This would be one of the photos for our holiday card...
Look for this lovely tiled plant receptacle on the corner.
Other side has a peace symbol and what looks like an anatomical heart or maybe some sort of horrific multilegged creature? A blood swollen tick perhaps?
A few steps away from this planter is the Micheltorena Steps. Totalling 177 steps, there are several flights leading up to Larissa Street. The first flight has two hearts and candy colored paint on the risers. I just realized, this is the third year in a row we utilized photos involving stairs in our holiday photos. Two years ago, we used photos from the 16th Avenue Tiled Steps" in San Francisco's Inner Sunset district. The following year, one of our family potos was on a tiled bench at the top of the Lincoln Park Steps in the Outer Richmond district (also in SF). Well, I guess this is three for three then!
Top of the first flight:
The second flight of steps is not as colorful, but they do have a tilted hearts in various shades of purple and lavender.
Top of the second flight:
In the street, looking down the second flight:
Ascending the third and last flight of steps. Only sixteen risers are painted for this last set.
Looking down the top flight. Someone spray stenciled "Does koala bear poop smell like cough drops?"
Hmmm, inquiring minds want to know. You get it right?
More street art + graffito on the fence.
Top of the first flight.
And heading back down. Notice my left sandal. Remember it. It shall come up again in a future post before the end of this particular day.
Before we walked up these flights, we took our tripod and semi-decent camera to take our family photos. There were several folks ahead of us taking selfies at the bottom of the steps. We stood on the first flight but on different steps. I thought it looked pretty cool. No we were not wearing "matching clothes". I try not to as much as possible. What I mean by that is when families wear clothing of the same color for their holiday photos. None of that for us. I think for the past three years, I was wearing jeans and flip flops for our photos. For this set, I had on shorts. In November. Hey, this is SoCal and it was still pretty warm even in what was supposed to be Fall.
So long Micheltorena Stairs...
Articles/mentions:
"Discover the Hidden Stairs of Los Angeles" Discover Los Angeles, Sept. 2015
"Why Angelenos are scrambling to spend a Saturday climbing Silver Lake's stairs" April 13, 2016 (ooh, my date of birth, not the year though)
"The colorful stairs of Silver Lake" KMTWanderLust, Nov. 2015
Around LA - Things to do in Silver Lake" MusingsonMomentum, July 24, 2016
plus this SUPER OLD article from THIRTY YEARS AGO, back when the stairways were not painted, "City staircases - They're a step behind in upkeep LA Times, Oct 12, 1986
Micheltorena Stairs
3324 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90026
fb page + reviews from you know where & foursquare
+ the fb page of Painted Stairways of Silver Lake
& this cool link, StairwalksLa.com (Micheltorena is #4 on the slideshow)
And one other thing...had I researched more thoroughly, we would have had the opportunity to take our photos on another set of iconic steps located just across the street. I'm talking about the Piano Steps next to Ali Mama restaurant. Literally it was just across the damn street. Aaargh! Anyhow, that will have to wait for a future road trip.
Before heading off to the "Epicenter of Art Fighting Cultural Deprivation", we went across the street for some caffeine...
No comments:
Post a Comment