The Exposition Park Rose Garden

 Here are a few cellphone photos from my walk through the Rose Garden. 

First time in Exposition Park

 Yes, there is a first time for everything, as the cliché goes. This was my first visit to Exposition Park, a place I had long known about but had never visited when I lived in Los Angeles in the late 80s and early 90s. 

I don't know why I had never gone. I guess I would have one if there had been a major festival held at the location. All it would have taken is a cultural presentation that was publicized in the Los Angeles Times' Calendar section and I would have gone. I went to other places, and it was close enough for me, just a few miles away from Olvera Street that I used to visit regularly.

The idea I had, and yes, it must have been a grave overexaggeration, was that it was seedy. I associated central LA with a dystopian, Mad Mad scenario, and it is not a stretch to imagine that it was right on the border with Compton. In those days, and even now, Compton has a fearsome reputation. It is associated with black urban youths with guns battling it out over turf, the way that Boyle Heights had Latino youth engaged in heavy gang warfare. And no, I am not exaggerating, despite how I started this paragraph. These were war zones, with continual reports about drive-by shootings and deaths in communities that were desperately poor, with youth that didn't have any sort of positive self-image. Yes, I know, now the people who have moved out of Boyle Heights and ascended the social mobility ladder have created this fiction of a Latino paradise in Boyle Heights, and they rage against what they perceive as aggressive gentrification, but I remember what a war zone it was, as reported in the media. And the same held true for Compton.

So, I think I thought that Exposition Park was on the doorstep of Compton, a place where I would be taking my life in my hands if I ventured close. It doesn't make sense, though, because it is next to USC, a major campus that caters primarily to the middle and upper classes. But USC students always said that their campus was located in the middle of a "ghetto", and besides, as a UCLA alum, why would I want to go visit the environs of USC?

But there are major museums at Exposition Park, such as the Museum of Natural History as well as the California Museum of African-American History. These places are listed on signs next to the freeways as we drive by the always-congested 110 freeway. Yes, drive down just one or two miles further south and you get offramps for streets that entered into the modern Los Angeles imaginary as entries to death zones. Streets such as Florence and Normandy, which was engraved in our collective Angelino mindset as the epicenter of the LA riots, where white truck driver Reginald Denny was brutally beaten on camera by thugs. This place was on fire back then, and the timber had long been dry. 

So, I associated Exposition Park with Central Los Angeles, and thus, with danger. You drove by the area if you had to drive on the 110 freeway on your way to other parts, it was not a destination, it was a necessary depository for the fears and anxieties of Angelinos. And so, I think I missed out on many things.

There are the museums. I didn't get a chance to go today, although I walked outside them, but I saw places that must have valuable collections that can teach us not only about science but about our social environment and history. I would have visited today if I could, but they are still on timed-entry, and you have to reserve a time and also buy a ticket in advance. My visit today was not premeditated, so I didn't make the preparation. I just wanted to walk around the park and, principally, visit the rose garden.

Arriving to the location, you exit on Martin Luther King Blvd and then turn right on Figueroa. You get to a street called Exposition Park Blvd (the signs will announce it), and you pay $12 (shortly to go to $15) to park. It was, as the homies say, "popping" with families attending today. I saw many middle class families, but also, Latinos and some African-Americans. I say this because the attendees at Exposition Park don't really mirror the ethnic composition of the area surrounding it. The people around the area are poor, living in ultra-dense housing, and many are African-American and Latinos. However, a big difference you see here is that any homeless people or those that want to "hustle" are not allowed here, which is contrary to what has happened to other areas (such as Venice Beach) where they have taken over. Here, they are kept out of the environs, and thus, one feels very safe. This is a place you can go and feel secure.

I arrived and started walking around. The displays of aircraft seem a little dated and rusty. They must not have been updated in several decades. However, it was a very clean area. I was surprised that they let so many Latinos set up stands to sell food, and the ice-cream vendors (not the Anglos ones, the Mexican "paleteros") were walking all around. Pupusas, muletas, frutas, many Latino foods were being sold. I wonder if they have to apply for a permit, because if more of them gathered, and there were quite a few, I think they would scare away the Anglos and Asians.

The rose garden was beautiful, a riot of colors. Of course, the first thing I noticed was a family posing for Quinceañera photos. I loved the colors, and enjoyed taking photos with my Instax Wide camera. I was intending on taking more photos with my Minolta Autocord, but it was loaded with black and white, and it seemed pointless to shoot monotone photos in such an environment. I did take maybe four shoots, but mostly, I used my Instax Wide and my cellphone. I have to say, I am very impressed with the Instax camera. I loved most of the photos I took with it, and used up two rolls of color. 

As I was walking around, I thought there would be another area that I could visit to the west. It was listed as the "Jess A. Brewer Jr Park" on the map, but it is a place that was fenced off because it was under construction. In a few of my photos you can actually see a giant crane in the background. We will have to return in 2022. 

Well, I saw some of what Exposition Park has to offer, and one sight was the entrance to Memorial Colosseum. There is also a "Banc" of California stadium being constructed nearby. Most of the south was taken up by parking lots. I would have liked to go visit the campus of USC, but I imagine that access must be limited due to the pandemic-aftermath. UCLA is listed as a campus that is closed, after all, and I could see why. Besides, I was very tired and didn't want to walk any further. 

I'll post a few cellphone photos in this entry and a few subsequent ones. My Instax Wide photos will be scanned and posted somewhere else. I want to make a book with my Instax photos, as a matter of fact. But here is my first batch of cellphone photos:

Back to the People's Republic...

 ...of Santa Monica, CA. Yes, I planned a double-header for today, I went first to the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, and then, planned for a quick visit to the pier. It has been maybe 10 years since I was there, but when I was an LA resident, I used to go several times a year. I missed the place very much, even though each time I go, it makes me think of that scene in the movie "Falling Down", where the Robert Duvall is killed by the prototype MAGA fan before Trump came on the scene, the white man who feels victimized by a plural and multicultural environment. 

I went and arrived at about 5 p.m. Quick note to self, there is a parking lot next to the Santa Monica City Hall. It is on the corner of 4th and Olympic, and it seems big enough. There are no attendants, it is all automated, but you grab a ticket as you go in, you carry the ticket with you, no on the car, and you calculate and pay your fee when you go back. For one hour it charged me $1 on a Thursday afternoon. 

Santa Monica feels less, how to put it, down at the ruff these days. I remember homeless people everywhere, but today, I hardly saw any. This is not to say that the drive on the 405 to reach the city is not hellish, the 405 is the same calamity it was back in the 90s when I was still an Angelino, but the city seems laid-back and clean. And people want to get over Covid, so there were big throngs of people on the pier, a very multiracial, primarily working-class group. You don't see many middle class kids here, but there were a few. You do see working class Latino and African-American groups, and many vendors on the pier, selling trinkets, balloons, churros, and even playing instruments and painting artwork. I heard a musician playing rock tunes with a sitar. I had to buy his CD.

I enjoyed my quick walk, and I did take several Instax photos. What happened at the Getty Villa? Well, that is a story for another post. 

Descanso in slide (pt. 1)

 I shot about two rolls of expired 35mm Fuji slide film in my last trip to Descanso Gardens on May 21, 21. I used my old Canon T-90 camera that I dug out of the closet where it was comfortable in hiding during the past 5 or so years. I don't even remember having used it ever, I quit my habit for 35mm long, long ago, when I became a Rebel and went over to the digital side. Before that, I was still using my Canon T-70, the older version of that model, and I remember it failed me miserably at the Rose Parade maybe 12 years ago, when I was trying to photograph a band and it jammed on me. So I think that was what motivated me to buy the Canon T-90, that and the allure of rock-bottom analogue camera prices when it seemed film was about to slink away. But film came back. I don't know if we can say roaring, but it is meowing a little.

So, I didn't really even know if my Canon T-90 camera was working. And here I was, trusting finicky (all the more so since it was expired) slide film. But I had to see how it was doing. It had a roll of color film in it, and I had to finish off that roll before moving to slides. I used it at the El Dorado Regional park, a trip that was an outing because, basically, it wasn't really a beautiful nature reserve, it was Lakewood's version of Fairmont Park in Riverside. Even the ducks were in abundance, and the sidewalks were caked in their filth.

But going back to Descanso, I took it there and finished off the roll of slide film I had started at El Dorado, then shot another one-and-a-half rolls. I sent two 35mm rolls to be developed. Now I know. The camera works, but not the photographer. I made a big mistake, and I realized it after I had finished the rolls, when I was thinking about how long a sound the shutter was making. Here I was, using aperture priority mode, and trying to use f8 up to f16, and really, given some dim lighting conditions and the 100 ISO speed of the film, the camera was choosing very long shutter speeds for me. Most of these 8 frames I scanned are blurry. I should have known, and to my credit, I realized it back then, but the mistakes were confirmed when I scanned the film 30 minutes ago.

Now I know, now I know. If I insist on using this camera with slide film, and my longish 135mm lens, I need to use shutter priority and use a shutter speed of at least 1/100 second. That way, the camera might be shooting wide open, but at least I have much more of a chance of obtaining sharp photos, and not the blur I obtained this time. By the way, you might have noticed the laconic attempt at humor in this post. I recently discovered the Youtube site "Grainydays", by one acerbic and low-key Jason Kummerfeldt, and have been enjoying his humor. It kind of rubs off on me.

So here are the frames I scanned today. I don't really want to finish scanning the roll. I think I will let bygones be bygones.

So Cal Railway Museum in Perris (pt. 2)

 And here is the last black and white image I took at the railway museum on Tuesday, May 25th. I was very, very tired, and when I found this vantage point, it seemed to promising. However, I could not level the image so that I had a straight horizon, I had to really work at it, adjusting one way and the next. I can't see very clearly using my old blue shirt as my dark cloth, I will need a dedicated black cloth. Plus, I was feeling a little uneasy with the worker a few hundred feet away sitting in his cart monitoring me. And finally, the wind was picking up and shaking the camera. I had to wait for a long time to get a temporary pause in the wind, and as it is, I don't think the shaking stopped entirely. I should have just declined to take this image, but I worked so hard to set it up, and I wanted this one so that I could go home. I wanted to take a color slide of some trains in another area, and I actually walked there, but there was no clear composition, and I was tired, and what I saw didn't merit $30, so I left.

By the way, there was a big hound panting frantically as I was leaving. I wondered if it came on its own, since it was not tied up anywhere. It looked to me to be in desperate need of water, it had its tongue out and it was panting, and yes, it was hot. I looked around but there was no container I could use to pour the rest of my bottled water out. I went back to my car, where I could still hear the panting far away, then took a stryofoam cup and tore off the top, then poured my water and took it back to the dog. As I left he was drinking away, and I only wish I could have given him more water.

Here is the image. I don't know why I have the massive light leak. I think it might have to do with the filter which is incorrectly placed. I think there is a gap in the filter, and I can see it, where the black electrical tape has peeled away, but also, I can't eliminate the possibility that this holder was not seated corrected in the camera, or that the camera or holder might have a leak on that side. Since I obtained another photo with the camera with no leak, I think it is either the holder itself or the makeshift red filter I place on the lens. Bummer.