Just Enough Chefs

the sugary dome of our fair City Hall

In what's to become an annual event, the Pasadena Museum of History will hold a 124th birthday party for our city this Saturday, June 12th (click the link for details). The birthday cake will be fashioned like the top of City Hall. I got to see the cake in progress where 14 student pastry chefs, under the guidance of Chef Joshua Orlando and Chef Instructor Alicia Boada, are creating it at Le Cordon Bleu's Pasadena west campus.

Student pastry chefs Rosetta Heung and Stacey Choi match colors for the cake's layers.

Andrea Bramall and Jonathan Whitney place tiny, tasty tiles on the dome.

How many cakes have you made that require a production schedule?

Flowers, garlands, and all the elegant architectural details you know of Pasadena's City Hall will be meticulously reproduced on the cake. If you can't make it to the party Saturday, check with Le Cordon Bleu school. You might be able to see the decorative part in their lobby for some time to come.

Student pastry chefs Jeanne Nelson, Berlin Mercado and Tracy Latimer remove a protective sheet from the cake's layers.

Tracy places a stencil.

Looks like this layer's going to be round. That's Crystal Mazzarella with the knife.

Find more information and another shot of these fabulous women at Pasadena Daily Photo.

Smoke

Yesterday when the radio announcer said there was a brush fire burning "in the hills above JPL," I lost a breath. I walk Boz in the wild lands near the Jet Propulsion lab.

Losing a breath is appropriate. Pasadena is once again situated between two brush fires, one in Glendora (the Morris Fire) and one above La Canada Flintridge (the Station Fire). It smells like a camp fire around here. If we didn't have to breathe it in and out all day I'd almost call it pleasant.
Today I went to the Devil's Gate Dam to get a photo of the fire over La Canada Flintridge. Readers of Pasadena Daily Photo might remember another glimpse of the mountain here. That's the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) on the lower right, obviously not threatened by the fire. The winds are moving in the opposite direction. Good news, sorta. That smoke is going away from us but the Glendora smoke is heading here as I type.

I drove over to La Canada Flintridge and up into the hills to get a better look. (The air is worse over there.) The best place I could find in the time I had was on a neighborhood street below the hilltop, under some wires that were buzzing and crackling. I don't know if it had anything to do with the fire. Maybe, maybe not. I could also hear the water-dropping aircraft but I couldn't always see them.

Wait. Let's zoom in on that shot. You still might have to click on it to see.
Sure enough. A helicopter. Seems awfully small to be fighting such a big battle.

The aircraft left to get more water. While they were gone the smoke shifted and billowed. It's beautiful, really. It was hard to tear myself away--from a safe distance, that is.

John took this one on the way home from work. The view is from a corner a little less than a mile from our house. The fire is, I would guess, a good twenty miles away.
Bless those firemen. They are crazy and brave.

Update: the Station Fire subsequently grew to historic proportions and I continued to blog about it on Pasadena Daily Photo.

On the Trail Of...

If you've been following along on Pasadena Daily Photo you know about the al fresco art exhibit I attended last weekend at Oak Grove Park. The exhibit, called "On the Trail Of," was sponsored by NewTown and funded by grants from Pasadena Art Alliance, the Pasadena Arts & Culture Commission and the City of Pasadena Cultural Affairs Division. A few more shots:

Above, one of Three Untitled Framing Devices by John O'Brien and Cielo Pessione, "placed in relationship to where an interesting panorama could be framed." I found that you could frame the panorama with the device, or you could frame the device against the the panorama. Each device was mounted atop a base etched with a quotation. This one, by Annie Dillard, said, "Spend the afternoon. You can't take it with you."

Below, Richard Newton's Seek no evil - Fear no evil - Be no evil echoed the Tarot by interpreting three of the cards in a traditional deck. I found them all striking, but Fear no evil was especially spooky when viewed from the high path in the misty woods.

Neil Fenn's Watershed Temporary Aesthetic Improvement Program entailed the "wrapping of large numbers of rocks in blue translucent plastic paper" alluding to, among other things, "the purposes and functions of a watershed." If you click on the photo to enlarge it, you can see the meticulous work that went into creating this, with "water" trickling down from the hilltop.

Many thanks to Barbara Ellis for the photo above. (You may remember Barbara; she was good enough to lead me/us on a tour of Caltech for Pasadena Daily Photo in March.) The picture is of one of six works entitled Ponds, by Toti O'Brien. "In plain view and sheltered from casual view, ceramic boats suggest journeys, real and imagined, liberating and confounding, chosen and serendipitous." I would also add, enchanting. They were small and hard to find, even with our map of the works. I saw four before I had to go. Barbara stayed to go back over the path and find the rest. Below you see how easy they were to miss, and how much they were worth looking for.

Blurry Women

There's a reason this photo is blurry but you can't blame me, because I didn't take it.

Rain

Passing by Warner Bros. in Burbank on a late September day.
Rain.
Not much, but when you live here you take what you can get.
When it was over my car was filthy! (Of course my car was filthy before it started...)

Devil's Gate Dam

These photos show some of the inner workings of the Devil's Gate Dam at Hahamongna Watershed Park in Pasadena, California. I don't know what they are, I just thought they looked interesting. These photos are overflow from a post at Pasadena Daily Photo.








Below is a broader view of the dam. To give you an idea of scale, click on the photo and enlarge it. You can see streetlights on top of the dam. The greenery is full-sized trees.

I took the photos above by shoving my camera inside the workings of the vertical grate at the bottom center of the dam.

Altadena Mountain Rescue Rappelling Sequence

These members of the Altadena Mountain Rescue Team were training a new recruit at the Devil's Gate Dam the other day. This photo sequence is of her first rappel (ever!) . More information at Pasadena Daily Photo.

Pasadena Police Classic Car Show

The Pasadena Police 2008 Classic Car Show was held on Colorado Blvd. Sunday, June 15th (Fathers Day).


Gee, I just want a look at that Datsun 2000...


Nice line-up.


Paul says this is the car he drives around town every day. He and his car will appear on the June 30th episode of "101 Cars You Must Drive" on cable TV's Speed Channel. Paul says his car is the star of the "not sexy" segment.






Ah. There's the Datsun.

Elegant Entropy

South Pasadena's Rialto Theatre, on the National Register of Historic Places. A few shots:

The marquee.


These stairs are on the south side of the building.


Detail of the stairs.


This yellow door is at the foot of the rusty stairs.

Cinema 21 Extras

A window at Cinema 21.


Cinema 21 at 845 Washington Blvd., a little the worse for wear. You can see where someone ran into the near corner. The window bars are iron, so I'd say the vehicle was big, and going fast.


The lobby.


Under the marquee.


Vandals have been busy.


From the back, you can see where the apartments were in relation to the cinema.


Reminds me of an old tenement. I guess that's exactly what it was.


At street level, cold air flows from the windows, even on a hot day.