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The Urban Wine Trail -Santa Barbara

On a cold wet rainy Super Bowl 2017 weekend, I decided to get out of Los Angeles and head north. I usually stop off in Ventura – the old town part – because of a favorite hotel, a couple of good restaurants and the thrift and furniture stores. But this time I decided to keep going north to Santa Barbara.

I’ve been going to Santa Barbara since the early 1980s. First time I went to Santa Barbara there was still a stoplight on the 101 freeway at State Street. If you were headed north and you turned right on to State Street it took you into town, the cultural and economic center of Santa Barbara. If you turned left and headed towards the beach you passed a couple of hotels, the train station, a couple of beach bars and made it to Cabrillo Street. Right in front of you was famous Sterns Wharf and the long open park which runs along the beach famous for the weekend art and crafts market. All the famous restaurants that are there now were there than as well including the first Sambo’s and the Santa Barbara Fishhouse.

And as you went down State towards the beach off to your left was an old run down warehouse district full of old buildings and tiny houses that hadn’t been torn down when the neighborhood changed from residential to commercial. This part of town was full of contractors, sail makers, and boat yards. The business that worked on the boats that came into the marina and back out again. It was very industrial and pretty run down.

Now Santa Barbara has been going through some amazing changes in the last 40 years but I really had not stopped in Santa Barbara for any more than a couple of hours in the last 10 years. I’ve always been going farther north to Pismo Beach, San Luis Obispo, or even further north. I had not stopped for more than lunch, but now I was going there for the entire rainy Super Bowl weekend.

I checked into the Avania Inn, a nice place about two blocks from the beach that I found on the Trivago for a good price. I unpacked, walked around on the beach for bit, and went back to the room. After a quick shower, I went out for dinner at the Enterprise Fish Company on State Street. It is not the greatest restaurant in the world but their fish is always fresh and their wine list it pretty decent. Plus it’s always a very popular place to go meet and talk with people specially while seating at the bar. After that I started walking around the area and I stumbled on to the Santa Barbara Urban Wine Trail. Now the full Urban Wine Trail extends to all parts of Santa Barbara and I have placed a link to a map of the tour here. http://urbanwinetrailsb.com/the-trail-map/

Yet, I wanted to focus on the 20+ wines and tasting rooms featuring Santa Barbara area wines you can find in a four block radius in an area between the 101 and the Beach, and State Street and Garden Street. Plus among those tasting rooms you can also find at least three or four craft beer breweries, and some excellent eateries including Loquita, an upscale Tapas bar that is outstanding.

Now if you’re into wine tasting, you’ve probably been up Napa Valley or down to Temecula. And at these wonderful areas, if you want to go to a lot of wineries you usually end up being part of a wine tasting tour, or you rent a limo,or you have a designated driver because if you have been sampling wines at more than three or four wineries, you should not be driving California highways. Yet, if you’re into the Santa Ynez wines, the wonderful thing is you can sample a wine at one tasting room, walk out the front door and go down three doors and find another tasting room. Some are owned by an individual winery and others are tasting rooms that feature wines that are presented by a collective of wine makers. These collectives feature a person working behind the counter who doesn’t favor one wine or over the other, and you can taste up to four to five different wineries at one time.

You will find 14 wineries or collectives featuring San Ynez area wines in this former industrial area. Here they are: Area 5.1 Winery, Babcock Winery, Ca’del Grevino, Cottonwood Canyon Winery, DV8 Cellars, Fox Wines, Kunin Wines, Laford Winery, Municipal Winemakers, Oreana Winery, Pali Wine Company, Riverbench Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara Winery, and The Valley Project.

Also in the same area, you will find Figueroa Mountain Brewing Company, Brass Bear Brewing and Bistro, Corks and Crowns, and Lama Dog Tap Room for the hops connoisseurs. Plus eateries like the Lark, Lucky Penny, 7 Bar and Kitchen and Helena Street Bakery.

Go have a wonderful time – eating and drinking while walking!!

 

 

Culver Hotel, Part 2 – The Infamous Munchkin Hotel – Culver City

Sources used for some parts of this story are – Wikipedia, Hollywood Babylon, LA Weekly, Daily Mail, Scott Simon, The Guardian.

After opening in 1924, the Culver Hotel soon gained a reputation as an excellent hotel for visitors to the Culver City area and MGM Studios. In 1939, it would gain an even more notoriety for housing all 125 of the “little people” who played the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz.

The Wizard of Oz was then the last word in 1939 special effects, make-up, set design and costumes, not to mention the highpoint of Judy Garland’s career. The 17-year-old child star plays the little Kansas girl Dorothy, who with her dog, Toto, is whisked away by a tornado to a fantasy land where she follows the Yellow Brick Road, kills the Wicked Witch and meets the powerful Wizard. And every step of the way, she is followed by “the Munchkins” as she goes on her adventures over the rainbow, meeting the Tin Man, the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion in the Kingdom of OZ.

The film called for as many as 350 “Munchkins” to be cast. In L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz, he described the Munchkins only as shorter than usual in stature and clad from top to toe in blue.  The studio did not want to use children for the parts, and could not find enough small adults in the Hollywood area.  MGM decided to use real dwarves, or “little people” as they were called in the 30’s to play the Munchkins. In fact, all the Munchkins were played by genuine circus midgets, whose colorful contribution to Hollywood history has never been forgotten. In its search, MGM advertised all over the country, auditioned tiny choirs – the midgets had to sing – visited circuses and sent out talent scouts.

The task of assembling as many as 350 ‘little people’ to act in the movie fell to a man named Leo Singer. Born in Germany as Baron Leopold Van Singer, he had put together a troupe of touring midgets who took part in vaudeville shows all over Europe. By 1938, he had gathered a stable of 100 tiny performers and was based in America. MGM drew up a contract with him to provide as many midgets as were needed to film. As soon as word got out, seemingly every little person in the country arrived in Hollywood by bus and train looking for a part. Singer was put in charge of them all – looking after their lodging, food and attendance on set.

Of course, managing the midgets was never easy. Many did not speak English and sang in thick German accents. Some of those who knew most about performing were from Germany, but had been forced to flee the country by the Nazis’ doctrine of ‘social hygiene’, which demanded the elimination of handicapped people. About 170 came from New York and had very little professional experience of show business. Some had never been away from home before and were keener to let their hair down than work. Their only qualification was their height – in some cases they stood no taller than three feet.

These little actors might have been vertically challenged, but they were exceedingly tough. Most were old enough to have learned how to survive in New York or in Europe during the years of the Great Depression. And when they arrived in Hollywood in 1938, to be cast in one of the most prestigious films ever, it marked a distinct improvement in their fortunes.

Los Angeles was in the midst of its gilded heyday. Stars such as Jean Harlow and Katharine Hepburn had a huge following, while the love lives of the swashbuckling Errol Flynn and Charlie Chaplin were already legendary. This was the height of Hollywood as Babylon. Sex and glamour was the name of the game and the “little people” wanted their fair share. Naturally, as soon as they had money in their pockets, their behavior did not improve.

For although their antics on screen brought joy to generations of children, behind the scenes they astounded everyone with shocking episodes of drunkenness, depravity and wild sexual propositions from which no one was safe. Wild stories began to emerge. There were rumors of wild evenings with rooms ransacked and drunken midgets swinging from the rafters. One horrified observer described them as “an unholy assembly of pimps, hookers and gamblers”.

A rather unimaginative 1981 movie, Under the Rainbow, starring Chevy Chase and Carrie Fisher, attempted to bring the legend to life — and failed. That hasn’t stopped Wizard of Oz fans from smiling at the thought of a hotel overrun with members of the Lollipop Guild. (LA Weekly)

“You had to watch them all the time,” observed Jack Dawn, the make-up artist on the film. Because they were so small, it was easy for other members of the cast to make the mistake of treating them like children. Predictably, their reaction was to do everything they could to disabuse their colleagues of this notion.

“They were adults,” recalled Jack Dawn firmly. “They did not like us touching them or lifting them into their make-up chairs. They insisted on climbing up by themselves.” If the film-makers thought full-sized stars had attitude, they had seen nothing yet.

The final count of people needed for Munchkin parts settled at about 125. Singer made a deal with the Culver Hotel to house the “little people”. They began to arrive in November of 1938. The hotel found that they could place three to a bed because they were so small. They could put them sideways and almost get them all here.

It turned out to be one of the biggest collections of little people to date at that point. Julie Lugo Cerra, who’s the honorary historian of Culver City, recalls, “Many of them, like Jerry Maren, who eventually settled in Los Angeles, who was a Lollipop Kid, had never seen another little person in his life before. They came to Culver City, and they thought it was wonderful to see so many other little people. Most of them had lived in areas where they were the only ones, so they were the exception. They were not very well accepted by society, and so it was wonderful to be with their own.”

Certainly, the normal urges of many of the assembled midgets emerged during the shooting of The Wizard Of Oz. We have to remember these were adult men and women, and they became bored after hours cooped up in their hotel. So often, they drowned their sorrows.

“They were drunks,” Judy Garland would recall later. “They got smashed every night, and the police used to scoop them up in butterfly nets.”

Cast members were astounded to hear they were holding ‘dwarf sex parties’ in the famous Culver Hotel. “They got into sex orgies at the hotel and we had to have police on every floor,” producer Mervyn Le Roy remembered afterwards.

Meanwhile, Bert Lahr, who played the Cowardly Lion, noted that “assistants were ordered to watch the midgets who brandished knives and conceived passions for normal-sized members of the cast”.

There were stories that the “little” women would proposition studio electricians, while one who called himself The Count was never sober. “Once, when he was due on set, he went missing. Then we heard a whining sound coming from the men’s room. He had got plastered during lunch, fallen in the toilet bowl and could not get out.”

Certainly, some of them seem to have resorted to boosting their earnings by pimping and whoring – and indeed begging. As many pointed out later, they were being paid far less than anyone else on the film – including Toto the dog. Many of them had vile tempers, too, so much so that one even tried to kill his wife.

Yet, Julie Lugo Cerra is not so sure that the rock star/Roman orgy scene is the true image. “No, I don’t think they trashed the hotel rooms. They were having a very good time and they celebrated a lot. They worked very hard,” she maintains.

She recalled one story about her father who owned a radio store at the time in Culver City. “He said they were all over the place. And they would pile them into cars, and they would be even under the dashboards because you could get so many in. So it – I’m sure it was a hysterical scene, I’m sure that they had a very good time, and I’m sure that most of them remembered it for the rest of their lives.”

“They got their star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame recently. And they love coming back to Culver City,” points out Ms. Lugo Cerra. “They were here in the ’90s for a reunion – they do this every once in a while. And there’s probably nobody who doesn’t know about the Munchkins, and there’s probably no one who doesn’t love them.”

 

The Culver Hotel – Old Hollywood Glamour in Culver City – Los Angeles

You are ready for a night on the town, but you would like an upscale place so you can dress up like a real adult. A place with no cover, live jazz, great drinks, friendly bartenders and elegant, historical architecture, does such a place exist anymore? Yes, Virginia, it does. It’s the Lobby Bar at the Culver Hotel.

Music playing is an integral part of the Culver Hotel experience. As the evening begins, the hotel’s Grand Lobby transforms into jazzy supper club. Vintage armchairs, classic movie projections and up-and-coming artists help create an ambiance of old Hollywood and modern times helped along with handcrafted cocktails, tasty fare and musical pleasure. You can order a ‘Good Witch’ or a ‘Cucumber Mule’ cocktail while you sit back and enjoy different interpretations of Jazz, every evening of the week after 7:30 pm. Shared appetizers or a three course dinner are just an order away. (Culver Hotel)

Alternatively, If you are in the mood for something equally “Culver-esque” but with a more contemporary playlist, go past the lobby and up the stairs. You will find the Velvet Lounge reminiscent of a 1920’s ‘Speakeasy’ with a twist of Parisian boudoir. Chic and eclectic, dark and whimsical, The Velvet Lounge is open Thursday through Saturday after 8pm and offers plenty of secluded corners to enjoy a cocktail, wine or bottle service. (Culver Hotel)

TripAdvisor.com calls the Culver Hotel the # 1 Hotel in Culver City. The Lobby Bar is a popular place where 30 somethings and older like to hang out because of the atmosphere and the drinks. The price range for food is between $11 ane $30 per person. I would judge the food good, but not great. They do take reservations and have take-out available but do not do delivery. They accepts all major Credit Cards, and while the dress cord is casual, the ambiance is classy. There also is a wonderful outdoor patio which also features the full dinner menu and drinks. Valet parking is right outside, while there are city parking garages within a short walking distance.

HISTORY

The Culver Hotel is a national historical landmark in downtown Culver City, California. It was built by Harry Culver, the founder of Culver City, and opened on September 4, 1924, with local headlines announcing: “City packed with visitors for opening of Culver skyscraper.” Originally named Hotel Hunt, and later known as Culver City Hotel, the six-story Renaissance Revival building was designed by Curlett & Beelman, the architecture firm behind renowned Art Deco buildings throughout Los Angeles, including downtown Los Angeles’ Roosevelt and Eastern Columbia buildings. (Wikipedia)

But the hotel is most famous for its long and tangled history with Hollywood and its stars. Built in 1924, the property has also housed countless Hollywood legends over its 90-year history. And Greta Garbo, Mickey Rooney, Ronald Reagan, Judy Garland, and Clark Gable are just a few stars who actually maintained part-time residences at The Culver Hotel. Charlie Chaplin was even the owner for a while until, legend has it, he lost the property in a poker game to John Wayne. Dwight D. Eisenhower even had a campaign office in the hotel during his run for President in 1952. Modern celebrities who have stayed there include all 4 members of the boy band 98 Degrees, Abby Lee Miller of Dance Moms, Countess Luann de Lesseps from Real Housewives of New York City. (Wikipedia)

The Culver Hotel may not be an A-list actor herself, but she has appeared in the background of close to 80 projects. The historic hotel has been used in The Wonder Years, Cougar Town, The Last Action Hero, Marvels Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., and many more. Numerous television shows, movies or commercials shoot in and around Culver City, and the hotel’s exterior and interior have stood in as a street in London, an apartment in Barcelona, and a café in Paris. (Travel and Leisure)

During the 1960’s, the hotel began to decline and fall into disrepair. In the 1980s, it was boarded up for a time and at risk of demolition. In the 1990s, the hotel was partially restored and reopened, joining the National Register of Historic Places in 1997, but the Culver Hotel’s modern comeback truly began after a hotelier family bought the ailing property in 2007. Since 2007, the hotel’s entire plumbing and electrical systems have been upgraded, each of the guest rooms and public spaces have been redone, all 140 handmade windows in the guest rooms have been replaced, and the public spaces have been entirely re-imagined all the while maintaining the property’s architectural integrity. The flatiron-shaped building is next door to the historic Culver Studios and a few blocks from the former Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios (MGM), now Sony Pictures.

Casts from movies like Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz stayed at the hotel during filming, including the more than 100 actors and actresses who played the Munchkins in the Oz film. (wikipedia) Which will lead to another column about the Culver and its notorious place in Hollywood history which earned it the nickname, the “Munchkin Hotel”.

Culver Hotel is a must see for Hollywood History, and a great nightspot in Los Angeles!

Hours For the Hotel

Mon 7:00 am – 12:00 am
Tue 7:00 am – 12:00 am
Wed 7:00 am – 12:00 am
Thu 7:00 am – 1:00 am
Fri 7:00 am – 2:00 am
Sat 7:00 am – 2:00 am
Sun 7:00 am – 12:00 am

 

Early Holiday Run to Solvang

“Let’s go to Solvang this weekend,” my Danish friend said.

“Why?”

“Cause it is fun and I miss all the Danish stuff this time of year.”

“In Solvang? It is a tourist trap!”

“No, it will be fun. Plus it is all based on real Danish traditions and foods. I want to go. Come on!”

So reluctantly I set off with my friend to see Solvang, a small California town about 30 miles above Santa Barbara just off the 101 Freeway at Buellton, CA. At Buellton, you take California 246 and soon you will arrive in the quaint semi-Danish village of Solvang. The town was founded in 1911 by a group of Danish settlers who were looking to establish a Danish school and community on the West Coast.

A LITTLE HISTORY

3 Founders of Solvang carved in wood.

Between 1850 and 1930, a considerable number of Danes left Denmark, which was suffering from poor economic prospects. According to some estimates, as many as one in ten Danes emigrated during this period, mostly to the United States.

The name Solvang means “sunny field” in Danish, and the original band of settlers bought almost 9,000 acres of the Rancho San Carlos de Jonata Mexican land grant. The city is home to a number of bakeries, restaurants, and merchants offering a taste of Denmark in California. The architecture of many of the facades and buildings reflects a traditional Danish style. There is a copy of the famous Little Mermaid statue from Copenhagen, as well as one featuring the bust of famed Danish fable writer Hans Christian Andersen. A replica of Copenhagen’s Round Tower or Rundetårn in the scale 1:3 was finished in 1991 and can be seen in the town center. Much of the Oscar-winning film Sideways (2004) was filmed in Solvang and in nearby Buellton.

Solvang’s Clock Tower

Initially, most of Solvang’s buildings were built in the same style as other buildings in the area. The Lutheran church was the first to be based on Danish architecture and bears a close relationship to Danish equivalents. But after World War II, interest grew in the concept of a “Danish Village”. The pioneer of the Danish Provincial style, as it came to be known, was undoubtedly Ferdinand Sorensen, originally from Nebraska. In the mid-1940s, after returning to Solvang from a trip to Denmark, he first completed Møllebakken, his Danish-styled home, and then went on to build the first of the village’s four windmills. A little later, a local architect, gave the older buildings a new look, adding façades in so-called “Danish Provincial” style. Buildings in the half-timbered style of Danish rural houses proliferated, creating a new tourist attraction.

One of Solvang’s four Windmills.

Thanks in large part to its unique half-timbered architecture, Solvang has become a major California tourist attraction, with over one million visitors per year. In particular, today’s visitors appreciate the Danish windmills, the statues of Hans Christian Andersen and the Little Mermaid, the half-timbered houses, the Danish rural church, the Round Tower as well as Danish music and folk dancing. In addition, several restaurants and pastry shops serve Danish specialties. A replica of a 19th-century Danish streetcar, the horse-drawn Hønen (“the hen”), takes visitors on sightseeing tours around downtown Solvang. Partly as a result of the 2004 film Sideways, which was set in the surrounding Santa Ynez Valley, the number of wine-related businesses in Solvang has increased appreciably, attracting oenophiles to the downtown area.

One of Solvang’s attractions is the 700-seat open-air Festival Theater, which was built in 1974 following the success of a makeshift performance of Hamlet in 1971 in the town park. The theatre is used here year round and especially in the summer by the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts located in Santa Maria. The style of the exterior is reminiscent of both Danish and Elizabethan architecture.

At night all the trees are lite giving the village a warm glow.

THE PRESENT

We drove into town about 2 PM on a cold but sunny Saturday, and the town was filled with people. Finding a parking place is not easy, but we managed to find one on a side street. Solvang has a small population (5000+) so it is easy to walk everywhere. Taking off on foot, my Danish friend was very excited to point out stores and items that were truly Danish.

A Viking Warrior carved in wood hoping to get his favorite wish of Christmas!

We stopped at one really Scandinavian type store with its clean lines and gleaming wood floor and tried on pairs of wooden clogs for men and women. Their big selling point is they help relieve pressure on your back when standing and correct your posture. Comfortable and at 70 dollars not too expensive. We found pairs in other stores in Solvang selling for as much as 150 dollars.

Traditional Danish Roast Beef sandwich

After cruising through lots of small stores, bakeries, and taking lots of pictures of Danish flags, we decided to get something to eat. We choose the Red Viking Restaurant which featured classic Danish food along with American dishes as well. Decorated in an old, rural Danish style with Royal Copenhagen plates hanging on every wall, the place was packed with tourists. My friend in spite of her desire to see all thing Danish that day only wanted a basic salad with chicken. It was up to me to really check out the Danish style food and see what if it was authentic or not. I choose a  Traditional Danish Roast Beef sandwich featuring thinly sliced medium rare Roast Beef with pickles, a dollop of horseradish, and a dollop of Remoulade on top. All of this was served open-faced on rugbrød! I washed this down with a local Danish Red Lager brewed locally by Figueroa Mountain Brewing, a brewery in Buellton.

Æbleskivers served at the Red Viking!

For dessert, I had an old Danish favorite called Æbleskivers. This is a Danish dessert pastry which is really Pancake dough that is deep-fried, covered with powered sugar and raspberry jam. A good meal.
More walking around the small village, more taking of photos, sampling some of the local Santa Ynez Valley wines in the seemingly endless tasting rooms, and some Danish style candies. As it was December and the sun was setting, we decided to head home earlier and get dinner on the road.

There is certainly a lot more to do in Solvang. There is the live theatre run by PCPA that was featuring a whole round of Christmas and holidays plays and pageants. Live music was just starting when we headed for the car and the village was covered with Christmas lights. Some of the local restaurants have excellent ratings for dinner so you could easily make a weekend of it if you wished.

Our Heroes in Solvang, CA.

A very nice and fun day in Solvang, and experiencing it with a real Dane makes all the difference in the world.  Highly recommend for a day trip within 3 hours from LA.

Enjoy!!

Rogue One Premiere – The Night Before

Los Angeles is a very famous city and the most famous part of LA is Hollywood. The Movies and their premieres are a huge business here in Tinseltown. Disney just blocked off Hollywood Blvd. and part of Cahuenga for a huge Hollywood premiere party, the opening of Rogue One, A Star Wars Story. Two streets are blocked off, there is a full size x-wing fighter in the middle of Hollywood Blvd., in front of the Pantages Theatre, and there are huge tents that cover an entire block of street for all the celebs to arrive and mingle with each other.

The Pantages is a 2700+ seat live theatre that Disney has rented and put in a state of the art projection and sound system.  And this is the holiday event of the Christmas season for Disney.

I was up on Hollywood Blvd. on Friday night and the photos that follow are what I saw. The party tents and the red carpet and the X-Wing Fighter take up two blocks on Hollywood Blvd.

They do everything big for the Movies in Hollywood.

May the Force be with you!

Museum of Jurassic Technology – Los Angeles

THIS IS A REPRINT OF AN ARTICLE FROM 2016. THE INFORMATION IS STILL CURRENT.

Los Angeles has a lot to offer a visitor. Sunshine, mountains, beaches, hiking, stars, world-class museums and some truly wonderful dining with up and coming new chefs. Yet, it is also one of the weirdest places on the planet. While the term “Film noir” was coined in France, the term describes films made in and around Los Angeles during the 1940’s. In LA, there is always a sense of pessimism and menace.

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Behind or under all that sunshine, there is a dark, troubling Los Angeles full of weird and sometimes dangerous things. This is also the city of corruption, the Black Dahlia, mad power grabs, famous unsolved murders, cults, and Charlie Manson.

This is also the city of strange, peculiar, and wondrously interesting people and places. Like the giant Randy’s Donut sign seen in so many movies about Los Angeles, the Watts Towers, or the Bronson Caves. One of the strangest yet most popular off-beat attractions in the City of Angeles is the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Located in Culver City, also the home of MGM and Sony Studios, the museum is located at 9341 Venice Boulevard in the Palms district of Los Angeles, California.

The museum itself seems to be a unique combination of interactive performance art and a provocative little haven of curiosities and rarities; scientific, historic and artistic in nature. Obscure exhibits feature everything from an extensive exhibit on a Soviet designer/engineer who influenced the Soviet space program but never actually made a rocket to folk curses and cures through the ages. Examples include “the restorative properties of urine” and “cures from eating mice.” Is it a parody or is it a witty homage to private museums of the 16th and 17th century or just some crazy collector’s obscure items that only they truly care about? Truth or fiction, myth or reality? You have to decide for yourself.

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TripAdvisor.com lists this as the #1 thing to do in Culver City, and it is sure worth the couple of hours you could take to wander through this warren’s den of small, dimly lit exhibits. The setting is very theatrical, mysterious and bizarre as you move from one unrelated exhibit to another. At some point you start to ask yourself where the joke is as you bump into an array of microscopes focused on tiny almost invisible arrangements made from butterfly wings and sculptures so tiny that they fit into the eye of a needle juxtaposed against a clearly made up exhibit of cheap items from junk shops called a “History of Trail Park Art”. Yet the exhibit is so painstakingly made with a history of the movement, models of trailers, several cases filled with plates and photos of supposed collections and in-depth histories of each of the collectors that you almost begin to believe that it is truly real.

The museum was founded by David Hildebrand Wilson and Diana Drake Wilson (husband and wife) in 1988. Wilson won a MacArthur Foundation Award in 2001. The museum’s pamphlet itself states the museum is “an educational institution dedicated to the advancement of knowledge and the public appreciation of the Lower Jurassic.” The link to the term “Lower Jurassic” and how it pertains to the museum’s collections is left unexplained.20161030_160141

At the end of your tour on the top floor, there is a lovely little tea room which is included in the price of admission, where you can ponder your vague, disquieting visit or reflect on the challenging originality and dry humor of the place.

Street and free meter parking were pretty easy to find on a Sunday afternoon. Admission is a donation of $8.00 per adult (well worth it!) with varying discounted costs for other visitors. Uniquely stocked gift shop to peruse at the completion of your visit. No photos allowed and the staff is amazingly friendly. This is a very small and peculiarly offbeat museum and it is well worth the time to visit and wonder about its mysterious and confusing exhibits, and the apparent randomness of it all.

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Imire Safari Ranch – Zimbabwe 2012

IMIRE – First Safari – ZIMBABWE 2012

(Taken from the original post at http://jamesrcarey.blogspot.com/2012/07/sunday-june-24-day-5-imire-game.html)

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As I told you in my previous post, I was going on a safari. What is a safari? Well, the origin of the word in Arabic meaning “to travel” and the word has come to mean “an expedition to observe or hunt animals in their natural habitat.” And the game preserve that we were going to was pretty tame, but this is not Disneyland where there is almost no danger. What we were going to watch were real animals – in the wild – and while they were pretty used to humans and having interaction with humans, they were still wild elephants, rhinos, lions and other animals.

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Got up early and had breakfast around 6:30 in order to meet Kathy Norman, a volunteer with NIAA. Kathy has played a huge part in my trip by arranging all parts of my travels and workshops. Kathy had volunteered to take me to Imire Safari Ranch about an hour and half outside of Harare on the Mutare Road. That is pretty brave to volunteer to spend your entire day with a perfect stranger.

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So we jumped in the 4 wheel drive and drove like bats from hell to try to get there by 8 AM so I could enjoy an elephant ride. The elephant ride was scheduled for 7 AM so I had missed it. I was disappointed because this is the one thing that I really wanted to do – ride an elephant – but there was so much else to see that it was quickly forgotten.

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So we missed the elephant ride, but upon arrival we had a light breakfast at the Sable Lodge which is also a small hotel in the Park. We met the owner of the preserve, Kate Travers. I talked to her about Imire and her life there. Turns out the preserve has been in her family for 3 generations. They had lost part of the farm to the Mugabe land reforms, but had managed to hang on to the preserve. She came back to Zimbabwe after a very successful career in London and Europe as a Chef with her partner, Chris. They gave that lifestyle up to return back to her home and run the park and lodge for the family. Plus Imire is not only a game park to see animals in a less controlled setting, but is also a game preserve where they try to protect endangered animals especially the Black Rhino. The Preserve specializes in trying to save Black Rhinos.

Imire is like a smaller, more real version of San Diego Zoo Safari Park. After the breakfast, we climbed on to a wooden wagon for a tractor ride through the park. Pretty low tech, but perfect for watching the animals as they are free to wander in the bush. Yet, they also know that everyday around a certain time they will get a meal, so they do not usually wander too far.

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The first animal that we met was a fairly friendly female giraffe that came out to greet the guests for treats. She does a bunch of tricks for the crowd including a very funny bit where to get food off the ground, she throws her front legs out in a wide V shape so she is able to bend down close enough to the ground. It is a very funny sight.

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The picture above is of me standing in front of a giant ant hill. And that was not the biggest one I saw! To think how long the ants worked to build a structure this big just amazes me.

BLACK RHINOS

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The story of the Travers family and Imire goes something like this. In 1972, Norman Travers, the grandfather pioneered the integration of cattle ranching and commercial farming with wildlife management at Imire in the south-east province of Zimbabwe. Imire soon provided a nucleus for various breeding herds in a safe and ideal wildlife environment. Norman’s dream was fulfilled and over the years, he had been recognized for his vast knowledge and contribution towards conservation. But the highlight of Norman’s contribution to the wildlife of Zimbabwe was in 1987, when he became the privileged custodian of seven orphaned baby black rhino.

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Black Rhinoceroses have been on this earth for 40 million years. So numerous were they in the Zambezi Valley at one time, and so magnificent was the valley itself, that the United Nations declared it a World Heritage Site in 1984. The Zambezi Valley in Zimbabwe became a place where the black rhino would survive forever amid spectacular surroundings.

In 1975, thousands of black rhino roamed this valley. By 1980, 3000 black rhino had survived the liberation war of Zimbabwe. But then a poaching onslaught ensued… and by 1987, just three years after the United Nations’ declaration, the black rhino became extinct in the Zambezi Valley.

During the late 1980s, at the peak of rhino poaching, the Department of National Parks and Wildlife removed the remaining 120 black rhino out of the danger zones of the National Parks and into Intensive Protection Zones of Conservancies. Imire Safari Ranch offered their expertise and were given 7 baby rhino aged between 4 and 6 months. All 7 calves were hand-raised on a bottle for at least 8 years. The rhino were kept on the milk formula for that length of time to continue the human contact and of course as a comforter.

The black rhino have bred successfully; to date, 14 births have taken place on Imire. Nine were returned to the bush. Sadly, Imire Safari Ranch also suffered great loss. Three black rhino and an unborn calf were shot and murdered on 7th November 2007. Imire Safari Ranch lost a generation of black rhino in this brutal poaching incident. The remaining Rhinos are now followed 24 hours a day with two heavily armed guards.

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At present they have 4 sub-adult rhino. The rhino are penned in two separate sites nightly and during the day are taken out onto the ranch with their handlers and armed guards to browse.

We saw the rhino, and elephants (a family of four), kudo, wildebeest and other bush game animals like sable and impala. Then I got the biggest surprise of the day when we met a full grown female elephant that thinks it is a buffalo. What? Yes, she thinks she is a buffalo.

ELEPHANT AS BUFFALO

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Now the African buffalo is different from but the same species as our American buffalo – just a lot less hair and different horns. This is not a water buffalo. About 20 years ago, Imire got an orphaned female elephant, Nzhou and somehow because there were no other elephants around at the time, she began to run with the buffalo herd. To such an extent that she bonded and began to think as a buffalo. She is now the alpha female of the herd and kills male buffalo that try to mate with the other females. She is now 43 years old and has so far killed 14 male buffalo. This is a problem in that this is a breeding herd so to avoid other deaths, at night they pen her up and let the males in with the other females. Thus the herd continues to breed and in the morning, they pen the male and release her back with the other females. They have tried to have her bond with the other elephants but she refuses contact with them.

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And a bigger surprise is that when a female elephant goes into heat, a male elephant can smell her up to 7 K away. A male elephant will stop at nothing to come to a female elephant in heat. In 20 years, no male elephant has ever approached our heroine. She has ceased to produce the needed signals to invite male elephants to her side. She no longer thinks that way. In her head, she is a buffalo.

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After the trek around the preserve that included a wonderful lunch by a small lake cooked by Chris. While we were stopped there, they provided us with the opportunity to watch the feeding of the elephants and allowed us to do some of that as well.

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Finally, we had afternoon tea back at the lodge, then we were off toward Harare again like bats from hell as Kathy was determined to make the city before dark. Driving at night is very dangerous in Zimbabwe because of lack of any street lighting and many autos with no lights or reflectors. (A pretty common thing in poorer parts of Africa as I can attest too. Once while in Malawi, my car almost ran into a ox drawn cart on the main highway with no reflectors or lights at all. We just saw it at the last moment.) Although it seems pretty dangerous to me as well to go 110 K per hour on a two lane road passing 3 to 4 cars at a time.

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Imire Safari Park was a wonderful introduction to the bush of Zimbabwe and what a beautiful place this country is. Highly recommend Imire if you are in Harare and have a day to spare.

After that fabulous day, it was back at Jeannette and Keith’s for a late dinner and then to bed. Thank you Kathy!!

Festival starts in the morning with a drive to Gweru, Zimbabwe.

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Cricket Anyone? – Zimbabwe 2012

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Day 4

It was Saturday and Keith took me to see my first cricket match. We drove around downtown Harare on the way to the cricket stadium. The Brits laid out this city in a beautiful way. Wide streets and on a partial grid that makes it somewhat easy to get around in.

The constant jaywalking and almost non-existent traffic laws takes a little getting used to. I forget that Americans seem to have some of the most rigid traffic laws in the world. Here it is a complete mess with everyone going everywhere at once but it seems to work somehow. Driving here for the new comer would be extremely overwhelming. I have not had to make that choice yet, as everyone as been so kind to take me where I need to go, or I am walking distance from shopping areas.  http://wikitravel.org/en/Harare

We got to the stadium to watch Zimbabwe’s national team play South Africa in a Pan-African Cricket tournament. I knew something of the game but not enough to describe anything to anyone. WOW. I love cricket. We were watching a type call Twenty20 cricket as opposed to Fifty/50 or One Day cricket which takes all day, or the 5 day classic Test match cricket. Can you imagine watching a 5 day match of the same two teams playing the same game for 5 days and still maybe ending in a tie. My head would explode, but people here are totally into it.

I cannot explain the game here in just a few words, because it is as complex as baseball in the record keeping and strategic moves. Yet once you get the basics down it is a really fun and exciting game to cheer for. Zim lost, but due to a tournament rule they somehow got into the finals.

We were in private boxes enjoying the game. Like watching football in a luxury box – only way to watch a sport really! I was taken to two other boxes as I continue to meet the sponsors of the drama festival here in Zim.

I am a bit of a local celebrity or curiosity since I have come all this way to do the festival on my own dime. Some appreciate it, some are worried that I will bring an American influence to a festival that is 100 years old next year, and some are worried that I will underestimate Zim’s education system. It is strange to be an American on the ground in a small country. They respect us and dislike us with equal measure. They know more about our country and elections then we do because we are such a huge influence in the world that what we do affects them as much as ourselves. I cannot tell you how many conversations that I have had about how they see the Obama/Romney contest.

It is like we are the Mafia Don at the end of the street protecting his neighborhood. We can provide protection and benefits to the local street, but it comes at a really big price. And even when we do nothing, it affects them. They have taken the Chinese money because of all the international sanctions that were leveled at President Mugabe because of his Land Reform measures where his government seized white owned farms and gave them to native Zimbabweans.

The sanctions are against him and his government personally, but the effect trickles down to all the businesses and people here. Whether the sanctions were right or not, they are one reason that the Zim economy is a disaster. They did not effect the leaders, it effected the every day person destroying jobs, pensions, and savings.

While we were fighting two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Chinese quietly came in to Africa, and Zimbabwe in particular and have bought all the minerals rights. So Zimbabwe has taken all that the Chinese will give them, because they were getting very little now from the US and Europe.  

The final score to the cricket match was 129 to 126. I can kind of explain the scoring if you are interested at some other time, but I can tell you it was a nail biter right down to the last over. Yes, I said Over. It is like an inning/turn/bat in baseball but shorter.

Then I went to over to Gavin’s house for a really quick dinner and off to the local theatre called Reps. Not professional, it is more like a community theatre. Reps Theatre is a private non-profit enterprise with two theatres, one large and one small and an excellent pub bar that is open all during the show. I saw part of the Norman Conquest trilogy. It was ok. Couple of really good actors, but felt like an actor’s showcase in LA.

Back on home and to bed. Tomorrow I am going on SAFARI.

Cheers

Ethiopia and Harare – Zimbabwe 2012

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Travel Day

Day 1

I am flying high over the Atlantic on Ethiopian Airlines. Talk about luxury. Certainly no American airline offers this kind of service any more. Blankets and pillows for everyone. Free meal and free booze and basically free everything. The people are incredibly friendly. They ask what I am doing and when I tell them, they all give me advice on how to survive in Zim and Africa in general. People are friendly everywhere if you take the time with them, and are courteous yourself. But this was really very pleasant.

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My stop-over in Washington was completely uneventful. I landed at 1:45 AM, and I had booked a hotel room. I am just too old to try to sleep in a row of chairs in the airport. It was worth it, because I was exhausted after a day of taking care of last-minute details and the stress that I have every time I fly. Plus is was really nice to spend one last night in what I perceive as American style luxury. TV, ESPN, ac, coffee in the room and a very large hot shower.

I am currently watching the cutest little Ethiopian boy run up and down the aisles. Big smile on his face as he laughingly runs back and forth. How can you not smile at that? The pure joy of just being able to run around with no cares.

Even with the help of alcohol and a few pills it is very hard for me to sleep on a plane. Although for one stretch I did manage to until a beautiful air hostess woke me up because I was drooling. How romantic and sexy is that image?

I am about halfway to Addis Abeba, and I still have 9 more hours after I land there. I will arrive in Harare around 12 PM on Thursday. This jet lag is going to be awful.

(For spelling junkies – Addis Ababa can be spelled two ways. I choose to use the spelling used by the official Ethiopian Mapping Authority Addis Abeba.)

I will try to send this out when I get to Addis Abeba as there is no internet on my planes. I marvel at people who can do all their work from the skies, but unfortunately I am not booked on one of those flights.

My two seat mates are two Ethiopian men who are returning home after long times away. One is a college professor in computer science in North Carolina, and the other is a man who has not been home for over 15 years who lives in Seattle and has three kids. They have been very kind answering all my stupid questions about Ethiopia and trying to teach me useful words.

Listening to Miles Davis at the moment – on the airline sound system – he is so cool, that he makes me feel cool just listening to him.

“Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe”……Anatole France.

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Sunday, June 24, 2012
Day 2

(It is hard to get online here for a number reasons. So please bare with me. I will write as often as I can.)

I have been flying for about 10 hours now and it is dawn. I am watching the sunrise over the east coast of Africa and it is amazing. It is the same sunrise as in any part of world, but since I have never seen anything in Africa this is especially amazing. I am flying over Somalia and Khartoum. The view screen on the back of our seats shows us flying over places that I have seen on maps all my life but never imagined that I would ever come near too.

As we flew into into Addis Abeba, it was grey and dreary. It is winter here and grey seems the main color. The airport seems in a total state of chaos, but it makes sense to them. Must be 20 or more duty-free shops selling everything that you can imagine. Pray rooms in all corners of the airport for men and women to pray separately. No clear idea of what gate that a flight is landing or taking off from, yet everyone but me seems to know exactly where to go. Someone in LA taught me a phrase in Ethiopian that means “good health to you”. A common greeting I was told. So I have tried it on about 10 people in the last day or so. I usually get a strange stare. It is due to my amazing and very special pronunciation I am sure.

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The plane that I am taking to Harare is the size of a sardine can. We have not even taken off the man behind me is already snoozing loudly and every third person on this flight is Chinese. Talking with people on the other plane they confirm that while we were fighting two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Chinese have bought all the minerals in Africa. They own Africa just like the Europeans owned it in the last century. This is the new form of colonialism, so has anything really changed? It just seems a new master is all.

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Finally I am in Harare dog-tired, yet I still have customs. The people are very nice but the process is clumsy at best. I stood in three lines over an hour while one man in one booth processed about 60 people. I arrived with a temporary work permit, my passport, my contract with the Festival and proof of my ticket out of the country – all required to enter the country. They never asked of any of it. They only wanted my 45 dollar fee for my visa. Oh well.

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I finally got through and met Gavin Peter, the festival director. We have spoken for months by email and Facebook – but to finally meet him in person was great. A big, friendly, gregarious man who drove me through Harare to the home of my hosts for the next week, Keith and Jeannette ——. Keith is the chairman of the board of the NIAA who sponsors the festival.

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A quick shower and a brief nap. I was so knackered, but I got up so that I could try to get on the Zim schedule. It was still about 4 PM, so they showed me around their property. The homes in the suburbs seem to consist of large to moderate homes on large tracts of land (2 to 3 acres) surrounded by high walls and fences. Their garden is amazing with so many beautiful plants and flowers that blazed with color even in winter. Then a very pleasant evening in their lovely home with a fire (it is winter here), dinner and a bottle of wine. What a very lovely introduction to this interesting country and what promises to be a very life-changing adventure.

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Zimbabwe 2012

In 2012, I accepted an offer to take a temporary job in Africa. At the time I did not know that this opportunity would quite literally change the entire fabric of my life. This trip would be so much more than just an adventure but in fact would be an overwhelming experience that would lead me to change the entire direction and focus of my life.

In 2011, my life was kind of falling apart. A three-year relationship with a woman who I loved very much had ended. I was still reeling from the aftermath of the world-wide economic downtown that had closed my real estate investment business and was forcing my house toward foreclosure. To cover the expenses of running my suddenly upside down house, I was renting out every extra bedroom that I had to college students who went to school at the close-by University of Southern California. My only other income at the time was running a small non-profit theatre where I served as Producing Artistic Director. Theatre is one of the great passions of my life, but after 25 years leading a small non-profit arts group, I was exhausted and burned out.

I desperately needed a break, or as one friend put it best – I needed an escape from my life. Yet, there was no life-line nor escape. As my house edged ever closer to foreclosure, my despair grew and my options were shrinking fast.

It was at that moment that one morning an email arrived in my inbox. It was an email that I had been expecting, but I was not really sure how I felt about it. I had been communicating about a possible job with an arts group in Zimbabwe. One of my former theatre students when I taught at Pepperdine University in Malibu, CA., was from Zimbabwe, and her mother was a volunteer administrator for this organization. My former student had put us together and on a lark I had applied to work for them.

The job was to be the Judge or Adjudicator for a national drama festival that takes place in Zimbabwe every year. The drama festival was part of an even larger series of arts festivals run by a group known as the National Institute of Allied Arts. The National Institute of Allied Arts is a 100-year-old volunteer organization founded by the British colonials to instill public speaking, drama, music, literature and visual arts into the white children of Zimbabwe. But over time and with the change of governments and Zimbabwe getting its freedom in 1980, the organization become one of the first to open its doors to all the children of Zim. Every year about 30 thousand+ children take part in 4 festivals a year in music, visual arts, literature and drama. If hired I would be the first American to adjudicate their national drama festival.

The job would take about 2 to 3 weeks and the adjudicator would see about 15000 children perform in various theatre and public speaking categories. The job paid a small salary and promised all living expenses would be covered. The catch was the adjudicator had to figure out a way to get to Zimbabwe, and pay for it themselves. But whom ever came as a reward, they would be given a two-week tour around Zimbabwe. They would see places with names that I had never heard but would soon become very familiar with in the coming weeks and years. Places like Harare, the capital city, Kwekwe, Gweru, Great Zim, Matopos National Park, Vic Falls, Bulawayo, and so many more.

The email offered me the job and seeing this as the escape that I needed and desperately wanted, I quickly said yes. The Festival would be in June and so the plans began in earnest. Being broke and not having the money to pay for the trip, I lied and told them I did. I swiftly started a campaign to raise the money. I wrote a small grant through my theatre, held a garage sale, and ran a Kickstarter fundraising campaign. Plus I also got 500 dollars from the US Embassy in Zimbabwe, but more on that later. In a matter of 3 weeks, I raised the 1500 dollars needed for the flight.

Zimbabwe here I come!!!

The entries that you are about to read are from my first travel blog called Dispatches. You can find the blogs here if you want to read ahead. I will be posting them here as part of my 2012 series with new photos, more stories both published and new, plus comments.

http://jamesrcarey.blogspot.com/

This epic trip did not end with Zimbabwe. I had landed another guest artist position with a theatre in Rome for a couple of weeks which was going to start right after I left Zimbabwe. This was going to lead to a month of roaming around Europe before I headed back to Los Angeles. The stories of Italy will also be part of this 2012 series.
Continue reading “Zimbabwe 2012”

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