Alright... the winner, thus far, in the Los Angleles neighborhoods blog poll is Morningside Circle. I know you probably thought I forgot all about it but what happened was my camera was broken and I just got it back from the store. You can still vote for whatever neighborhood you want and I'll tackle it in a timely fashion. Just go here to vote for Los Angeles Neighborhoods or here for L.A. County Communities.

So Morningside Circle. If you're a resident of Morningside Circle, let me know. For the most-voted-for neighborhood, it sure was hard to find out anything online. Wikipedia doesn't have an entry (despite having one for just about every other neighborhood in the city) and I found next-to-nothing online.

I knew it was somewhere in the vast South Central area so I asked South Angelenos Kirk Gee and Big Nick Nickerson and they weren't really sure where it was but Nick thought it was by Manchester... which turned out to be right. I checked the city clerk records (Court File: 01-1874). According to a motion introduced in 2002:

     "the Eighth District Empowerment Congress has been working aggressively on the "Naming
     Neighborhoods Project" to identify and appropriately name the unique communities found within its 
     membership area. Frequently, the diverse and dynamic characteristics of the individual
     neighborhoods are cast aside as an entire area of the City of Los Angeles is deemed "South 
     Central." By properly identifying the existing communities throughout the area, the Empowerment
     Congress members have sought to instill a feeling of community pride and foster a greater sense  
     of community empowerment."

When I was kid my grandfather had his television on constantly and his nightly vigil was Putnam’s newscast. My grandfather ate it all up, every right wing paranoid dramatic declaration; he absolutely trusted everything Putnam said. And of course, Putnam was one of the most influential commentators of the era.
 
In pop-cultural history he is most fondly remembered as the inspiration for fictional newscaster Ted Baxter, Ted Knight's windbag of a character on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Putnam was also famous for his annual Rose Parade ride on his silver-saddled palomino for almost 50 years. In fact I believe it never rained when he rode in the parade … talk about a man with connections!

Putnam began his broadcast career on a Minneapolis radio station in 1934, moved to New York in the 1940’s. In late 1951 he was hired at KTTV, the independent station then owned by Times-Mirror Co., which also owned the Los Angeles Times.  Putnam quickly became a dominant force in Los Angeles TV news. The winner of three Emmy Awards, six California Associated Press Television and Radio Assn. awards and more than 300 other honors, at one point he was reportedly the highest-rated and highest-paid TV news anchor on the Los Angeles’ airwaves. In the mid 1960s, Putnam moved to KTLA Channel 5. Also, Putnam was briefly a co-host on the political news talk show Both Sides Now with comedian Mort Sahl.

… once again I’m a day late and a dollar short, but that’s just the beginning…

Yesterday was the thirtieth and, oddly enough, the twentieth anniversaries of the deaths of legendary designers Charles and Ray Eames. Mostly known for their furniture design, their work also includes major contributions in industrial design, graphic design, architecture and film. Charles died August 21, 1978, Ray died on the same date, ten years later in 1988.

Architectural colleagues Charles Eames and Ray-Bernice Kaiser married in 1941 and moved to Los Angeles to open their own firm. In 1946, as part of the Arts & Architecture magazine's "Case Study" series that commissioned architects of the day to design and build inexpensive and efficient model homes, the groundbreaking Eames House design was selected. Built on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean at 203 North Chautauqua Boulevard in the Pacific Palisades, and once a part of Will Rogers' estate, this unique house, also called Case Study House #8, used pre-fabricated steel parts and was hand-constructed in a matter of days. The structure was entirely constructed from "off-the-shelf" parts available from steel fabricator catalogs. However, immediately after the Second World War, steel was in very short supply, which explains the three year delay in construction. The Eames house was completed in 1949.

Working from their office located at 901 Washington Boulevard in Venice, Charles and Ray Eames’ hit their stride in the 1950’s in modern furniture design. Their landmark and highly collectible furniture includes early molded plywood chairs and their innovative use of materials, such as the fiberglass and plastic resin. Aside from the molded-plywood DCW (Dining Chair Wood), other classic furniture designs include the DCM (Dining Chair Metal with a plywood seat), the Eiffel Plastic Armchair and side chair from 1959, the Eames Lounge Chair and ottoman from 1956, the Aluminum Group furniture series and the wire mesh chairs designed for office furniture manufacturer Herman Miller, 1962’s Eames tandem sling seating, as well as the Eames Chaise designed specifically for film director Billy Wilder in 1968. At the time of Charles’ death they were working on what would be their final design, the Eames Sofa, which went into production in 1984.

And here's a survey for the non-Los Angeles Communities of L.A. County. Vote for whichever communities you'd like to see me visit and blog about.

And remember, Eric's Blog gives you a voice!

Click Here to take survey