April 27, 2017

Universal Studios Hollywood Part 1

Universal Studios has offered tours since its beginnings. On March 14, 1915 Carl Laemmle who was a German immigrant and a former bookkeeper invited the public to tour his studios, cheer their favorite actors and have a boxed lunch; all of this for a mere 25 cents. Today, it costs a whole lot more and no boxed lunch. Sigh!




Neek, Sar and I had a blast visiting all of the amazing attractions and going on the tram tour.

April 21, 2017

The Donut Man on Route 66

On Route 66 in Los Angeles County as it cuts through the town of Glendora, California, there is a shop that’s definitely worth stopping for if you’re feeling hungry. That would be The Donut Man, which has been serving donuts for over 40 years!

April 13, 2017

Spring is here! The cherry blossoms bloom at Lake Balboa.

It's a beautiful event to witness at Lake Balboa in the San Fernando Valley in California. The flowers are lovely and the ducks are feisty!

April 12, 2017

How Standard Oil and GM Stymied Los Angeles Public Transportation

How Standard Oil and GM Stymied Los Angeles Public Transportation

Monday, April 10, 2017

This is the Seattle Center Monorail, built for the Seattle World's Fair in 1962 and still operating today. I've always wondered why this form of mass transit never caught on in Los Angeles where I'm from. The truth is the Alweg Monorail Company, responsible for the Seattle and Disneyland's Monorail offered to build this sort of thing for Los Angeles in 1963. What happened?

In the aftermath of gaining international recognition for their monorail at the 1962 Seattle Century 21 Exposition, the Alweg Monorail Company wanted to establish a major presence in the world of urban rail transit. On June 4, 1963, the President of the Alweg Rapid Transit Systems, Sixten Holmquist wrote a letter to the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) of Los Angeles with an official proposal. It stated, "We are pleased to submit this day a proposal to finance and construct an Alweg Monorail rapid transit system 43 miles in length, serving the San Fernando Valley, the Wilshire corridor, the San Bernardino corridor and downtown Los Angeles." In specifying the financial details, in which the complete system amounted to $105,275,000, the proposal, which was also presented to the L.A. County Board of Supervisors, stated, "this is a turn-key proposal in which a group will share risk, finance the construction, and turn over to MTA a completed and operating system to be repaid from MTA revenues."

So why didn't the L.A. County Board of Supervisors approve this proposal? It was opposed by Standard Oil. According to Kim Pedersen, a former Alweg engineer explained that there was initially a lot of excitement for the proposal. But then political pressure from Standard Oil dampened their enthusiasm. According to page 170 of American Society of Civil Engineers - Los Angeles Section, political pressure may also have come from General Motors against the project. Famed author Ray Bradbury rallied against this pressure by stating, "A single transit line will not answer our problems; we must lay plans for a series of transportation systems that would allow us to move freely, once more, within our city. The answer to all this is the monorail." For all his objections, Bradbury was thrown out of the Board of Supervisors meeting. Walt Disney also supported the monorail, but unfortunately their influence was unable to match Standard Oil and GM.

But this wasn't the first time that Standard Oil and GM stymied public transportation in Los Angeles. Their most infamous collusion is known as the Great American Streetcar Scandal. Between 1938 and 1950, the transit systems in more than 25 cities were bought out by National City Lines (NCL) and replaced by GM buses. Who controlled National City Lines? Well, their list of investors included Firestone Tires, Phillips Petroleum, Mack Truck Company, Standard Oil and, at least since 1946 when American City Lines merged with NCL, General Motors. Despite public opinion polls that, in Los Angeles for example, showed 88 percent of the public favoring expansion of the rail lines after World War II, NCL systematically shut down its streetcar systems until, by 1955, only a few remained. L.A. had two popular trolley systems; the Pacific Electric "Red Cars" and the Los Angeles Railway "Yellow Cars." While National City Lines owned only the Yellow Cars, because both systems were often used in conjunction by travelers and cutting service on one line made the other less convenient than automobiles, both systems failed and were dismantled. While General Motors, Standard Oil and Firestone Tires may not have bought the Red Car just to destroy it, like the Judge Doom character played by Christopher Lloyd did in the final act of the 1988 movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, the result was identical.

read more at link...

http://americanjudas.blogspot.com/2017/04/how-standard-oil-and-gm-stymied-los.html

Or just watch the video:

April 11, 2017

How Standard Oil and GM Stymied Public Transportation in Los Angeles

How Standard Oil and GM stymied public transportation in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1940s.

April 6, 2017

Abandoned ruins from the 1971 Sylmar CA earthquake

Going on a solo adventure, I recently explored the abandoned ruins of Olive View Hospital in Sylmar, California. It was quite a sight!