Tiles

One day I went to the Mercado La Paloma, here in Los Angeles, and came across this tile wall.

Street Art In The Amazon

I was walking along a street in the hot and humid Amazonian town of Nauta, about 50 miles from Iquitos, when I spotted this doorway, a combination of art and religion.

Colors

Colors I discovered on a recent walk along ultra chichi Abbot Kinney in Venice. This was not the chichi part.

Bank On Wheels: South Central LA

I thought I had seen it all, but this bank on wheels near Long Beach Boulevard and Slauson (south central a todo dar) took me by surprise.

Los Angeles Police Department Vs. Immigrant Rights Demonstrators

The pro-immigrant rally in Los Angeles ended in violence, thanks to the attitude of the Los Angeles Police Department, who dispersed the crowd with rubber bullets and tear gas, a crowd including mothers with children, the elderly and handicapped, and many others who were peacefully congregated. Yes, there was a small group of troublemakers, mainly youth who wanted to provoke the police, but the police fell into the trap, and the outcome is that the vast peaceful majority had to pay for it.

Even Telemundo's Pedro Sevcec was not safe from the police action. This is a photo moments before we all had to flee the area as the police cracked batons and fired rubber bullets at the crowd.

This photo demonstrates the peaceful character of the overwhelming majority of the people who gathered in Los Angeles' MacArthur Park.

Democratic Secular Turkey

I don't usually post other people's pictures, but serious times require serious actions. On April 14, over a million people marched in Ankara to defend Turkey's secular and democratic heritage. Today, April 29, another million people marched in Istanbul for the same cause. I am posting these pictures in solidarity with my secular and democratic Turkish sisters and brothers.

City Flag

I love flags.

The flag of the City of Los Angeles was designed in 1931 for Los Angeles' 150th anniversary. The red represents the vineyards, the golden-yellow depicts the orange groves, and the green symbolizes the olive trees. The center of the flag features the City Seal, which dates from 1905. The center features the four flags that have flown over Los Angeles: Spain, Mexico, the California Republic, and the United States. The olives, grapes, and oranges represent Los Angeles' agricultural roots. The rosary around the seal symbolizes the role played by the Mission padres in the city's early history.

Saksaywaman

This is one of my favorite photos of Saksaywaman, also known as Saksaq Waman, Sasa Waman, and in Spanish, Sacsayhuamán.

Ten West

Freeways in LA, like arteries, transport countless cells through the urban circulatory system.

Iquitos Tiles

Many of the historical buildings in Iquitos are covered in exuberant tiles, an architectural influence from Brazil and Portugal.

Freedom Won't Wait

Heading west along 54th street towards Crenshaw.

In Flagrante Delicto

This made me burst out loud in laughter over my bowl of cereal earlier this week.

For the kid in the photo, it was just another school day and a little bit of tagging in the morning before heading into class.

What the kid didn't know was that the passengers on the bus he was tagging included Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent David L. Brewer, along with a team of reporters and photographers, including Anne Cusack, who snapped him in flagrante delicto.

Certainly, he never expected his photo to be splayed across the front page of the Los Angeles Times.

old Lima

Lima was still a small town, especially for a capital city, at least until the late 1950s

central Lima, as it had for centuries, was the focal point of Lima society, and Jirón de la Unión was the chic street in town

these photos are out on the internet, because of their age, the original copyright has expired, and they belong to the public domain

downtown LA buildings

i've decided i need to make this blog a fotolog for a while

i've learned maintaining a good blog requires a lot of time and dedication, and my food blog keeps me pretty busy

yet, i want to have a space in which to write in english about whatever strikes my fancy

for now, i think i'd like to just post my photos and make some commentary

i need a stress-free blog, where i don't feel that each post has to be a literary masterpiece

because in that mindset, i rarely post

so here goes:

yesterday there was a storm here, so today was brilliantly blue, a perfect day to drive around downtown taking pictures of tall buildings.

Carniceria Las Muchachas

It was a wonderfully clear day today in LA; yesterday, for the first time all winter, we got a real rainstorm, so although it was cold (by Angeleno standards), it was also very clear and the sky was a brilliant blue. I had seen this mural at Orchard and Venice a few days ago. Since it faces west, I knew that today in the afternoon, on my way home from a friend's house in South LA, the light would be perfect.

Lafayette Park

One of the emblems of Los Angeles, the palm tree. This one was in Lafayette Park, one of the city's oldest.

Playing With Color 2

This is an entryway to one of the original carparks of the 1920 buildings along Wilshire Boulevard, which accounts as for the narrow width.

Playing With Color

This stretch of Wilshire Boulevard is where the first Korean stores begin. This one is a tailor's near historic Lafayette Park.