I’ve been to Seattle a number of times, so at some point it’s not the standard pictures I want to capture. We started our visit with a lunch at Lake Union, always fun to see the Seaplanes landing.
It’s not every day you see people moving a large lemon.
A wall of antique sewing machines in a High end Men’s clothing store. No I don’t remember the name of the store. Apparently it’s a British chain and the owner collects thousands of these machines. These were just a few in this store. Part of me wanted to liberate the machines and find them real homes where sewers would actually use them.
Yes, Pike Place Market is fun and bustling with people in the summer. Of course all I could see was the amazing flowers in the boxes overhead. That’s what a lot of rain will get you.
The Great Wheel wasn’t here my last visit – so a spin was worth while. Of course if it wasn’t closed cars – I never would have gone up.
This is what a modern port looks like. Dinosaur cranes, a lot of fancy equipment. Doesn’t hurt to have a ferry enter the picture as well.
I did take a few pictures of the space needle, but this one seemed more eclectic.
I take time to look down, this is was a very photo worthy manhole cover.
Old brick road with fancy new cars.
Public art by the side of the road. I remember using this, any guesses?? It’s a typewriter eraser – created very large by Clause Oldenburg.
Category: Photography
The Chocolate Shop
First of all thanks to my friend Becky for taking all these pictures.
A plug for LA Conservancy walking tours, specifically Downtown Renaissance and Broadway. It is on these tours that you can visit this treasure. It is not 100% guarantee, life happens, but you’re best bet is on one of these tours.
What is the Chocolate Shop? A real treasure in LA.
On an average day, walking on the north side of 6th St. from Spring to Broadway, you will see standard downtown businesses as well as some of those roll up metal doors. Behind one of those door is this treasure. For years it too was simply another electronic shop. Charles Aslan, a member of the family that owns the building, is the man with a smile who greets our tours and loves showing off the space.
Looking in from the street, can you see how the whole surface is covered in tiles. Not just any tiles, all are made by Ernest Batchelder.
These tiles are very typical of his style – these are in the Art Nouvaux feel. 
What is very different is the finish on the tiles. They are very dark and somewhat shiny. One of Batchelder’s signatures was the matte finish on his tiles. He did seal them, but not with a shiny glaze. The owners of the shop wanted a brown tile, they probably wanted the shine because there are no windows and having the walls and ceiling reflect the light would be helpful. Unfortunately, they shellacked the whole space. With time the shellack aged, darkened and obscures many of the details of the tile. This is a problem art restorers see all the time. 
As you enter the shop, you walk under this archway with the two Dutch children blowing bubbles – which are in fact lightbulbs.
In the early 20th The Chocolate Shop Corporation was hoping to be the Starbucks of it’s day. Of course they were going to sell chocolate and sweets. They commissioned Ernest Batchelder in 1914 to make all of these tiles – which he did. The Chain concept never really got off the ground. In 1922, C.C. Brown opened Brown’s Chocolate Shop here and sold his invention – the chocolate Sundae. Then in 1928 it became a vegetarian cafeteria and remained so until 1942. For more than 40 years, this was the location of Finney’s cafeteria. In 1986, after it closed, in went the drywall and the electronic store came in.
It was during the Finney period, in 1975 that the city of Los Angeles declared the interior a historical cultural monument.
Part of the Batchelder commission was creating these murals with Dutch scenes. You can see that the tiles were colored, but that shellack is dulling everything.
I must commend Becky for touching up the photos, in reality is hard to see this kind of detail, the space is very dark. Sometimes the camera can capture more than the naked eye can see.
A shelf may have been affixed to the wall here, you can the that not only was the shellack removed but so was the original color. For all the problems with the shellack. There are a number of tiles where the shellack has been removed. I hope it stops there because all that remains is a dull fired tile. This is a problem all art conservators have – sometimes you can’t get back to the original intent – so better to stay with the added layers than lose everything.
A wonderful close up of a windmill.
Dutchman in the role of gargoyle, holding up the lintel about him.
The detail work is incredible. I just love the different ways of laying tile on the ceiling and the walls. Here you see the top of the pier with it’s many decorations. Also, this is the one picture I took, you can see the difference in quality.
Charles Aslan is fighting to get permission from the building at the rear of the shop to open up an additional exit. This would open up on the Spring/Broadway arcade. Different building, different owners. They are not interested. Charles cannot turn this into a viable coffee or chocolate shop without that additional exit. So it is not clear what will happen.
My advice is get on either the Broadway or Downtown Renaissance tours soon. This treasure may soon be hidden again behind the metal door. Being a cultural monument is very nice – but with the many players involved, it may be a hidden one.
Leah
Walk #16, Allesandro Loop, Echo Park
Have I mentioned that I love LA. Today we took a walk in Echo Park, climbing some steep hills and a lot of stairways. As we started our walk we met someone delivering for Amazon in the postoffice trucks, he was totally lost. Couldn’t figure out how to get through the maze of winding roads. 
We were heading up this staircase, before doing so I pulled out my phone and figured out the route for him. Sure enough, we met up at the top of the staircase. Both he and the package recipient were grateful. Then when I got home, Amazon delivered a package for me on a Sunday. That is service.
This wooden staircase leads off the public stairs to a private home. Very creative engineering.
This bucolic road is how the delivery man had to drive up. The freeway is right underneath us, yes smack dab in the middle of the city.
This is Peru St., the sign for Elmoran st. is still standing although the street itself is blocked off and probably no longer on the map. Unless maybe that was part of the directions our poor delivery man was trying to follow.
Some of the Flora we saw along the way. As well as a garden fountain built into a castle. Someone must have chopped the prickly pear down to this one enormous trunk. Nature at work, new paddles are growing.
The crest of the hill afforded us amazing views. I can’t get enough of downtown from any angle.
Or the Hollywood sign and the Griffith Observatory.
No, I wasn’t tilting my camera. We were up on N. Alvarado. The steep street is Baxter, The top image is facing east and the lower image – west. The cars were driving down very slowly, riding their brakes the whole way. The Hills don’t stop old roads, I have no doubt that no city engineer would approve any of the streets in Echo Park today.
Two homes, one warning about a dog and the other celebrating both cats and Mickey Mouse.
Oak Glen Stairway. One of the few remaining wooden stairs. Most were replaced in the 30’s with concrete, or simply abandoned. As shaky as these were, the next staircase was even more treacherous.
First the sign and it’s own artwork. Unfortunately, someone did tag this fence.
Here the wooden stairs simply end with a steep, poorly maintained path.
There are the stairs behind me, with a big drop between them and the path.
Shortly thereafter, very shallow concrete stairs resumed, with this cute house next to them.
Looking back up at the shallow stairs.
As is our tradition after these walks, we found some good tacos for lunch.
LeahPlaying with my camera
I bought a new camera last year before our trip to Peru. Panasonic DMC FZ200. I wanted more than a simple point and shoot yet wasn’t sure about the very sophisticated cameras out there. Doing my research online, this camera came with high recommendations. Most of the pictures you see on the blog are taken with this camera. It is time to learn more of the tricks of the trade of photography.
I am taking the Craftys , Basics of Digital photography. Rick Allred is a very good teacher, I think my camera is not quite as sophisticated but I’m doing my best to learn. I know, cameras are like sewing machines, there is always something better out there.
Here are a few of the examples that I have achieved so far.
Using Fstop, here I have a very sharp picture of both the flower and the background.
Here you can see, the background is blurrier. Of course I would like to learn how to manipulate this more. I know, practice!
The camera comes with set options, might as well play with them as well.
Very sharp detail on the flower as well as intense colors.
Highlighting the flower, dimming out the background.
I hope with time that as I photograph what I make, I can get more creative with images. This is just the beginning.
LeahRandom DTLA (downtown LA)
My introduction to downtown was in the early 90s’. We had recently moved to LA from Israel, for Joel it was moving back, for me it was a whole new world. Our first year here I started taking classes at LA Valley college, a wonderful local community college. I then enrolled at FIDM and set out studying textile design. That is a subject for a different post.
FIDM had just completed their lovely new building, so I found myself going downtown a few days a week. I stayed very close to the campus. I would venture to the Fashion District and even got a part time job there. But in those days, downtown was still very sketchy. So I never ventured far.
How things have changed, today I am a downtown docent with The LA Conservancy and I love exploring on my own, which is what I did the other day. I’m sharing some pictures without much information. I know I should get better at both taking the pictures and gathering information. Meanwhile, just enjoy some wonderful architectural details, Los Angeles can boast as much as NY or Chicago – we have real beauty here which I am happy to share.
The exterior of this building is on my Downtown Renaissance tour, since I am doing all the talking I don’t take pictures. I had the opportunity today to enter the lobby. Today this is a low income building, but as you can see, the owner Izek Shomof takes very good care of his buildings regardless of how much rent is being paid.
I love the detail on the railing. Hotel Hayward was originally a hotel for traveling salesmen, very close to the PE Trolly station. Even then the cost for rooms was reasonable, but the lobby was very well appointed.
This building is further south on Spring st, someone was filming there. I just love the details.
How about these wonderful eagles?
I think the address of this building is 801 Spring st. Spring st and Main st. meet just beyond this location. I was capturing the exterior when a young man with a camera exited and he just let me in.
As you can see, the building straddles two streets. Today this is a residential building, the lobby is beautiful and well cared for.
The details on the ceiling are lovely, someone cleaned and possibly repainted them.
There are three elevators, only one still has the original doors, I don’t know if the car was replaced. As you can it, it used to have one of those dials that let you know what floor the elevator was on. I did see that the other two are modern doors, no I didn’t take pictures of them.
That is it for today, I promise many more in the future.
LeahMore Downtown treasures, Allied Crafts Building
I always tell people, when walking downtown – look up! There are amazing things to see. While dress shopping on Saturday, I had to stop and take a closer look at this building. With so much cacophony on the street, it’s easy to miss even a building of this size. 
As you can see, most of the area is much lower buildings. So this Beaux Arts and it’s neighbor the Bendix building do stand out.
This is a photo from the 1930s. You can see there was retail on the ground floor even then and across Pico Blvd, no high construction. This was really the outer limits of downtown, from here on there would be other tall buildings, but many more low warehouse and small industry.
As the fashion industry rapidly expended here, the owners are doing just fine renting out large loft style space. They also set about spicing up the lobby.
You can see the wonderful old elements that haven’t changed, the marble wainscoting, the wonderful mail box. In 2010, they brought in the artist Andre Miripolsky to add some vibrant color. Boy did he ever.
I love how he worked around the old elements, the clock, The grill.
Wonderful old elevator doors. I was able to see into the elevator but not snap a picture. It looked like the original paneling – no fancy materials but nicely decorated wood. And there is an elevator operator – which leads me to think – they haven’t updated this elevator to standard push button yet. Now there is a job you don’t see often, although I’ve seen other buildings downtown with one.
It was hard to isolate out an image like this, so much stuff on all sides. This is the balcony over the Lobby entrance, also, the end of the fire escape.
On a busy shopping trip, I’m sure this restaurant does good business. I love the cocktail sign, I think it was from a previous business. I’m pretty sure there are manufactories upstairs, they have wide open loft space, although this business looks more like a design studio.
Next door is another very interesting building. The Bendix building. I shot this image from the rooftop garage across the street where we parked.
This building was build in 1930. The tower was built by Bendix Aviation Corporation manufactured to aid in nighttime aviation. The entire sign stands 150 feet tall; the letter “B” alone is 25 feet tall and 16 feet wide. This helped light the way to an airfield in Glendale, 9 miles away. Three years ago the tower was restored and the neon is now lit again at night.
In the 1930’s this building was used to manufacture automotive parts, navigation instruments and car parts. The fashion industry moved in much later.
LeahTools of the trade
I’m slowly learning how this blog thing works. I know, there are many tweeks I can make on the blog, but right now I’m concentrating on content.
Content means good pictures, which means good equipment. Let’s start with the camera.
Otherwise sold under the Lumix name.
I have a small Canon, I have an iphone. I had a nice large camera that was so old (9 years) it only took a 2GB card. So before our trip to Peru I did a lot of online research and bought this camera. I’m not quite ready for changing lenses, I didn’t want a simple point and shoot. This one came recommended as a very good high end one lens camera. I’m still learning the ropes. One thing that was very important was a remote control, I want to get pictures of myself in my me-made clothes. So yeah, sometimes you’ll notice that little clicker in my hand. Give me time, I’ll get better at hiding it.
Next, background, I know they often distract from the object. I need a simple white box so off to Michael’s I went and came home with this.
Which can be set up like this:
Ok, I have a lot to learn, like I think my camera lens needs cleaning.
Leah