Adams Pack Station
“Haulin’ ass since 1936”
In the foothills where Sierra Madre, Arcadia, and Monrovia meet, the Adams Pack Station in Chantry Flat has been providing asses, as in pack mules, since 1936, and cold beer and other sundries since 1953, to Angeles National Forest hikers and the 81 recreational cabins (serving as private vacation residences) that populate the area around and leading to Sturtevant Camp.
A walk in Big Santa Anita Canyon is like stepping back in time. Trails of varying difficulty start from the Adams Pack Station parking lot. A 3.8-mile round-trip hike past some of the cabins to Sturtevant Falls will make the bottle of icy suds awaiting your return feel like a well-deserved reward. The rustic cottages that dot the trails near Chantry Flat were built between 1907 and 1936 with materials carried in by mules and humans. The cabins exist on a special use permit from the U.S. Forest Service and cabin owners lease the land upon which the dwellings sit.
For those looking to spend the night, primitive campsites at Hoegee and Spruce Grove Campgrounds, about a two- and fourmile hike, respectively, from Chantry Flat, operate on a first-comefirst-serve basis. If that seems too hardy, consider booking a stay at Sturtevant Camp. The nostalgic mountain resort offers cabins for rent on the weekends with flushable toilets and hot showers (learn more at www.sturtevantcamp.com). All food and supplies must be brought in. Make arrangements at least a week in advance with Adams Pack Station to have a mule do the heavy lifting.
Friday to Sunday, the station grills hot food on outdoor barbecues next to the main building, offering excellent burgers and fries and sometimes pulled-pork sandwiches. Live music is performed on Sundays from noon to 5:30pm. Get to the station by 8am on Friday morning for the best chance of seeing the mule team head out on their weekly canyon haul.
Address One Chantry Flat Road, Arcadia, CA 91024, +1 626.447.7356, www.adamspackstation.com, info@adamspackstation.com | Parking On-site lot and street parking along Chantry Flat Road. Adventure Pass required for parking. Passes can be purchased at Adams Pack Station or at other adventure retailers. | Hours Fri – Sun 7am – 5pm | Tip Tempted to ride? Sunset Ranch Hollywood (3400 N Beachwood Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90068), family-owned since 1929, offers horseback riding tours in the Hollywood Hills.
Catalina Tile
Chewing gum, red clay, sun, and sea
Despite being only about 22 miles away from the megalopolis of Los Angeles, Catalina feels like, well, an island. The surrounding deep blue and turquoise waters are dotted with bright flashes of orange Garibaldi damselfish. Harbor seals bark and glide through thick kelp forests around moored sailboats and motor yachts. Late chewing-gum magnate William Wrigley was seduced by the island lifestyle, and his purchase of a controlling interest in the Santa Catalina Island Company in 1919 gave him ownership of Catalina, the only developed Channel Island and the central jewel of the corporation.
Ever the business mogul, Wrigley was constantly looking for ways to monetize his investments. He founded Catalina Clay Products Company in 1927 as a way to create employment for local residents. Until 1937, the signature colorful and graphically bold tiles were made from red clay harvested from the island itself. The factory on Pebbly Beach Road was in operation for only a decade, making the original Catalina tile quite rare and valuable. Today, six-inch-square tiles, originally priced at 25 cents, typically sell for $200 to $300 apiece. Downtown Avalon businesses, such as the former Catalina Casino – now a contemporary movie theater – and public fountains are blanketed with them. Crescent Avenue, Avalon’s main street, serves as a default open-air museum of Catalina tile and is well worth a leisurely stroll.
The Wrigley Memorial on Avalon Canyon Road, about two miles into the interior of the island, is covered in thousands of handpainted, primarily blue, Catalina tiles. Wrigley could afford it. The memorial is nestled in the canyon foothills of the Botanic Garden, which also displays the eight plants endemic to Catalina. Shuttles run to the memorial and gardens, or you can rent a golf cart, the island transport of choice, for a self-guided tour.
Address Crescent Avenue, Avalon, CA 90704 & Wrigley Memorial at the Botanic Garden, 1402 Avalon Canyon Road, Avalon, CA 90704, www.catalinaconservancy.org | Public transport By boat: Catalina Express leaves from San Pedro, Long Beach, and Dana Point. See www.catalinaexpress.com for schedule and fares. | Hours Crescent Avenue: always open. Botanic Garden: daily 8am – 5pm, closed Thanksgiving and Christmas; admission $15.50 adults, $10.50 seniors & students w/ID, $7.50 children 5 – 12, veterans free, active military & family free | Tip Bookend the day with coffee in the morning and beer or wine at night at Catalina Island Brew House (417 Crescent Avenue, Avalon, CA 90704).
Clara Shortridge Foltz
Pioneer of public defense
Mother of five, Clara Shortridge Foltz was 27 years old when her husband abandoned her and their young children, disappearing into Oregon. It was 1874, a time when women were prevented and discouraged from making a living in almost anything other than a trade or teaching. But Clara aspired to neither. She wanted to practice law as her father did. A couple of significant hurdles stood in her way: In California, women were excluded from taking the California bar exam; it was an uphill battle for women to go to law school.
One by one, Foltz surmounted systemic foes. First, with no professional legal experience, she wrote an amendment to the code of civil procedure to redefine the qualifications for California lawyers in 1878. The proposed amendment deleted the words “any white male citizen” and substituted “any citizen or person.” To make a dramatic story short, and with the support of male allies, the amendment passed. This radical change meant that Californians – regardless of race or sex – could take the bar. Foltz passed the bar that same year and became the first female lawyer in the state.
She entered Hastings College of the Law the following year. The only woman at the school, two days after her admission, the board of directors decided women could not be admitted. So, Foltz went to court and with dogged persistence, won her case.
All this time, she was practicing law, mostly representing women and indigent people. This exposed her to outrageous miscarriages of justice executed by many district attorneys, which developed her conviction that there should be a public defense system. In 1910, Foltz was the first woman appointed deputy district attorney in Los Angeles. By 1913, the first public defense agency in the US was established in Los Angeles, making LA, in Foltz’s words, “the cradle of public defense.” She is buried in Inglewood Park Cemetery.
Address Inglewood Park Cemetery, 720 E Florence Avenue, Inglewood, CA 90301, +1 310.412.6500, inglewoodparkcemetery.com, inforequest@inglewoodparkcemetery.com | Parking Parking on premise | Hours Daily 8am – 5pm | Tip Glory in classic Googie architecture less than five miles away at Pann’s, an iconic LA diner.
Eames Case Study House No. 8
A thoroughly modern affair
Quintessentially California and Los Angeles, the power couple Ray and Charles Eames lived design, literally. Furniture, toys, graphics, film, architecture – nothing was off limits for them. They designed their home in Pacific Palisades as part of the Case Study House Project initiated by Arts & Architecture magazine, which challenged architects to build low-cost homes using modern materials creatively. When construction finally began, it took a team of eight people just one and a half days to assemble the house, which cost $1 a square foot, less than half the cost of a typical new home construction in 1949. Ray and Charles took up residence on Christmas Eve that same year and lived and worked there until their deaths, ten years to the day apart from each other in 1978 (Charles) and 1988 (Ray).
For the Eames, work was play, and play was work. They kept a “traditional” but decidedly unconventional office nearby in the Bay Cities Garage, a big brick building at 901 Abbot Kinney Boulevard (called Washington Boulevard in their day), and the Eames furniture line was manufactured locally until the 1950s. But much of their work / play took place in their home with detached studio. They hosted legendary picnics on the meadow in front of the Eames House. And entertaining was a joy. Young relatives remember a rope swing attached to a ceiling beam. Grab the string, swing through the house and knock down a wall of boxes on the other side.
All visits to Eames House are by reservation only, which include a guided tour of the grounds and exterior of their home. Be sure to peer through the windows and grab a glimpse of the aging tumbleweed hung from the ceiling like a chandelier. The honeymooning Ray and Charles picked it up in 1941 on Route 66 on their way to build a new life in California. And what a life it was.
Address 203 Chautauqua Boulevard, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272, +1 310.459.9663, www.eamesfoundation.org, info@eamesfoundation.org | Parking No parking available at the house. Free street parking is available on Corona del Mar, a five-minute walk north of the house. | Hours Mon, Fri & Sat by reservation, closed Tue, Wed, Thu & Sun. Closed many holidays. Adults $30, students w / ID $10, kids 7 and under free. | Tip Take a dip in actress Marion Davies’ pool at the popular Annenberg Community Beach House (415 Pacific Coast Highway, Santa Monica, CA 90402). The pool is open Memorial Day through Labor Day. Reservations recommended, although walk-ins are admitted when space is available.
Idle Hour
A barrel of fun
Los Angeles’s population began exploding in the 1840s, growing from 2,000 to 16,000 by the 1870s. Unleashed in the middle of that boom was the Mexican-American War, which concluded in 1848 with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in Mexico City. The United States was ceded much of Mexico’s northern territory, including California. By 1850, California had gained acceptance into the union, officially acquiring statehood.
Giant marketing campaigns, beckoning people to come west for opportunity, worked. Culturally, the nascent metropolis convulsed as it morphed from being a violent and lawless town to at least having some modicum of order. Then, in the 1920s, automobiles were introduced to the streets of LA, and the public got hooked on motoring. The city sprawled. To attract the attention of suburban drivers, businesses invested in thematic architecture – buildings that appeared to be the very thing the business was selling. A few whimsical examples are the Donut Hole in La Puente and the Tamale in Los Angeles.
Idle Hour Cafè was built in 1941 in the shape of a whiskey barrel. It was used as a taproom through the 1960s, became a Flamenco dinner theater, and then fell into disrepair in the 1980s. Under threat of demolition, it was saved by the fervent efforts of LA magazine columnist Chris Nichols and designated a Historic-Cultural Monument. Recently purchased and restored by Bobby Green to its original splendor, it’s a welcoming place to grab a cocktail and a bite of American comfort food. Old-timey photos capturing the construction of the building line the walls, and the former ceiling planks now serve as flooring.
On the back patio, relocated from Washington Boulevard, is the original Bulldog Café, another example of thematic architecture. Angelenos can still admire the pipe-smoking pooch and even rent him out for small parties.
Address 4824 Vineland Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 91601, +1 818.980.5604, www.idlehourbar.com | Parking Metered and unmetered street parking | Hours Mon – Fri 4pm – 1:30am, Sat 1pm – 1:30am, Sun 11am – 1:30pm | Tip Just a 10-minute drive away is Norton Space Props (7429 Laurel Canyon Boulevard, North Hollywood, CA 91605), a prop shop specializing in aerospace and industrial items since 1962. It’s open to the general public too, so anyone with a sci-fi inclination can whirr around the store looking for items to make the robot of their dreams.
Neon Retro Arcade
The greatest hits of coin-op video games
There was a party. There was a pinball machine. There were sparks flying. That’s what was going down when Mia Mazadiego and Mark Gunther met and fell for each other in 2002. It seems apropos, therefore, that the couple went on to open a 1980s and 1990s-era arcade, where walking down an aisle feels like stepping back in time – except that it’s not so dank inside. Occupying a cheerful space with hanging cafe lights, about 50 classic arcade games and 7 pinball machines beckon to visitors: “Remember me and all those good times we had? I’m still here for you.”
Generally speaking, the 20-somethings get fired up when they catch sight of Street Fighter 2, The Simpsons, and Ninja Turtle. The 30- and 40-somethings make a beeline for PacMan, Centipede, and Asteroids. Preteens find their home at Neon too. They’ve been watching YouTube videos of the classics and come excited to play the real things. What those young’uns don’t experience is the use of quarters. The business model of Neon is free play. You pay a per-hour fee ($10) and can start and restart a game at will – no need to place your coins “on deck,” claiming your right to go next. There’s one rule though –no game hogging, which, according to Mazadiego and Gunther, has, remarkably, never happened. Many of the games are multiplayer and often those playing are glad to let others join in, ramping up the competition and fun.
The whole arcade phenomena really started with the Atari game, Pong, in 1972. The play was elegantly simple. Based on the sport of table tennis, two paddles hit a ball over a net. Whoever gets to eleven points first wins. The story goes, one of the Atari founders plopped down the first Pong game in a bar to see if it held interest. In a week and a half, the console was having mechanical difficulties. It turned out the problem was that too many quarters were blocking the coin mechanism. Popular indeed.
Address 28 S Raymond Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91105, +1 626.568.2924, www.neonretroarcade.com | Parking Paid lots and metered street parking | Hours Sun – Mon noon – 10pm | Tip Head east to the sprawling and diverse Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens (1151 Oxford Road, San Marino, CA 91108). Highlights include the more than 14 geographic gardens, particularly the Chinese, Japanese, and Desert Gardens.
Pasadena City College Flea Market
Trash and treasure
Since 1977, Pasadena City College Flea Market has brought typically quirky goods, both new and used, to the adventurous buyer. Less well known than its much larger Pasadena competitor, the Rose Bowl Flea Market, the City College fair charges no admission – saving you extra dollars to spend on that special find of the day.
The first Sunday of the month, with a few exceptions each year when the market is closed for holidays, more than 450 vendors assemble in the eastern parking lot, spreading out over three levels of the Bonnie Avenue covered garage known as Lot 5, as well as the open parking lot on the west side of campus. Artfully curated kaleidoscopic wares, mixed with an occasional haphazard jumble of odds and ends, sparkle and tantalize the eye. There’s antique furniture, Japanese kakemono with calligraphy and sumi-e ink drawings, antique wooden soda boxes, classic vinyl, vintage to contemporary clothing, jewelry, hats, toys, kantha quilts, succulent plants, collectibles of all kinds, and much more. A great treasure is bound to be discovered, and the people-watching is always a treat.
As with all flea markets, arrive early for best finds. But don’t sweat it if you’ve slept in and are still seeking a Sunday adventure. Latecomers can enjoy the beautiful displays and drive a hard bargain for the items vendors don’t want to pack up and take home.
As if finding the perfect couch for your home or a pair of thighhigh white go-go boots wasn’t enough, a portion of the market’s proceeds provides scholarships to Pasadena City College students and helps fund student-led events, a tradition that was started when the fair was founded, and continues to this day.
Food is available for purchase: sweet and savory cobblers, soda, doughnuts. Parking is only $2 (the first bargain of the day).
Address Pasadena City College, 1570 E Colorado Boulevard, Pasadena, CA 91106, +1 626.585.7906, www.pasadena.edu/fleamarket, fleamarket@pasadena.edu | Public transport Gold Line to Allen Station, then a .6-mile walk | Parking Paid on-site lots and unmetered street parking | Hours First Sunday of the month, 8am – 3pm; closed for certain holidays; check website for calendar. | Tip Can’t wait for the first Sunday of the month to get your secondhand fix? Check out Full Circle Thrift Store (2245 Lake Avenue, Altadena, CA 91001) for great furniture and clothing finds with daily inventory updates Monday through Saturday (closed Sunday).
Philippe’s
Send in the clowns!
Philippe’s opened its doors in Los Angeles in 1908. According to company lore, founder Philippe Mathieu made the first French dip when he accidentally dropped a French roll into a pan of au jus and served it up to a local policeman who was in a hurry. The cop returned with hungry friends in search of more “dipped” sandwiches, and so a culinary legend was born. Philippe’s relocated to its current location on Alameda Street in 1951 when the 101 freeway came through. And although Mathieu sold the business in 1928, Philippe’s remains a family-owned restaurant serving the same classic fare of flaky-crust French dips made with sliced roasted meats, spicy mustard, and purple pickled hardboiled eggs on the side.
Communal seating allows for interesting dining mates, whether they be police, fans from Dodger’s Stadium, neighboring Chinatown locals, downtown artists, or the general mishmash of humanity that makes Angelenos. Line up at any one of the ten stations at the big front counter, and a so-called carver will pull together your order, serve it up on a paper plate and send you shuffling over the sawdust floor, loaded tray in hand, to find a seat. You’ll find beer and wine, including a selection from Los Angeles’s San Antonio Winery, on the menu as well.
Long red-topped tables with wooden stools line the front room of Philippe’s, while booths are available in the back, where the walls are lined with pictures of clowns and circuses. In the 1940s, veteran Happytime Circus man Paul Eagles started going to Philippe’s every Monday. Soon, fellow clowns and circus performers began joining him, launching a tradition that lasted for more than four decades, well into the 1980s. The Big Top veterans no longer meet, but the photos and memorabilia pay tribute to their carnival legacy. Who knew there were so many carnies in the area? Enough to pack the back room at Philippe’s.
Address 1001 N Alameda Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012, +1 213.628.3781, www.philippes.com, customerservice@philippes.com | Public transport Gold Line to Chinatown Station, then a .3-mile walk | Parking Free on-site lot and metered street parking | Hours Daily 6am – 10pm | Tip The Los Angeles Railroad Heritage Foundation maintains a rotating exhibit of miniature trains in the back room of Philippe’s.
Tam’s Burgers #21
Something like that
Tam’s on West Rosecrans Avenue has been slinging big burgers since 1971. Simple is the modus operandi at Tam’s. The windows are covered in bright decals with oversized pictures of gut-busting menu items, like the pastrami burger, chili cheese fries, burritos, and tamales. Dining is available inside at one of nine booths in a long galley-style corridor, or outside under a green, corrugated metal awning at circular cement tables.
Or opt for drive-thru service. Don’t be alarmed by the bulletproof glass between the cashier and the customer. Compton has a storied past fraught with racial covenants, redlining, constricted opportunities, and shifting demographics. Prior to World War II, the residents of the small town 15 miles south of downtown Los Angeles were predominantly white. By 1970, a year before Tam’s opened, Compton was 65% Black.
The crack epidemic of the ’80s hit Compton and area residents hard with violent gang wars over territory. In this intensity, West Coast gangsta rap was born, giving rise to such hip-hop acts as N.W.A., whose story is brilliantly told in the biopic Straight Outta Compton. The 1988 album by the same name shone a light on Compton, police brutality, and gangsta life.
Tam’s was the site of a violent flashback in late January 2015. Death Row Records cofounder Suge Knight, having allegedly just been asked to leave the set of a TV promo for Straight Outta Compton being filmed a few blocks away, rolled into the parking lot at Tam’s in his red F-150 Raptor truck. A surveillance video captured blurry images of rapper-turned-filmmaker Cle “Bone” Sloan approaching Knight’s truck on foot, followed by a flurry of punches exchanged through the driver-side window, and finally the Raptor backing up over Sloan, exiting the frame, and then returning and running over Terry Carter, a longtime Compton resident with ties to the music biz.
Tonga Hut
Return of the killer zombie
It took Jeff “the Beachbum” Berry over a decade to find the original recipe for the 1934 cocktail that set off the tiki craze in Los Angeles and beyond. The libation? The Zombie. The inventor of the recipe was the man who introduced Polynesian kitsch culture to the United States, “Don Beach,” born Earnest Raymond Beaumont Gantt. He dabbled in bootlegging toward the end of Prohibition, and then opened a tiki bar in Hollywood in 1933. It was all about rum and escapism. In those days, people couldn’t travel much, so visiting Beach’s bar felt like a getaway to an exotic land with unusual tastes and wild island décor. Same too, with the Tonga Hut, which hasn’t changed much since it opened in 1958. It’s very dark, with the ever-present sound of gurgling water. Lovely topless Polynesian ladies adorn the walls over the squishy vinyl booths.
When the Beachbum finally got his hands on the elusive Zombie recipe, he found one component written essentially in code, labeled simply “Don’s Mix.” Additional sleuthing unearthed the ingredients in Don’s Mix, which included “Spices #4.” Yet more digging revealed that Spices #4 used to be kept by Beach in a safe in Inglewood. What’s up with the hardcore hiding? Back in the days of the tiki explosion, the competition grew to be brutal. Beach only shared his recipes with his most trusted bartenders. But what did Spices #4, the final unknown ingredient, consist of? Eventually, Berry ran into an old bartender of Beach’s who shared the secret. It was … cinnamon syrup.
The current general manager of Tonga Hut learned how to make the original Zombie from Berry. All the ingredients are fresh and unlike the overly sweet bastardized imitations one finds on the menus at “less devoted” bars, the cocktail you’ll get at Tonga Hut is authentic. It’s a muscular drink with big rum flavor, including traces of anise, lime, clove, and, of course, cinnamon.
Address 12808 Victory Boulevard, North Hollywood, CA 91606, +1 818.769.0708, www.tongahut.com, tongahut@gmail.com | Parking Free on-site lot | Hours Mon – Thu 4pm – 1am, Fri 4pm – 2am, Sat 2pm – 2am, Sun 2pm – 1am | Tip Before getting your tropical on, visit the chilly Iceland Ice Skating Center (14318 Calvert Street, Van Nuys, CA 91401). They host public bumper car birthday parties, where you can jump in a bumper car on ice.
Laurel Moglen has produced news for NPRaffiliate stations KPCC and KCRW on the shows “AirTalk,” and “Which Way, LA?” The programs immersed her in all things Los Angeles – its politics, history, current events, and cultural vastness. She has created multiple podcasts for organizations including Travelocity, Forbes Magazine and the California State Parks Foundation. Catch her in a bunch of character roles in reruns of television and film.
Julia Posey is a writer, artist, and clothing designer. She is a native Angeleno and has worked for NPR affiliate KPCC’s “AirTalk” and “Talk of the City.” She has also written and filed stories for KPCC news. She has held many jobs, and in her inauspicious youth – she even worked in a recycling truck. She lives in Highland Park with her husband, sons, and sweet dog.
Lyudmila Zotova’s photographs have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo News, and Eater National, and she is the photographer of the book 111 Shops in Los Angeles That You Must Not Miss (Emons, 2015). Zotova is an alumnus of The Art Institute of California-Orange County and resides in San Diego, California.
The information in this book was accurate at the time of publication, but it can change at any time. Please confirm the details for the places you’re planning to visit before you head out on your adventures.