Readings By Dorothy ~ 1111 W. Olympic Blvd. ~ Downtown L.A.

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Anheuser-Busch ~ East Los Angeles

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Elena’s Market ~ 1369 Venice Blvd. & Hoover St. ~ Pico-Union

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Harry & Sons Radiator Shop ~ 9344 Valley Blvd. ~ (626) 288-0644 ~ Rosemead

Harry & Sons specialize in vintage, classic and antique radiator repair. In 1938, Harry Trepanier of Luddington, Michigan, opened Harry’s Garage in Santa Monica, CA. In Michigan, he’d flown and sold old airplanes out of Trepanier Airfield, until an aggravated asthma condition sent him and his two sons packing for sea breeze and California sun. One mechanic at Harry’s, Joe, 71 years old, has worked here since he arrived from Mexico at the age of eighteen. Mrs. Trepanier, who drives a 1913 Cadillac and staffs the front office, has been married to Harry for at least 27 years. There’s no website, “but plenty cobwebs.” The family has participated in a traveling antique roadshow and loaned their collection to movie shoots, which explains the incredible car collection in the yard. A fire engine, buses, cars, and antique bicycles were paraded around with well dressed mannequins behind the wheels and seated in the vintage paddy wagon from Sing Sing Prison. Years ago, Harry & Sons refurnished cars for Disneyland. One time, Robert (Bob) Jani, legendary event producer and L.A. native, asked Harry & Sons to build a custom bicycle for Liberace to ride on the opening day of Walt Disney World in FL. Three 5′ wheels carried a piano which Liberace played and steered from a unicycle seat. It’s on permanent display at the Pepsi Cola Saloon.

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The alleged creator of one of the most prolific unauthorized items seen in the streets of Los Angeles over the past few years was busted in a sting operation late last year, Dana Bartholomew of the Daily News reported today. Who was this incredibly active vandal? It wasn’t a street artist, it wasn’t someone doing graffiti, and it wasn’t an illegal muralist. No, it was Rickey Reed, who has put up thousands of PHONE JACKS signs all over Los Angeles for the past half-dozen years. The signs have been so ubiquitous that artist Free Humanity did a parody early last year (see below). The Daily News reports…

We’d been trying to get him for a while,” said code enforcement Chief Frank Bush, who said he cited Reed after he’d begun to measure the store for a phone installation. “He caused visual blight throughout the community.

“I’ve seen his signs all over the place – everywhere you drive.”

Reed, 52, of Los Angeles, was charged with five counts of posting advertising signs on public property, for which he faces a pre-trial hearing on Wednesday.

If convicted of each count, he faces up to 2 1/2 years in jail and a $5,000 fine.
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Ice Fade City ~ 3732 W. Slauson Ave. ~ View Park-Windsor Hills

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MyCityofLA

Chapines Express ~ 4060 Beverly Blvd. ~ Koreatown

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Jolly Jug Liquor ~ 8464 Reseda Blvd. ~ Northridge

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The Sunset Strip was once the epicenter of LA’s youth culture, a place where disparate bands of young people could come together, hang out, get high, listen to music, and meet each other. The sound of the time was strictly Rock ‘n’ Roll and it was being defined by LA bands and packaged by LA-based record companies, who erected giant, temporary monuments to their standard-bearers in the form of beautiful, hand-painted billboards on the Sunset Strip. Born and raised in Los Angeles, photographer Robert Landau grew up near the strip and took some of his earliest photos of the signs that would help define an era. His new book, Rock ‘n’ Roll Billboards of the Sunset Strip is available now from Angel City Press.

What’s your favorite place in LA to get a taco?
Loteria, at the old Farmers Market on Third and Fairfax.

What originally drew you to start photographing the rock billboards of the Sunset Strip?
I was a 16 year old just getting interested in photography and I lived a block above Tower Records. I went out to explore my world and at the time (1969) the Sunset Strip was like a drive-thru gallery with giant artworks depicting all the rockers whose records I was listening to. I noticed the billboards would be painted over with new images every month so I began shooting them to show my friends who lived in other parts of town and never got to see them.

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