On one end of Selma Avenue in Los Angeles is Hollywood High School
The only bungalows on Selma Ave. are on the opposite end, where Selma Ave. does a slight “S” crossing N. Gower Street. It was at the “shooting” location of one of these bungalows that “the shootout” occurred during the $2 Mill robbery.
In some ways, Los Angeles seems quite navigable. You begin to build your layout on the main routes, you add some notes of interest, and you learn the freeways that get you from point A to point B more quickly… except during rush hour.
Echo Park is just off the 101, as is the Hollywood Bowl. And you can get off the 101 onto Hollywood Blvd., or below it, Sunset Blvd. and a little further below those Santa Monica Blvd. Santa Monica Blvd. parallels Hollywood and Sunset Blvds. until it does a dog leg and heads to the Pacific Ocean. And just before you get to the Ocean, there was “Little Ruby.” But, you wouldn’t take Santa Monica Blvd. if you wanted to get from downtown. There are faster routes.
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Federal Building – FBI Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA
Gessler heads up S. Sepulveda Blvd. from the Federal Building, buys gas, and isn’t seen again.
Los Angeles Central Library
Nat’s
Not sure where or if there actually was a Nat’s Bar, but this is the approximate location, “about a half block, south of Hollywood Blvd.” Musso & Frank Grill is behind us and to the right from here, on Hollywood Blvd. To our left if we turn around from this view.
Kate Mantilini’s Restaurant (permanently closed)
Branch Bank
Okay, I do not wear caps. Never have, or never have for very long, and rarely trying them on to see that I really don’t want to wear a cap. But, I bought this one as a test, to try and solve a problem with me reading from my easy chair. I have the floor lamp shown above which is just to the left of my easy chair. I can reach over and pull it to me to turn it on, or turn it off, but when I am reading, the light hits me “directly” at an angle;-) It’s just irritating to try to read for too long with this light glaring at me. So I’ve tried sitting up, or holding the book at a different angle, but all of that is uncomfortable also. At some point I thought that wearing a cap, and having the brim shade my eyes might work… I thought about it for a time. And, I asked Jeff about how much a cap should cost. I think he said it’s about $25. Now, at one point I might have thought $25 was too expensive for a cap, and that $12.95 plus tax was the more reasonable, but this time I went on to Amazon.com and found a cap, a “Port of Los Angeles” cap, black, adjustable (aren’t they all, and this one with a velcro adjuster), and added it to my Cart, but I didn’t complete the purchase. I left for a day or a couple and then came back to it, in a buying mood, and finished the process. Now this cap didn’t include free shipping. That was another $4 or so. And it said delivery would take about 10 days (It didn’t in reality.).
This afternoon, I decided to take a drive, and go grocery shopping for steak and a red bell pepper up toward Lillington. Lillington is about 25 minutes, one way and I’ve shopped at the Food Lion and IGA there quite a few times. As I walked out my front door, I noted a small square box (my new cap) just outside. I brought it in, and sliced it open. Looked in real life as it had in the online photos. I put it on, had to readjust the fit, and then put it back on, and then on backwards, and then on sideways. I took the cap into the bathroom before I left and put it above the Bosch novel I’m currently reading.
After I got back home, I went and got the cap and the volume of “Lost Light” from the bathroom and brought them both back into the living room to test the reading. Works fine in shading my eyes from the floor lamp light. I decide to take a few pictures to illustrate me & my new cap. Oh, and I don’t have any other caps in my apartment or in my car. As I said, I don’t feel comfortable wearing one, and except for reading, I probably won’t wear this one much.
Why did I get a “Port of Los Angeles” cap? Well, as written elsewhere, I had just finished reading “A Darkness More Than Night,” which has a good deal of it’s time spent down near the Port of LA, and Catalina Island. But also, I was watching an episode of Perry Mason and some of that show was down near the Port of LA (but probably late 50s or early 60s), with much fewer cargo cranes, and an LA Fire Station which is probably near where the current one is located very near to the Vincent Thomas Bridge and the Battleship Iowa. *And ironically, a short time after this episode of Perry Mason ended, I was watching a commercial, a Dodge car commercial with Dodge Darts (I think.) from 2023 (just last year), and they were driving across a bridge, but I recognized the bridge, or thought I did. And, later in the commercial, several cars are speeding away from a tall building with the label “Port of LA – Warehouse #1.” I went to Google Maps Street View and found that this warehouse was located right next to the Cabrillo Marina (a setting in the Bosch novel), and a building that the large container ships have to pass when entering or leaving the Port of LA. *And the YM Warranty passed it coming into port just a few days ago, and will pass it again on it’s way out in a day or so. On the opposite end of this warehouse is a large lettering saying something to the effect, “Welcome to the Port of Los Angeles.”
I think my current moustache & beard remind me of those of Michael Connelly. Not intentionally grown for that likeness, but just noted by me. I think Connelly is about three years younger than I am.
Before I forget it, I happened to look at the book cover for the current novel, “Lost Light” and realized what it was showing. I recognized it because I had just read a short time earlier in the novel where Harry, feeling paranoid, and sensing he might be, “being followed,” cuts his car sharply across traffic and into a tunnel, and Connelly through Bosch describes how the car lights, of a following car would show up in the tunnel. *Makes me wonder if the tunnel may have greater meaning that will be revealed later. Otherwise, it would be strange to choose this image for the cover of this novel. Still, I don’t see how it could have greater significance. We will see, or at least I will;-)
NOTE [02/18/24]: This is just a navigational reference that I noticed recently. I was looking at an old posting, and had made note of where the old motel was located in Pulp Fiction, where the Bruce Willis character & his wife stay, just before leaving LA for the last time. By the time I had pulled up the location on Google Maps, the motel had been torn down and a new storage warehouse built there. But I happened to see that you could head in an almost southerly direction to Silver Lake and then on to Echo Park, and then to downtown LA (with all the skyscrapers), but here’s the thing, you now have a straight line all the way to the Port of LA. It’s a long way from Silver Lake to the Pacific, but it is a straight line. And, you could come close to following that line out to Catalina Island and Avalon.[end NOTE]
Bill Gibson, II 