July 17, 2008

• Hollywood: Beachwood Estates and the sign

  

  Following are a presentation of some of the over 250 photos in my newest Webshots Folder, “Hollywood, The Sign, Beachwood Estates and Cemetary.” (The cemetary is the Hollywood Forever cemetary, where dozens of celebrities are buried, but I’ve written enough about death for a little while, so I’m not going to feature the cemetary photos today.) The composite above uses elements from the 8th photo below, plus a couple of the automobiles in my image collection. The Chrysler convertible is actually one of my scale models and the Isetta was snapped at an auto museum on the Orange County Fairgrounds. “Hollywood” is going to be a major project. I bought a Fodor’s guidebook to the L.A. area and I’m looking into nooks and crannies that I’ve never even seen before even though I’ve lived in the area all my life.

  

  An unaltered photo of the Hollywood sign as seen from Bronson and Glen Oak a little while after I got off the freeway at Sunset Blvd. Although I’ve been up in Hollywood hundreds of times, it’s usually on either Sunset or Hollywood Blvds, and not in the residential areas. The Hollywood sign was originally erected only “temporarily” as a mammoth advertising billboard for the Hollwoodland real estate project, back in 1923. It was longer than it is now, spelling out the project: “Hollywoodland”. Blinking lights at night illuminated first the “Holly”, then “Wood”, then “Land”, making the sign visible from over 25 miles away. A history of the sign and the project can be found HERE.

  

  I drove up Beachwood to the Beachwood Estates area of Hollywood, which encompasses the Hollwoodland project. Here is the left side of the entrance. A shot of the back of the right side, which includes a clock, can be found HERE. This is the bottom of a series of twisting single lane roads up into the hills. You really have to be careful driving around here. I took my trip early Sunday morning, so there wasn’t much traffic.

  

  This is the real estate office for the Hollywoodland project. It is one of the few original buildings left in the area, and has an alpine quality to it. To the left is a garage for a more typical “Spanish” style home with a red tile roof. I can remember the first time I visited the east coast of the United States. I noticed ALL the homes had pitched roofs. Here in SoCal there’s no snow, so nobody needs a high pitched roof, as in the east. If snow were to pile up on a flat roof, the roof might eventually cave in!

  

  All the homes are pretty close together in this area. I liked the ivy growing on this garage, which sort of tells me nobody has opened that garage door in a long while. Across the street is another old home in the alpine style.

  

  I’ll confess. I shouldn’t be hiking around the Hollywood hills, and I should be using my cane, or so my doctors have told me. However, I forgot the cane, and I found myself hiking up in the hills, trying to get a good shot of the sign, which is postioned on the side of Mt.Caheunga. Here I am on the Hollyridge hiking trail at the top of Beachwood Drive. I found an abandoned restroom, and am shooting from inside the restroom. You can see the lone top hinge to the long gone door on the left, and a spider web on the right. I like to take two kinds of photos. Those which resemble postcard shots, which make an area look attractive, and those which show the “reality” behind the forced perspectives of postcard shots.

  

  Here’s a great example of the latter kind of photo mentioned above. This is a direction and caution sign planted on the hiking trail, which has been “tagged” with all kind of grafitti. Hollywood stretches in the distance.

  

  I followed the tour from my Fodor’s guide to try to get as close to the Hollywood sign as I could. You used to be able to get a lot closer, but not any more. There are “hidden” ways to get close, and here you see the sign as it looks above one of the houses on Rodgerton drive.

  

  Another shot of the Hollywood sign from farther back. This is the shot I used as a basis for the title composite at the top of this entry.

  

  I’m a sucker for the “fairytale castles” which dot the southland. Build in the 20s and 30s, a lot of these stately, as in this case, or quaint little homes really stand out against the landscape.

  

  A shot up the driveway of another old grand home in the Hollywood Hills. It is really strange seeing these large SUVs and big cars parked on small twisting streets. The few times I parked, to get photos, I had to make sure I was off the road. I drive a sports car, so I can just imagine how difficult it would be to park a Hummer on these small streets. At least this guy’s house is positioned so that he needs a long driveway.

  

  After I got tired of driving around Beachwood, I came back down Gower Street, and parked below the 101 freeway to get some closeups of the Hollywood Tower Hotel, which is now an apartment building. If you’ve ever been to Disneyland or Disney World, the Twlilight Zone Tower of Terror was based on this building.

  

  The “Hollywood Tower” sign on the outside of the building cannot be seen from the street in front of the hotel. This is on the back side, visible to cars driving down the Hollywood Freeway. I got this shot from a dead end street at the back of the building. It’s pretty close to the freeway, so it was difficult trying to get a really good shot. You can see a shot of the sign from the other side of the freeway HERE.

  

  The Capitol records building is another iconic structure on Hollywood Boulevard. Here I’m shooting a less than “postcard” type view of the building from the back. I’m standing underneath the freeway overpass on Gower Street. Either the bags are filled with trash or with some homeless person’s clothes. I didn’t get close enough to check.

  

  Here we see an older hotel (the Castle Argyle) fronted by a strip mall. A billboard advertises the “Rouge Gentleman’s Club” which is a fancy way of saying it’s a strip joint. Unlike in other big cities, like San Francisco for example, where there are “red light districts” housing the nudie bars, you’ll find industrial looking buildings with bright lighted signs all over Los Angeles, some in the strangest of places. These “gentleman’s clubs” always seem to find their clientele, no matter where in the city they are located.

  

  There seemed to be more construction cranes in this area of Hollywood than even in downtown L.A. Theres lots of construction going on these days in both L.A. and Hollywood. Some of these high rises didn’t even exist last time I drove through this area. Shooting south from the intersection of Gower and Franklin.

  

  An apt way to terminate this PhotoPost. I plan to go back into Hollywood this weekend sometime. (Today I’m meeting Joel’s brother Dale at the funeral home to plan Joel’s memorial, so I might not make it out to Hollywood until next week.) I took some shots at the Hollywood Forever Cemetary, but I need to go there again armed with a map to find even more celebrity graves than I already photographed.  Part of the “Hollywood Project” will be a MikeVideo, comprising of driving footage through the area. Stay tuned to this blog!

   

  • 11:19 am
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