Chef Johnny Vee stood in his test kitchen, welcoming a dozen students to his “New Mexico Combination Plate” class and trying to explain how the list of dishes we’d be preparing had grown so-o-o long. “I don’t smoke pot,” he said, “but it looks like it – like I’m going, ‘Maybe we should make enchiladas. […]
“Los Angeles in Three Great Houses” continues from last week. This final installment looks at the futuristic house of the city’s most colorful octogenarian: The Sheats-Goldstein House It’s the most famous bachelor pad in Los Angeles, a futuristic man cave of concrete and glass tucked into a slope above Beverly Hills. At the push of […]
“Los Angeles in Three Great Houses” continues from last week. This week’s installment looks at the house of a man for whom the California dream came true: The Doheny Mansion He had been a drifter, mule driver, fruit packer, and failed prospector – not the résumé you’d expect for the future richest man in America. […]
Cities and civilizations leave enduring footprints. Think of Egypt’s Pyramids, the rows of statues on Easter Island, the white columns of the Parthenon in Athens. But Los Angeles has an unhappy habit of knocking down its past, its iconic buildings and houses – paving paradise to put up a parking lot and leaving no trace […]
Los Angeles has always been an incubator for magnetic religious personalities, and in the 1920s no one could touch evangelist, faith healer, and media celebrity, Aimee Semple McPherson. At her pioneer megachurch, Angelus Temple, she preached the “old-fashioned gospel” for a packed house of more than 5,000 people three times every Sunday. “Sister Aimee” livened […]
Every year my wife, Merry, and I drive Interstate 40 from Southern California to New Mexico. The route is scenic, but the Arizona part has long stretches of nothing but miles and miles of miles and miles. I always think of a favorite cartoon: An automobile is starting a trip across a dull, featureless desert, […]
Like many of us as the Year of Plague subsides, my wife, Merry, and I were dying to take a trip somewhere . . . anywhere. But even vaccinated, we weren’t quite ready to board a 5,000-passenger cruise ship in Europe. A trip near home sounded pretty good, though. Baby steps. What’s more, like 23 […]
“If you ride a horse, shoot a gun, and go fishing,” locals told me, “you’re a Montanan!” Over the next few days, I hoped to earn my membership badge. My wife, Merry, and I had just arrived at the Ranch at Rock Creek in southwest Montana. Set along a mountain-fed stream amidst cottonwoods and evergreen […]
To get to Half Moon Bay, we had driven up U.S. 101 through crawling traffic in San Jose, dodged the pushy Porsches and Tesla jockeys of Silicon Valley, and finally twisted and turned our way over a busy road through the Santa Cruz Mountains. At the end, though, waited a quiet little farm town called […]
It was ten at night, and two weary travelers stood at Track 17 at Toronto’s Union Station, waiting to board The Canadian. The brochure for this flagship of Canada’s VIA Rail system had promised “comfortable accommodations” in “superior sleeper cabins,” and we were filled with the anticipation of looking out our window as the train […]
“There’s No Such Thing as ‘Fun for the Whole Family’.” – Jerry Seinfeld Funny! … and true? Recently, I had the chance to run a field test. When I turned (a boyish) 70, my wife gave me a remarkable present: I could choose a trip anywhere in the world. My mind flooded with ideas: seeing […]