Pages Tagged “SoCal”
Blog Posts
- Far Snows
We actually got quite a bit of rain (for Southern California, anyway) in December, and the mountains have stayed cold enough that the snow has stuck around for a few weeks! Here’s a view of the San Gabriels in mid-December, after a big storm. And here’s a comparable view a week into January. Nowhere near […]
- Bar and Grille
The outside of the former Great Maple restaurant at Del Amo Fashion Center. It opened with the new upscale wing of the mall, and closed suddenly about a year later. (Like, people showed up to work and the door was locked.) Nothing’s moved in since then, and of course nothing’s likely to move in for […]
- Spring! Sundogs! Silhouettes!
For once it wasn’t the ocean view, but the *sky* that was the most impressive sight from Del Cerro Park up in the Palos Verdes hills.
- After the Crunch: Rubble and…Ewoks?
I’ve been watching the Century/Aviation bridge demolition with some interest. The southern rise is down to a single wall, with some interesting graffiti.
- Aftermath: Century Crunch
The intersection looks oddly open, and brighter. The most interesting thing is the tunnel-like remnant of the southern ramp leading up to the old bridge.
- Slated for Destruction
Next weekend, construction crews will tear out this old railroad bridge across Century Blvd near LAX to make way for a Metro station on the future Crenshaw Line. They’ve dubbed the road closure the Century Crunch. As of Thursday, they were already breaking down the parts of the bridge that don’t cross the street. I […]
- San Gabriel Snow and Clouds
Photos: Clouds drift past the snowy San Gabriel Mountains, the peaks lit by the morning sun.
- Elf Storage
ELF STORAGE, originally uploaded by conradh. A decade ago, Katie saw a self storage place with the first S missing from the sign. She didn’t get a picture, and has been looking for another sign with the same failing ever since. Last summer we spotted a sign with the S broken. It turns out that […]
- Magenta Sunset
Watched the sun set, its disc tinged almost magenta by the smoke plume from the Morris fire near Azusa stretching along the horizon.
- Lost Food: Panda Panda
Panda Panda was a steam table Chinese restaurant in Lake Forest around 2000, until it was replaced by Panda Express, then bulldozed for a new Panda Express.
- Catalina Island Inversion
The south end of Santa Catalina Island as viewed from Newport Beach this morning around 9am. The winds have cleared out a lot of the haze that would normally obscure the island, and I had a great view of its entire length. Interestingly, while the sky seemed clearer at 8am than at 9am, by which […]
- Green Lots & Venus
Walking to lunch. Vacant lots are actually green! Spotted Venus at 1 in the afternoon! Thanks, Sky Map app!
- Saddleback Snow – Two Days Later
Photos of the unusually heavy 2008 snowfall in the Santa Ana Mountains as seen from Irvine, California.
- Woodbridge Snow View
Saddleback and the Santa Ana Mountains got an amazing amount of snow yesterday, and I went out to a couple of spots this morning to take photos.
- Misty Mountains: Another San Gabriel Snow Panorama
Last January when I caught a view of the entire range of the San Gabriel Mountains absolutely covered in snow, I figured it was a once-in-a-lifetime sight. Sure, they get snow every year, but they usually don’t get that much snow. Amazingly, I got to see something similar again today. In a way, even better, […]
- Seeing LA From Irvine?
It’s an amazingly clear day morning today. So clear that I suspect I saw part of the outline of Catalina Island off in the distance, between trees and buildings, on the drive to work. So clear that I decided to drive up to the park at Quail Hill in Irvine where I once spotted what […]
- Smoke Plume Above Trees
Smoke from various fires up near Los Angeles and Corona, creeping across the sky into Orange County.
- Fall in SoCal
Fall in Southern California = checking the weather report daily to decide between shorts or a heavy jacket.
- OC D&D
Something like 10 years ago, Katie saw a self-storage place in which the opening S was unlit, making it read, “Elf Storage.” She’s been looking for another one ever since, and we finally caught one in Newport Beach a few months ago. This one was even better, because the S had actually fallen off. Of […]
- Knowing too much
Finally watched A Scanner Darkly this weekend. Better than I expected. One sequence pulled me out of the film, though, and only because I live in Orange County. In the middle of the film, several characters start a road trip to San Diego. They start on the 5 freeway in Anaheim and drive south until […]
- Quake and Con
Here’s a scary thought: Imagine Comic Con, with the San Diego Convention Center jammed with people from out of town, jolted by an earthquake.
- Starbucks Overreaching
A couple of years ago, Starbucks bought all 30 or so company-owned Diedrich Coffee stores. There were a couple of franchise locations left (well, kiosks, really) in Orange County, and one of the Texas stores, but that was it. Most of them were converted or shut down, with only two keeping the Diedrich name and […]
- Golden to Green
Back in October, shortly before the Santiago Fire, I went sightseeing in the Tustin Foothills and snapped a picture of Peters Canyon, the hills behind it, and Saddleback in the background. A month later, I took a picture of the same view after the fire and posted the two as a before and after comparison. […]
- San Gabriel Snow Panorama
We went to The District on Saturday afternoon to catch Cloverfield and check out the Auld Dubliner. I took the Warner exit to go in the back way, and noticed someone standing out on the shoulder of the ramp, taking photos. I looked out past the wide expanse of empty fields and was astonished to […]
- Green and Brown
While driving to work this morning, I looked off to the left and saw this beautiful view of fluffy white clouds hugging the mountains, and bright sunlight on the patchy green hills.* When I got into work, I went straight for the corner conference room that has a view in that direction… but the clouds […]
- Saddleback Snow: Don’t Blink
There was a little snow on Mt. Saddleback on Sunday, but not much worth mentioning. Sometime early Tuesday morning, though, a freak storm seems to have hit the mountain… and only the mountain. We certainly didn’t get any rain down here in the flatlands. At 8:20, the mountains were still shrouded in clouds: By 9:00, […]
- Yes, Snow!
After the last few days of rain, today was clear and windy. I finally dragged myself out to a vantage point where I could see something of the mountains… just at sunset. This is looking northeast toward the San Gabriel Mountains from the edge of a vacant lot on the former MCAS Tustin. (You can […]
- Snow!
Okay, so it’s ~40 miles away (and likely to stay that far, barring a freak storm or new ice age), and it’s not much (compare this April 2006 view)…and I half-suspect it’s all melted by now (this photo was taken Monday morning, and it looked lighter by Tuesday), but still… Say, all those places that […]
- Before and After
On a clear day in early October, I went driving up into the Tustin Foothills to see what I could see. I took a bunch of photos at a turnout, and also stopped at an intersection that gave me a nice view of Peters Canyon, the hills behind it, and Saddleback in the background. I […]
- Ashen Mountains
Things are starting to get back to normal, at least for those of us not directly affected by the Santiago Fire. There was a layer of haze coating the mountains Monday morning, but the air smelled normal, and the sky, when the clouds broke up, was blue. My co-worker who stayed behind in Silverado came […]
- Clouds Replace Smoke
The change in the weather has brought in clouds today (Saturday), and even the occasional sprinkle of rain. It apparently helped slow the Santiago Fire considerably. I went into work this morning to deal with some network problems (you may have noticed that this site was down for a while), then went over to the […]
- Shift
Winds have shifted northward. The good news: my workplace is no longer drenched in smoke from the Santiago Fire. I can see blue sky and wispy clouds, terrain back to the nearby hills, and the twin peaks of Saddleback rising above the smoke. Reportedly the northern peak (the one without all the radio transmission towers) […]
- A Breath of Fresh Air. Please.
The Santiago Fire has moved up into the mountains, raging through the Cleveland National Forest. The canyons are still under evacuation, but out here in the Saddleback Valley, it just looks like a really smoggy day. With yellower-than normal sunlight. It was actually cold this morning, for the first time in well over a week. […]
- Fire by Night
With the winds dying down, the smoke from the Santiago Fire clung loosely to the mountains most of the day. Unfortunately, smoke from the new fires down on Camp Pendleton drifted up the coast to take its place, bringing back the yellowish sunlight. Also, without the wind to clear them away, ashes left a thorough […]
- Smoky Sky
Had a chance to run through all my Santiago Fire photos from the last few days with Katie and my parents, and they picked out a few favorites that I hadn’t already posted. This first one was Monday morning around 10:30, as I drove into the region covered by the smoke plume. Just a few […]
- Watching the Santiago Fire
Now that the wind and smoke have shifted, watching the progress of the fire has become a nervous office pastime. It’s far enough not to threaten us here, but from the windows along one side of the building, we can see the blackened hills through the haze. And we’ve got people who live in the […]
- More Fire
The wind shifted during the day, and by mid-afternoon the sky near where I work was considerably clearer—even though the fire seemed to be getting closer. Some geography: The Santa Ana Mountains run parallel to the coast, and form the northeast border between Orange County and Riverside County. Here are a couple of photos from […]
- City of Smoke
No 3AM evacuations, though we’re several miles away from the danger zone anyway. The Santiago fire we spotted yesterday was stopped before it crossed into suburbia, but judging by the OCFA map it was a near thing. Now it’s burning southeast, into the hills and toward the canyons. Some of which are inhabited. (Yes, there […]
- Wind and Fire
The Santa Ana winds arrived in earnest overnight. We spent most of the day indoors, going about our usual business with the howling wind and occasional thump in the background. I’d glance up from my book (I’m about halfway through Regeneration, the conclusion of Julie Czerneda’s 3-part Species Imperative) and look out at the trees […]
- Invasion of the Lenticular Clouds!
I wasn’t expecting to see more after my last post on lenticular clouds. As I said, they’re (usually) rare in this area. But as I left the office Friday evening, I pulled onto the freeway and nearly freaked out at what I saw: A line of three smooth, layered clouds running above the ridge of […]
- Santa Monic-odd
In early August, we went up to Santa Monica to visit my brother and his colleagues as they returned to Florida from Wikimania 2007 in Taipei… with a 10-hour layover at LAX. We carpooled with my parents, and arrived while the group was still stuck in customs. So we wandered around the Santa Monica Promenade […]
- Big Orange Balloon
Today I went with a group from work to ride the Great Park Balloon, a.k.a. that big orange thing that’s been floating over Irvine for the last month. After about a decade of wrangling, the city of Irvine has started converting the former El Toro Marine Base into, well, a park. It looks like it’s […]
- Radio Connection
They say that the Southern California car culture is isolating. It’s hard to argue with that, when everyone’s shut up in their own little boxes. But today, on my way to work (delayed a bit on account of dentist), I was listening to KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic and stopped at a traffic signal. They were […]
- Pick a city, please!
A few days ago I was remarking on the signs by the side of the 405 indicating where to find the Cal State Fullerton El Toro Campus. This is odd for several reasons, namely: The signs went up years after the city of El Toro changed its name to Lake Forest. Having the two cities […]
- Smoke and Fog
Monday morning dawned foggy. By the time we left for work, most of the fog had burned off, but we looked out the car window and saw a huge, billowing gray cloud hugging close to the ground. If this had been the usual fire season, or if there had been no fog to start with […]
- Cloud Cover-Up
Today was a reminder that just having cloud cover doesn’t necessarily keep things cool. We’ve had occasional wispy clouds at evening, and at one point some serious cloud cover closer to the coast, but today was hazy and overcast all day—and it was just plain muggy. Eh, it’s only early August. It’ll get hotter (and […]
- Clouds on the Horizon
Well, June Gloom seems to be over, and we’re now into the time of year when we get hot, sunny days with lots of clouds. Big, towering cumulus clouds, often with anvil heads, promising shade and rain to cool things down. The teases. Yeah, we see those clouds most afternoons—on the horizon, just on the […]
- This Way to the Egress
Whenever I see this freeway sign, I think of the story about PT Barnum trying to get people to leave and putting up a sign saying This Way to the Egress.
- Yes, it does rain in L.A.
An intense deluge woke us up briefly around 5:00 this morning. I think I was awake enough to say “Damn!” and fall back asleep. It reminded me of something that’s been bugging me. I looked through the first few pages of Otherworld #2 in the comic store yesterday. As at the end of the first […]
- There is no The
Every once in a while I listen to Star for a few minutes. And every once in a while I catch their station break. And I cringe whenever I hear them talk about being the whatever station for “L.A. and the O.C.” I’ve lived in Orange County most of my life, and I have never […]
- Federal pyramid
Well, I’ve finished The Illuminatus! Trilogy (the novel, at least — I’m still working on the appendices), and in honor of that dubious accomplishment, I present this photograph of the Chet Holifield Federal Building in Laguna Niguel: Snapped last week while trying to locate the movie theater showing Donnie Darko, just down the road from […]
- Things you don’t hear on the radio
Well, not often, anyway. But occasionally, twice in one night. Last night, Indie 103.1 (yes, they’re still on the air) played a listener request for “Bohemian Rhapsody” – and then didn’t play the song. Later on, they played a string of people calling in and saying things like “You guys suck!” and “Why don’t you […]
- Back on the Dial
There was an article in this morning’s LA Times about the latest radio station to broadcast on FM 103.1. Calling themselves Indie 103.1, and billed as “alternative alternative,” they have a lot of the things that were great about the “world class rock” format: a wide-ranging playlist, spanning several decades and including deep album tracks […]
- Smoke
The weather has been… unusual the last few days, to say the least. Tuesday afternoon I could see smoke from at least two of the fires that had broken out. There was a huge cloud billowing up from the southern horizon, and another huge cloud creeping over the hills to the north. Both seemed to […]
- Another One Bites the Dust
I had a slightly jarring experience on my way back from lunch today which provides a perfect introduction to something I had already planned on writing. I absent-mindedly tuned my car radio to a station that until this week had been an English-language rock station and was briefly surprised to hear a commercial in Spanish. […]