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The benign climate of Los Angeles, the excellent highways, the desire to escape into an alternate reality and the skills of Hollywood designers were material causes of our architecture of fakery, informing how donuts, ice cream and pianos were sold.
Venice has been in a state of perpetual renaissance since tobacco heir Abbot Kinney founded the seaside resort town in 1905. And yet traces of its past stubbornly persist in street names, artworks and the built environment.
The New Deal and a surge in arts funding led to the creation of public works of art throughout the country. In Southern California, muralist Edward Biberman offered an evocative interpretation of Venice with "Abbot Kinney and the Story of Venice."
The only ghosts in this episode are the dreams of the past — visions of wealth, of new cities, and of new ways of living that failed. One of our stops was at Zzyzx, where we found multiple layers of history baked under the desert sun.
Former insurance salesman turned radio evangelist Curtis Howe Springer successfully transformed a seemingly barren patch of desert now known as Zzyzx into a bustling business, selling snake oil and salvation. It was his success that led to his downfall.
“The Endless Summer” grew from a simple idea into a cultural product, a lifestyle available to anyone with the means for a ticket. Filmmaker Bruce Brown set out to sell a documentary film about surfing and, in doing so, he inadvertently sold a dream.
The Llano del Rio commune offered a way out of the “circle the drain” life of most Americans. More importantly, it did so while forcibly demonstrating to the rest of the world the validity of dreams.
Before we made this episode, I didn’t realize how far surfing’s influence extended, even to my own childhood. Conversations with surf culture historians Dick Metz and Peter Westwick, and a visit to Muscle Beach, helped to tell the story.
In this 2005 interview, Julius Shulman explains how the people who lived in buildings gave purpose and meaning to the idea of home.
The aerospace industry and surfboarding have a historic connection through technology, and have worked together to popularize the California Dream across the globe.
Californians have learned to love their arid eastern lands. Joshua Tree continues to enjoy (or suffer from, depending on your perspective) record visitation. Music and art festivals draw hundreds of thousands more. For many, the desert is home.
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Los Angeles has long been the place where you can imagine something — a time period, a location, ordinary or exotic, real or fantasy — and build it. It’s a tradition that dates back to the 1910s and 1920s, when early filmmakers built huge, elaborately themed sets that often remained standing for months or years, inviting visitors to explore and to imagine being a part of the action. It found its fullest expression in nearby Anaheim, where Walt Disney’s Imagineers created the intricately themed, immersive experience that is Disneyland.