| The Naked City | Dec 3 2019 |
'Tis the season for generous giving—of prison time.
This unusual photo made today in 1953 shows a man named Edward Hallmark, aged seventy-three, being wheeled into a Pasadena courtroom to testify against twenty-four year old Donald Randazzo. Apparently, the previous September Randazzo kidnapped and beat Hallmark in an effort to rob him of his life savings. The shot is part of the large Los Angeles Examiner archive held by the University of Southern California, and which we've mined for interesting historical shots often.
In the photos below you see the defendant Randazzo conferring with his lawyer Edward S. Cooper. Randazzo is being shown a page from an edition of Advance California Reports. Advance reports or advance sheets are legal aids—specifically, pamphlets containing recently decided opinions of federal courts or state courts of a particular region. So basically Cooper is informing Randazzo of something relevant to their court appearance.
And we know exactly what that relevant something is—a standard in California case law stating that when the chief prosecution witness is trundled into court on a stretcher the defendant is seriously screwed. We have a feeling a wheelchair would have worked fine for Hallmark, but when you're facing your kidnapper you play your best card. The bedridden victim card beats everything king and below. Cooper is doubtless saying to his client, “As you can see here in Advance California Reports, Donald, legally you're fucked.”
Los AngelesPasadenaUniversity of Southern CaliforniaLos Angeles ExaminerEdward HallmarkDonald RandazzoEdward S. Cooper
| Intl. Notebook | Jun 14 2018 |
Nocturnal postcards showcase a magical Los Angeles.
Around the turn of the last century, and particularly during the 1910s, nocturnal postcards became all the rage in the U.S. They were made for virtually every tourist locale in the country, but it seems Los Angeles was an exceedingly popular subject. Above you see a nocturnal postcard depicting the Venetian Gardens in Venice, California, and below you'll find more moonlit cards showcasing various places around the L.A. area. These were published by many companies, among them the California Greeting & Post Card Co., and Edward H. Mitchell Co., which was located in San Francisco. Most of the places depicted, including the Venetian Gardens, the spectacular Ocean Park Bath House, and the Dragon Gorge, a scenic railway (rollercoaster) also located in Ocean Park, are long gone. These postcards are a reminder of a more romantic Los Angeles that has long since succumbed to the wrecking ball of progress.
| Intl. Notebook | Nov 26 2011 |
When you get the urge to eat inside a big ole boot, a regular restaurant just won't do.
Below are six more examples of programmatic or mimetic architecture from Los Angeles and environs. Side note: the swastika on the teepee serves as a reminder that the symbol was used by many cultures, including Native Americans, long before it was appropriated by Germany's nazis. See our orignal post on programmatic eateries here.
