today was the big tour of the historic core shepherded by shannon, and it delivered on all the promised reasons to go. even the story about the parking lot. i have a bunch more pictures, and i’ll upload them to my flickr photos after i sort through them and clean up the good ones.
after the tour, albert, lisa and i went to clifton’s cafeteria, which i think is a required stop for anyone who hasn’t yet been there. and though i still think it is overpriced, the turkey was quite good.
turkey and stuffing with gravy and cranberries is my favorite meal at cliftons...it's always thanksgiving!!!
you guys were fabulous tour goers...especially albert's perplexed look during the parking lot story.
hey, what can I say? the gut wrenching historical facts you were presenting at that moment simply blew my mind.
i mean, i did know about the old red car system, but not the subway part. to think we had the kernel of an *underground* system too. sigh. as Homer Simpson once lamented, "when will people learn? democracy just doesn't work!"
clearly you need to re-watch that great historic film about los angeles and the red line system: who framed roger rabbit?
okay, maybe the film takes some liberties with the history….
confession: i've never seen it. but rest assured, it's on my list now.
I've been meaning to take that tour for years now... now that I actually do live in downtown I will have to go check it out! I am about to post up a wonderful tidbit of historical information on eecue.com... I have a 40 page tour book from 1908 with hundreds of photos from historic LA. I am going to OCR the text and make a nice CC licensed pdf for everyone. [btw i dig the live preview at the bottom]
sorry, comments on this post are closed.
woo hoo! we're famous!
as for Clifton's Cafeteria: it took a while to hit me just how special it is. one could perhaps replace the definition of "surreal" in the dictionary with a Saturday afternoon walk down Broadway followed by lunch in Cliftons. nice choice, Jim. i never knew about that place. i can only wonder how many other "Clifton moments" lurk Downtown ...