Metropolitan Idyll

In early July Maya had a few days off in row and so we headed down to L.A. to stay with Maya’s grandparents. Seeing all her family in L.A. as often as we can is half of the reason we came out here to California. They are in the midst of some renovation. So we woke up every morning to the old stucco being ripped off the side of the house. That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but things were in an unavoidable state of disarray. We played cards, visited, picked oranges, and went shopping. We also did two big, fun things: We went to Universal Studios for a day and we saw the Mission San Gabriel.

Mission San Gabriel Arcángel is the most interesting mission we have seen since we’ve come out here. It is so solid. The construction is big thick walls of brick and adobe. There are even buttresses along the sides. It makes it look so strong. They have a nice self-guided tour. You get it at the start and then follow the stations around the property seeing the gardens, the church, the museum, the remains of the winery, the old orchard, the soap-cooking vats and the tanning tanks. It’s a real jumble of stuff in a small space. The missions, for the most part, are all built in a square. The church would sit on one corner and then there would be buildings – workrooms, storage rooms, living quarters all forming an enclosed square with only one or two gates and the gardens and animal pens in the central area. Of course, the lands of the mission were often much larger – 100s of acres. All of these lands were ceased by the Mexican government and auctioned off in the 1830s. Almost all of the land ended up in the lands of ranchers. In areas where a town had already grown up around the mission, the mission church often was still used as a church through the years. Sometimes, when the mission was not near any city, after the Indians dispersed, the buildings were used as grain storage, stables, or left to return to earth. In the 1850s and 1860s a lot of the missions had part of their lands returned to church control by the US government. Often, this was just the quadrangle (such as remained) with only a few token acres.

The Mission San Gabriel is one of those that remained in use. All most all the buildings that formed the quad still stand. All the wine-making and tanning stopped but the infrastructure for it all remains to this day. Part of it is set up as a museum. Their collection is very well annotated. Almost every item is described in detail on little note cards posted all over the place. One of the most interesting things in the collection is a set of paintings of the Stations of the Cross painted by a native convert to Christianity. Replicas of the paintings are hung in the sanctuary itself. Here’s a bit if fun history: the little town of Los Angeles was founded just a few miles to the west as an outreach effort by the mission.

Universal Studios was literally on fire when we first got to L. A. back in early June. There was some kind of accident involving roofing tiles being heated so get the tar tacky. The part of the back lot used as a double for New York burned down. This includes the building famously appearing as the clock tower in Back to the Future, although the “clock” itself had been removed to make the building look a little different so some other filming project. The point is that while we considered going then to look at the smoking rubble, we decided we were just too tired after our long trip. This time (in early July), we did go.

We went on the studio tour. The little tour trolley takes you past some of the actual studios Universal Pictures uses for their TV shows and films. They also rent space to other productions so there are all kinds of things going on at any one time. Since the tour is part of the amusement park there are various points along the route where special effects things are set up. Some cars “blow up” and come flying toward you. They are really just being tilted forward on mechanical arms. There is a flood that comes crashing down a gravel road and almost drenches the trolley before all the water just flows down some vents in the ground instead. The tour passes some sets used in old westerns and some used for movies set in old European cities. The set for the Bates Motel, with the house eerily above it is still there, looking a little creepy even on a bright day. Oddly enough, it’s right next to the set for Whoville from How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Part of the set from Jaws has a big shark that jumps out of the water, jaws agape. Also, the big crashed airplane set from War of the Worlds is still there and the tour takes you down the middle of the rubble. It really is fun to be that close to stuff we have seen in the movies. But it is also a little sad because to be that close you see that the famous clock from the famous clock tower is just a round piece of plywood with a clock face painted on it. The brick texture on buildings is as often just painted on as anything else. The look of things is all controlled with sightlines and how close they are to the camera. We know movies are fictional; they are created realities, but to see up close just how artificial they are is interesting.

The amusement park part of Universal Studios is a little less fun than we hoped it would be. It turns out that we just don’t like amusement parks after about one ride. The thing is, you pay so much to get in you can’t just ride one ride and go! We did a fair amount of things. We rode a ride based on the Mummy franchise. Matt thought it was okay but Maya thought it was really cheesy. For those twenty-somethings from Louisville, it was like the Star Chaser, but with neon-flashing mummies instead of pictures of comets. We also went on the Jurassic Park ride. It is in serious need of repair! It’s all out of synch so that the foam rubber dinosaurs pop out way before the boat gets there and then are sliding slowing back into the bushes by the time you do pass them. And the t-rex at the end is falling apart. It’s not even all covered in foam rubber anymore. Weak! The flume part of the ride still works. Gravity doesn’t exactly ever break. So we got wet at the end. Matt doesn’t like flume rides because he likes amusement parks even less when he has to walk around wet. There was also a trained animal show we saw. There were no rabbits in it but there was a parrot that flew in place with the help of a huge fan and a cat that didn’t hit its mark and took off up the aisle instead. We also wandered into a haunted house thinking it would be like a museum of Universal’s monster movies. A guy with a bloody axe standing in front of a meat locker was very helpful and pointed us toward the exit.

Maybe the best, certainly to most interesting, ride was the Simpsons-themed simulator. It has the most authentic movement of any simulator ride we’ve ever been on. Part of this is because you ride in a “car” with just a few other people. Even looking away from the screen, you don’t see a whole room of other people in shifting seats. The visual part of the ride is typical Simpsons. It’s all CGI so it doesn’t feel quite like the Simpsons’ world but the spirit is right. Totally crazy stuff happens that seems to knock and fling you all over Springfield and most of the memorable secondary characters make appearances. It’s Simpsons: The Ride, just as advertised.

One last note: at Universal Studios we saw Proof #10 of California’s Progressive Stance on Conservation and Climate Change. The trash cans in the park were all labeled: Contents sorted for Recycling. Wow!