I feel like I somehow get in the “L.A. versus” argument more than most people. Perhaps because I am such a staunch supporter and lover of this city, it invites criticism and devil’s advocacy. I get that. I also get why people hate on us, here. However, I think I just found the single greatest, all-encompassing reason to love this city… an ice cream truck.
Oh, this isn’t just any old ice cream truck, this is that rare crossbreed of ice cream and architecture. Two bed buddies that could only really meet each other in this town. The truck itself is a throwbacky steel Airstream trailer kind of deal with a pink 2nd story (probably permitted) on top, but the architectural references only begin there… it’s one knee-slapping architectural pun after another: the company itself is called Coolhaus and the products all have architectural references, of course (Frank Behry, Mintimalism, etc.), but it’s all earned as the owners have the appropriate pedigree to pull it off. And the cool doesn’t end there – these guys Twitter their locations, secret passwords that get you unlisted flavors and, like any good L.A. citizen, they can’t help but namedrop along the way (“Departing T Lofts in 5 minutes…headed to our friends at Dexter!!!”). And they can be booked for your party.
So, to recap: ice cream, architecture, nice rims and overall insider club vibe. But good for the kids. No city could pull all that off but ours. And although you’ll want to poke fun, in the end you have to admit… it’s cool. Or, as we like to say in LA: so wrong it’s Wright.
EatCoolhaus Website
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Article on “The Moment” NY Times Blog
Bridges are a small special interest of mine. Although I have done my own self-education on them, I am not remotely an educated bridge person. I know the basics and can recognize most bridge types and I know how they function, from a broad physics standpoint, but beyond that my love for them is purely visual and romantic. I sometimes peruse websites on bridges, trying to get smarter, but inevitably the math and materials discussions lose me. But, perhaps not coincidentally, searching for bridges leads me to places that I otherwise would never go: into historical records of small town America all the way to Brooklyn, London, Seoul or Brazil.
But the construction of my love affair with bridges started a long time ago in an unlikely place: San Diego. Bridges in the beach community I grew up in are a necessity for a variety of reasons: for one, the train runs along the coast from downtown San Diego all the way up until it heads inland up past Oceanside. In order for the train to stay on the coast, it must avoid both the highway, which runs the same path, as well as numerous inlets of ocean water. And for two, like any city, San Diego became a city of freeways long after it was a city of interconnected roads which connected one small community to another. And since freeways are egotistical in nature and like to cut a bee-line from center to center, all those little roads that got spliced along the way had to be bridged. So, overhang passes are a thing of plenty. Here’s the one that first opened my eyes to the magnificence of simple bridge construction, on the 805 freeway in San Diego – a concrete arch bridge of the most gorgeous kind:
And here’s a similarly constructed one, the Lilac Road Bridge, on i-15. Little different view.
Continue reading ‘My Thing For Bridges.’