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| The famous Hollywood sign, seen from the grounds of the Griffith Observatory. |
In February 2024, after visiting Joshua Tree and Death Valley national parks, Jane and I broke up the drive home by stopping for three nights in Los Angeles. On one previous visit we stayed in Beverly Hills, and on another we stayed in West Hollywood. This time we stayed downtown, at the Hoxton Hotel, which is on Broadway a couple of miles south of L.A.'s Chinatown. The Hoxton has two restaurants, Meadowlark's Diner off the lobby, where we had breakfast each day, and Cabra, a rooftop Peruvian cafe with excellent Pisco sours and such an inviting menu that we had dinner there twice.
One reason for stopping in Los Angeles was to give us another chance to visit the Griffith Observatory. In the past we tried to visit but gave up when we couldn't find parking. This time we tried first to find parking on Griffith Park, the winding road that leads to the observatory. We found parking, maybe a mile away, but the machines for paying to park weren't working. So we reversed course and this time tried to go up East Observatory Trail to the observatory itself. There were maybe a dozen spots available in the lot right by the observatory -- and the parking fee ($10 an hour) was the same as for street parking much farther away. It seems that if the traffic people let you go up the trail, then there will be parking when you get there. The trail is closed when the lot is full. Or at least that's how I think it works. The observatory opens every day at 10 a.m. and the earlier you are the more likely you are to get a good parking spot.
The observatory is more than an observatory. It's also a planetarium and has various displays explaining the Big Bang, galaxies and other star systems as well as the Solar System. Its Event Horizon Theater shows a film in which the late actor Leonard Nimoy discusses the observatory from its opening in 1935 to its 2002-2006 closing while the building was greatly expanded and reinforced. Admission to the planetarium, the theater and everything else is free, presumably thanks to the generosity of Griffith J. Griffith (1850-1919), a Gilded Age industrialist who gave Los Angeles money for sprawling Griffith Park as well as money specifically for the observatory.
Another reason to stop in L.A. was to visit the Broad, a major museum of contemporary art. I used to think that West Coast museums tend to have great artists' lesser works because the best stuff is in museums in the East. Not so with the Broad. Basquiat, Lichtenstein, Warhol and other 20th century greats are well represented here.
And, since we had a few hours to spare, we made our way to the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, a nonstop celebration of movies, from John Waters to Pedro Almodovar. One area shows Oscar acceptance speeches through the years. A very entertaining museum. It's in a neighborhood of museums, with the Petersen Automotive Museum across the street and the very worthwhile Los Angeles County Museum of Art next door. La Brea Tar Pits are nearby, too. Park once and see it all!
We parked our new electric car at LACMA and were happy to find free Level Two (slow) charging stations. When we returned to our car after a few hours it had a 100-percent charge. That LACMA charge took us all the way home to San Diego the next day.
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| Terraces that surround the Griffith offer views of the Hollywood Hills as well as distant downtown Los Angeles. |
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| The Edge of Space exhibits show the planets in proportion to one another. |
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| The Big Picture takes up a wall almost the length of the building to show how many stars and galaxies are hidden in a small slice of our nighttime sky. |
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| A monument at the observatory's entrance honors history's greatest astronomers. |
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| The Broad, founded by collectors Eli and Edythe Broad in 2015, features art from the 1950s onward. |
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| Yayoi Kusama's "Longing for Eternity" (2017) creates illusions of infinity within this mirrored box. Visitors await turns to look into it. |
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| Each porthole view reveals universes of different colors. |
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| I can be seen holding my camera phone in the porthole at upper left. My wife, Jane, is slightly visible in the second-from-the-top porthole in the upper right. |
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| Jean-Michel Basquiat's "Pink Devil" (1984). |
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| Robert Therrien's "Under the Table" (1994) gives visitors a toddler's-eye-view of the world. |
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| The Walt Disney Concert Hall, designed by Frank Gehry, is across West Second Street from the Broad. |
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| One floor of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures was devoted to Baltimore's John Waters. |
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| The exhibit featured posters and clips from many of his films, including some seldom-seen early ones. Yes, the scene from "Pink Flamingos" with Divine and a small dog was included. |
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| An interactive exhibit provided WhatsApp-like filters based on Waters' characters. This is me as Divine. |
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| One room had large screens looping scenes from the movies of Pedro Almodovar. The museum did not, as I had expected, offer a full history of the movies or even a compilation of "greatest" stars or directors. It did show a couple of the Lumiere Brothers' earliest motion pictures but had little on the Silent Era, the great MGM musicals, Hitchcock, Kubrick, and on and on. Nonetheless, this should be a must-visit for movie buffs of any sort. |
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