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50 years of Billy Reed’s
It’s one of those places everybody knows. Locals, obviously. But over the years, I’ve been surprised at how many tourists and visitors to Palm Springs know it. It’s not fancy or high-priced. It doesn’t have a Hollywood backstory, which so many Palm Springs restaurants do – like “Frank Sinatra once tipped his waiter $20,000 here…
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109 Miles
When my health dictated I resign from Technicolor and retire, I had many options. I had spent all of my life up to that point around Hollywood and Burbank because I worked there, and before that I grew up near there. But now I could go anywhere, literally, and at 41, depending on how I…
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We are all sons of Verdugo!
We call her the Jewel City of the Verdugos. Because of geography and terrain, we can see the skyline of downtown LA just over the hills of Elysian Park where Dodger stadium sits. We are the backdoor to LA’s “urban wilderness” – Griffith Park. We bridge the southland’s two great valleys, the San Gabriel and…
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Palm Springs includes pets in its disaster plan
Back in January, as Los Angeles endured horrific devastation due to wildfires, I wrote about a subject I fear is all too often an afterthought, if it is thought of at all: in the event of a disaster, what happens to people’s pets? At the time, I observed: In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that…
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Aftermath
It can’t happen here. Palm Springs, California. Where the winters are like spring in most places, where spring sees the temperatures rising steadily toward that first triple digit day each year, and where the summers, if you’re not used to them, feel like you’ve been transported to the surface of the sun. Palm Springs, California. …
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The Mighty Met
If you asked me what I listened to, musically, growing up, I would proudly proclaim, without thinking twice, “oh I loved progressive rock – bands like Rush, Genesis, Yes, ELP, Jethro Tull, Supertramp, and of course Pink Floyd.” I got my first bike when I was 9. I put that bike, a yellow 1975 Schwinn…
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In like a lion, out like a lamb
Today is the first day of March, so it seems fitting to examine that old saying “March comes in like a lion, and goes out like a lamb.” I suppose, if I’m honest (and I like to think I am), ‘fitting’ is in the eye of the beholder. But it’s my website, and I say…
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Topophilia Au Jus
I’ll begin with the title of this post. “Topophilia” comes from the Greek topos meaning ‘place’ and philia meaning ‘love of’ – so it literally means the love of a place and is usually mixed with the shared sense of cultural identity that people in that place develop. It’s why people from New York City…
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Miradero
Leslie Coombs Brand was born on May 12th, 1859 in Florissant, Missouri. His family was quite wealthy, but when Leslie was 10 years-old, his father died and left his mother with no means of supporting the family. The next year, during a particularly severe blizzard in 1870, when many of his siblings were stricken with…
Your mileage may vary.