Quartz City

Bringing up the Shady Dell again, I was wondering about the origin of Harbie - the faded fiberglass seal that greets you at the boat. I figured he was some old mascot for some forgotten business, but I couldn’t help but think as to how a seal which generally goes with the ocean found it’s way out to the Arizona desert mountains near the Mexico border.

Enter Google…

Right off the bat, a photo of a vintage Harbie turns up at RoadsidePeek.com. Apparently, Harbie is the mascot of Harbor Gasoline - a Los Angeles/Orange County chain of gas stations that lasted through to the early 1970s. Can’t remember Harbor Gas at all, but it probably never made it down to south O.C. at all.

Alumni of Hawthorne High School remember Harbie a lot. A Harbie was spotted at a Colorado River resort (could this one be the Shady Dell Harbie?) and another remembers the gas station…

Do you remember the Harbor gas station at 115th and Inglewood ave. Had the little plastic seal and even had decals. Name of seal was “Harbie”.

Another alumni remembers a Harbie at an Anaheim trailer park…

There are two posted at the entrance of a trailer park on Harbor Blvd in Anaheim (Harbor and Chapman?, just south of the Target store.)

Meanwhile, these folks find a Harbie out near the Channel Islands beach:

we lived in a waterfront apartment in channel islands while we waited for our house to be built. there was a playground opposite the apartment where aly fell in love with a horrible old fiberglass seal called ‘harbie’

Years ago, I heard about this motel in Arizona that was made up of vintage Airstream trailers. Each one decked out with vintage decor, fixtures, everything… Later I learned that the motel was a RV park in Bisbee called The Shady Dell and in addition to the vintage Airstreams, there’s a 1947 bus (decked out in full Polynesian regalia), a vintage Chris Craft yacht, and to top it off - a 1950’s era prefab diner imported from Los Angeles.

Anyway, I was craving pancakes, bacon, and scrambled eggs from a vintage diner and Bisbee is a heck of a lot closer than New Jersey.

The Shady Dell itself is a total scream…

Adding to the atmosphere is the Shady Dell’s next door neighbor: Bisbee’s Evergreen Cemetery.

Some random signage from around Los Angeles the past couple of days…

Local Long Beach newspaper the Grunion Gazette realizes that it’s 2005 and discovers public-access Wi-Fi spots. Hilariously, they illustrate the article with a picture of Yours Truly (on the left) and an all-too appropriate quote:

Enh. “Other people” in coffee shops are overrated anyway.

Not since the days of the much missed Highway 17 Page Of Shame has there been a commuting story as good as this. Best of all, the cops were there too!

She pulls directly next to me. Cell phone still on her left ear. Right hand comes across to give me the finger. At this point i have the camera already snapping shots. She’s so into giving me the finger, that she does not notice the CHP unit drop in behind her and light her up.

That ugly blob over there on the right is Jupiter. Well, Jupiter as I built it for school when I was eight in 1974. I found it recently in my mom’s house but couldn’t find the rest of the solar system, even another gas giant, to go with it. I distinctly remember getting the color scheme from the Pioneer 10 fly-by which I saw live on a broadcast at the San Francisco Exploratorium. Anyway, back at school I made a scale model solar system for class and while I couldn’t quite get the distance scale correct (Pluto would have been somewhere out in Kern County), I got the planet diameters down. Even got my photo in the local newspaper in their feature on my class. Some kids play with scale model trains, others build planets…

Couple years back I took a picture of part of the scale solar system in downtown Ithaca, New York.

What’s the point of all this? Some kids and scientists in the UK are building a scale solar system of their own (BBC news story). A little Googling turns up a meta-directory of scale solar systems.

Lost in the fine print between the DeLorean car, the GTO, the cocaine, and movie time machines in yesterday’s obituaries for John DeLorean was that he was also responsible for the 1969 redesign of the Pontiac Grand Prix. I only mention this because my first car was a 1973 Grand Prix - couple generations removed from the cleaner ‘69/’70 design, but still rather nice looking for the Detroit Iron of the day.

Be nice or else…

In a state where one former governor once joked that the official bird was “the middle finger,” Assemblymen Jon M. Bramnick and Gordon Johnson think a few more random acts of kindness couldn’t hurt.

A resolution under consideration in the state Legislature is encouraging residents to join “a campaign toward civility, kindness and respect to all.”

Haven’t we seen this movie before? Have the slime levels in the Hudson been checked recently?

I’m shocked that I haven’t run across Polar Inertia before. Don’t think, just go there…

I especially recommend West Texas Bus Depots, North American Roads, and Airport Urbanism.

While most of Los Angeles awaits the demolition of the Ambassador Hotel, I’m using up my tears for the Algiers Hotel in Las Vegas which I only just learned was demolished last September.

The Algiers was certainly not the nicest hotel in Vegas. Hell in terms of Las Vegas Strip culture, the Algiers was a scabby old drunk that still patronizes the same divey bar long after it’s been gentrified into hipsterville. No casino, no flashy show, no volcano - the Algiers was pure attitude that only comes from surviving for 50 years in the face of Steve Wynn and his ilk. I couldn’t quite think of ever staying there, but the bar in the Algiers was one of the great dive bars of Vegas. Dark, smoky, and with a slight hint of malfeasance, the Algiers’ bar was the motel’s entertainment: crabby drunks and a loud bartender that made the meanest drinks this side of a longshoreman’s dive.

Sigh… I wish I knew about the clearance sale. I would have driven out special to purchase one of the spectacularly ugly light fixtures.