Exploring Southern California with John Rabe and Kevin Ferguson and the rest of Team Off-Ramp.
Garcetti's F-bomb: Off-Ramp's imagined mayoral interview
On Monday, the mayor of our major world city dropped the F-bomb at a rally celebrating the L.A. Kings' Stanley Cup win, and since it wasn't Rob Ford, everyone took notice ... from KPCC's AirTalk to the L.A. Times to any 10-year-old who will learn quickly that just because the mayor did it, they can't do it.
Some said it was spontaneous. Some believed it was calculated to make him seem a man of the people. Some loved it. Some hated it.
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In an exclusive* interview, Off-Ramp's John Rabe imagines a talk with Mayor Eric Garcetti about dropping his first public F-bomb and whether he plans to use it in the future (click on the audio button on the left).
(*exclusive=fake)
The surprising story of 2 TV chopper pilots who followed the OJ chase 20 years ago
As Angelenos recall the O.J. Simpson case 20 years later, one story has never been told, until now: how the rivalry between TV news helicopter pilots Bob Tur and Dirk Vahle became friendship.
Tur, flying for CBS, was first on the scene for O.J.'s slow speed chase on June 17, 1994. Vahle, with NBC, was not far behind. The video from their choppers filled millions of TV screens across America.
Tur and Vahle, the best in their field, hated each other ... until about a year ago, when they met through a mutual friend and discovered they had one other thing in common.
Each is transgender: Dirk Vahle is now Dana Vahle, and Bob Tur is now Zoey Tur (she has been telling her story on Off-Ramp).
VIDEO: The OJ Simpson Slow-Speed Chase
The pair have formed a deep friendship. But how did they get over 20 years of bad blood? This woman:
(Desiree Horton on the job. Credit: Desiree Horton)
Helicopter pilot Desiree Horton is a mutual friend. "Desiree told me I should get in touch with Dirk Vahle," Tur recalled. "I said, 'Why? Dirk Vahle is an a--hole.' She said, 'Because Dirk is now Dana.'"
Vahle, meanwhile, had transitioned to female two years earlier and recalls reading an article about Tur's transition and thinking, "You've got to be f--king kidding me!"
RELATED: "Dirk" Vahle's 53 movie credits
The two had a tense dinner together, actually their first face-to-face meeting, and have since become close. "When you go through something like this," Tur said, "it's like going to war. It's very, very rough, and you need people out there who understand. Dana was very understanding."
Vahle offers support and friendship, but as someone with such a similar background, and a two-year head start, Vahle's also been able to talk back to Tur, who was becoming a very public face of the transgender community.
"I felt she's spoke in a lot of absolutes," Vahle said. "And there's not a whole lot of absolutes in this, because it varies a lot by age and how you are in general. There's a lot of physical aspects of this — the hormones, the surgery — that I wanted to talk to her about, because they weren't portrayed the way they should be."
What about that day 20 years ago that had us glued to our TVs and calling friends saying, "Hey! You've gotta see this!"
On June 17, 1994, Tur recalls that he flew over Nicole Simpson's grave site, figuring that O.J., who was on the lam, would go there and possibly commit suicide. But he wasn't there. Tur then heard over the California Highway Patrol radio that O.J. was in a white Bronco at the El Toro Y interchange.
"I looked down between my legs, and down below, [through the helicopter's bubble windshield,] I could see the freeway. And we saw a white Bronco," said Tur.
Now, the two laugh discussing Tur's claim to be first on the scene. "Everybody at my station feels very strongly that we were actually there before Bob Tur was there," Vahle said, "which, of course, is something we all wanted to do in that market at that point." But NBC delayed putting them on the air with it; Tur got on the air almost immediately.
Tur said that after the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, "I thought we would be able to sit on the ground for a week or two because it would be wall-to-wall O.J. Simpson stories, and I never believed it'd become a helicopter story. And it became the biggest helicopter story and the biggest news story that we've seen in the United States outside of Sept. 11th."
"I don't think a lot about it," Vahle said. "But somebody will be talking to me, and I'll say, 'I did the O.J. chase.' And that freaks them out."
Where were you when O.J. took off in the white Bronco? Share your memories with us in the comments.
Route 66 icon Wigwam Motel's owner to be crowned Americana royalty
Off-Ramp correspondent Robert Garrova takes us to the Wigwam Motel in Rialto, whose owner, Kumar Patel, will be crowned Americana Royalty June 21, by Charles Phoenix.
In America, roadside attractions are monuments to car culture, family road trips and the highways that connect the country. We have a giant Paul Bunyan, massive balls of yarn, and life-size dinosaurs always just over the horizon. And 60 miles outside of L.A., in Rialto, there’s a roadside attraction you can spend the night in.
At the Wigwam Motel, you’ll find 30-foot-tall teepee look-a-like cabins made of stucco and wood. Yes, it’s called the Wigwam Motel, but they actually look more like teepees. Built by Frank Redford in 1949, the Wigwam Motel became the most western member in a chain of teepee motels that stretched all the way from Kentucky.
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But the Wigwam Motel might have seen the wrecking ball if it wasn’t for the Patel family, who bought it, and when Kumar Patel’s mom got sick, it was up to him to take over. At first, he didn’t really get it. But, after a couple trips along the Route with then Route 66 Association President Kevin Hansel, Patel says he became fascinated with the restoration projects he saw.
The Patel family bought the Wigwam in 2003, but you might say Kumar’s been running on Route 66 his whole life. “Born on Route 66, I live on Route 66, I’m a business owner on Route 66 and I love Route 66. I travel it every year,” Patel says.
Inside the lobby, he proudly displays pictures from his yearly Route 66 road trip. There’s the old-timey barbershop, the roadside diners and gas stations, even a shot of one man’s Wigwam Motel tattoo. “Now I love traveling for the people. So many characters on Route 66,” Patel says.
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At just 32, Patel admits he’s a driving force in the preservation of the old road’s character. But he also says he’s just a member of the Route 66 family.
“They say you’re better off writing a book and having a best seller than becoming profitable on Route 66. ...Anybody that goes on Route 66 and opens a business and wants travelers to come, they’re doing it because they love it.” -- Wigwam Motel owner Kumar Patel
If you’d like to go check out the Wigwam Motel for yourself, Patel and “Ambassador of Americana” Charles Phoenix have just the party for you. If you can make it out to Rialto on June 21, Phoenix promises the full retro experience, with classic cars and vintage trailers, an old-fashioned weenie roast, the Bob Baker marionettes, and a vintage fashion show ... culminating with the crowning of Kumar Patel, an Indian-American who got a Native-American themed Route 66 attraction on the National Historic Register, as Americana Royalty. Only in America.
VIDEO: He's no Huell (yet) but it's short and sweet with good pics of the Wigwam
James Ensor's massive menace, minute malign fantasies on display at the Getty
Off-Ramp correspondent Marc Haefele reviews The Scandalous Art of James Ensor, at the Getty Center through Sept. 7.
In his final decades, James Ensor was an international celebrity showered with official honors in his native Belgium. But in the 1880s and 1890s, the young Ensor was a scandalous and defiant figure. To this day, Ensor's art continues to baffle in its psychological complexity, internal contradictions, and sheer eccentricity.
- J. Paul Getty Museum
Of all the artists of over a century ago, James Ensor would probably have done best in Zap Comix. Much of his most famous work — roughly from 1886 to 1900 — is rooted in obscenities akin to those of S. Clay Wilson and R. Crumb’s cartoons, but spread across vast and vividly colored canvases, packed with massive menace and minute malign fantasies.
(The artist as a young man)
One of the greatest Ensor paintings is the 1898 “Christ’s Entry into Brussels.” It has long been a prized possession of the Getty Center, its worth-the-trip-to-the-museum picture. Now it's joined by 118 other great Ensors in a magnificent new show, "The Scandalous Art of James Ensor."
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"Christ's Entry into Brussels" is the star of this show, but in the painting, Christ is almost an afterthought, diminished in a 14x8-foot canvas packed with marching bands, ranks of officials and clergy, some parodistic faces of Ensor’s contemporaries and even a few surprise celebrities — like the Marquis de Sade (who in profile resembles Bob Hope). Banners praise socialism and official dogmas, along with the newly returned Christ the King. Everything shouts and shrieks in bright colors except Jesus’ humble, inarticulate message, utterly lost in the commotion. It’s a painting so big and jam-packed that it could take you all day just to see it. Ensor himself redid it several times on a smaller scale.
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"Christ's Entry into Brussels" is Ensor’s most famous picture, but it's by no means his weirdest, or even his most offensive. Take the colored etching on display here called “Doctrinal Nourishment.” One of several treatments Ensor did of the same subject, it shows the highest leaders of 1800s European society — a king, a cardinal, a general and a judge — squatting bare-bummed as they defecate into the wide-open mouths of their supine, passive subjects.
(Doctrinal Nourishment, James Ensor. LACMA/Joan Palevsky Bequest/ARS/SABAM)
While Ensor respected — or perhaps a better word would be “pitied” — Jesus Christ, he detested every one of the authorities that bound up the young nation of Belgium into which he was born — a kingdom created only 29 years before his own birth in 1860.
Ensor showed his genius in his teens, and by his early 20s he was an undeniably original master painter in the avant garde tradition of the 1880s. The Getty includes some of his best early work — seascapes, still lifes and some remarkable interiors, including a young woman gorging on oysters at a well-laid table that is likely to make the viewer share her hunger. But then, quite suddenly, in the mid-1880s, Ensor went weird.
(The Skeleton Painter, James Ensor. Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp/Lukas-Art/Hugo Maertens/ARS/SABAM)
First, he incorporated into his pictures the carnival masks sold in the family store downstairs from his studio. His painted subjects sported grotesque, long-nosed faces, obscuring their feelings and motivations. Then he took a big step that no one in those pre-Freudian days seemed to comprehend: he plunged a kind of psychic sump pump deep into his sub-conscious; and out poured the crazy, wicked notions that filled his work for almost the next 20 years. Works that scandalized his closest friends and colleagues but made him Belgium’s most famous artist.
There are masks, there are demons in masks, there are masked devils from far away Asia — Ensor was influenced by Japanese master Hokusai. Death’s dark scythe sweeps people away in masses in the same empty spirit that the Belgian police massacre dozens of striking fisher folk on Ensor’s Ostend doorstep in “The Strike.” Impressive as the big pictures are, even some of the smallest have stunning impact.
(The Man of Sorrows, James Ensor. Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp/Lukas-Art/Hugo Maertens/ARS, SABAM)
Like the “The Man of Sorrows,” a small oil painting in which Jesus’ face, far from sad, shows a tear-your-throat-out rage. The usual religious expectation is again and again reversed: Devils defeat angels in mortal combat, and elsewhere, like friendly old pals, those demons lead Christ into Hell. Elsewhere, Jesus miraculously spreads a few fish and crustaceans before his hungry flock, and they ignore the sparse bounty and turn away.
But this show is itself a bounty from which we cannot turn away. If I have one criticism, it’s that the show stops early in the highly productive career of a man who died at 89. Only a hint of where Ensor was heading is shown here — a photograph of him in the 1920s, playing a little harmonium.
(James Ensor Playing the Harmonium in His Music Studio, July 28, 1933, Maurice Antony)
It turns out, Ensor was then teaching himself how to be a composer, and eventually wrote a performed ballet, for which of course he designed the sets and costumes. His pictorial art continued to evolve too, to describe the sufferings of occupied Belgium in World War I (“The Banquet of the Starved”) and beyond, to a sensuous new style in the 1920s (“The Finding of Moses”).
But even if it isn’t perfect, “The Scandalous Art of James Ensor” certainly is sufficiently scandalous — and a very fine thing to see.
Who is killing the peacocks of Rolling Hills Estates?
Someone is killing the peafowl of Rolling Hills Estates.
To so many people, Rolling Hills Estates is paradise. Its borders roll along the hills of the Palos Verdes Peninsula in a part of the South Bay dotted with golf courses, gourmet markets and pristine ocean views.
"It's known as an equestrian community. We have about 26 miles of horse trails in the city," said Judith Mitchell, the city's mayor. "It's a great place for families and a great place to raise children. We have a very good school system on the peninsula. Lots of open space."
Families show off their last names over their mailboxes in big, carved wood letters. There's a real-life general store. At city hall, you'll find not one, but two places to tie up your horse on the way to a city council meeting.
But among the 8,000 residents, the backyard chickens and the horse stables are hundreds of Indian peafowl — also known as peacocks and peahens. They roost in the trees, roam the canyons and fields, rest in backyards.
The peafowl arrived here in the early 20th century, brought to the estate of Mr. Frank Vanderlip — a banker and former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and one of the peninsula's first developers. His original 16 birds grew into the flocks that dot the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
So who is killing these birds?
A multicolored murder mystery
In the last two years, at least 50 birds have been found dead. Some were hit by cars. Others were poisoned. Still more were shot by pellet guns or arrows.
Leading up an investigation into the killings is Lt. Cesar Perea, a humane officer with the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals L.A., or spcaLA. I met him at the end of Buckskin Lane, where many of the dead birds have been found. Perea said that to him, the ones killed by arrow and pellet stand out most.
"It really shows a high level of violence in the person that's doing it," he said. "Just based on the arrows that were found — the trajectory and the type of weapon that was used — these people are walking right to the animal and shooting it at point blank range."
Why are so many dying? And who's doing it? We don’t know. The poisonings and car collisions could be accidental. The arrows and pellets aren't, but investigators haven't found a suspect. If they're caught, the killer could face up to three years in prison.
The deaths have brought into sharp focus what many residents call the single most divisive issue in parts of Rolling Hills Estates: The peafowl question.
Eric Vander Ploeg, the vice president of the Dapplegray Lane Property Owners Association, said its an issue that comes up at every DLPOA meeting.
"It's not really an issue of if people like them or don't — 'cause most of them like them," he said. "It's how many there are."
Vander Ploeg said the DLPOA performed a survey recently to find out what to do about the peafowl in the area — the survey came back evenly divided.
Some residents say the peafowl are noisy. They eat plants. If they see their reflection in a shiny BMW, they'll mistake it for an another bird and attack, damaging the car.
Cheryl Rajewski has lived here for 15 years. When she first moved in, she said, the peafowl were an adjustment.
"They squawk. They poo. They stand on your car. They run on [the] roof where it sounds like it's a human being," she said. "But they are here, and still — 10 years later — I'm living here, and I'll drive home and I'll see this beautiful bird just sitting in your garden, with its gorgeous feathers. It's like, 'Wow, this is really special.'"
A love/hate relationship
To Mayor Judith Mitchell, the peafowl are a galvanizing force in the communities where they live: Residents either love them or hate them. "As long as I've been in city government, it seems like we've been dealing with this issue," she said.
For years, the people in peafowl territory have been in a stalemate. The city has passed ordinances protecting the birds from being removed and relocated. There are some measures the city and community could take — like training the birds to stay off roofs, or relocating some of the population. But nothing of the sort's happened so far.
In 2005, the city of Rolling Hills Estates hired researcher Francine Bradley and an assistant to take a census of the peafowl. They counted 218 at the time, a number Bradley said has certainly gone up.
Bradley also warned residents that if nothing was done about the population, killings like this would be inevitable.
"Just as ... on golf courses, where waterfowl populations are allowed to increase, you get the situation of the golfer who misses the putt because the ball hits a pile of goose droppings," she said. "And then the golfer rips a driver out of the bag and goes after the goose. It's certainly not justified, but I can understand people's frustration."
Without a culprit caught, without the population put in check or their behavior curbed, life will go on. The peafowl will roost in trees. They will scratch cars. They will walk on roofs. And, on some morning, maybe on Buckskin Lane again, the sun will rise on another dead bird.
San Pedro's 'living treasure' Harry Hall celebrates his 101st birthday
Harry Hall was born in 1913 and he’s lived in San Pedro ever since. Once a professional violinist and teacher, he keeps in practice with a weekly gig at a local bar, The Whale & Ale. Friends, family and fans flocked to the English pub last Friday to celebrate Harry’s 101st birthday.
Hall performed for guests at his party and impressed newcomers with his still nimble fingers. He began playing violin as a 9-year-old, when a door-to-door salesman offered his family a deal.
“A gentleman came by and said that he was selling lessons. They would loan you the violin, it was a dollar a week - this was in 1925 - and if I took lessons for a year, the violin and the bow would be mine,” said Hall.
Hall completed the year-long violin course and has been playing and performing regularly in the 92 years since. He went on to study at the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music and then played professionally, once conducting a violin concert at the Hollywood Bowl. He retired decades ago, but continues to perform for small audiences in San Pedro.
“I’m not trying to build a reputation. I’m not trying to make money on it, because I don’t make money,” said Hall. “I just do it for the fun of it.”
The centenarian received congressional recognition on his last birthday and was named one of San Pedro’s “living treasures.” He’s the type of local fixture that you run into everywhere — playing music at retirement homes as a volunteer or serving as a community marshal in San Pedro's annual holiday parade.
“He’s a community asset,” said owner of The Whale & Ale Andrew Silber. “A local treasure, in a way.”
Silber says that Harry has been playing violin alongside pianist Rob Klopfenstein at the pub every Friday for some 19 years now, and he’s developed a group of devoted fans.
“He has people flocking to see him every Friday, especially ladies, who seem to have a very soft spot for Harry,” said Silber. “He’s a very nice human too, apart from being an excellent violinist.”
A regular at The Whale & Ale, Crystal Roche, has come to see Hall play most Fridays since she moved to San Pedro last year.
“It’s an amazing thing to see someone who has lived through so many important parts of history and is still so vivacious and exciting,” said Roche. “I’m inspired by the guy.”
Patt Morrison recalls the OJ Simpson white Bronco chase
You see a lot of unbelievable stuff on TV, but this – this set the bar for bizarre. Ridiculous. Horrible. And real. It made all the scriptwriters in Hollywood look lame.
Here's this middling celebrity, a football star emeritus, a passable comic movie sidekick, a gung ho pitchman and now — maybe — a double murderer, rolling down the freeway in Friday night traffic, with a gun to his head.
RELATED: The surprising story of 2 TV chopper pilots who followed the OJ chase 20 years ago
O.J. Simpson had said he'd surrender that morning, avoid all the cameras and the hoopla, get the gentleman's treatment at Parker Center, but then he cut and ran and for hours, it was a game of where's O.J.?
He was with his friend, in a white Ford Bronco, but a different white Bronco, not his, not the one with the bloodstains that police had seized as evidence of murder.
He had left three notes behind – one to his mother, one to his kids, and one to the public whose glow had warmed him for so long, a note everyone took for a suicide note, all about him. Don't feel sorry for me. I've had a great life. And he signed it O.J., with a happy face instead of an O.
Wherever you were for the nearly two hours that O.J. was on the run on the air, that's where you stayed. Whatever was going to happen, you didn't want to miss it.
Twenty cop cars in a flying wedge formation — was it a police chase or an escort? Nine TV stations in New York City dumped their programming to show it. The NBA finals got squeezed into a corner of the TV screen.
North on the 5 they went, west on the 91, north again on the 405. The crowds mashing themselves onto the freeway overpasses like the crowds that had cheered him at the Coliseum: go, OJ, go. The last time I saw him cheered like that, it was 1984, and he was carrying the Olympic torch.
Along Sunset, along Rockingham, people surged toward the Bronco until it stopped on the cobblestones of Simpson's house, and for 50 minutes, crouched in the back seat, he talked to the cops. He talked on a cell phone, so new back then that only six percent of Americans owned one, and the reporters kept calling it a "cellular telephone" to make sure people understood.
Ten hours after the LAPD expected Simpson's surrender, he stumbled into their grasp. He went into his house, drank some juice, called his mom and then he went to jail.
We would watch him for another 15 months, through the trial of the century, until another trial of the century came along.
Somewhere, I've still got the best of all the souvenirs that came out of that long, strange trip … it's a watch. On its face, a picture of O.J., and around and around, a couple of little police cars chase a tiny white Bronco, circling the face of time.