Tuesday, August 28, 2007 – Downtown Façades

The manufactured picturesque at 247 South Main Street, between 2^nd and 3^rd – a storefront modified to promote a new album by the LA lo-fi noise/punk duo, No Age, which would be Randy Randall and Dean Spunt. The album is Weirdo Rippers, and the storefront was featured in this video.  At "Pitchfork Media" you will find this review, and in "Prefix Magazine" this – "Is the secret of noise-rock to make as much noise as possible or to find beauty within the noise? …  Using and often abusing extra-crunchy guitar - more squealing distortion than the instrument itself - fuzzy drums and deadpan vocals, Spunt and Randall explode, violently and uncomfortably…"  Be that as it may, the façade is good.

The real picturesque, the nearby Los Angeles Times buildings –

Oh, yeah – the famous façade, Los Angeles City Hall - designed by John Parkinson, John C. Austin, and Albert C. Martin, and completed in 1928. Until 1964 it was the tallest building in Los Angeles – the concrete in its tower was made with sand from each of California's fifty-eight counties and water from its twenty-one historic missions.  And it wasn't really destroyed in the 1953 film version of War of the Worlds.  Most of us remember it from the radio show that moved to television, Dragnet. The first show of the first season, "The Human Bomb," 16 December 1951, was filmed here, and building became a character on the show, always in the background. And it was embossed on Sergeant Joe Friday's famous badge, number 714, always displayed under the credits.

But things change. This is the crane working the hole in the ground on 2^nd at Main, where the new police headquarters is going up.

If you wish to use any of these photos for commercial purposes I assume you'll discuss that with me. And should you choose to download any of these images and use them invoking the "fair use" provisions of the Copyright Act of 1976, please provide credit, and, on the web, a link back this site.

Technical Note:

Most of these photographs were shot with a Nikon D70 - using lens (1) AF-S Nikkor 18-70 mm 1:35-4.5G ED, or (2) AF Nikkor 70-300mm telephoto, or after 5 June 2006, (3) AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor, 55-200 mm f/4-5.6G ED. They were modified for web posting using Adobe Photoshop 7.0. Earlier photography was done with a Sony Mavica digital still camera (MVC-FD-88) with built-in digital zoom.

All text and photos, unless otherwise noted, Copyright © 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 - Alan M. Pavlik