But at the same time, Astros are just one win away. Ever notice that witch-like house in Beverly Hills? The little-known psychometry story tied to La Brea Tar Pits.
Mayor Eric Garcetti passes on bid for governor, so is a presidential run in his sights?
Californians won't head to the polls to pick a new governor for another year, but the race is already crowded with political heavyweights.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti will not be one of them. He dispelled rumors about his potential bid when he announced yesterday that he will not run for California governor.
Take Two's A Martinez spoke with Politico's David Siders about what that could mean for the governor's race and what it tells us about Garcetti's political aspirations after he terms out as mayor.
To hear the full interview about Eric Garcetti's decision not to run for California governor, click on the media player above.
The Dodgers see-saw as they win, lose, lose, win and lose again
The Dodgers and Astros played one of the most thrilling and emotionally gut-wrenching World Series games in history last night.
At first, it was all good for the Dodgers as they had a 4-0 lead with Clayton Kershaw on the mound.
But heading into the 7th inning, it was tied up 7-7.
The Dodgers took an 8-7 lead, only to lose ground. Heading into the 9th, it looked bleak as they were down 12-9.
Then Yasiel Puig hit a 2-run hr to get the Dodgers to within one which set up Chris Taylor:
https://www.mlb.com/video/dodgers-come-back-in-the-9th/c-1865977983
It was tied at 12 heading into the bottom of the tenth and with the Dodgers ace closer Kenley Jansen on the mound, the Astros sent the fans home happy:
https://www.mlb.com/video/extended-cut-bregmans-walk-off/c-1866009883?tid=63106348
The game punctuated a crazy weekend of baseball that started under a cloud Friday as Astros 1b Yuli Gurriel was spotted in the dugout making a slant-eyed gesture about Dodgers starting pitcher Yu Darvish.Gurriel was suspended for the 1st five games of next season but not for any World Series games.
Ned Colletti is baseball analyst for Spectrum SportsNet. We reached him at the Houston airport, where he brought us up to speed with everything that happened over the weekend.
On why we saw home runs after home runs, Colletti says it's hard to pin down the cause.
The ball is different, nobody is going to admit to it. Typically you see a record like that on the Sunday when the season ends, on a day or half a day. But now we are seeing it going on all season long in the World Series, it's just part of the season because it continues to happen. Houston helps a little bit, obviously the ball park is configured a little differently. I think that may have something to do with it.
On Gurriel's racist gesture to Darvish, Colletti supports the Commissioners' decision.
I think everybody is very upset. No matter where you are from, I don't think anybody appreciate it. There's no place for that at any point in time, anywhere. I support Major League Baseball in their suspension.
It's getting even harder to hire early childhood educators
Meet the keeper of the famous Beverly Hills Witch's House
Walden Drive in Beverly Hills is full of the high-end houses that are expected in this part of Southern California. The architecture styles are as distinct as they are grand. But one home, located right near the cross street, stands out from all of them: The Spadena Witch’s House.
With its shuttered windows, overgrown trees and fake crows staring at pedestrians from the branches, it’s like something out of a fable.
The style is "kind of fantasy storybook,” said real estate agent Michael Libow. Libow has owned the Witch’s House for 19 years and has lived in it for most of that time.
While it all looks old and decrepit, Libow says that everything has been carefully crafted to preserve the aura of the house. He consulted everyone from landscape architects and Hollywood production designers to achieve his vision for the house.
“It was purposeful to make it look organic to its setting. Even the stucco kind of rolls out into the dirt,” Libow said. “As I like to say, it’s like a tornado picked it up and moved it here.”
The Witch’s House was originally built in the 1920’s for the Willat Studios in Culver City. A few years later, it was moved to its current spot in Beverly Hills.
“It was constructed as a set office,” Libow said. “The home was never a great home.”
Still, someone did eventually move in: The Spadena family, who gave the house its official name. It remained in their care until the 1960’s when the Green family moved in.
The first two owners turned the Witch’s House into a popular destination on Halloween. They’d fill the moat that cuts through the front lawn with dry ice and greet trick-or-treaters with music from Disneyland’s The Haunted Mansion.
Libow says his house continues to draw crowds every year, especially on October 31st.
“It attracts about 4,000 to 5,000 kids and their families in four hours on each Halloween night,” Libow said. “It's an international site so people come all the time to take photos of it and you know the bottom line is it makes people smile.”
While Libow resists the costume part of the holiday, he’s really taken by the macabre spirit of Halloween. This is evident for anyone who steps inside the Witch’s House.
The Witch motif touches every corner of the home. There’s an artful warp to the doorways and hallways with tiles exploding into a mosaic that’s off-putting and welcoming at the same time. With the multitude of imperfections in the geometry of the home, it’s easy to mistake it for one that’s been around for centuries
“Most of what you see is new material made to look 300 or so years old,” Libow said. “It is really difficult to achieve that. It's really simple to build a modern box and to make it look pretty and shiny. It's really difficult to create a 300-year-old cottage which is new.”
But Libow made sure that the creepy vibes of his home wouldn’t come at the expense of its welcoming spirit. “I didn't want the home to be terribly Gothic inside,” Libow said.
“It is the Witch’s House so somebody could think creepy but, to me, it's very warm and inviting inside.”
While Libow has no interest in extending that invitation for the public to step outside, he’s happy to welcome people to view the outside every Halloween.
“Halloween is my national holiday,” Libow said. “It’s the big day for the house. There are young kids who are totally freaked by it and they're really scared of it. But for the most part, when they see the home, they smile.”
To hear more about the Beverly Hills Witch House, click the blue player above.
On the Lot: Ending Hollywood's systemic sexual harassment
It's been almost five weeks since the Harvey Weinstein fallout started. But the saga continues.
Over the weekend, Kevin Spacey was the latest to be outed for sexual misconduct. The allegation comes from Anthony Rapp, an actor known for Broadway productions like "Rent" and who is currently starring in "Star Trek: Discovery." Vanity Fair's Rebecca Keegan explained:
"Rapp recounts an incident from 1986, when he was 14 years old. He said that Kevin Spacey, who was then in his late 20's and was also appearing in a Broadway show at the same time, invited Rapp to his apartment in Manhattan and made a sexual advance on him."
Since the story broke over the weekend, Spacey has responded on Twitter:
— Kevin Spacey (@KevinSpacey) October 30, 2017
As more of these stories of sexual harassment and assault continue to be made public, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and other industry groups such as the Screen Actors Guild and the Producers Guild are mobilizing. The Academy is creating a code of conduct, while the guilds are trying to come up with a system for dealing with these types of complaints.
To hear more about Hollywood's efforts to address sexual harassment complaints, click the blue play button above.
No Place Like LA: Travis, and the Jennifer/Genaphyr at Starbucks
No Place Like LA is our series that asks transplants and immigrants to LA, "When was the moment you felt that Los Angeles was truly home?"
This is Travis Howard's story
I moved from Nashville 20 years ago, and I live in Hollywood Heights.
Having been born in the South, because I was such an outcast, I'd never felt like I belonged in Tennessee.
When I got to Los Angeles, this was something like I'd never seen before. This was like something you've only seen in movies, and it was awesome!
I was tending bar, I was fixing toilets – it felt like you could just show up and go, "I'm a household appliance juggler," and everybody's like, "Oh, welcome!"
So one day I'm over at Starbucks standing in line.
There's a girl behind the counter that was the barista, and I order my coffee and I glance down at her name tag.
Her name is Jennifer. Except, Jennifer had decided to spell it "Genaphyr."
Ugh, Hollywood!
You roll your eyes and you're like, "Come on! Just spell your name."
But as I'm leaving and I go back to my life and do my thing, I start to realize...wait a minute.
I'M GENAPHYR.
I came out here and I got to create who I was. I got to write my own "name" how I wanted to write it. We're all misfits.
It made me so happy. I was like, 'Yeah, I'm a citizen of Los Angeles now."
Tell us your own story about that time you truly felt at home in Los Angeles
Semi-spooky LA history for Halloweenies
Halloween is just around the corner. Before the holiday became known for costumes and candy it was dedicated to remembering the dearly departed. So, in the spirit of remembrance, Take Two is bringing you some little-known, kinda spooky stories about L.A., including Showmen's Rest.
Find the pink tiger
Evergreen Cemetery in Boyle Heights is one of the city's oldest and largest graveyards.Historian Kim Cooper knows a lot about this place. She's an expert in LA crime and oddities for Esotouric bus tours. She says if you walk all the way to the very eastern side of Evergreen cemetery, you may come across a little pink tiger atop a tomb.
It's a fitting symbol for those who are buried there - members of the Pacific Coast Showmen's Association. It was for people who participated in the carnival arts, circus performers, sideshow workers, etc.
"These people are all buried together because they were part of a traveling community. And though some people believe that the Pacific Coast Showmen's Sssociation graves represent penniless carnival workers who were buried because they couldn't afford a burial, that's actually not true."
Think of it as more of a guild or a union. Because they were all in the same career/field, the workers would pay an annual fee to this association and in return, if they died out on the road, they would get shipped back to Los Angeles and be buried among their friends.
"Every December when the shows went off the road because the weather was terrible, people would gather in Los Angeles to remember those that had come before," Cooper said.
Some circus and carnival notables buried there include:
- Fat lady Dainty Dotty Jensen (who was the wife of tattooing legend Otto Jensen).
- James Louis Cooley (who is believed to have introduced the ice cream sandwich in the west).
- The armless and legless Billy Pilgrim (who was famous for his exquisite penmanship).
- Flea circus proprietor Professor W.E. Alexander.
The world-class shopping mall and the LA gangster
A lot of people say it's America's first outdoor shopping mall: Crossroads of the World. It sits on Sunset Boulevard between Las Palmas and Cherokee Avenue in L.A.
Built in 1936, it was designed to look like an ocean liner and it's surrounded by cottages built to resemble ports o call all over the world.
You've probably seen it. If not in person, it's been in films like "L.A. Confidential" and "Cafe Society." Today, it's home to offices for a variety of creative companies, but as part of our mini-series on semi-spooky places in L.A. Esotouric's Kim Cooper and Richard Schave share the story of Crossroads' forgotten roots.
It was actually built as a tribute to an OG Los Angeles gangster.
"Charlie Crawford was one the original guys that was in Los Angeles from about 1915/1916 doing all these bad things...Charlie Crawford owned this property. Crossroads of the world was developed by his widow."
It all came about because in May of 1931 Charlie Crawford was in the middle of a meeting with newspaper publisher Herbert Spencer.
According to Schave, suddenly an unidentified person walked into Crawford's office, shot Spencer dead and fatally wounded Crawford and walked away.
"They rush Crawford to the hospital and say, 'Charlie Crawford, who shot you?' and he said, 'I'll never tell you.'"
Turns out, Crawford was trying to live a legit life, and that's why they shot him. So, as a result of the shooting, Charlie Crawford's wife said, "He was the greatest Angeleno anyone ever knew, and I want to make sure everyone remembers him."
In an effort to have him remembered. She had Crossroads of the World erected, "based on all the wonderful trips we took on cruises around the world."
Psychometry and the La Brea Tar Pits
L.A.'s urban center is also a treasure trove of ice age fossils.
Mammoths, ground sloths and saber-toothed cats are just some of the prehistoric creatures found at the La Brea Tar Pits in Hancock Park. It was George Allan Hancock who donated the land where the tar pits are located in L.A. County.
But it was a lesser-known geologist named William Denton who first identified the tar pits' bones as ancient fossils. Esotouric's Kim Cooper told us the REAL reason Denton made his way out west.
"Usually when scholars talk about Denton, they say oh, 'He was a geologist from Boston, and he came out looking for oil.' That is not true. He actually came out because he and his wife had the most extraordinary hobby, she had a gift from very very early childhood."
The gift was that of psychometry. Which means having the ability to hold objects and while having little to no information about the object, and narrate the object's 'experience.'
"Old man Hancock, gave him this fang and Denton recognized this fang as coming from an extinct cat and he took it home to Elizabeth and I'm sure they had lots of fun holding it to her forehead and seeing what life was like on the edge of the tar pits..."
The Bradbury Building
The Bradbury is one of the most iconic buildings in downtown L.A.
It isn't the brown brick exterior that's so noteworthy but its naturally lit interior of iron grillwork that's made the Bradbury a star, and not just architecturally.
The building has also played a role in films like "Blade Runner," "500 Days of Summer" and "The Artist."
Gold mining millionaire, and real estate developer, Lewis Bradbury had it built way back in 1893.
For the conclusion to our miniseries on semi-spooky LA stories, Estouric's Kim Cooper explains how the Bradbury's beginning is a classic "right person at the right time" kind of story...with an occult twist.
It all started with a drawing. Lewis Bradbury wanted a building that had his name on it and that was really extraordinary. Unfortunately, the architect he hired for the job, Sumner Hunt was not delivering.
It was then that he came across George Wyman's sketch, inspired by the sci-fi fantasy novel "Looking Backward" by Edward Bellamy. He offered Wyman the job on the spot.
"The young man went home and told his wife of his problems and his problem was, do I actually take this commission and steal a job from my boss and build something that's just a fantasy from a science fiction book?"
The answer, was yes. But how he got to that decision is where things get interesting. Wyman decided to consult his deceased brother, using a planchette, an instrument very similar to a modern-day ouija board.
"The planchette began to move and quiver and shake, and the planchette began to make a mark and it said, 'Take Bradbury you will be...' then an incoherent scribble.
It wasn't until someone got up from the table to go to the restroom and look at the table upside down that they saw if you turned it over it said, 'Take Bradbury you will be...successful."
And he was.
To hear the stories in its entirety, click the blue play button above.
Surf zombies (and other swell costumes) compete for Halloween glory
Jimi Hendrix, Kim Jong-un and a hotdog were found milling about the beach in Santa Monica this weekend. No it wasn’t a dream—it was the Haunted Heats event thrown by local skate and surf shop ZJ Boarding House.
Todd Roberts, one of the shop's founders, hosted the event now in its 10th year. To compete, surfers had to act out their costumes both on the beach and while riding the waves. There were some pretty spooky and cooky outfits this year, like 3 men dressed as human piñatas.
“Well…We’re inspired by birthday cultures, especially Southern California, Mexican American kinda mash; so we’re human piñatas, here to spread candy and joy to all the kiddes and adults.”
Many people spent weeks or even months planning their costumes and their acts in the water.
There was a turquoise shark:
“So! I plan on going surfing for a moment, I will have a thing of fake blood with me and at one point I may lose my board get some fins on me and go and attack all other surfers, and it may come out bloody.”
There was Tippi Hedren from Alfred Hitchcock’s "The Birds." She wore a retro style dress with black feathers and fake crows stuck to it with blood splattered all over.
“The birds! I don’t know what’s happening get them off of me! Ahh! Ahh!!”
Adults and kids competed in different groups, or "heats" in surfer terms. There was panel of three judges scoring the beach performances and another three judges scoring the action in the ocean.
Crowds gathered to watch from the sand. Even a pod of dolphins (real ones, not people in costume) hung around the surfing contestants, as if they, too, were gawking.
Human piñatas batted at smaller real piñatas hanging from their bodies while on another board a woman wearing a giant triangular cheese hat, calling herself the ‘cheese goddess,’ caught waves.
It was a contest but nobody really seemed to care about winning. Heres what one of the piñatas had to say:
“It’s just a privilege to dress up in this ridiculous outfit and share our joy of Halloween with the community and everybody here at the beach; so just being in here is already a win.”
Winners were announced for best costume, best act in the water and best overall. This year’s prize was taken by a surfer dressed as Kim Jong-un and three women dressed as nuclear missiles. They used music, lit smoke bombs and stayed totally in character the entire morning. Proceeds from event will go to help victims of the recent wildfires in northern California.
Listen to the full story by clicking the audio player above