The skyline of the modern city is largely defined by its skyscrapers; those towering, gleaming symbols of the architectural ambition, developer wealth, humanity’s hubris, and usually crowned with a corporate logo. Before skyscrapers, cathedrals were nearly always the tallest human-made structure; Before them, the ancient pyramids. Their symbolic (and perhaps psychosexual) importance is subconsciously understood by … Continue reading High Rising — Los Angeles’s Asian-American Skyscrapers
Los Angeles is often characterized as an horizontal city, spread as it is across an area that could contain Boston, Cleveland, Manhattan, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, St. Louis, and several interchangeable college towns. Dodger Stadium‘s parking lot alone is larger than some principalities. Less often acknowledged is the fact that no city on Earth is as vertical either, stretching as … Continue reading High Rising — Visiting the Hotel Figueroa
Signs of urbanization through verticality. If there’s a Los Angeles skyscraper you’d like me to visit and write about, please let me know in the comments. Architecture, Urbanism, and the Cinema Los Angeles’s Asian-American Skyscrapers Visiting the Hotel Figueroa
April is National Landscape Architecture Month. This got me thinking about an idea for a piece but, as often happens, I found myself tumbling down a rabbit hole of research tangents and decided I’d start with a post about architecture of the non-landscape variety. Apparently there is no “National Architecture Month” and Los Angeles proclaimed October … Continue reading High Rising — Architecture, Urbanism, and the Cinema
Fast-fashion company Bestseller recently announced their intention to build a 320-meter tall skyscraper as their headquarters in Brande — a tiny Danish town of roughly 7,000 inhabitants. Few buildings there have more than three stories and the mostly flat skyline is punctuated with the occasional windmill or church steeple. It won’t be the first such … Continue reading Highrising — Solitary Skyscrapers of Suburbia
May 1959: Seven years before Silver Lake‘s Black Cat Riot and ten before New York‘s Stonewall riots, a group of drag queens, trans women, and hustlers clashed with LAPD officers at a location of the local Cooper Do-nuts (also known as Cooper’s Donut Depot, Cooper’s Doughnuts or Cooper’s Donuts) chain, usually considered to be the first queer uprising in modern … Continue reading The Cooper Do-nuts Uprising
This blog entry’s focus is the Northeast Los Angeles neighborhood of Highland Park. As mentioned already, HLP is in NELA. Its neighbors are Pasadena to the northeast; Garvanza, Hermon, and South Pasadena to the east; Montecito Heights to the south; Cypress Park and Lincoln Heights to the southwest; Mt. Washington to the west; and Eagle … Continue reading California Fool’s Gold — Exploring Highland Park
INTRODUCTION Over the years I’ve drawn maps, painted maps, and created digital maps. For the latter, I’ve most often used Google‘s My Maps program for several reasons. It’s relatively easy, looks relatively good, has pretty good functionality (e.g. links to websites and decent customization) and because Alphabet Inc. (Google’s parent company) is the fourth-largest company … Continue reading Pendersleigh & Sons Cartography — The Google Maps
Los Angeles is the world’s great Pan-Asian Metropolis. In Los Angeles, Asians and Pacific Islanders together comprise more than 15% of the population. They are the most numerous racial minority and the fastest growing. Recognized Asian ethnic enclaves include Cambodia Town, Chinatown, Filipinotown, Koreatown, Little Bangladesh, Little India, Little Osaka, Little Saigon, Little Seoul, Little Tokyo, and Thai Town. Metro Los Angeles … Continue reading Pan-Asian Metropolis
Amongst the many resources available pertaining to Los Angeles are websites, blogs, podcasts, and other online-only resources. I read many of them regularly, some too much, and almost all of them occasionally. For my own use and for the use of others (especially explorers and adventurers) I’ve here compiled what I hope is as conclusive a … Continue reading Los Angeles Webography; or, Los Angeles Websites and Blogs
Eric Brightwell 