading something in the L.A. Times about the gift-giving habits of celebrities, and someone mentioned retro concert t-shirts. Sure enough, Urban Outfitter had some Led Zeppelin concert t-shirts from the 1970s (don't remember which tour though). They also had newly manufactured versions of an old hand-held football game my brother and I used to play in the mid-1980s. $20. It probably cost $20 in 1985, but when you pay $20 for it in 2003 you're paying for soooo much more than just a bunch of tiny red blinky lights meant to stand for big tough football players (by the way, my brother and I owned that game. We just couldn't lose after a while). But it was the concert t-shirts that interested me the most, and I realized my brother Danny would love one of those things because 1970s retro is actually one of his styles.

So off to Hot Topic, because I know they sell music t-shirts, and I'm hoping they've got something like an early-1980s David Lee Roth-era Van Halen shirt. Unfortunately, they didn't have any Van Halen (at least not on that day), but they did have a great deal of old shirts. Obviously the shirts themselves weren't old, just the design. For instance, there was a Metallica shirt with a picture of the band from 1983, a Mötley Crüe shirt from 1983, as well as dozens of t-shirts emblazoned with logos and graphics of 1980s kids television shows. These shows, of course, were watched by the buyers of the t-shirt and this puts a slightly different spin on the concept of "retro." In the case of the kids television shows, the message of the t-shirt is "hey, did you watch XXX when you were a kid? Wasn't it rad?" Like the allure of 1980s children for the 1970s, television shows carry with them nostalgia. In combination (by wearing, say bell bottoms and a You Can't Do That On TV t-shirt) they make for an almost frightening amount of nostalgia though. So much so that the fashion component of these kids' self-image is about living in the past. The music young people buy, while not completely immune to a fetishization of the past, doesn't suffer from this nostalgia nearly so much. But the visual image of "hip" in the stores we visited is intimately connected with "past."

I am not surprised at this general concept of retro. What does surprise me is the intensity of it, and the fact that the intensity has grown exponentially in so short a time. The retro concert t-shirts is a perfect example of the "intensifying intensity" because concert t-shirts have always been over-priced gimmicks that are of poor quality and are quickly outgrown (literally, people get older and fatter and can't fit into them anymore). But with companies licensing old designs there is no longer a limit to what can be rebranded and resold. Culture companies (clothing, music, movies, etc.) are now able to go through every product they've ever created and resell it to a demographic whose idea of "now" is "yesteryear." I can't imagine what will come next, but I certainly won't be surprised. 

Jasmin visited the DMV site and sent me this: 

 

While I'm not jumping at the flowers, I do like the emphasis of "road" over "geek."

Hmm... 

Moammar sayz wassup, y'all? (thanks to Jasmin for forwarding this)



I'll think I'll use this as the new Nuthin' Special category image. Peace out. 

When my friend and UCLA colleague Durrell was in town at the end of September to defend his dissertation he was most excited by the possibility of getting a so-called vanity license plate for his truck once his PhD had been conferred. He really wanted to get "DR RUSH" (his dissertation was on the Canadian progressive hard rock band Rush). His idea got me thinking about perhaps getting a personalized plate as well. However, personalized plates are a bit like tattoos, in my opinion: not only do you really have to know what you want the thing to say but it's also something of a permanent move. Granted, you can always stop paying the annual renewal fee for the personalized plate, but the point is you're forking over some fairly serious cash for the ability to make a public statement about yourself. So, what kind of personalized plate would adequately summarize the collective experience of an individual into seven characters (plus a half space if desired)? I spent a few moments at the California DMV's personalized plate page fiddling with some possibilities. Let me know what you think. I'm sure I'll think of other ideas, and please feel free to put your own ideas for my potential plate in the comments.
 

Kinda obvious choice I suppose...


Does this look like "Road Gek" to anyone? As in "Road Gecko"? Kinda worried that it does look like that!


How about this one? I really want one more character between the R and D, but ROD read far too much like "rod" instead of "road." 

Finally, the "Protect Our Coast" background is just there...because. Any other ideas for the lettering? 

In other news, my apartment didn't get out of the low 60s until about 7 pm. It's now 70.2° according to my new SkyScan automatically updating clock. 

Just in case anyone needs this (I just needed it, and found it on someone else's blog, so I'm just spreadin' the love...), Amazon.com's customer service number: (800) 201-7575

Also, I learned something interesting: Amazon does not ship on the weekends, so if you order something Thursday night/Friday morning, it won't actually ship until Monday or so. Saturday and Sunday appear to be black holes as far as the "usually ships in 24 hours" timeline goes. Got this straight from the customer service guy who explained it as an error on their web page which crops up when you select Standard Shipping (the site said my order would ship this Saturday). 

Just used UCLA's online librarian again, and it's really cool. It's basically a web chat application and it works with Safari. Yesterday I used the LAPL's service as well. Interestingly, LAPL's service doesn't actually put you in touch with a LAPL librarian. Instead, LAPL participates in a nationwide online librarian service where librarians from all over the country "man the phones" to answer questions. For instance, I was asking about something in LAPL and was chatting with a librarian from Massachusetts. So, I was in L.A. connected to a woman from Massachusetts who was searching the catalog at LAPL. It actually felt a little weird once I realized that she probably knew about as much of the LAPL catalog system as I did, and I probably should have just used the catalog myself. I didn't trouble her too much though.

Still, I think the idea of online librarians is very cool. 

MEC forwarded this entertaining little Flash video starring Gollum and an orc. It's called "Towers are the Players." Gotta love the do-rag... 

Who knew there was a freeway down in south Los Angeles by the port? Today I drove down to see CA 47 and, after I read about its existence, CA 103. Both are down by the big Port of Los Angeles in the San Pedro area near the southern end of the 110 freeway, and this was the first time I'd been down that way. I'd always wanted to drive the southern part of the 110 but until today I never really had the chance (or burning inclination).

Basically, CA 47 begins at the Vincent Thomas Bridge, at the end of the 110, but I decided to pass up the exit for a bit and continue into San Pedro to see what it's all about. Very nice, very hilly, and there's a great overlook at the top of Gaffey street to view the port. 'Twas a bit overcast today so my view wasn't as spectacular as it might otherwise have been, but I was still impressed. Moreover, it felt kind of weird to be looking at a part of Los Angeles I'd never seen before. Driving back down the hill I took a little detour down to the water and Cabrillo Beach (check out the way cool web cam on the site!), a city park. Very cool little place right on the breakwater of the harbor.

Finally, I got back on the road to the Vincent Thomas Bridge and drove over it. It goes right by the cruise ship docks so you can get a good view of those massive ships. The bridge is quite large and it provide a great view once the weather clears up a bit. Once over the bridge there's a turn-off to CA 103, a short stretch of two-lane freeway that heads north out of the port area. However, today the northbound lane was closed when I arrived. Two CHP cars were sitting just sitting there behind the barrier and I thought perhaps it had something to do with Sept. 11. When I noticed that the southbound lanes were still open I grew even more confused. By this time I had ended up in Long Beach and headed north on the 710, and I figured I could get off the 710 and cut back on surface streets to the 103. Well, I did make it to the 103 and was able to get on the southbound 103 about a mile from its end at CA 47 (I basically went in loops all day -- I wish I had a map to show you). I then got back on the 47 toward the 710 because I really wanted to go north on 103 at least once and I thought I could maybe get on the north 103 via a street called Anaheim street (an exit on the 710 as well). Made my way off the 710 along Anaheim street toward the 103 and thought I was home free when I saw that that northbound entrance was also blocked by a CHP patrol car. Totally confused as to why the northbound 103 was closed while the southbound 103 remained open, I once again got on the southbound 103 to make the loop and try yet another entrance father north. However, at this point I saw a regular car go past me on the north 103 and I thought, "hmm. I wonder if it's open now?" Sure enough, as I came to the intersection with the 47 the CalTrans truck had just removed the road barriers and the CHP guys were gone. So at the next green light I flipped a U-turn and headed north on the 103. Yay! (and there was much rejoicing).

The 103 is rarely used (the much bigger 710 is just to the east) and it was empty today. Very nice to have a whole two-lane freeway to oneself. Interestingly, when you first get on the north 103 at the 47, the signs say "North CA 47" for about a mile, and then all of sudden, in the middle of the stretch, you see a sign "BEGIN CA 103." No intersection, nothing. The road just changes its name from CA 47 to CA 103. Imagine of the 405 suddenly changed to (oh, I don't know) 315. Wouldn't that be a good time giving directions to out-of-towners! Anyway, very strange little freeway.

Useful links:
www.aaroads.com page on CA 47/103
www.cahighways.org pages on CA 47 and CA 103  

About six weeks ago I realized that my old beige G3 All-In-One (1998) was just taking up space on my computer desk. The machine ran great and was my OS 9 lifeline for things like my scanner (not natively supported under OS X), but the odd scanning job didn't seem to justify the rather large amount of space taken up by that computer. Moreover, it had a 40GB hard drive in it, which I very much wanted in order to free up space on my other external 40 GB drive. Basically, I needed to cannibalize the G3's hard drive so my rather large MP3 collection could have its own drive and I could once again store lots of unneeded applications and documents on the open space of the old external. You following all this?

Bottom line: After saying a few words of appreciation for five years of unfailingly faithful service (I really did say some words!), I opened up the back of the G3 and ripped out its heart.

So, what to do with the empty hulk of a once proud computer? Recycle it, of course. The only problem, as I discovered, was where exactly to take it. I first loaded the machine into the car and took it over the great Santa Monica recycling station (quite literally Rhonelle's favorite place on the planet). After all when Rhonelle moved up north last year we just dropped off her very old Performa somethingorother and left. The nice man said we could. I figured the same would happen with the G3, but no dice. Instead, I had to drive onto the big scale thingy and was told it would be $.47/lb. to "dump" the computer (and some accessories) because I was not a resident of the People's Republic. Captain Math tells us that, at that rate, a 50 lb. computer would cost about $23 to recycle, and so I drove off the scale and drove back home miffed ("Those bastard commies won't take my machine? We left it the last time! Why, I'll just drive over there at 2 am and drop it off! That'll show them not to screw with well-intentioned people. Ha!") Of course, I knew that recycling electronics was no easy task because of the chemicals used in the circuit boards, among other things, but I thought enlightened government had figured out a way to eat that cost for the benefit of ecologically minded citizens. Oh well, time to look into what the CIty of Los Angeles had to offer.

[I really am getting to the mystery neighborhood, so please bear with me. Remember, it's my blog. :) ]

Later that day I discovered that Los Angeles does indeed offer a service for disposing of old electronics, but they're only open on the weekends. Fortunately there was a station in Playa Del Rey, just down the road; unfortunately I couldn't get there that weekend. In fact for various and sundry reasons, I couldn't get there until yesterday morning. But I got there at last and the computer has been properly disposed of.

Which brings me to the whole point of this entry: discovering (in the sense of Columbus "discovering" the Americas) a mystery right next to LAX.

You see, Yahoo! Maps told me to take surface streets from my apartment in Palms down to Playa Del Rey, which is right on the coast. I saw that the route went along Vista Del Mar St, which runs right up against the western edge of LAX -- it's the last road you see on the land as you whiz out to sea during take-off. I thought, cool, it will be interesting to see LAX from that vantage point and maybe a plane will fly over my head. More importantly, I wanted to see what the "bike paths" were all about. Bike paths? Yea, when you take off from LAX and look down there's this area just past the runway that, from the air, looks like a series of bike paths or walking trails. You know, for exercise and stuff.

Whoa, was I wrong. Here's what I'm talking about:
(CLICK FOR A LARGER IMAGE)
(terraserver-usa.com)

The red rectangle is the entire "bike path" area at the end of the runway. The black rectangle is coming up. Driving along Vista Del Mar St. gave me a great close-up of that area and revealed that those "bike paths" are actually roads. By that I mean they are streets! Here's a zoomed-in view of the black rectangle area above:
(CLICK FOR A LARGER IMAGE)
(terraserver-usa.com)

Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me, so I don't have any ground-level shots of these streets, but I could quite clearly tell that this whole area was once a neighborhood. The "landscaped avenue" in the above picture was clearly a nice tree-lined divided avenue back in the day. Moreover, you can still see where the houses sat -- the terraced hillsides for the lots were not cleared, just the houses themselves. It's all over-grown with weeds and things now, and the whole thing is fenced off with a tall fence topped by barbed wire (because it's part of the LAX site), so you can't just walk in and go exploring, but you can still see the streets. The land has shifted and broken up the concrete somewhat over the decades, but it's still apparent what was there.

Once I realized that the maze of paths was actually a maze of streets in a long-forgotten neighborhood I really wanted to know more about it. I guess the visibility of the streets themselves, in particular the nice divided avenue, made it all the more intriguing. After all, if the streets had been taken out along with the houses the whole thing wouldn't seem as interesting. But because the streets were left basically intact there's a much more distinct presence to the whole area. The old streets are a tantalizing reminder of what was once there, even if the LAX builders didn't necessarily intend to leave the streets as a "memorial." Who knows why they left the streets alone, probably for cost reasons and practicality concerns, but they did.

So, what was this mystery Los Angeles neighborhood all about before LAX took over the land, and what happened to the people who lived there? Were their houses demolished? Were the houses put on trucks and moved somewhere else?

So far, my Internet research has only turned up the following tidbit at the Los Angeles World Airports' (LAWA) history section:

1945
May 1 - $12,500,000 bond issue approved in a five-to-one landslide vote. This was for purchase of 1,860 acres to the west, expanding runways to 8,500 feet, and building temporary terminal facilities, now known as Cargo City. (my emphasis)

I wonder if this bond to purchase land to the west of the existing airport is the death knell for the mystery neighborhood? Also, the land itself seems to be (or was part of) the community of Playa del Rey, but their history section doesn't mention LAX. I've sent an email to the LAWA site asking to contact the "LAWA historian" indicated on their Community Relations page, so we'll see what happens. I'll certainly keep you, my faithful readers, informed...

Update 12/08/03
Just a couple of quick things as I work to figure out the story behind the mystery neighborhood next to LAX:

1. Drove back down there today and took a bunch of pictures. You look at pictures now.

2. When I saw that Sandpiper St. existed, I was hit with the idea that street maps of the area would show when the streets existed, what their names were, and when they stopped existing. So I went down to the Los Angeles Public Library and looked through a few Thomas Bros. guides. The earliest available at the library was from 1946 and, lo and behold, there was the neighborhood! I photocopied that page and will put it online soon. I didn't have time to find the exact year the neighborhood disappears from Thomas Bros maps, but I did see some aerial shots of LAX from the late 50s where the neighborhood seems to be gone. Also, there was a reference in the history of Playa Del Rey indicating that residents really started to flee the community as the airport expanded. No real timeframe given or any indication regarding the mystery neighborhood.

Update 12/09/03
Faithful reader Jasmin, using the newly implemented comments system here at PeteOfTheStreet Sayz, forwarded to me a web page reprinting a discussion of the threatened environment of the El Segundo Blue butterfly. The ESB, as the author Rudi Mattoni calls it, lives in the sand dune environment that at one time stretched from Palos Verdes in the south up to Santa Monica in the north. Increased urbanization in the twentieth century has severely affected the ESB and its habitat. Apparently, the mystery neighborhood was part of the LAX dune, the largest of the remaining dune areas.

While the page is primarily concerned with laying out the biological case for the dunes and the ESB (Mattoni is a professor of geography at UCLA), it also provides some incredibly significant historical data about the mystery neighborhood area. (Jasmin attempted to put some of this in her comments, but the comments are limited to 1000 characters) First:

"In l928 the grid of streets on the LAX dunes were constructed, but development was minimal following the l929 crash. It was not until after World War II that explosive development occurred, with virtually the entire dunes built upon between l946 and l965, where almost all the land was privately owned."

This tells us that the neighborhood was laid out in 1928, but that houses weren't much part of the area until after WW2. However, the most stunning part of the article comes later, when we get some details of why the neighborhood went away:

"A major cause of conflict arose from events attendant to the expansion of the Mines Field into the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). The major radar installation (VOR) was located on a 60 acre site purchased in 1950. Home construction on the remainder of the dunes continued unchecked until into the 1960s. With increasing air traffic necessitating construction of the north runway, safety considerations and the onset of jet age noise, residential living conditions became increasingly difficult. In a 1965 referendum, over 66% of homeowners elected to be bought out with the remaining property condemned. Between l965 and l975, 822 homes were vacated and over 2000 people relocated. The $60 million cost was 75% reimbursed by the federal government."

So, the neighborhood lasted from 1946 to 1965 before the years of removal and vacancy began. Fascinating that it should show up in an article about butterflies. Also, this kind of ties in with the statement regarding Playa Del Rey residents "fleeing" the expansion of LAX, but it gives a lot more detail. I still wonder about the streets though? Why were they left? It must have been for practical reasons. I also have many other questions as well. The article references tables and figures, but unfortunately those weren't included in the online version (perhaps for copyright reasons?) so I'll have to hunt it down at UCLA tomorrow (Melvyl tells me it's "in process for SR" -- that doesn't look good). Mattoni worked with the Los Angeles Airport people, and I'm sure that's where he got some information, as well as pictures. I'd sure like to speak to them as well.

By the way, here's the map of the neighborhood as it looked in 1946. For a wider view, check out this map, also from 1946. Both of these are courtesy of the 1946 Thomas Guide. Interestingly, you can see that what I called "a landscaped avenue" was actually called Grand Pre Blvd. Neat, eh?

Update 12/10/03
Jasmin found the following reference to the mystery neighborhood (she mentioned it in a comment):
"1 Park at the top of Sandpiper St. (Playa del Rey) at the western departure end of LAX, and watch the fuel- and flesh-laden 747's lumber into the sky. Wonder if they'll make it? Sneak into the Blue Butterfly dunes, and observe the absurd suburb that was curbed before it could blurb." (original page)

Obviously this guy is to cool to bother with the real truth. The "absurd suburb" was not "curbed" in the way he's thinking. It was not removed to protect the ESB, as his statement implies. As we now know, the residents gave up their neighborhood in the onslaught of the LAX expansion. Silly little man. To hip to do research I guess...

UPDATE (11:45 pm): I went to UCLA this afternoon to look at Professor Mattoni's book on the ESB in order to see the photos he used. Unfortunately the book had been transfered to microfiche so the quality of the photos was really poor. Also, there was only one that might have showed the houses (from the 1950s). Alas, I suppose I really will have to visit LAWA to get a look at the real thing. I'm sure they've got lots of photos from the 1960s in preparation for the buyout. Or at least the city of Los Angeles might. I think I need to hire a research assistant. Any takers???