Richard and Karen Carpenter Performing Arts Center, Long Beach

All American Asphalt

Ever since All American Asphalt has been tearing up Fair Oaks Avenue in South Pasadena, several of us pointed out that the work crews didn't look very professional, and some of the work looked shoddy.  Today we bring you the reinstallation of the newspaper stands in front of Starbucks/Wells Fargo at Fair Oaks and El Centro.  It seems that one of the stands is facing the wrong way.  Yes, folks, the stand in the lower right opens out to the street, as you can see by the way we propped the door open.  Shoddy, unprofessional?  Whatever could we have been thinking?

Too bad they took away the "Sandblasting" sign before we could take a picture of it.  It looked like something a 7-year old would have done, and the writing was barely large enough to see.

Lost and Found

I found this print in a frame in South Pasadena on April 1.  If it's yours, contact me.

Earth Quakes and Tsunamis

I do a gratitude list almost every morning.  I have a hard time being thankful that my part of the world is OK when other parts of the world are not.

Cold Sunday Morning in Pasadena

Hahamongna with a Twist

What do you do when you get the day wrong for the Hahamongna Walkabout?  You watch a frisbee golf tournament.  That's what!

Here's what I learned: Frisbee golf is very sophisticated.  Like regular golf, each player has several frisbees that they use for different situations, depending on what they need to do.  There are putter frisbees and distance frisbees and frisbees that curve and frisbees that go straight and frisbees that glide.  Each player carries a bag of frisbees around, just like golfers carry bags of clubs.  These are not your regular frisbees, either.  These are all special frisbees.  Some guys were telling me that the frisbee's characteristics change as they get beaten up, and some of them get better.  It's against the rules to manually alter a frisbee, but changes that occur naturally from using it are ok.  Below is one manufacturer's chart showing all the frisbees it makes and what each one's characteristics are.

A disc golfer goes for the hole, which is that basket thing in front of the red car next to the dumpster.  The disc in mid-air is right in front of the rock behind the red station wagon.

Here's what I came to see to begin with.  Here's the info on the Hahamongna Walkabout scheduled for  February 19, 2011.  http://www.savehahamongna.org/walkabout.htm

No on 14 - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Would you want your daughter to marry a realtor?" In 1964, Proposition 14 was on the California Ballot. The purpose was to overturn the Rumford Act, which prohibited discrimination in housing. The California Realtors Association supported Proposition 14, thinking homes would be harder to sell if neighborhoods became mixed, or perhaps that property values would fall if people began to move out of neighborhoods in large numbers. Proposition 14 passed by 65%, but was later declared unconstitutional by the California Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court. This is a button from the anti-14 campaign.