A blog about food, history, data visualization, and more
(Disclosure: I received a discount on the International Food Blogger Conference (IFBC) registration fee in exchange for writing three posts about my experiences at the conference.) It was a long hot drive to Sacramento for the International Food Blogger Conference (IFBC) — a searing 95 F and increasing traffic intensity as I reached the city’s outskirts. Construction and […]
The Golden Gate Bridge is a global icon, a triumph of engineering, and a work of art. In American terms, it was shaped by the City Beautiful movement, the Progressive Era, and the Great Depression. More mysteriously, the Bridge expresses those forces that science tells us constitute the dynamics of nature itself. Like the Parthenon, […]
Los Angeles has all kinds of tours and guide maps: movie stars’ houses, filming locations, locations in Raymond Chandler novels, architecture, city history, staircases, and food. But if you’re a true fan of advertising or cars, here’s a tour that might appeal to you: Los Angeles car commercial filming locations. Because of the good weather, the […]
Not finding a satisfactory history of the evolution of Wilshire Boulevard in Kevin Roderick’s Wilshire Boulevard book, I searched for old maps to find the answers (my review of Roderick’s Wilshire Boulevard book). The Los Angeles Past blog led me to the 1897 edition of Maxwell’s Los Angeles City Directory at the California Digital Library […]
The Edible Schoolyard, an educational garden and kitchen at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School in Berkeley, California, has been my path, so to speak, twice recently. The first time was a cover story in the East Bay Express. The second was an actual visit to the garden, my first visit ever. I wrote a […]
While doing some research for my “Eating by the Numbers” piece for Edible San Francisco, I ran into some fascinating documents about the now-gone California sardine industry. Today’s tourist destination of Cannery Row occupies land and buildings that were once a huge industry, employing thousands and providing a significant fraction of the U.S. seafood. But […]
(Update, 3/6/17: fixed broken links, updated photos) A few weeks ago, I visited Gold Ridge, Luther Burbank’s experimental farm in Sebastopol while touring the wine country and counting the hours until our reservation at Ubuntu in Napa (which unfortunately closed in late 2011). Luther Burbank may not be a household name, but his work touches […]
Update, January 2013: Huell Howser, a true California treasure who was known for his aw-shucks manner, his genuine interest in the people he met, and wide-ranging explorations of this huge state, died in early January. In his last years, he donated all of his programs to Chapman University in Orange County, where they will be […]