On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Here we are, back in Los Angelos with Steve from Mendocino. Seems like just yesterday that he was showing us photos of Paris! Growing up, we had an alley just like the one pictured below, and I just realized that I don’t have a picture of it. I may have to steal this one and pretend it’s my own.
We lived in the apartment above my parent’s local tavern, so we were in a business area a block from the train station – the houses with gardens and lawns were just one block down. The alley started just across the street from us and took us so many places – to school and church and shopping. We had our own name for it – wind canyon.
Thanks for indulging me in my trip down memory lane. Steve from Mendocino really needs to stop making me cry! And now, back to downtown Los Angles in the 60s. ~WaterGirl
Steve from Mendocino
It’s been since the mid-80’s since I last stepped foot in downtown Los Angeles, so I no longer have any idea what it looks like. These pictures were taken in 68 or 69, and were already rather quaint by the time I left my job as a programmer/analyst at Figueroa and 8th in the early 80’s.
City Hall on an overcast day.
Department of Water and Power from the columns of the Music Center.
Music Center in its earlier days.
Another shot of the Music Center.
The heart of downtown Los Angeles. Very funky. Home to wholesalers of produce, flowers, and much else. I really enjoy the old cars and the billboard. Skandia was one of the top-rated restaurants at time, soon to be eclipsed by several new French restaurants.
Photogenic alleyway downtown.
The look of homelessness in the 60’s (and, undoubtedly before). After Reagan gutted support for the poor and the mentally ill, homelessness was no longer limited to a few areas like skid row.
Pershing Square and another look at homelessness downtown.
CarolDuhart2
La City Hall Today
It looked like my downtown did before urban renewal. Buildings that looked like the ones in NYC and east, before Los Angeles began to embrace its warm weather and sunny skies and Hispanic influence.
HinTN
The definition in the parking garage and the increasing softness in the buildings makes that first shot most sublime.
Also, what
@CarolDuhart2: said about New York style buildings!
Thanks for this trip to the past.
raven
Some 15 years ago my brother was with a law firm in downtown LA. The family went to visit and we had a great lunch. When we went to retrieve the car the parking bill was $45 for 2 hours!
rikyrah
Great pictures ?
SectionH
Love em!
I don’t suppose you have a pix of the Angels’ Flight by any chance?
sherparick
Growing up in the sixties & seventies mean you saw a lot of these images in TV & movies, particularly what were then called “cop” shows such as “Dragnet,” “Mannix,” “CHIPS,” & of course “Mod Squad.”
arrieve
I love these, especially the picture of downtown LA. Cities seldom look like that anymore and I miss it.
The Castle
These are an amazing time capsule. Little of this exists anymore. And that is some serious smog, as if the city were engulfed by forest fire smoke, which I suppose is rather apt.
?BillinGlendaleCA
Interesting shots. In photo one, it looks like the old state building and new state building in front of city hall. The old building was damaged in the 1971 San Fernando quake and was torn down to the foundation which was there for 40 years. It’s soon to be a park. The new state building was replaced by a newer state building at 3rd and Spring(the Ronald Reagan building), and it was torn down and replaced by the US courthouse. The Music Center looks much the same except they recently refurbished the plaza between the Chandler and the Taper. The look down 5th from San Pedro looks much the same. Pershing Square was referbed in the early 90’s with a who bunch of artsy elements, no grass and no trees; it is awful and being redesigned.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: Sounds like you got off easy.
JustRuss
Re that Scandia billboard, I remember the “cooking with gas” ads on TV in the 60s. When I lived in LA in the 80s, I use to ride my motorcycle around downtown early Sunday mornings. Practically had the whole place to myself.
frosty
I was in SoCal in 69. That first picture looks exactly like smog on a sunny day.
My college catalog had what I thought was a picture of the quad on a hazy morning. Nope, after I got there I realized it was a smoggy afternoon.
oatler.
Jack Webb voice: “This is the city. Los Angeles California.”
pat
Did you develop and print these photos yourself? As a once-upon-a-time B&W dark room person, I am in awe.
Would love to know what camera and film you were using.
Thanks.
Steve from Mendocino
@SectionH: Last picture in this post is Angel’s Flight balloon-juice.com/2020/07/16/on-the-road-steve-from-mendocino-los-angeles-train-yard/
Steve from Mendocino
@pat: The first photo (city hall) was taken with a 4X5 view camera. All the other photos were with a Nikon F. I always carried two of those, one loaded with color, the other with black & white. All black & white shots were always on Plus X. Tri X was too grainy for what I wanted, Panatomic X was slow and didn’t really look better than Plus X. A little follow up on Kodachrome: It’s beautiful, but the curve is so short that casual shooting produced a lot of black shadows and blown highlights. Since shooting full frame digital, I get really depressed looking at my earlier color work.
pat
@Steve from Mendocino:
Thank you. I assume you did the darkroom work yourself. I loved spending hours in the darkroom. Have binders full of negatives and contact pages somewhere….
Steve from Mendocino
@pat: Had a big stereo in my darkroom as well as a fish tank with a ruby bulb. My photography was as much to feed my dark room habit as anything else. These days it’s Lightroom and Photoshop that provide that entertainment.
ColoradoGuy
I was in LA from 1967 through 1972. Those pics bring back a lot of memories, including the very heavy smog, and the funky look of much of downtown. Really outstanding B&W tonality, because the quality of light there is really challenging, from ultra-harsh mid-day light to the flat, even light of LA overcast and the fog from the sea. I wouldn’t blame yourself too much for the challenges of working in color; the pros always had an assistant provide fill light with a reflector when they used Kodachrome in a place with hard light like LA. Los Angeles is not easy to photograph, unlike San Francisco, where pictures almost take themselves. Completely different quality of light there.
Mike Mundy
Angel’s Flight AND City Hall.
Ruckus
My mom was born in LA in 1918, and lived around San Pedro and Washington. My father’s family moved to LA from Kansas City in 1918 by horse drawn wagon when he was a year old. In 1961 dad bought a machine shop, that he served his apprentice ship at, located less than a block from Washington and Alameda. When he retired I owned that shop – ended up owning it longer than he did, 18 yrs to his 15.
The point is I spent a lot of time in the city of Los Angeles, within sight of downtown, on the less smoggy days of course. We had an alley next to our building, like the one shown. The street cars were gone by the time we got the shop but the main tracks remained and today the Metro system that runs from downtown to Santa Monica uses them as well as the line from there to Long Beach. The area has changed rather dramatically over the decades from when I first went there to visit gran in the early 50s. But most of the change has come in the last 30 yrs.
Ruckus
@The Castle:
We used to use the visible from our shop to tell how bad the smog was. If we could see the mountains, over 20 miles away it was a good day. That would be a very few days a year. If we could see downtown, 3-4 miles, but not the mountains, not a great day. If we could not see downtown, that was a bad day.
BigJimSlade
Great shots – thanks for sharing!
John Revolta
Mmphh. How a little one-horse burg like that ever passed up Chicago I’ll never know.
I think it’s all done with CGI.