Quote:
Originally Posted by Scott Charles
HOLY COW, some of you here are just AMAZING experts on the history of Los Angeles architecture. I thought that *I* knew this stuff, but so many of you here have simply blown me away with your expertise. I have learned so much in this thread, and I thank you all for it! Let me just say, this is the most amazing internet thread EVER.
Hello, this is my first post on the forum. I have lived my entire life in Los Angeles, and I absolutely love the beautiful old buildings, so many of which (see my avatar) we have lost in the name of “progress”.
I’ve been reading this thread for probably a year now. I had originally intended to not make any comments until I had caught up, but this thread is now over 2,000 pages long! I just passed page number 1007, and at the rate I’m going, I’m never gonna catch up!
With the help of you fine people, I now believe that I could easily navigate old LA if I were thrown into a time machine. I could explore the beautiful, long-gone tunnels on Hill and on Broadway. I could make my way around the much-missed Bunker Hill, visit the Bradbury Mansion, and ride down Court Flight. And I could find myself a good lunch in the original Chinatown. And boy, would it be a pleasure to do it!
Anyways, here’s my thanks to all of you people who have made this such an amazing thread‼
PS: If any of you would like to tell us how you became such experts on the history of Los Angeles architecture, I’d love to hear your stories!
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I'm afraid that I'm small potatoes compared to many of the posters here; but here's my background and how I arrived here (put as laconically as possible):
A lifelong love of Catalina prompted me to start collecting old postcards of same. In due course I thought that it would be fun to make a site showing early Catalina, via a fictional story. I then thought, "Well, I have to get the visitors to Catalina, don't I? I could have just a little bit about the part of their visit before they got to Catalina." And then the "little bit" in Los Angeles turned into the lion's share of the site. In researching the L.A. views, at length I found myself repeatedly googled over to Noirish L.A. . . . and spending hours reading post after post. On the encouragement of our colleague Alvaro Legido, I eventually joined . . . which however put me into a cyber holding pen for about a year, a sort of limbo in which I could neither post nor re-attempt to join. One day, I somehow was released from limbo, and . . . here I am.
Such familiarity as I have with metropolis L.A. derives from these turn-of-the-century postcards I've collected, and the research I did when putting them together and writing the story for the site.
I have a further familiarity with pre-Yankee L.A., and L.A. up to about 1875; but sadly or happily that doesn't much come into play here.
Perhaps most importantly, another keen lifelong interest of mine is horticulture, and so I'll often have something to say about trees or flowers or whatever.
I'll (nearly) end by saying that NLA posters compose the most good-natured and well-behaved group of people I've seen on any forum (and I'm on a good number of forums), our spirited, knowledgeable, and gallant preceptor
e_r leading by example.
And so, welcome to NLA, and, um,
Hurrah for us!
That is all.