A blog about food, history, data visualization, and more
Wilshire Boulevard: Grand Concourse of Los Angeles, by Kevin Roderick (with research by J. Eric Lynxwiler) has been on my list for many years and I finally read it last month. On my handful of visits to Los Angeles, I have probably driven the entire length of Wilshire Boulevard, covering a lot of the same […]
In my review of The Box, I noted that containerization required ports to cover much more ground to support cranes, container storage, roadways, and so forth. To illustrate the size of major modern ports, let’s take a look at the Ports of LA and Long Beach. These are the two largest ports in the United […]
In a previous post about ancient Roman dining habits — tossing bones, shells, and scraps on the floor — and shared a mosaic that records this practice in exquisite detail. At the time, there were two things bothering me. First, what do we know about the mosaic? Second, it seemed a little strange to me that […]
Updated, May 2016: 1) The mystery of the “ice cream, bisque of black bread a la Delmonico” is solved in my post about rye bread ice cream! 2) I found the original menu in the NY Public Library archive and comment on it in this post about the whale meat luncheon menu. If you follow […]
In a previous post about whaling, I mentioned that desertion was a financial strategy used by management and labor. For management, the goal was sometimes to cause a sailor to desert on the return voyage, after the hold was full of whale oil and baleen, thus increasing the profits for those who stayed on board […]
(Updated, 12/12/16: fixed broken links, updated cross-references) This post, like the previous one, comes from my recent Ahab-lite obsession with whaling, as well as the recent general interest in Hermann Melville’s monumental Moby Dick – which celebrated its 161st anniversary in 2012 (including my slow plod through it over many months, the Google doodle […]
The mid-19th century was the “golden age” of whaling in America, with hundreds of ships making long voyages – often into uncharted parts of the oceans – to kill whales and process them into key ingredients of the Industrial Revolution: oil to illuminate homes, offices, streets and factories at night; and lubrication for machines. Candles […]
During the research for my previous post about the Golden Gate, I wondered how and when the Golden Gate become the “official” name. What was the process for naming things in the 19th century? Did Fremont’s map for the U.S. Senate give “official” status to the name? Did the U.S. Government have a standing panel […]
During the weeks leading up to the big 75th birthday party for the Golden Gate Bridge, I listened to a few podcasts about the bridge’s history (like a Commonwealth Club panel, an hour of KQED’s Forum, to name two). During one of these, I learned how the Golden Gate got its name. With the tremendous […]
Blood was running International Orange in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2012 because its most famous structure, the Golden Gate Bridge, turned 75 in May. Celebrations and commemorations are all over the place, including a multi-artist show called International Orange at Fort Point National Historical Site.* In the historic 19th century fort, sixteen artists […]