Book Wrangler

November 14, 2005

By Bob Patterson

[Clicking on underlined type will open a page with information pertaining to that topic.]

Venice's ocean front boardwalk, according to an unsubstantiated item I read online, is second in line behind Disneyland when making a list of tourist attractions in the Los Angeles area.

Recently, while walking there, we wondered if the tourists really appreciated the location's history.  When we saw Jeff Stanton, we walked up to his street vendor emporium where he sells books (some are copies of some of the books he has written and others are used books written by others) and postcards. 

As if reading our mind, he noted that copies of his new book, Venice California: Coney Island of the Pacific, which had been printed just prior to the 100^th year celebration, held on July 4^th of this year, was not achieving "best seller" status with the tourists and locals who were passing his location.

The book is an expanded and revised hardback version of one of the other books he has written which was about the early years of the seaside community which has always been a magnet for arty types. 

The new book is 288 pages and contains 367 historic photos and twice as much text as the previous volume.  The new book is up to date.  He related the details of expanding the last chapter by six pages just as it was due at the printers. 

Stanton was a frequent visitor to the library and photo archives of Santa Moncia's daily newspaper (The Santa Monica Evening Outlook) while it was being published.  He still assiduously hunts down minute bits of local history and urban legends, but, he notes ruefully, the amount of material available to historians doing research is slowly diminishing. 

Stanton's Venice book is available at various locations in the area, but folks (let's say hypothetically someone on the staff of the University of Peking is interested in getting an autographed copy of Stanton's latest book) outside Southern California might want to send an e-mail inquiry to the author himself (the address to contact him would be:  JeffreyStanton with the little "at" thingie followed by yahoo, then a dot, then com [humans reading that will understand it; spider programs searching the Internet looking for e-mail address for to send spam to won't.])

Another literary note for folks living in the Los Angeles area:  A meeting of "Frogaholics Anonymous" will be held Friday November 18, at 7:30 p.m. at Santino's Restaurant, 3021 Lincoln Blvd near Marine in Santa Monica.  The event is being arraigned by Marilyn Anderson, author of Never Kiss a Frog: A Girls Guide to Creatures from the Dating Swamp.  Marilyn's newsletter reports that she has been the "dating, flirting, and kissing coach" on ABC's program Extreme Makeover.  Admission is free.

Santa Monica residents, who don't know that a native of their city became the first American to win at Le Mans and was also the first American to win the Formula One Driver's Championship, might want to read about it in Ferrari: A Champion's View by Phil Hill, with photographs by John Lamm ($80 Dalton Watson Fine Books).

Phil Hill drove for the Ferrari factory racing team and did quite well back in the Fifties and Sixties. 

Recently, a Book Wrangler column about writers who served in the military before beginning their author's careers omitted Marion Hargrove, who was a very famous (if not the most famous) enlisted man in the American Army in WWII.  After serving his hitch, the author of See Here, Private Hargrove, became a citizen of Santa Monica and embarked on a career of writing movie scripts. 

LA Observed has an extensive list of websites done by writes in the area (under the heading Local Authors) in the long list of links relevant to the city and county of Los Angeles and the topic of journalism.

William Sidney Porter (writing as O. Henry) was a proud citizen of New York City and wrote (in the short story titled "Man About Town"): "Leisurely and with something of an air I strolled along with my heart expanding at the thought that I was a citizen of great Gotham, a sharer in its magnificence and pleasures, a partaker in its glory and prestige."

Now, if the disk jockey will play the song The Anaheim Azusa, and East Cucamonga, Sewing Circle, Book Review, and Timing Association, we'll pop the clutch and "leave a patch" (now, illegal in the State of California) and vacate the premises.  Until the next time, have a week full of civic pride.

Copyright © 2005 - Robert Patterson

Email the author at worldslaziestjournalist@yahoo.com