Los Angeles

The City of Freeways and Angels, windows in the new Cathedral of LA

Pacific Palisades

 15480 Albright St, the house Barbara found in 1969, Our House, in January 2004. The great sycamore (Californian plane tree) is bare of leaves in winter to permit the to sun warm us. In summer it shades us from the western sun. A spicy palm tree, seeded by the birds and the ash and the eucalyptus, which we planted in 1971, have grown into real trees.  

 The living room. Extensive changes in 1983 have made its interior space much larger and more beautiful. We love to return to this house after one of our long travels. A new sofa and the glass table, under which rests my Cycladic Goddess, are its center. The Oachacan-Idian rug on the wall we bought in Madrid, New Mexico on Christmas 2001. Barbara always keeps many bouquets of flowers everywhere; oriental lilies are our favorites.

 The glass wall into the garden in the back, the Ingo-Maurer lamp, and the dining table were part of the additions of 1983, as was the extended open-beamed ceiling. The reclining chair was the "Gesellenstück" of my furniture-making career. 

Barbara's room is the most beautiful. On clear Winter days she can see the Pacific Ocean on the horizon. 

A Sunset from Barbara's window in October 2003.

In May the jacarandas are blooming on Albright Street and the ground is covered with blue snow.

Our Beaches

Zuma Beach, half-an-hour by car west along the coast, at the end of Malibu seen from Point Dume, which juts into the Pacific. A unique place, especially when the yellow flowers bloom after the rains in March.  

Pirates' Cove, east of Point Dume is our favorite beach. A large sandy cove where we used to swim in the nude, before one day a sheriff on horse-back issued us "traffic citations" costing us $60 each...! These days, we have become too old to test the law or compete with the young people swimming in the nude....  

After a winter storm Pirates' Cove is strewn with driftwood. In the wild, cold winter of 1969 we lived by a blazing fireplace with wood collected here.  

Leo Carillo Beach is a little further out along Route 1 — Point Dume can be seen in the distance. It has even wilder waves and several sandy coves nestling in the rocks of last promontory before the coastline turns north.

 Venice, California

 Funky Venice beach-walk, south of Santa Monica, is, on week-ends, crowded with steel-bands, jugglers, fire-breathing artists, faded old hippies, one-legged athlets, triple-breasted gays, roller scaters, dancing Hindus, Jewish pensioneers, and flop shops.... A good place to visit.  

Venice Coffee House, a historical hangout of the Beatnicks in the early fifties. Jack Karouac and his cronies had breakfast here.

 A "homeless" sleeping it off in the warm California sun —....

Roller-scating in 1981 (roller-blades had not been invented yet) in the courtyard of the "Venice Cultural Center,"  the walls of which were then covered with impromptu "wall-paintings," which are today disfigured by Graffiti.  

 Mother and child. — All kinds of soft and hard drugs are, of course, part of the scene.

The New Getty-Center

In 2001 the Getty Foundation opened a 1-B$ complex on a mountain bluff overlooking West Los Angeles, Our Acropolis. Among buildings for the Getty Research Institute, their Restauration and Funding Project, an Administration Building, several restaurants is also a complex housing their Collection of Paintings and Sculptures, which had previously been located in the Getty Villa in Malibu. A cable car connects the city on top with a huge, subterranean garage next to the 405-freeway below. This picture is taken from the tram.

The highly eclectic buildings were designed by Richard Meyer. They have an almost clinical austerity that borders on coldness. But they also catch the California light better than any other building in LA. This is the glass-domed entry hall to the Museum Complex. It leads into a public area with water flows, ponds, trees and picnic tables under umbrellas surrounded by restaurants and coffee stands. Despite its abstract intellectualism the place has become a popular destination for the masses. Entry is free. In so far the Getty has become a symbol of the ethnic diversity and the open society of Los Angeles.

Detail of the entrance hall

The outside of the buildings are faced with raw-hewn, white travertine, all stairs are steel painted white.

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However, the best feature of the Getty Center is the view of the city and the ocean, from the gardens and the terraces interspaced in its many levels.

Downtown Los Angeles in January 2004

In October 2003 the new Frank-Gehry-designed Philharmonic, aka Walt Disney Philharmonic Hall or WDPH (after its main sponsor) opened. All concerts were sold out for the 2004 season, but one can admire it from the outside.... and, as you can see, it did turn out to be a spectacular, highly imaginative piece of architecture sitting between the high-rises of downtown LA.

 Spring trees reflected by the 2-mm thick stainless steel sheeting of the outer shell.

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 Some panels are brushed others highly polished to reflect...

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 ...various small gardens between the wings (petals?) of the structure. Fritz Keilmann Spring 2004

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 The entry of the Symphony Hall. Because of its tight location, there is only one place from which one can see the entire building between the skyscrapers and the old Music Center  

In October we often see fabulous sunsets over the Pacific from our house....

California Route 1 North to San Francisco

Lion's Head Rock north of the Hearst Castle. California Route 1 passes below Pacific Palisades. After meandering between the coast and inland farming towns it skirts the desolate mountains north of San Louis Obispo and Morrow Bay. During the Summer, when the hinterland is hot, the coast is shrouded in dense fog which boils from the very cold Pacific, but in Winter and early Spring this lonely stretch of some 100 km is one of the most magnificent sceneries in California.

Coast near Plaskett Creek north of Santa Lucia. We had camped with the children at Plaskett Creek Campground and in the morning walked, dressed in thick sweaters down to the water's edge. 

 The shallow continental shelf leads to these typical Californian wave patterns. To swim in the Ocean you need to have the fat of a sea lion or the pelt of a sea otter.

The little red riding hood staring at the sea is Susanne. Only icebergs are missing in the sea. She did not look for long, before she came back shivering from the cold. 

 Barbara and the children on the way down (1979).

The coastline south of Big Sur, its most loneliest and wildest stretch.

Behind the Mountains: The Desert

Mountains of the Los Angeles Crest National Forest To the East the Los Angeles Basin is protected from the California-Nevada Desert by an over 3000-m-high southern extension of the Sierra Nevada — one of the reasons for the temperate climate of LA — and its smog.

A Joshua Tree, a member of the lily family, in Joshua Tree Desert State Park.

Anza Borrego State Park just north of the Mexican Border. An Occotillo in bloom. If the winter has brought enough rain the desert blooms in profusion.

When the children were small we used to camp on Easter Weekend in a secret place in the Anza Borrego— where a profusion of rabbits and hares — and rattle snakes in some years — layed plenty of Easter eggs! The flowers lead a precarious existence changing from yellow patches of red and blue, depending on the marginal ecologie, the week and and the wetness of the dry sand.  

Barrel Cactus in the Anza Borrego. The last to bloom are the cacti, which have the most complicated and showy flowers in off-red, yellow, and many hues of green and brown.

 Whole hills of the Anzo Borrego are covered with cacti, Ocotillos and these strongly smelling, yellow-blooming desert bushes.

 The moon over Death Valley 1980. On our way home from skiing we would sometimes spend a day and night in Death Valley. But like the Grand Canyon Death Valley is, because of its size, hard to photograph, and I have only very few pictures to show.

 Along Route 395 to Mammouth Lakes

The Superstition Mountains near Big Pine. Next to Route 1 along the Coast the road through the Owen's Valley to Mammouth, on the eastern side of the High Sierra is one of our favorites, especially in Winter....  

 The same desert mountains near Big Pine in April.

Lava beds flowing into Owen's Valley from a string of old, extinct volcanos at the foot of the eastern escarpment of the High Sierra. Six hours north of Los Angeles.

Mammouth  

 Barbara and Cornelius amid colorful lichens on the ridge above Minaret Summit (1978). Mount Ritter in the background. In Summer one can hike for days in the Sierra Wilderness west of Mammouth, sleeping under the stars, and in Winter Mammouth Mountain is an ideal place to ski.

Mammouth Lakes above the village.

 Cornelius and Barbara on Minaret Summit (1978) from where one has a a great view of the High Sierra: the Minarets on the left, the triangle of Mt. Ritter on the right.  

 Still higher up lies Shadow Lake at the foot of Mt. Ritter

 Minaret Lake at over 3000 m.

Mammouth Hot Creek in Summer.  East of Mammouth airport lies a desert valley with volcanic hot springs and Indian power spots. One boils up in this icy creek, hence its name. It is a mysterious and heavenly spot to sit in for hours, shifting between hot and cold water...

 Summer in Mammouth is nice, but early spring, is even better. We rented a luxurious cabin in March or April with friends and the whole clan spent skiing, the younger members wedeled down Mammouth Mountain, and I went alone or with Barbara on cross-country trips like this one. Nobody disturbed me for whole days, the sun was hot enough to take a sunbath on my skis....

 Barbara in a snowdrift on Minaret Summit (1974).

 Mammouth Valley and the desert mountains from the path to Mammouth Lakes.

The snowed-in desert at an altitude of 1800 m near the Hot Springs.

 These trips always ended by soaking one or two hours in the Hot Springs, after which one has, overheated and all soft muscles, still to ski back to one's car near the airport. I know of no better exercise....

 Barbara, who doesn't like the the hot water, waits for me to take my bath...

 Steam rising from the Hot Springs in Winter.

 The sky reflecting in a hot puddle nearby. In the opper corner you see the heads of two bathers near where the hot spring boils up. Of course, when one gets out, one stinks for sulfur, but that can be washed off with a shower in the cabin....

 Hot Creek and the High Sierra in the snow. April, 1975.