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Archive for January, 2010
CRU
Inspired vegan and raw cuisine in the heart of silverlake, renowned for it’s creative use of the freshest organic produce and entirely gluten-free menu.
Chef Rachel Carr crafts exquisite vegan offerings from a huge variety of seasonal fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts, and whole grains. Artfully weaving Italian, Japanese, Tunisian, Thai and Indian flavors into a fresh interpretation of life enhancing gourmet food, including desserts that even the most health conscious individual can indulge in guiltlessly, and the perfect stop for any of the many private Los Angeles Guided Tours.
After Jan.1 we will be open
mon-sat lunch 11am-4pm and dinner 5:30pm-10pm, sunday brunch 11am-2:30pm and dinner 5:30pm-10pm. 1521 Griffith Park Blvd. LA, CA 90026
Tournament House
Tournament House is the name given the building where the organization is headquartered. The Tournament House (formerly the Wrigley Mansion) and the Wrigley Gardens are located onSouth Orange Grove Boulevard, Pasadena, California. The structure, a stately Italian Renaissance-style mansion, was once owned by William Wrigley Jr., the chewing gum magnate. After Mrs. Wrigley’s death in 1958, the property was presented to the city of Pasadena with the condition that the house become the permanent base of operations for the Rose Parade.
Today, the five bedrooms of the second floor are used for committee meetings, dressing area for the Royal Court and for displaying of the Tournament of Roses traditions, and can be seen from private Los Angeles helicopter tours. There are displays of trophies, past Rose Bowl Games, Grand Marshals, Presidents, and Queens and Courts. Of interest is the original panel of Peanuts comic strip for January 1, 1974, when its creator Charles M. Schulz served as the Grand Marshal.[4] On the panel, Lucy was watching the parade on TV and was telling Charlie Brown that “They have some of the most beautiful floats this year I’ve ever seen.” When Charlie asked about the grand marshal, Lucy said, “Yeah, you missed him … but he wasn’t anyone you ever heard of!”
Equidome
The Equidome is a 3,500-seat indoor arena located in Burbank, California, as part of the Los Angeles Equestrian Center. It was built in 1982 and is used for sporting events such as rodeos, equestrian shows and is occasionally used for concerts. Its arena floor measures 45,000 square feet (4,200 m2) of space.
Pasadena Tournament of Roses stages the “Equestfest” at the Equidome at the end of year to showcase the Rose Parade equestrian participants prior to the parade on New Year’s Day. If you are an equestrian enthusiast and here to tour Los Angeles; a visit to the LA Equestrian center is a must. Additionally, the annual Fiesta of the Spanish Horse, a show to raise awareness and funds for cancer research is held in the Equidome.
Carney’s
Carney’s is a hot dog and burger restaurant in a Union Pacific rail car on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. It was brought to the site in the 1970s. A second Carney’s, also in train cars, is located on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City. A crackdown on weekly biker meetings at that location caused controversy.
LA restaurant critic Jonathan Gold put Carney’s on his list of 99 essential Los Angeles restaurants and wrote that, “Carney’s is a restaurant in the real Los Angeles tradition, two ancient Union Pacific cars transported to West Hollywood at great expense and mounted overlooking the Strip, where a mad parade of bass players and catalog models, hustlers and high school kids, movie guys and industry suits stare out the windows of the old train, onto the profusion of German tourists and Japanese cars that flow down this section of Sunset so steadily that after a few beers and a chili dog or two, the train can appear to be lurching down the track.” You can not miss this train on most private LA tours. KTVU movie critic Bob Shaw was fond of Carney’s burgers. Carney’s serves a chocolate-dipped frozen banana on a stick for dessert.
US Bank Tower
The US Bank Tower, formerly the Library Tower and First Interstate Bank World Center, is askyscraper located at 633 West Fifth Street in downtown Los Angeles. It is the ninth-tallest building in the United States, the tallest North American skyscraper west of the Mississippi River, the tallest building in California, and the tallest building with a helipad on the roof (this is required by the citybuilding code). Rising 1,018 feet (310 m) in height, it is also the 39th-tallest building in the world as of December 2009. Until the construction of Taipei 101, it was also the tallest building in a major active seismic region; its structure was designed to resist an earthquake of 8.3 on the Richter scale. It consists of 73 stories above ground and two parking levels below ground. Construction began in 1987 with completion in 1989. The building was designed by Henry N. Cobb of the architectural firm Pei Cobb Freed & Partners and cost $350 million to build. It is one of the most recognizable buildings in Los Angeles, often used in establishing shots for the city in films and television programs.
The building is also known as the Library Tower due to its location across the street from the Los Angeles Central Library, visible from most tour vans Los Angeles, it was built as part of the $1 billion redevelopment of the Library following two disastrous fires in 1986. The City of Los Angeles sold air rights to the developers of the tower to help pay for the reconstruction of the library. The building was also known for a time as First Interstate Bank World Center after being bought by First Interstate Bank. After First Interstate merged withWells Fargo Bank the name Library Tower was restored. In March 2003 the property was leased byU.S. Bancorp and the building was renamed U.S. Bank Tower. Residents, however, generally continue to refer to it as the Library Tower.
The Walt Disney Concert Hall
The Walt Disney Concert Hall at 111 South Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, California is the fourth hall of the Los Angeles Music Center. Bounded by Hope Street, Grand Avenue, 1st and 2nd Streets, it seats 2,265 people and serves (among other purposes) as the home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra and the Los Angeles Master Chorale.
Lillian Disney made an initial gift in 1987 to build a performance venue as a gift to the people of Los Angeles, and a tribute to Walt Disney’s devotion to the arts and the city. The Frank Gehry-designed building opened on October 23 2003, and is not to be mistaken for any other structure on Los Angeles van tours. Both the architecture by Frank Gehry and the acoustics of the concert hall (designed by Yasuhisa Toyota) were praised in contrast to its predecessor, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
Angels Flight
Angels Flight was a landmark funicular railway in the Bunker Hill district of downtown Los Angeles, California.
The funicular has operated on two slightly different sites, using the same cars. The first Angels Flight operated from 1901 until it was closed in 1969 when its location was redeveloped. The second reopened nearby in 1996, and closed again in 2001 after a serious accident. The second funicular still exists but does not operate, and it has been scheduled to reopen on several occasions. In early 2008, the Los Angeles Downtown News reported that the railway would reopen “soon”. Private sightseeing tours Los Angeles, may overlook this historical wonder while driving by; as it is best observed and photographed on foot!
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The Huntington Library
The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens (or The Huntington) is an educational and research institution established by Henry E. Huntington in San Marino, California, USA. In addition to the library, the site houses an art collection strong in English portraits and French eighteenth-century furniture and botanical gardens that feature North America’s strongest collection of cycads.
The library contains an extensive collection of rare books and manuscripts, including a Gutenberg Bible, the Ellesmere manuscript of Chaucer, and thousands of historical documents about Abraham Lincoln, including the papers of his bodyguard, Ward Hill Lamon. The rare books and manuscripts in the library are among the most heavily used in the United States. The library holds some 6.5 million manuscripts and more than a million rare books. It is the only library in the world with the first two quartos of Hamlet; it holds the manuscript of Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography, the first seven drafts of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, John James Audubon’s Birds of America, a collection of manuscripts and first editions of the works of Charles Bukowski and many other great treasures. Probably an overlooked “gem” with regard to what visitors would like to see on “Hollywood tours” but I would suggest making some time in your schedule for it!
The Rose Bowl
The Rose Bowlis an outdoor American Football stadium in Pasadena, California, near Los Angeles. The stadium is the site of the annual college football bowl game, the Rose Bowl, held on New Year’s Day. In 1982, it became the home field of the UCLA Bruins college football team of the Pac-10 Conference. It hosted events during the 1932 and 1984 Olympics, and was the venue for the 1994 FIFA World Cup Final.
The natural grass playing field runs in a north-south configuration and sits at an elevation of 825 feet (251 m) above sea level. The stadium is a National Historic Landmark. Its design was based upon the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Connecticut. Not to far off the path, this site can be added to your “things to do in Hollywood” list, and is most definitely a rich piece of Southern California history.