CB1100 Monthly Photo Challenge

[Gone in 60]

Moving back downtown on my way home, I passed the Bonaventure Hotel, which has been a filming mecca since it opened. Countless movies have used it, but my favorite is Clint Eastwood and John Malkovich's final scenes in In the Line of Fire.


Finally, I have shown and described L.A.'s newly rebuilt Sixth Street Bridge in detail in earlier posts, and it has already shown in several TV shows and car commercials. But two blocks to the North, the Fourth Street Bridge is just as famous, featuring in many car chase films and car commercials. This view is from the West side looking East. My favorite movie using the bridge is Lee Marvin's Point Blank, where a sniper uses one of the bridge's vertical cupolas to conceal himself as he shoots a key character below in the L.A. river.

The sun came out after work! Here's Johnie's Coffee Shop, which is located across the street from the Petersen. For years, it served as one of the best examples of Googie Architecture in the city. It closed for business in 2000, but being between the old Petersen Publishing office and the museum, I had countless lunches there. Due to it's fairly generic coffee shop interior, it has continued to serve as a filming location even after its closure, and more recently was Bernie Sanders' West Coast campain headquarters. It is historically protected, and with the current expansion of L.A.'s subway system, there has been extensive construction on the corner of Wilshire and Fairfax, where an underground subway station will be located. I am curious to see how they will incorporate the restaurant in the design of the stations, as the back of the place is blocked off with huge construction fences.

Johnie's was featured in movies such as Reservoir Dogs and Big Lebowski, but one of my favorite recent videos is this dance scene with Sam Rockwell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH5L4qTVsTk


The aforementioned La Brea Tar Pits is a few blocks East on Wilshire. In Volcano, the tar pits are revealed to be a dormant volcano, which erupts, sending the city into chaos.


MacArthur Park is further East along Wilshire, toward Downtown L.A. It has featured in many films and TV shows, but going back to Volcano, this is where the scientist played by Anne Heche discovered that temperature in the park's lake was rising, leading to the discovery of the volcano. Sadly, these days, the park is mostly occupied by homeless people and weirdos. I initially stopped and got off of my bike to take a better photo, but a couple of guys walked up to me assuming that I wanted to buy drugs, so I didn't get the best photo of the park...

so funny and sad at the same time

Ugh, yeah, it's pretty sad. There are parts of L.A. that you just ride through as quickly as you can, and Wilshire Blvd near this park is one of them. In my photo, you can see a woman in a yellow skirt, no doubt a volunteer for an art council or something like that. She was scrubbing graffiti off of a tiled art piece in the park. I have to give her a lot of credit for doing so.

Speaking of the Fourth Street Bridge, if you watch the scene I describe in Point Blank, the vertical columns you see on the bridge are hollow inside, forming viewing points for pedestrians crossing the bridge. Mrs. Gone and I traversed the bridge about a year ago on a city hike, and each of the columns was occupied as makeshift campsites, with tarps over the openings.