FOLLOW THE RED BRICK ROAD: LINCOLN HEIGHTS TIME TRAVEL

"Well I’m heading back home it’s been so so long/It must have been ten years or more/I’m on a long lonely stretch of Route 66 but my minds in 1984/I'm walkin' down Main Street..." Walkin' Down Main Street, Dana Agnellini

"Well it winds from Chicago to LA
More than two thousand miles all the way
Get your kicks on route 66"

What lies beneath in Lincoln Heights? Ask Kim Cooper. She has a great post on her "1947 Project" site: "Historic Cobblestones Exposed in Lincoln Heights" on the 1947 Project site.

Recorded history is such a tenuous thing. A little road construction and another world is revealed. So random that Kim would walk across the street and see the original cobble stone momentarily revealed. She also risked life and limb to bring us pictures. When the road paving is finished it will be gone again.

She posted her finding on a site concerned with preserving the history of LA in 1947, although the cobblestones are not a product of 1947. She just happens to live there. Still, when you finish her post you might be intrigued by the rest of the '47 Project. This from the site bio:

"Los Angeles in 1947 was a social powder keg. War-damaged returning soldiers were threatened by a new kind of independent female, who in turn found her freedoms disappearing as male workers returned to the factories. These conflicts worked themselves out in dark ways. The Black Dahlia is the most famous victim of 1947's sex wars, but hardly the only one. The 1947project seeks to document this pivotal year in L.A., through period reporting and visits to the scenes as they are today."

WHO IS KIM?

Kim Cooper edits Scram, a journal of unpopular culture, and compiled anthologies on bubblegum music and the greatest records you never heard. Her latest book is “Neutral Milk Hotel’s ‘In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.’”

INCONGRUITY AND HAPPINESS

For some it is "the butcher, the baker, the candle stick maker", but for moi, the artsy loft dweller, it is "the decorator, the photographer, the musician and the film maker"

Every night I come home to the same driveway, the same parking spot, the same pine trees, the same iron fire stairs. But last week, I drove in to a different view. An antlered deer head was mounted to the pine tree and underneath stood four sullen rock stars straight out of the sixties (running black eye liner, pale faces, long oily hair, heroin-thin and wearing paisley).

Our building photo artist was doing a shoot. "You're looking at rock stars", he told me. I took a hard look. I couldn't tell if they were famous rockers that I ought to be star struck by, or if he meant soon-to-be stars (after his photos shot them to the top). So I shrugged and said "hi rock stars" and trudged up the stairs.

There should be a special word for the happiness that incongruity can bring. That deer head just struck my silly bone. I couldn't wipe the smile off my face. It was all gone when I came back out, the rock stars, the deer head, the photo shoot. It was just me, my parking space and the tree, back to earth.

OBJECT LOVE: THE COLOR OF MY DESIRE

What to do with a whimsical blue shape painted on the floor? What to do? What to do?

One year later, I have finally arrived at the combination of color and shape I was searching for.

Now to get to work on the rest of the place!