Hot!

We are having a heat wave here in LA. In The Valley the temperatures went up to 95ºF (35ºC). So I feel it appropriate to post some some summer themed vernacular photography.


Despite of hating to sleep with the AC on, I like summer. I like the hot sun bleaching out the landscape.


I like going on local road trips in summer time - taking the long way down to the coast. I take windy little roads that land me far north of the popular beaches of Santa Monica and Malibu.

I don't care a whole lot about the beach itself. The Ocean is an alien thing to me; it smells funny and it's frigging cold. Thanks to the giant clockwise current of the North Atlantic the waters along the West Coast are always frigid. I guess I should be thankful for that, because with warm currents LA would probably be hot and humid like Florida.


Temperatures are supposed to go back down to very manageable low 80's by midweek. At least that's what my phone is telling me, and my phone rarely lies, though occasionally has an alternative interpretation of reality. Existential stuff.

Vanda's Lemonade

Ingredients:

1 very large glass
ice
2 oz dark rum
1 oz ginger liquor
1/2 oz Agave syrup (or simple syrup)
1 can of sparkling lemonade (San Pellegrino preferably)

Put ice in glass. Add rum, ginger liquor and syrup. Stir. Pour lemonade over it. Stir briefly. Drink.

Flea Market Fourth

There is a flea market at the Pasadena City College at every first Sunday of the month. This July it falls on the fourth.


Thanks to my recently acquired, and perturbing habit of waking up early, even on weekends, I got out there at a reasonably early hour. There are a lot of things you can find at a flea market - like old cash registers.

Art,


and more art.


Assorted members...

...of the Animal...


...kingdom.


You can also procure kicking boots.


Also, tin boxes having to do with boots. I bought this box. I don't need it, but I liked it instantly, and I can put things into it. What things, I'm not sure yet.


I Also bought this old portable Remington typewriter. It's sexy, isn't it? For forty bucks it was a steal. I have a thing for old typewriters. My father used to have one - it was old even back then. It wasn't exactly like this, but in the same family.

Signs Of Other Times

LA is a great place to find old signs, shop window decorations, and old things in general.


Not that hundreds of years of European kind of old, but makes you think of black and white television old.


The great thing about them is that they are not trying for a retro look, they just are what they are.


This place sits in the semi-industrial wasteland bordering Burbank/Glendale. As I was taking pictures a man came - I think he might have been the proprietor - and asked me why I was photographing the store. I told him because it had character. He got it.


I'm now officially collecting old signs. Pasadena and Altadena have a bunch of them, and I'll have to drive over just for that.