Nightmares on Wax at the Fonda Theater

On June 22nd, I got to see Nightmares on Wax at the Fonda Theater!

I generally don't know anything about that sort of music. However a lot of my friends were fans of them, and my dad is a MASSIVE fan. So when I accidentally found that they were playing at the Fonda Theater, Dad said we HAD to go. 

For those that didn't know the history about the Fonda theater (I know I sure didn't) here is some information. The Fonda opened up in October 18 1926, and it originally called The Music Box. It's investors were some of the early greats, John Barrymore, John Gilbert, Reginald Denny, King Vidor, and Mae Murray.

It was originally a preforming play theater where hits like Fancy, Chicago, Glengarry Glenn Ross, and Driving Miss Daisy were preformed. 

In 1945 Fox West Coast purchased the building and gave it a spanish decor changing the stage theater into a movie theater. The Fonda played movies for 32 years. 

In 1985 the Music Box became the Fonda theater after actor Henry Fonda.

In 2012 the building was bought and changed into a music venue. Originally in 2002 the theater was briefly called the Music Box but then switched back into the Fonda Theater. 

Now my review on Nightmares on Wax.

Like I wrote before, I am not usually a fan of this type of music. I don't really get it, and it tends to bore me a bit. HOWEVER, this band really gives it their all. I have only seen one other band really try that hard and it was Ego-Wrappin' in Japan.

These boys have heart, and they play for themselves and not for the money. Well, the money is nice, but you can tell they are mostly there for the art. 

Watching them made me happy. It made me try to like their music. Truth be told their style is not my style, but their dedication is. They worked quite hard to do a good show, and if I liked their music, I would put them in my top three favorite concerts. They preform well, but I wasn't quite with them yet.

I enjoyed the show though, and I loved being in the Fonda theater.

Something AMAZING is brewin'!

Well some great things are coming from around the corner. 

First, I surpassed 100 views!




Damn right! Thank you so much for reading what I wrote, it really means a lot.

So since I made that promise that I would do a lookbook, I be spending my time working on that! I think the lookbook will be up in a couple of days.





Second, I am working on a literary magazine! The magazine will incorporate specific themes but probably be connected towards Los Angeles. I will talk about it later and give more information on how you can order it yourself. 




So there are a lot of fun things coming from a round the corner. Stay tuned and keep reading. Also THANK YOU so much for everything you've done! :)

My day trip to Venice

A couple of weekends ago I managed to go to Venice. Venice is a whole different world compared to East LA, so I'll just write about my basic observations.

Venice is beautiful. It is a city filled with the history of the silent movie era. It was the home of Marion Davies, Thelma Todd, and others. It is the city of canals and it sits right next to the beach. It offers art, beautiful sites, and the innovative Abbott Kinney is a clean hipster haven.

Compared to the east side, Venice shows off its wealth but denies even having it. Venice is like a rich rapper trying to claim he's from Compton, it just isn't the case. Venice is good to visit, but sometimes it can also be annoying.

I got to go see the Venice canals and eat at a restaurant called Gjelina.

I went to the Gjelina take away right after seeing the canals. I had the veggie sandwich and I asked them to make it vegan. Generally food in Abbott Kinney is quite easy to make vegan so there wasn't any problems with that request. 

The veggie sandwich was good. It wasn't AMAZING, but it was good. Using a massive variety of pickled vegetables, the sandwich becomes a standard vegetable sandwich. It wasn't awful and it did the job of filling me up. 

I only wish I was amazed.   

Venice is always a good place to visit. It is a combination of rich hipster and new age ideas that put it on the top of the map. If you have a day to spare, share it with Venice.

Lookbook for 100

I know it's nothing but I'm near to 100 views!

I think when I get 100 views I will do a lookbook of some Hollywood icons!

YAY!

SO coming soon is a Hollywood lookbook!

Going to Murphy's Ranch

I have successfully done one of the things I wanted to do this summer/ year.

I went to Murphy's Ranch!

I wanted to find some older photos of the area but I couldn't find them, but this is my experience to the wreck.

For those that haven't read the THOUSANDS of blog posts based on the history of Murphy's Ranch, nor seen the thousands of television segments based on the site, I will give you a small rundown.

Murphy's Ranch was built in 1930 in Rustic Canyon. It was owned by Winona and Norman Stephens, who were Nazi sympathizers. It was designed to be a base for the Nazi regime but it was raided on December 7th 1941 after Pearl Harbor. Afterwards, it was occupied by various other groups, hippies, homeless, whatever, and eventually it became abandoned in 1990. 

I've read about this, and I've seen a lot of the segments, but I never knew it was so easy to get to. I literally put it on my Apple maps and I found it. 

One of the first things I found was an abandoned car at the bottom of the cliff.

The initial journey starts off with a long hiking pathway. Being in Los Angeles hiking is a main component of life, so generally going to Murphy's Ranch wasn't a solo journey. 

Then, after a short walk, I found a gate with an opening. I went through the opening and walked down the stairs. 

Truthfully, the stairs were the best part about Murphy's Ranch. I found the stairs had so much to tell.

The stairs were our history. They were the path to evil comfortably placed in the center of nature. These stairs were covered completely with graffiti. The mixture of the urban and natural environments make a strong contrast that have to be seen. Walking down those stairs and seeing the last remnants of man made construction, you can see how weak we truly are compared to our planet. 

The other great thing that has to be seen is the graffiti art. Everywhere you look there is something awesome.

It is quite easy to break into the gates that are blocking the structures. However I didn't really want to see it. It didn't really bother me. I was more focused on the stairs.

Sometimes the clearest things are right in front of you. Los Angeles is a land of things that might seem boring, but with a deeper look, there is so much fun to do. I managed to do Murphy's Ranch in the morning and I really enjoyed it. Maybe next time I will check more inside the compound.

Going to Massachusetts Tomorrow

So tomorrow I'm going to Massachusetts to see a friend! However, that means I won't be writing for a week. 

So I'm going to be on hiatus for a week.

I'll write a couple a posts on it on my other blog http://woffke.blogspot.com/ and I'll see how vegan accepting it is.

I'll continue my posts May 20th

yay!

My Hopefully Glorious Summer and Year

I really shouldn't be doing this. I know it's May. I had my chance. This is wrong. I know I shouldn't make a "to do" list but I feel like my circumstances are different this year, so fuck it, I'll make my "summer and 2014 to do list".

So here it is...

Things to do in 2014

□ Learn how to make my own special blends of teas

□ Read 25 books (I've read five so far)

□ Go or shop at the Rosebowl Flea Market 3 times!

□ Go to the beach

□ Go to Disneyland

□ Go to four parties

□ Shop at Farmacia Y Botanica Million Dollar

□ Have a drink at No Vacancy

□ Visit the Museum of Neon Art

□ Run around the Tempest Freerunning Academy

□ Go to the Great wall of LA

□ Go to two concerts

□ go on a detox

□ Shop at the Last Bookstore

□ Go to Rustic Canyon's Murphy's Ranch

□ Go to the California Institute of Abnormalarts (CIA)

□ Go to an outdoor movie

□ check out the art walk

□ See 3 festivals

□ Get my tattoo

I think that's a good start!

Flashback Fridays #3

So here is another Flashback Friday, and this one will involve a very interesting item. It seems that I have written so far about a person, a place, and now I find it appropriate to write about a thing. Categorizing things by types of nouns is quite fun.

So here is the next historical fact...

#3 The Cobb Salad

The Brown Derby was a chain of restaurants that ruled Hollywood from the 1920s to the 1950s. Hollywood elite constructed and formed their major scandals and stories within these four restaurants. However I am not here to talk about that. What I am here for, are the Cobb salad stories.

The Brown Derby at Hollywood and Vine had a lot of historical rumors attached to it. It is supposedly where Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons ate at, and where Clark Gable proposed to Carole Lombard. It is also where the Cobb salad originated from.

I've read different stories based on how to Cobb came to be. The first one was that it was late and the restaurant was closing up. A regular, and a good friend of the owner Robert Cobb, walked in and asked for something to fill him up. There wasn't a lot of food left, since it was the end of the day and they were packing up, so the chef, Chuck Wilson, simply used what was left. When the friend asked what the salad was, the chef replied, "a Cobb salad".

Another story was that the famous Sid Grauman,  founder of the Pantages, Grauman's Chinese theater, as well as others, came in and asked for something that didn't require a lot of chewing due to the fact he had dental surgery.  The result was the Cobb Salad. 

It is disputed whether chef, Chuck Wilson, or owner, Robert Cobb were the founders or creators of the salad, but whatever the answer is, it came from the fantastic building. Sadly the building experienced fire damage in 1987, riot damage in 1992, and overall the complete wreckage in the late 2010s. The building is completely gone now, and all that is left is a parking lot (on the bottom of this article). The Cobb Salad is an item owned by Hollywood history, and, it takes its place as third flashback friday.

What I Didn't Realize...

Coming back home there was something I realized that I really didn't understand before...

We live in paradise.

Growing up in this city, I've always heard the same thing about Los Angeles being a haven for not exhibiting the extremes of weather. As I got older, I understood that. I understood others flocked here to get away from the cold, I understood that the temperature in LA has always remained consistent throughout the year (except for August and September), and I understood that here, the sun always shines. However, I always wondered why people didn't want to experience the seasons. 

I thought that until I dealt with it myself. Then I finally got it. However, that is not why I think LA is paradise.

Traveling last year and seeing LA in the past couple of weeks, I realized Los Angeles is a paradise because it is a city that didn't accept its role as a concrete jungle. 

I have always considered my town a city, but I never realized that it took a different role to that. I don't know why, or I don't know how, but Los Angeles deliberately took the role of sustaining nature as a essential aspect of its image. 

I didn't see how nature or foliage was so abundant in this town. I always figured that other towns and cities were like my own. I assumed that during the 1970s the government decided to destroy the real natural beauty of LA like it did with Jimmy Carter's reputation, but it didn't, it used it as a source of energy. 

LA is a safe haven of vegetation. Wildlife roam free, and food is abundant. Each morning there is a cool breeze omitted from the dew drops formed on the leaves, and walking around you free clean and refreshed. This was something that I did not experience last year.

Last year I was sick most of the year. I was dealing with various forms of depression based on health. Going outside was tearing away at my insides. Getting off the plane I would walk around with massive headaches. Every night, when I would wash my face, I would have a residue of black gunk. The issues of pollution in asia were endless.

However above all, I felt a large portion of Asia didn't let nature naturally run its course in the city. It never integrated itself comfortably in the city's individual atmospheres. It became two separate entities. With LA, nature and modernity, go hand in hand.  

What I didn't realize was that LA has always taken the initiative to keep the true beauty of the world alive. The city might be a growing metropolis, but it's a land that still wants Mother Earth to be apart of it.

And I am now grateful for that.  

Flashback Fridays #2

I've already fucked up. 

I had this goal of having a blog that I would continuously connect with, and I already fucked up and missed a deadline. 

Even despite being out of school for two years I have resulted to my lazy procrastinated self. 

Last night, just as I was going to bed, I legitimately jolted out of bed yelling, "ahh fuck". However  I was already in bed, so my laziness won the battle. 

But if Chaplin is my witness, I will still do my Flashback Friday.

So here is #2

#2 The Knickerbocker Hotel

If I could have everything I wanted, The Knickerbocker would be open to the public. I would even settle for the small cafe connected to the hotel to be open to the public. If I had all the money in the world I would buy that place in a second and convert it into apartments or ANYTHING just to give this building back to the deserving world. But instead this place is now a russian retirement home. 

Putin wins this round.

However it's hard to blame Russians for the inaccessibility  of this fantastic building. Before the 1970s it was basically a decapitated shithole covered with the drugged up remains of whores and deadbeats. Hollywood did the right thing in converting it to a retirement home so they can clear out the mess.

Just like any dessert in LA, this place has a really short but rich history. When it was constructed in 1925 by E.M. Frasier, it became a regular hang out spot for Hollywood's elite.  

The Knickerbocker has been the place where Valentino, as well as Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio, had their occasional drinks. It is where Harry Houdini's wife conducted her séances to contact her recently deceased husband, and it's also where Francis Farmer was carried out kicking and screaming after failing to meet with her probationary officer. 

Elvis stayed here when he was filming Love Me Tender and Laurel & Hardy were here on an episode of "This is your Life". 

However, some dark stuff happened here as well.  

D. W. Griffith was found unconscious in the lobby from a brain hemorrhage, ultimately dying of that later that night. Irene Lentz, also known as Irene, committed suicide by jumping out of her window and dying on the roof of the lobby. She was found a couple of days later. Also William Frawley, famously known as Fred Mertz from the famous I Love Lucy, suffered from a heart attack and was dragged to the Knickerbocker ultimately dying later at the hospital.  

See, this place is rich with both sides of history.

The question I always seem to get is, "why do you even care?" 

I care because this is a building with so many interesting facts. Not simply facts but facts that ignite interest and fascination. What is so fascinating about this city is that the city we live in is where our idols generated from. Those that we admire and worship reside and evolved in this town, and their residual effects are fascinating to the rest of the world today. The celebrity status is filled with weird and scandalous stories, and The Knickerbocker is the epitome of that, and that's why I love it so. 

Flashback Fridays! #1

The funny thing about growing up in this city is that it sits on the best stories. Its history is constructed on deceit, lies, and the strange. There isn't any reality show that can compete with Hollywood history. Hollywood is the queen, and nothing can come close to how great this city is. Many scoff at its pseudo pretentious demeanor, but they don't realize what this city had to do to become the city it is now.

No one knows how really great this city is.

So since this is my hobby I decided I'll write about one random historical person or fact every friday. It'll be called, "Flashback Fridays". It'll have fun details about some famous person or place or event that happened in Hollywood.

and I'll start off with...

#1 Gilda Gray

Gilda Grey was an actress from the silent movie/ talkie era that is famous for introducing the shimmy dance move. She stared in seven movies, and she was mainly a dancer throughout her career. Dealing with the terror of the stock market crash as well as her faltering career, Gilda Gray died at 58 from her second heart attack. 

Like most actresses during the Golden Era, Gilda Gray started off as a vaudeville performer. Born Marianna Michalska in Kraków, Austria-Hungary, (now Poland) Gilda seemed like a person that fought tooth and nail to get the career. She originally danced in her native land of Poland, but like every hopeful dreamer, the beaconing lights of the boulevard called her in. She wanted the adventure, and she wanted the fame.

What is most interesting about Gilda was that a Times article stated that she was married at 11 and had a child at 12. However records state that she was married at 14... so I guess that's ok?

But fuck me man. I couldn't even commit to go to a party when I was 14. I sure as hell wouldn't been able to have gotten married at 14.

I would have been crying all the time at 11, since I was a baby.

When the 1929 stock market crashed, Gilda lost most of her money but managed to sustain a career as a dancer at the Palace Theater in New York. After that, she had a heart attack. She had previously dealt with a couple of divorces as well as other financial problems. 

Near the end of her life Gilda was in complete financial trouble. She couldn't afford any form of room or board and had to live with her friends for about six years. Gilda died December 22, 1959 at age 58. The Motion Picture Relief Fund, an organization that helps actors that need assistance when they can't find the means to do so, paid for her funeral.

While her name did not survive in infamy, she left behind the shimmy. While that might seem like much, at least it was something. If you think about it, did your grandma leave anything fantastic behind? No, delicious pies do not count.

Gilda danced for Hollywood, and because of that, we contain her history.


Watch her dance here!