Welcome to My South Pasadena Time Capsule!

by Laurie Allee

Thanks for stopping by my virtual South Pasadena front porch! In 2018  Glimpses of South Pasadena turned 10 years old, which was just the right time to retire.

Find out more about the history of Glimpses here.  Feel free to browse the tabs above and the many (too many) links on the bottom right for thousands of views of my favorite little town in the big city.  (All the video and slideshows can be found in the Video tab.)  I'm proud to have left a decade-long time capsule of my beautiful city.

For more archived photographs in and around greater Los Angeles, check out my also-retired blog Glancing About.

For inquiries about licensing my work feel free to email me.  For prints and other photo goodies you can hang on your walls, hold in your hands and even wear check out my store.

I am no longer on any social media, though my Twitter account is still up as an archive. 

Any future updates or essays will appear at laurieallee.com, but consider me offline for the foreseeable future.

Week of South Pasadena Noir #7

"It all depends on how we look at things, and not how they are in themselves." --Carl Jung 

I've had fun looking through my lens darkly this week!  Tomorrow I'll repost my favorite South Pasadena Halloween video.

Want to leave a comment or start a conversation?  I'd love to hear from you.   

Arty Wench

Ever wish you could literally immerse yourself in art? Well, that's what I did at last month's South Pasadena Art Crawl. (See how I turned a goofy photo after a few glasses of wine into a truly highbrow endeavor? I'm good that way.)

Carnival Cut-Outs were scattered along the South Pas business district, giving South Pas art lovers a chance to "get into the picture." And, you know, we all kinda wish we could be in pictures. The Cut-Outs were conceived by Marie Miller and created by local artists as part of a collaborative project sponsored by our friends at SPACE and the South Pasadena Arts Council.

For a small city, South Pasadena has a ginormous collective of creative people.

SPACE is not only an incredible gallery, but it offers creative workshops for developing artists of all ages. (Little Bit just finished up a week of Art Camp there.) Find out more about the terrific programs at SPACE here.

South Pasadena Arts Council provides a great networking resource for local artists, writers, filmmakers, actors, set designers, singers, performance artists, photographers, directors and art patrons who want to make sure the arts thrive in South Pasadena. Find out how you can join us at SPARC here.

And you thought this post was going to be about drinking beer. (Well, the Orange Grove Park building was once a beer garden ... but that's another post.)

The things I do in the name of art.

Yet Another Shameless Birthday Post!

Screw cake, where's my champagne?! It's my birthday, and I hereby grant permission for all readers to take the day off and have a party.

Speaking of birthdays, Glimpses of South Pasadena turned 4 years old this month. That's 1473 posts and pictures as of today. (Hey bartender! Make mine a double!)

Thanks for being here, everyone. This blog has turned into a hell of a fun obsession.

Noir Week (#7)

What? You think I'd do an entire noir series and not pretend, just once, that I'm Barbara Stanwyck or Veronica Lake? Ha! Give me a blast of afternoon sunlight and a camera self timer and suddenly I imagine detectives and danger and deep mysteries. Where's my scotch, damn it?

And now, I leave behind Noir Week. Thanks for indulging my dark side.

Another Shameless Birthday Post

Look who is growing up ENTIRELY TOO FAST!

Because today is Little Bit's 7th birthday, she told me to tell all of you that everybody gets seven wishes.

"Just be sure to use the wishes wisely, Mommy. I'm serious. And no using a wish to wish for even more wishes because that's just rude."

Indeed.

Now, go out and have some cake!

Shadows (#7)

A human being is only breath and shadow.

--Sophocles

(Thanks for hanging around with my shadows for the past week, everyone!)

Shameless New Year's Eve Post

Here's to clean slates and new beginnings, y'all!

Self Portrait: Shakers

It's been a busy couple of days. If anybody wants me, I'll be loading up on coffee, eggs and hashbrowns while compulsively playing hashtag games on Twitter. (As illustrated above.) Special thanks to everyone who came out to the reception for my photo exhibit, South Pas: Observed at Charlie's Coffee House on Saturday evening. I'm honored to have so many good friends. (My pal Petrea Burchard at Pasadena Daily Photo posted such a nice piece about it yesterday that I now have a head SOOOOO big, it won't fit through the door.) Another big thank you to everyone who packed the house at yesterday's Encore, Rialto symposium at the South Pasadena Library Community Room. Chamber of Commerce wonderboy Scott Feldmann put together a great afternoon of entertainment, information and inspiration. Stay tuned to my Patch column for more video interviews with other Rialto fans as well as case studies of other theaters who have successfully reopened. (If I'm lucky, I'll even convince the original Rialto cast of Rocky Horror moviegoers to do the time warp AGAIN. On video, of course.)

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

I've got nothing here today, folks. But feel free to run over to Patch after lunch for my latest column and slideshow.

Older. (Still a Goofball.)

Shameless birthday post? Oh yeah!

Now, all of you go out and have a big slice of chocolate cake.

Accidental Self Portriat

While I was recently shooting this beautiful old Chevy, a man passing by stopped and took a long, wistful look.

When I look at an old car like that," he said, "I see myself."

Me too. (I'm right there in the hub cap. See?)

All in a Day's Work

You have to be a little insane to be a daily photo blogger. Posting every single day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year and yes, even on Christmas means that while you might have occasional flashes of relavence -- posts that are thoughtful, or interesting with pictures you're proud of -- more often than not, you just have to pull something out of thin air. And that means sometimes you get into weird territory. For instance, you might do a post on your high fever, or one about the robot you found in your kitchen. Anything -- anything -- is better than breaking your stride and missing a day.

Recently, Blogger went down for almost 24 hours. Daily photo bloggers flooded Twitter and Facebook with frantic messages. We weren't worried about data being lost or security being breached or anything reasonable like that. "I haven't missed a post in almost 1050 days!" I tweeted with all the anxiety of a caffeine addict who realized she had mistakenly bought decaf. "I don't know what to do with myself!"

I remember reading about a psychological syndrome akin to obsessive compulsive disorder. It had to do with believing that the trivial tasks you complete are secretly, magically saving the world. Superhero psychosis, or something like that. I can't remember where I read it, but it was probably a daily blog. (And it's a good thing the blogger posted it. Who knows what might have happened to the world if a day was skipped...)

(I finish up my week of iPhone shots with this ridiculous creation shot with my iPhone, edited with Photoshop for iPhone and turned into a comic with the Half Tone app.)

That's my story and I'm sticking to it...

In case South Pasadena residents may have been disturbed by loud music blasting from a certain giddy woman's open sunroof as she took her new car for a spin yesterday ... well, um, it wasn't me.

Ticket Booth in Limbo

I often take odd, abstract photos of the Rialto. The theater cries out for someone grieve its decay and imagine its rebirth. It has been reduced to a moldering collection of walls and doors and objects, not the thriving city arts, film and music center it could be.

It really could be!

But, until then, it sits. Very still. Perfect to find little pieces of it to fill my viewfinder.

So Close

It was a perfect Model T. One I hadn't seen before. It was moving slowly, with no other cars on the road. I pulled into a red zone, scrambled with my point-and-shoot and ... sneezed. Which is why you see a slightly blurry, slightly scary image of me in the car side mirror instead of another lovely photo to add to our GOSP collection of South Pasadena vintage cars.

I'm losing my touch.

A Walk in the Park

The long days of late summer are perfect for after-dinner walks. (And the long shadows of sunset are perfect for on-the-spot snapshots...)

Speaking of Birthdays: Glimpses of South Pasadena is 2!

How did I miss it? On July 13, GOSP quietly and uneventfully turned two years old. I'm not sure how it's possible that I have posted 743 photographs of our fair city. (Well, I suppose you can't count this one. Or this one either. But what the heck, that's still 741!)

A big thanks to all of you, my fabulous readers, for your continued collaboration. Your comments give this blog a color and depth I could never achieve on my own. Long-time residents offer an insider's history of South Pasadena. Visitors near and far stretch the boundaries of our San Gabriel Valley neighborhood to span the globe. I may take the pictures and write the posts but you, my readers, make this blog a real community.

Slow Down

(Good advice for the weekend.)

Walk Softly, Stranger

Maneuvering the dark corridor from Rite Aid to the parking lot is normally an uneventful experience. But in late afternoon on a long summer day? It's a film noir moment.