History Adventuring

If you're a movie fan, especially old Alfred Hitchcock movies, you know what a McGuffin is. You may or may not have heard of the term, but you know that it's something in a movie that gets all of the characters moving, and tends to be very unimportant in and of itself. And I have been using McGuffins in real life as long as I can remember. My history adventuring has a lot of McGuffins. I may be looking for a particular building, or an historical site. And if I find it, great, I'll take a photo. If I don't, then I still get to adventure. I still get to see Arizona and California. I get to travel around, and eat Fritos. If I'm in Gila Bend, I get to have lunch at the Space Age Restaurant. So my McGuffin for going to Gila Bend was to get the coffee cup that you see there. Most people won't admit to McGuffins. It really is kind'a silly, to have what you're doing come down to something like searching for gold in the Superstition Mountains. Over t

If you're like me, you really enjoy movies that are shot in locations in cities that you know. Phoenix, Arizona is my favorite city, so a movie like "The Gauntlet", which is from 1977, really gets my attention. When I first started seeing this movie, on TV, I would wait patiently through all of the story, acting, etc. to see the scenes that show downtown Phoenix. Of course, it's just a movie, but if you look carefully, past all of the shooting, etc., it can be a good view of what Phoenix looked like in the 1970s. In the most important scene in the Gauntlet, Clint Eastwood's character is driving a bus to deliver Sondra Locke's character to the Phoenix police headquarters. Yeah, as often as I've seen that movie, I really have no idea what it's all about, sorry! And, as you can see from the movie poster above, the bus gets shot up with about a million bullets, and gives a good opportunity to see the buildings on Monroe in the 1970s. Driving u

If you're a Santa Barbara local, you have enjoyed an Omaha at Joe's Cafe. And even if you're just visiting, you should. I wish I was eating an Omaha right now, but I'm in Phoenix. When I lived in Santa Barbara, back in the '80s, I went there often. And since Santa Barbara is a touristy kind of place, I made a point of asking the locals where to go to eat, and Joe's Cafe was at the top of the list. No, they don't pay me to say this, and I don't care. I went back there a couple of years ago and it just made me so happy! Since I know that businesses can only thrive if people continue to go there, and I can't get back as often as I'd like, hopefully you will be able to. Here are a few suggestions: • Park in a parking garage, or a lot. State Street, like all of Santa Barbara, is a beautiful place to walk. Joe's is on the southeast corner of State and Cota, and there is a lot of parking to the east and west of State Street. If it were me

For reasons that I still don't understand to this day, I was told not to use the term "life enrichment" when I first started teaching at GCC in 2001. But since I haven't taught there for years, and besides, this is my blog, I can say "life enrichment". Because I really do believe that you can pursue life enrichment at your local Community College. Yeah, I know it sounds corny, but I really did see people change their lives by taking classes at GCC. And no, I'm not some career teacher who got into the business to change lives. I'm a Graphic Designer who just happened to know the software that everyone was trying to catch up to in the late 90s and early 2000s, Adobe, and that new invention, web design. Although I don't teach anymore, I have been stumbling over to GCC for the past couple of years, using the Fitness Center, and if you think that schools like this are fading away because of online classes (of which GCC has a lot), go look for

People who know me know that I always enjoy a little history adventuring on the side when I go out to eat. And one of my favorite places here in Glendale is Parson's Restaurant, which is on Northern just west of 59th Avenue. If you've never been there, seen it, or even heard of it, it's not surprising, even though it's been there since the 1960s. It's not a trendy place, and frankly, it's just kind of, well, ordinary-looking. I've been going there for twenty years, and the customers there always struck me as people who were on their way to milk the cows, or harvest some corn, or something. It's as if you were walking into a coffee shop in rural Wisconsin or something. Plaid shirts, John Deere hats, that sort of thing. Working class. It's open from way before I'm ever up and around, until 2 pm, and it serves good, plain, solid, food. And the kind of non-trendy coffee I like. I'm a bacon-and-scrambled eggs kind'a guy, and I always o

If you went to an Arizona State game (now ASU) in the 20s, 30s, or 40s, you probably remember shouting, "Go Bulldogs!" You would, of course, have known about Pete the Bulldog. And you may have been a bit resentful when, in 1946, the school changed to the Sun Devils. But memories are short. Very few people nowadays have ever heard of the Bulldogs, even people who bleed Maroon and Gold. But it really was a step in the right direction, and if you know the history of Arizona State University, you know why. The original name of the school, which was founded in 1885, was the Tempe Normal School. A Normal School was the old-fashioned name for a teacher's college, that taught teaching "norms". So the teams were called the Normals, and sometimes the Teachers. And I suppose people shouted, "Go Normals!" or "Go Teachers!", but really, a team needs something with a little more spirit, wouldn't you say? The Tempe Normal School started callin

If you're a serious Phoenix history buff, you know that Steinegger's Lodge, at 27 E. Monroe, built in 1889, is one of the oldest buildings in Phoenix. And even if you work, or live, downtown, you may have gone past it many times and not noticed it. And if you noticed it, like I did when I worked downtown in the '90s, you may have tried not to. I definitely have mixed feelings about this building. On the one hand, I would like to see Phoenix not tear down all of its old buildings - there really aren't that many left from the 1800s, but to me, I just remember seeing it in the late 20th Century, when it was a boarding house (to put it nicely) and a flophouse (to put it not so nicely). I worked at Bank One Center (now Chase Tower), right across the street from it. From from there we could see people sleeping on the sidewalks and doing, uh, other things, that shouldn't have been done in public. I have a friend who delivered beer to Newman's back in the '8

It's Sunday morning, and I will be going history adventuring today. And if you're wondering why I'm doing this, it's because I just like looking at stuff, and I have since I was a kid. Of course, just *looking at stuff* doesn't make much sense to most people. I'm an illustrator, and I've always loved to draw, but I won't be bringing a sketchbook along. I used to, but then I discovered that I was spending most of my time looking at stuff, and not drawing. And as much as I like drawing, refocusing on the sketch pad just took me away from looking at stuff. I will bring along a camera, but mostly just to record the adventure. My co-adventurers always have something in mind to find, so I like to get a photo of me standing in front of whatever that is. It's human nature - you know, get a photo of me standing in front of, well, whatever. But it really has never mattered all that much to me. My high school art teacher once gave me some great advice

If you've ever wondered what Southern California looked like before just about every square inch of it was covered with freeways and doughnut shops, all you have to do is to go to Calabasas. But there is a trick to it - if you wind up hanging out with the Kardashians, or going to the mall, I can understand. You may even need to go buy yourself a new Lamborghini. But once you're done doing that, please travel along with me to the end of Las Virgenes Canyon. Las Virgenes Canyon, by the way, is Malibu Canyon south of the freeway. So, again, if you need to go to the beach, or to Pepperdine, I'll wait. Los Virgenes is the other way. It's a road less traveled, because, well, it goes nowhere. Like so many places that I've visited over the years, doing what I call history adventuring, it puzzles a lot of people, because there's nothing there. There's no Starbucks, no gift shop. There is a hiking trail, but that's really not the point. And if you need to

I love history adventuring. Sometimes I call it time-traveling, and it just means doing the kind of things that allow me (within the limits of physics) to travel into the past and the future. And it's surprisingly easy, and surprising satisfying. I started history adventuring when I moved to Los Angeles in the 1980s. While I was looking for a job, I stumbled into the public library in the Hollywood hills. If you've ever been there, you know that there are photos of Hollywoodland on the walls. Well, there was when I went there, hopefully they are still there! The photos are from the 1920s, when the subdivision of Hollywoodland was being built. And in that moment, when I was 25, something hit me. I had found the solution for the neurological strain of too much traffic, too much noise, too much stuff going on, and what I called the "L.A. Hee-Bee-Jee-Bees". I walked out of that library and looked at Beachwood Canyon differently. I could strip away all of the confusi