Manhattan Beach and Venice: Namesakes and coin tosses

I AM OFTEN struck by how vastly different Venice and Manhattan Beach are from their namesakes. The car-less maze of canals and bridges in Italy doesn’t seem much like Venice, Calif. And the laid-back, cute town of Manhattan Beach seems to have little in common with bustling New York City.


But delving into the history of each Los Angeles County town sheds light on the connection to their namesakes thousands of miles away.


According to the Manhattan Beach Historical Society’s website, the town was the result of two public transportation systems coming together. One area was named Manhattan by its developer, Stewart Merrill, after his hometown on the east coast.


Venice, as we learned in class, was developed by Abbot Kinney. Before it became the T-shirt vendor-lined muscle beach of today, it was a cultural city modeled after Venezia, complete with its own gondolas on man-made canals.

Interestingly, the history of both Manhattan and Venice involved a coin toss: To determine town’s name Merrill won his coin toss against realtor George Peck, who wanted to name it Shore Acres. According to the Venice Historical Society's website, Kinney won a coin toss to determine which half of the oceanfront land he would purchase. He surprised the four other developers by choosing the barren, marshy property that is now Venice.


We’ve discussed how Pasadena was shaped by the Midwest roots of the people who settled there: several groups of people traveling across the country to re-create their home elsewhere. But, as with Manhattan Beach and Venice, the vision of one developer can bring a piece of another city to L.A. too.


– Emily Rome

Top photo: Manhattan Beach (Credit: Mr Bulitt / Wikimedia Commons)

Bottom photo: Venice (Credit: SameerKhan / Wikimedia Commons)

Hidden L.A.

A FEW responses to guest speaker W. Lynn Garrett, creator of hiddenla.com:


“I see it not as a city but as a country with many villages.”
I think this is an apt description. It captures how vastly different neighboring areas of L.A. are but also that within one city there are lots of communities, areas and groups that are tight-knit and have their own cultures.

The L.A. River
I learned a lot about the river from Garrett. It was especially fascinating to watch the video of people kayaking and canoeing down the river – I had no idea that was possible. It’s wild to think that you can experience that right in the middle of a desert city.





“Go to work, come home, go to work, come home.”
This also captures the experience of many Los Angeles residents. This unbroken routine of is part of the reason there’s so much of the city that is hidden to us, that we don’t see or only see from our car. It’s an odd existence, when you think about it: Living life only from our homes and our places of work. When you think about it like that and realize how limiting it is, it does make you want to get out and see the city some more!


– Emily Rome


Photo: The Los Angeles River. Credit: FlickrLickr / Wikimedia Commons

Genius Loci: My L.A.

Many American cities have famed, distinctive skylines – think of New York, Seattle or Chicago and you’ll probably also think of the collection of buildings that make the city iconic. I haven’t found this to be as true for L.A., probably because this earthquake-prone city isn’t known for its skyscrapers – there is no Empire State Building, no Space Needle, no Sears Tower.

Instead of specific buildings, L.A. is recognizable for – among many things – its vastness. The city goes on and on. Whether seen from Griffith Park or from LMU’s own Bluff (as above), the stretch of lights – to me – is a reminder that there is so much more to explore in Los Angeles. It’s a city I’ve seen, for the most part, from a distance. The one part of the city I’ve really set my zoom lens on is its world of movies.

One visual that shouts, “You’re back in L.A.!” are billboards, especially billboards for movies. In Pierce County, Wash., where I grew up, there are laws significantly limiting where there can be billboards. They are a rare site there, in stark contrast to the mass of advertising around Los Angeles.

Movie theaters are my L.A. There are so many to choose from – multiplexes to small indie theaters, to historic revival ones. A marquee announcing the presence of a favorite filmmaker is Los Angeles to me.

Red carpets, dozens of camera flashes going off at once, a loud crowd of reporters packed into a small space: movie premieres are another part of my L.A., something I’ve gotten to see from the perspective of a journalist on the press line. Here is a look at the fans flanking “The Hunger Games” premiere and a behind-the-scenes peek at the Oscars red carpet, taken from the press route through Hollywood and Highland Center.

L.A. through the eyes of a bus rider

SINCE STUDYING French in high school, I’ve lost a lot of my ability to speak the language, but one thing I do remember is that the French have two different words for the verb to know: savoir and connaître. It’s a useful distinction that is lost in translation: Savoir refers to knowing a fact or knowing how to do something. Connaître refers to knowing a person or a city. Makes sense to me – knowing your multiplication tables is quite different from knowing a friend or knowing your hometown.

So I’ll say it in French because it hits much closer to my meaning: Je connais Los Angeles un peu meilleure grâce au l’autobus.

Yes, I know the City of Angels a little better thanks to the bus system. For my first three years of college, I didn’t have a car, so mooching off friends with wheels or hopping on L.A.’s public transportation system were my ways of getting around. I definitely got to know the city much better then than I have since I first brought my car here last summer.

Taking the bus forced me to learn the layout of the city because knowing the bus routes was key to not getting lost and not taking a long way home. When I’m driving and trusting my GPS to get me around town, the only part of L.A. I’ve gotten to know any better are the freeways.

Bussing around the city also meant more time walking around the city – from one stop to another, or just exploring for fun when there wasn’t the automatic tendency to walk straight to my parked car. Before last summer, I took the bus to internships in Hollywood and Santa Monica. I know those areas a lot better than I know Downtown, where I’ve driven to my current internship since September. You notice a lot more of what’s around you when you’re looking out a bus window: I had been driving to Downtown two days a week for seven months, and it wasn’t until last week that I took in my surroundings while at a red light and finally noticed that every one of those days I had been driving past a location from “(500) Days of Summer” and “Blade Runner”: the Bradbury Building.

I do still take the bus sometimes, when it has its advantages (taking the Big Blue Bus No. 3 to Santa Monica is a lot cheaper than paying for parking there). But I do wish I took it more – there’d be more opportunities to meet interesting people instead of sitting alone in my box on wheels, I’d see more of the city (watching the city fly by instead of eyes fixated on the road), and I’m sure I would connaîtrais Los Angeles a little more.

– Emily Rome

Photo: Riding the bus in Los Angeles almost always means riding a moving movie ad. Credit: Indianhilbilly / Wikimedia Commons

On the Radio

WHEN I return to my home state of Washington, one of the first things I do that makes me feel at home happens as soon as I get in the car of whichever family member braved the airport traffic: I turn the radio dial to 103.7. Also known to Seattleites as The Mountain (derived from the station’s call letters KMTT and the way all Washingtonians refer to Mount Rainer), 103.7 immediately tells me I’m home. I grew up listening to its blend of modern and classic rock, seeing its logo on beach balls tossed around by concert-goers at Pier 63, and expecting to hear the voice of host Marty Reimer over the car speakers every morning.

Thinking about how much listening to The Mountain defined my Tacoma and Seattle for me, I realize what may be missing from how I connect to my new home of Los Angeles. I don’t listen to the radio much here. I hardly listened to it at all before bringing my car to the city last summer. And even since then, when I’m driving, I tend to opt for a playlist on my iPod or Jack FM far more than tuning in to The Sound or KROQ. When I’m not in the car, it’s always my iTunes library or Pandora.

I feel that I might find myself connecting to the city more if I chose to listen to Los Angeles radio more often. Part of this would be about hearing the music that defines an L.A. radio station and getting to know the hosts. But it’s more than that: There’s something about listening to the radio that’s different from listening to a CD or an mp3 player – even if it’s the same song – it’s different when you know that a few thousand people are also listening to that same song at that same moment. Even if it’s indirect and somewhat abstract, I feel a little more connected to my fellow Los Angelenos when I know that I’m not the only one alone in my box on wheels, listening to it, and singing along.

– Emily Rome

Photo: I don't even own a radio aside from my car's – an antique like this one or otherwise. Then again, that's no excuse as long as all the radio stations keep up their active websites. Credit: David / Wikimedia Commons

Andy Grammer: the Los Angeles musician

IT USED to be that when I saw musicians singing on sidewalks lining busy L.A. streets, I wouldn’t give them much thought. I’d make a sad attempt at polite with a “No, thank you” to the demo CD they offer me, or I’d walk by their penny-filled guitar case without even considering reaching into my wallet for a monetary acknowledgement of their (and their music’s) existence. Now I give these busking musicians a second thought, and for every occasional dollar bill I drop in a fedora or violin case, these musicians have Andy Grammer to thank for it.

Los Angeles – home to movie studios and record labels – is a city full of musicians, actors and filmmakers trying to “make it.” Many don’t find success. Some do. It’s hard to know just which of those lining the streets will make the transition to venues like the House of Blues and big stadiums. It’s hard to know what I would have thought of Andy Grammer’s music had I first heard it on a Santa Monica street instead of at a small show on LMU’s campus. But I do know that he is part of a lucky minority of singer/songwriters who have “made it,” and he’s a musician who strikes me as having a very L.A. story.

Grammer – born in L.A., raised in New York before moving back to L.A. at age 20 – got into the business with a combination of the quintessential ways to “make it”: have a family member in music, and play your heart out busking on the streets and performing small shows. His father is a singer-songwriter of children’s songs. But Grammer also performed for years on Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, selling demo CDs to pay the rent before moving on to performing small shows at colleges around California then around the country.

Now he is headlining his own tour, and those college crowds have turned into a devoted following. And the other artists and performers who lined the Santa Monica street in his busking days? Grammer stays close to them and even invites them out on stage during his shows.

Most of his songs are ones you’d expect to come from spending so much time performing in sunny Santa Monica and to energetic, free-spirited college students: His music is uplifting and optimistic, calling for his listeners to “keep your head up” in his single of the same name.

When I interviewed him for The Hollywood Reporter last summer, I asked him if he sets out to be uplifting with his music. He responded, “My ultimate goal is to try to be real. It just so happens that I’m usually more happy than sad when I’m writing.”

His songs always do seem to succeed in tapping into those real experiences you have but may never admit to – in “Numbers” he puts into lyrics that thing we all have done at some point in our lives: assign numbers rating the hotness level of people we see out and about. He admits to feeling like “a 5 on a good day” and that “just one time I wish I could have a 9” while sending an anti-superficiality message, singing, “The value of personality seems to be dead. / We’re all walking around numbered with halos on our heads.”

But not everything that is real and authentic is all sunshine and rainbows in Grammer’s music. Perhaps no song of his has resonated more with me – truly struck at real emotion, the heart of what I’m feeling and what frame of mind I’m often in these days as a college senior going through ups and downs and freaking out about whether I’m going to have a job come graduation time – no song any more than “The Heavy and the Slow.” He sings, “If there’s anything to learn on Earth, / I’m certain it’s the heavy and the slow” and “Bruise me life. / Confuse me life. / Bring on the rain.” It’s a song about embracing the hardships and the sorrows that actually brought tears to my eyes when I saw him sing it at one of his shows, closing his eyes, swaying with the strumming of his guitar, getting more into the music than I ever had seen him be.

That performance of “The Heavy and the Slow” also was a tear-jerker for me because of how he introduced it, giving a shout-out to his mom, who died a few years back, leaving that Earth Andy sings about before he got his success and found his way in the music industry.

Just as Andy’s life is a mix of the joyful – like getting a record deal and starting his first headlining tour – and the “heavy and the slow” – like losing his mom too soon – L.A. is a blend of the two. It’s not all sunny Arcadia as it’s represented to be, just as New York most certainly isn’t all black clothing and gloomy weather as it’s often depicted. L.A. has the sunny weather and the smog, and even some rain. It’s a city where so much is fake and contrived – reality shows, anyone? – but right next to the phony there’s plenty that’s authentic and real, and that’s where artists like Andy Grammer come in.

Photo: Andy Grammer performing at the Anaheim House of Blues on Jan. 14, 2012. Credit: Emily Rome, courtesy of my oh-so-high-tech camera phone