Greenlisted

Phil slowed down and looked at the property. Isolated? Check. Right color scheme? Check. Vaulted ceilings?

"Damn!" He said. "No vaulted ceilings!"

Once again, Phil drove on. (It wasn't easy being the Jolly Green Giant's realtor.)

Time Portal

I have a soft spot for old-school late 20th Century garage doors. Maybe it's because I grew up in Texas in the 70s and early 80s. Those garage doors were as ubiquitous to my neighborhood as Craftsman houses are to South Pasadena.

I watched a lot of cute boys jamming with their bands inside garages like this. More than one shaggy-haired guitar player stole my heart while covering old T-Rex and Bowie under fluorescent tube lights. I kissed the cute guy who moved from Hawaii in the 10th grade in a garage like this. I had my first lukewarm beer tapped from a keg in a garage like this.

Most of my late night whispered telephone conversations happened in a garage like this: my parents' garage. I would perch on a paint can, giggling to my best friend Mary with the kitchen wall phone cord stretched through the back door and pulled around the front of my mom's Cordova...

I'm sure the teenagers walking through the book stalls in Paris have the same confusing/mad/wonderful dreams as those of us who grew up hanging out in garages. We're not so different. In fact, I remember arguing with Paul from my drama club about whether Godard or Truffaut was the better French New Wave director, all while leaning against his dad's workbench in a garage like this. It's not a grand setting that makes youth so grand. After all, the setting is just the launch pad for where we eventually end up. (Which, more often than not, turns out to be an awful lot like where we started out.)

I know, I know. Garage doors like this don't call for a Gershwin soundtrack. They don't inspire the same homespun nostalgia as picket fences or porch swings. But for those of us who cut our teeth on the edges of American suburbs, garage doors like this are familiar touchstones. They welcome us right back into our past, with or without the remote control.

Ultimate Craftsman

The Style of the house should be as far as possible determined by four conditions: First, Climate; Second, Environment; Third, Kinds of materials available; Fourth, Habits and tastes—i.e., the life of the owner.

--Charles Sumner Greene, 1906, The Western Architect

Caption this Photo (#74)

I really need help with this one...

Curbside Hope

The colorful old houses along El Centro are even prettier when my favorite Gatsby car is parked nearby.

This is one of the sweetest vantage points in the entire city. Looking down this street is like gazing at an iconic image of the 20th Century American dream. It's like watching Our Town with a tall glass of lemonade next to a girl scout who is reading an old Saturday Evening Post. There's nothing snarky or ironic about this place. It's just happy. And hopeful. (You might want to click on this one to make it bigger.)

My Pretty Things Week continues. Nothing serious or startling -- just lovely little bits of eye candy. Consider it my rebellion against ugly news and humid weather.

It Could Happen

I imagine it looks like It's a Small World inside that cheerful house. And late at night, clowns go out joyriding in that car...

Color Coordinated

In a perfect world, everyone would have a house with a matching convertible!

Always in Fashion

“Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only," Coco Chanel once said. "Fashion is in the sky, in the street, the way we live." She might as well have been writing about South Pas real estate. There are so many gorgeous homes in South Pas -- and all so very differently adorned -- it's impossible to pick a best dressed. The Craftsman beauties certainly awe and inspire. They're grand examples of symmetry and clean lines, presenting naturally lovely faces to the street like the architectural equivalent of supermodels. The Tudors are regal and a little conservative -- dressed like grand old queens. Victorians coyly smile at their neighborhoods, dolled up in lacy finery, rouged and painted like porcelain dolls. Nearby, mid-century moderns play it cool in minimal, hipster chic while easygoing ranch style homes celebrate comfort with the ease of a well worn pair of Birkenstocks.

And then there are colorful bungalows like this one. They remind me of little girls playing dress up in their brightest party clothes. Houses like this make me want to put on a bright party dress, too. (And spin around on that green, green grass just to see my petticoats swirl.)

The Craftsman Challenge: Round 6

It's been a while since I've taken the Craftsman Challenge but this cozy, green wonder seemed to be begging for a portrait. South Pasadena has hundreds of Arts and Crafts houses and each one is an inspiration -- not to mention a tricky subject to photograph. (Those shadowy porches! Those blindingly reflective slanting rooftops!)

I've already waxed rhapsodic about this period of design, but I can't help repeating myself:

Simple. Beautiful.

Collage

I couldn't decide whether to focus on the historic house, the curving tree or the wrought iron fence.

How about all three?

Maybe...

...the conversation went something like this:


"I finally finished it honey," he said, "I built your dream house."

"No!" She cried, "I said I wanted a house surrounded by orange trees, not an orange house surrounded by trees!"

Grand Entrance

I don't know which I like most: the big red door, or the little black awning.

Fairytale Detail

Just when I thought I knew every house in South Pasadena, I turned a corner and noticed this one. How could I have missed those wonderful, whimsical shutters?

Retro Garage

I wonder if there's an early 70s muscle car in there?

Window Units

There's not much to say about these cute little apartments. But just look at all those rear windows! Imagine all the stories playing out behind each of them... (Kind of like this.)

Chi Totaler

The good vibes coming off this place are so potent you can drink them in. I don't know which is more charming -- the tiny studio or the giant tree. (Maybe it's the way the two just seem to go together in some kind of zen/feng shui affinity.)

A tree that can fill the span of a man's arms grows from a downy tip;
A terrace nine stories high rises from level earth;
A journey of a thousand miles starts from beneath one's feet.

--Lao Tzu

Caption this photo... (#17)

Anyone?

Staging

So, I was wandering around in the hills the other day, hoping to discover something interesting to photograph. I happened upon this scene -- teal stucco, what looks like fossilized topiary -- and I thought, well, it's just not quite right, it needs something else...

Then the bird landed. Snap! Et, voila...

Reinventing the Wheel

When I was a little girl, my mother taught me about the color wheel. Somewhere in her explanation, however, I missed out on the fact that it was a chart, just a graphical representation of the hues that we see and their relationship to one another. I thought the color wheel was an actual place. The Color Wheel. You know, like Yellowstone National Park or The Blue Ridge Mountains or The White House. Oh, I mused to myself, I'll bet The Color Wheel is HUGE! I'll bet it is twenty stories high, filling up the entire sky and casting a giant multicolored shadow!

I was pretty bummed out when I found out the truth.

Maybe that's why I get such a kick out of wildly colored houses like this one. I may not be able to make a trek to The Color Wheel, but I live in South Pasadena. I get to see these technicolor wonders whenever I want.

A Taste of Yellow

Here's a little something for those of you who have emailed me asking for more pictures of Victorian era South Pasadena homes. The neighborhoods around the library and all over the Mission West District are loaded with wonderful little cottages like this. They're often overshadowed by those famous Craftsman scene stealers, but they're every bit as beautiful.

Houses like this represent a kind of homespun turn-of-the-last-century American gestalt. (Note: there's not only a rocker but also a porch swing! Bring on the lemonade and apple pie...) When we see this cheery yellow house, it's hard not to reminisce about the past, about childhood, or maybe just imagine the way we wish things once were. I'll let poet Raymond A. Foss sum it up:

Forsythia blooms
plucked from the bush
a sudden jolt
back to when I was six
walking to kindergarten
petals curl on my tongue
a taste of yellow
like the first time
forty years ago