INDIAN HILL

The Packing Plant in Pomona is a live-work facility converted from an old cold storage facility next to the railroad tracks. I sneak around in dim hallways and out onto the deck where the sun slants in at oblique angles. Sometimes long haul trains rumble by just a few feet away. I feel old and young at the same time. 

Cactus Flats begins with a turnout on California Highway 18 northeast of Big Bear Lake. Roughly half way between Lucerne Valley down in the Mojave Desert and the high alpine country of the San Bernardino Mountains, the plateau features Joshua Trees, sandstone boulders, yucca and chaparral and sweeping views of this transition terrain along with panoramas to the east of the vast California deserts. It’s my favorite place in Southern California to explore and photograph.   From the turnout a dirt road leads southeast across flat ground with plenty of places to park and explore. There aren’t any marked trails but I’m familiar with the territory so I head towards a slope of rock and juniper with only my camera and hiking poles. At six thousand feet the sky is deep blue with patches of puffy white clouds rolling across the sky. The Flats gets few hikers and I’ve only seen a few further south along the dirt road. This edge of the plateau is lightly traveled and I’m alone on t...

            “Z” Generation, welcome to the Roaring Twenties.                                                                                          The nearly one hundred year old Pomona YMCA building is undergoing extensive renovation to become the destination of choice for the Millennials, or as the Spectra Company, who is handling the construction project calls them, the “Z’ Generation.             Handsomely built in the 1920s of brick, with stained glass and large arched windows, the project will be called the Pomona Village, and will be the home of Pomona based Spectra along with live-work lofts, a restaurant, swimming pools, conference...

            If you spend a lot of time alone like I do, at times you seek contact, friends, a familiar coffee shop for a hamburger or just to talk to somebody.             There are other times, however, when you embrace solitude. Even seek it out. Not just being by yourself while among others in a library, but being so far from civilization you hear the silence. Thick, broad-reaching, quiet. The desert is the perfect place.             I checked in with the Mojave Preserve Visitors Center in Barstow to see about road conditions, weather, and to ask about the best places for photography. The two ladies were friendly and helpful.             “Turn in at the radio tower, and climb up the ridge,” she said. “You’ll have a 360 degree view of the valleys and the moun...

I walked Hollywood Boulevard taking photos of tourists and landmarks;  the classic Hollywood restaurant  Musso and Frank, the huge Ninja Turtle statues that draw in folks in front of the Hollywood Highland Center escalator where people can do a selfie with the turtles then whisk themselves up the escalator and do some shopping.      The sun was bright and warm, the tourists dressed in shorts, tank tops, and the more exotic dress of high class hookers strolling with patrons along the sidewalk of stars.     A young sales crew approaches me for a star tour bus ride, handing me a brochure and asking where I’m from. I engage them and ask some questions about the one sales rep that seemed most engaging.     “Business is slowing down from the summer,” he says. He’s got dark skin, bright white teeth, buzz cut hair. “We show you star homes. From a distance. The house where Michael Jackson died, Stephen Spielberg’s house.” ...

            A GUY NAMED VERN   says hello when I sit down at the counter at Corky’s Café and Bakery in Upland, over on Mountain Ave. Vern knows everybody there and wants me to know. Waitresses, the manager, he calls them all by name. He’s bored but he doesn’t know it, pretending he’s all up on who’s the oldest server, going to school with the manager who he says he used to peek at through the fence in junior high. She winces, moves on. Athletic Director at some high school, he takes his grandchildren to school and it’s all so wonderful he gets up every day in a great mood.             “It’s all in your mind,” Vern says. “You make up your mind every day to be happy, and it’s just that simple.”             LATER I'M DRIVING   over by the Montclair plaza and stop in for a small car show. It’s the American Motors confab, bunch of guys showing off their AMXs...

               There isn't a lot of interesting architecture around Claremont. The colleges have some re-visited styles, a bit of new construction, but dorm room design doesn't hold my attention.                 Down at Pomona College, the art and design building lights up with morning sun.