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Anaheim, California
All alone at the '64 World Fair, eighty dolls yelling "small girl after all"
Prior to going to California, my mom requested that we visit the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove (designed by Philip Johnson). After getting all the way there and walking around the oddly statued campus (and avoiding most of the missionaries working there) she asked if we could stop by Disneyland, the much more popular attraction just a few miles away. Unfortunately our visit was marred by what could best be described as capacity crowds, so many people that just about everything was inaccessible and just about nothing seemed worth such waits. Still we did manage to see a few minor attractions, including the all holiday version of "It's a Small World," fifteen minutes of singing fun featuring children from all races and religions from all over the world singing about the most popular western Christian religious holiday. I guess it really is a small world after all.
Inside and outside the aforementioned Crystal Cathedral, which was just a little less crowded than Disneyland on the weekend after New Year’s.
Unlike the theme park at Universal, the studio tour at Warner Brothers takes you through an actual working studio, including stops at the backlot past buildings and rooms that feel oddly familiar in most every way. The New York Street (with removable fire hydrants and fake buildings with no upper floors) doubles as most every city and has been seen in everything from Blade Runner to Casablanca to Spiderman, while the small town that I fondly remember as Hazzard County was being prepared for shooting a current tv show not involving nearly as many flying cars and earthen ramps as it probably should (Gilmore Girls). Along the way you learn lots of cool tricks: all mirrors and windows are on pivots to avoid reflections of the crew, all of the doors are hardware free (door knobs are an easy give away for a specific time period) and the four living trees in the town square set have all their real leaves removed and replaced with fake silk leaves to represent fall and springtime. They also take you into and around soundstages, through an odd collection of cars used in films, on to parts of sets from Friends and ER (as they await those expected phone calls from the Smithsonian) and into a museum that shows enough artifacts that you're bound to be impressed by at least one of them. Highly, highly recommended.
We had taken the standard two hour VIP tour, but while there I found out they also offer an in-depth five hour version, something I'll be tempted to try the next time I'm around.
The mighty Getty museum is more than just that billion dollar Richard Meier designed complex that you always seem to be getting pictures from me of. The original Getty was located in a re-creation of a Roman Villa just off the Pacific Coast Highway at the very southern edge of Malibu, a traffic light away from where Sunset Boulevard finally makes it to the Pacific. After being closed for eight years for a painfully slow renovation, the original Getty has reopened as the Getty Villa, a place where the Getty's ancient Roman and Greek collections certainly seem happy enough in their (often) splendid isolation.
If you decide to visit the Getty Villa you'll need to prepare first. Crowds are kept at an absolute minimum and parking reservations are required at all times (in fact as you approach the complex you need to clear two security checkpoints just to make sure you belong on the property). Admission is free but parking isn't. After parking you'll need to ascend an elevator, then walk a path, then ascend an elevator, then walk a path, then head down through an amphitheatre to enter the museum. The Getty Villa's galleries are located inside the villa, a generous building with (authentic) atriums and gardens and occasional views that spill right down to the sea.
The new buildings (visitor facilities including the parking deck, paths, shop, cafe, etc) were competently designed by Machado and Silvetti, and are interesting but forgettable compared to the renovated buildings. Also with the exception of a special exhibit featuring mosaics, the art could be given the same comparison- it was certainly interesting but also nothing that different from what you would see at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. What sets the Getty Villa apart is the villa itself, its grounds, its gardens- a place special enough to make all those reservations and security checkpoints and elevator rides more than worth it in the end.
The other Getty is right where I left it, (still) basking in the sun just off the 405 as it climbs Sepulveda Pass as it (still) enjoys hilltop views from Santa Monica all the way to Century City. The only real difference is the addition of a (gasp) free overflow parking lot, two miles south of the garage and connected to the campus through mini buses that bypass the familiar funicular trains as well as bypassing any security checkpoints- good news I guess for any museum visitors carrying a backpack and/or automatic weapons.
I do not hate Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and I certainly don't hate the fact that it takes a damn good picture.
We’ll end this slideshow at as a good a spot as any, the upper levels of Hollywood and Highland.
I’m not the biggest fan of Hollywood, although I do love the Arclight Theatre and Amoeba Records. Hollywood and Highland is however one of those places that I only seem to visit if I have to, or if I’m with someone who hasn’t been there before. It’s not that it’s not nice, or the views aren’t good, or those weird elephants are awful, it’s just that there isn’t a real reason to go there, or at least there isn’t one that I found yet.
