Photography

If you want some transpressional uplift, get over to the Hollywood Freeway and head downtown, catching the Harbor Freeway through the center of Los Angeles and roll south for more than twenty miles.  You end up in the blue-collar port town of San Pedro.  Joe Hill, the songwriter, labor activist, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World, lived and worked in San Pedro – it's where he began his labor organizing.  If you’re a jazz fan, Art Pepper was born and raised here, and Benny Goodman first met Lionel Hampton in a dive down by the docks. That odd poet, Charles Bukowski, spent his final years here – "San Pedro is real quiet. It used to be a seaport full of whorehouses and bars. I like the quietness. They ask you how you're doing, they really want to know."

On a hot day, heading to the rocky tidal shelf at the bottom of the cliffs will clear your head, considering the geology –

The City of Los Angeles is located on the east edge of the Pacific Plate, within the wide transform boundary zone with the North American Plate and near the big bend in the San Andreas fault. Situated just south of this restraining bend, the city is within the Western Transverse Ranges which are undergoing transpressional uplift along active thrust faults. The city has experienced and mitigated the effects of earthquakes on the San Andreas and local faults, floods, fires, droughts, landslides and debris flows.