Looking for somewhere different to spend the pre-Christmas or post Holiday time. Consider the destination mall, the Grove. The Grove is a retail and entertainment complex in Los Angeles, California, built, owned, and operated by Rick J. Caruso and his company Caruso Affiliated on parts of the historical Farmers Market. (Wikipedia)
TripAdvisor. com lists the Grove Mall as the #17 thing to do in LA out of 506.
The Grove features a large center park with an animated fountain designed by WET. Its music-fountain show plays every hour, though the feature has a non-musical program in between shows. The water’s choreography is reminiscent of the Fountains of Bellagio in Las Vegas—also designed by WET—but on a much smaller scale. (Wikipedia)
The property also has a statue, The Spirit of Los Angeles. Live shows are often performed there – on the grassy area by the fountains. (Wikipedia)
The Grove is adjacent to the iconic Farmers Market and is a modern contrast to the homey historic market and it’s collection of lower end stores and common eating places. By contrast, The Grove is a collection of elite establishments, including Nordstrom’s, Apple, Coach, Nike, and others among some very nice and swanky restaurants.
At Christmas time, the Grove becomes a beautiful place to hang out with thousand of decorations including the Grove Christmas Tree. Usually up to 100 feet or more, it is the tallest Christmas tree in the city of Los Angeles. The tree is lit every evening starting in November, beginning with their annual Tree Lighting Ceremony. The tree remains lit every evening for the remainder of the holiday season.
During the holiday shopping season, fake snow is produced periodically every evening. The mall also features an elaborately parkway with a giant Santa House where you can tell the old man what your secret wish is. There are loudspeakers playing non-stop Christmas carols, free live music in the street, and the double-decker trolley ride. An internal transit system uses electric-powered trolley cars to link The Grove and the adjacent Farmers Market with a nice 3 minute ride. It is great fun for kids, and kids at heart. In truth it is a great area for all ages with its good shopping area and eating facilities.
“Let’s go to Solvang this weekend,” my Danish friend said.
“Why?”
“Cause it is fun and I miss all the Danish stuff this time of year.”
“In Solvang? It is a tourist trap!”
“No, it will be fun. Plus it is all based on real Danish traditions and foods. I want to go. Come on!”
So reluctantly I set off with my friend to see Solvang, a small California town about 30 miles above Santa Barbara just off the 101 Freeway at Buellton, CA. At Buellton, you take California 246 and soon you will arrive in the quaint semi-Danish village of Solvang. The town was founded in 1911 by a group of Danish settlers who were looking to establish a Danish school and community on the West Coast.
A LITTLE HISTORY
3 Founders of Solvang carved in wood.
Between 1850 and 1930, a considerable number of Danes left Denmark, which was suffering from poor economic prospects. According to some estimates, as many as one in ten Danes emigrated during this period, mostly to the United States.
The name Solvang means “sunny field” in Danish, and the original band of settlers bought almost 9,000 acres of the Rancho San Carlos de Jonata Mexican land grant. The city is home to a number of bakeries, restaurants, and merchants offering a taste of Denmark in California. The architecture of many of the facades and buildings reflects a traditional Danish style. There is a copy of the famous Little Mermaid statue from Copenhagen, as well as one featuring the bust of famed Danish fable writer Hans Christian Andersen. A replica of Copenhagen’s Round Tower or Rundetårn in the scale 1:3 was finished in 1991 and can be seen in the town center. Much of the Oscar-winning film Sideways (2004) was filmed in Solvang and in nearby Buellton.
Solvang’s Clock Tower
Initially, most of Solvang’s buildings were built in the same style as other buildings in the area. The Lutheran church was the first to be based on Danish architecture and bears a close relationship to Danish equivalents. But after World War II, interest grew in the concept of a “Danish Village”. The pioneer of the Danish Provincial style, as it came to be known, was undoubtedly Ferdinand Sorensen, originally from Nebraska. In the mid-1940s, after returning to Solvang from a trip to Denmark, he first completed Møllebakken, his Danish-styled home, and then went on to build the first of the village’s four windmills. A little later, a local architect, gave the older buildings a new look, adding façades in so-called “Danish Provincial” style. Buildings in the half-timbered style of Danish rural houses proliferated, creating a new tourist attraction.
One of Solvang’s four Windmills.
Thanks in large part to its unique half-timbered architecture, Solvang has become a major California tourist attraction, with over one million visitors per year. In particular, today’s visitors appreciate the Danish windmills, the statues of Hans Christian Andersen and the Little Mermaid, the half-timbered houses, the Danish rural church, the Round Tower as well as Danish music and folk dancing. In addition, several restaurants and pastry shops serve Danish specialties. A replica of a 19th-century Danish streetcar, the horse-drawn Hønen (“the hen”), takes visitors on sightseeing tours around downtown Solvang. Partly as a result of the 2004 film Sideways, which was set in the surrounding Santa Ynez Valley, the number of wine-related businesses in Solvang has increased appreciably, attracting oenophiles to the downtown area.
One of Solvang’s attractions is the 700-seat open-air Festival Theater, which was built in 1974 following the success of a makeshift performance of Hamlet in 1971 in the town park. The theatre is used here year round and especially in the summer by the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts located in Santa Maria. The style of the exterior is reminiscent of both Danish and Elizabethan architecture.
At night all the trees are lite giving the village a warm glow.
THE PRESENT
We drove into town about 2 PM on a cold but sunny Saturday, and the town was filled with people. Finding a parking place is not easy, but we managed to find one on a side street. Solvang has a small population (5000+) so it is easy to walk everywhere. Taking off on foot, my Danish friend was very excited to point out stores and items that were truly Danish.
A Viking Warrior carved in wood hoping to get his favorite wish of Christmas!
We stopped at one really Scandinavian type store with its clean lines and gleaming wood floor and tried on pairs of wooden clogs for men and women. Their big selling point is they help relieve pressure on your back when standing and correct your posture. Comfortable and at 70 dollars not too expensive. We found pairs in other stores in Solvang selling for as much as 150 dollars.
Traditional Danish Roast Beef sandwich
After cruising through lots of small stores, bakeries, and taking lots of pictures of Danish flags, we decided to get something to eat. We choose the Red Viking Restaurant which featured classic Danish food along with American dishes as well. Decorated in an old, rural Danish style with Royal Copenhagen plates hanging on every wall, the place was packed with tourists. My friend in spite of her desire to see all thing Danish that day only wanted a basic salad with chicken. It was up to me to really check out the Danish style food and see what if it was authentic or not. I choose a Traditional Danish Roast Beef sandwich featuring thinly sliced medium rare Roast Beef with pickles, a dollop of horseradish, and a dollop of Remoulade on top. All of this was served open-faced on rugbrød! I washed this down with a local Danish Red Lager brewed locally by Figueroa Mountain Brewing, a brewery in Buellton.
Æbleskivers served at the Red Viking!
For dessert, I had an old Danish favorite called Æbleskivers. This is a Danish dessert pastry which is really Pancake dough that is deep-fried, covered with powered sugar and raspberry jam. A good meal.
More walking around the small village, more taking of photos, sampling some of the local Santa Ynez Valley wines in the seemingly endless tasting rooms, and some Danish style candies. As it was December and the sun was setting, we decided to head home earlier and get dinner on the road.
There is certainly a lot more to do in Solvang. There is the live theatre run by PCPA that was featuring a whole round of Christmas and holidays plays and pageants. Live music was just starting when we headed for the car and the village was covered with Christmas lights. Some of the local restaurants have excellent ratings for dinner so you could easily make a weekend of it if you wished.
Our Heroes in Solvang, CA.
A very nice and fun day in Solvang, and experiencing it with a real Dane makes all the difference in the world. Highly recommend for a day trip within 3 hours from LA.
Los Angeles is a very famous city and the most famous part of LA is Hollywood. The Movies and their premieres are a huge business here in Tinseltown. Disney just blocked off Hollywood Blvd. and part of Cahuenga for a huge Hollywood premiere party, the opening of Rogue One, A Star Wars Story. Two streets are blocked off, there is a full size x-wing fighter in the middle of Hollywood Blvd., in front of the Pantages Theatre, and there are huge tents that cover an entire block of street for all the celebs to arrive and mingle with each other.
The Pantages is a 2700+ seat live theatre that Disney has rented and put in a state of the art projection and sound system. And this is the holiday event of the Christmas season for Disney.
I was up on Hollywood Blvd. on Friday night and the photos that follow are what I saw. The party tents and the red carpet and the X-Wing Fighter take up two blocks on Hollywood Blvd.
They do everything big for the Movies in Hollywood.
So a movie can be a trip or journey of the mind, and last night, I went to see a sneak preview of Dr. Strange, the newest Marvel movie from Disney. It was truly an amazing film on so many different levels. Yet, the most astonishing thing about the film was the deep philosophical bent that the movie had. Nothing amazingly profound, mostly every day statements that you can read on Facebook or hear your yoga practicing friend tell you over coffee/chai. But this is deep stuff for a comic book movie, and it gives the film characters footing as they go about their missions of good and evil.
Visually, the movie is stunning, and the acting matches the visual effects. The main cast of Benedict Cumberbatch, Tilda Swinton, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rachel McAdams, and Mads Mikkelsen are excellent in their various roles which are not just typical good guys and bad guys. The story is deep and all the characters are interwoven in complex ways that make this much more than your basic Superhero movie. I will not bore you with the details of the plot except to say that it is worth your time and money.
My connection to Marvel comics and films is long and personal. It started over 50 years ago when the oldest son of my father’s business partner gave his comic collection filled with DC and Marvel comics to me. I fell for the Marvel stories and humor and realistic life problems that those characters had much more than the black and white view of the world that DC seem to have. Plus I had most of the Silver Age comics in first editions. Hulk, Thor, Spiderman, Fantastic Four, Captain America, Avengers and so many other characters were to become my friends and companions. I had problems focusing on reading so those comics got me reading – which is my great passion to this day. Because my family moved so many times when I was young, a shy kid in a new town turned to the escape and adventure that these heroes and stories offered.
I saved my comics for years. My collection was filled with premiere issues, and I kept them in pretty good shape. But my collection was not stored in plastic to never be read. Mine were constantly read and re-read, so they were in only fair condition. Yet, in a time of financial hardship, I was able to sell them and they provided me with the funds to survive for a couple of months.
Later, I would appear in a Marvel film as an actor. My lines and scene ended up on the cutting room floor as they say, but if you are quick and know where to look you will see half my face in a crowd scene for about one second. And even that little amount was a total thrill.
So I am biased for Marvel vs other comic franchises, but the proof is in the movies themselves. Marvel’s characters, no matter how far fetched they may seem, they still have real daily problems like how to pay the rent or problems at school. While DC comics and their characters never seemed like they changed clothes, went to the bathroom or had acne. Marvel had humor and depth, DC was bad/good, black/white with nothing in-between which led to boring most times.
That still plays out in the humor and interesting characters of Marvel films and the dark, depressing nature of the current slate of DC based films. It all goes back to the source material and a sense of real life (in a really made up world).
Go see Dr. Strange!! It will entertain you and maybe (just maybe) nudge you to think about something in your own life. You cannot ask more from a movie than that!
THIS IS A REPRINT OF AN ARTICLE FROM 2016. THE INFORMATION IS STILL CURRENT.
Los Angeles has a lot to offer a visitor. Sunshine, mountains, beaches, hiking, stars, world-class museums and some truly wonderful dining with up and coming new chefs. Yet, it is also one of the weirdest places on the planet. While the term “Film noir” was coined in France, the term describes films made in and around Los Angeles during the 1940’s. In LA, there is always a sense of pessimism and menace.
Behind or under all that sunshine, there is a dark, troubling Los Angeles full of weird and sometimes dangerous things. This is also the city of corruption, the Black Dahlia, mad power grabs, famous unsolved murders, cults, and Charlie Manson.
The museum itself seems to be a unique combination of interactive performance art and a provocative little haven of curiosities and rarities; scientific, historic and artistic in nature. Obscure exhibits feature everything from an extensive exhibit on a Soviet designer/engineer who influenced the Soviet space program but never actually made a rocket to folk curses and cures through the ages. Examples include “the restorative properties of urine” and “cures from eating mice.” Is it a parody or is it a witty homage to private museums of the 16th and 17th century or just some crazy collector’s obscure items that only they truly care about? Truth or fiction, myth or reality? You have to decide for yourself.
TripAdvisor.com lists this as the #1 thing to do in Culver City, and it is sure worth the couple of hours you could take to wander through this warren’s den of small, dimly lit exhibits. The setting is very theatrical, mysterious and bizarre as you move from one unrelated exhibit to another. At some point you start to ask yourself where the joke is as you bump into an array of microscopes focused on tiny almost invisible arrangements made from butterfly wings and sculptures so tiny that they fit into the eye of a needle juxtaposed against a clearly made up exhibit of cheap items from junk shops called a “History of Trail Park Art”. Yet the exhibit is so painstakingly made with a history of the movement, models of trailers, several cases filled with plates and photos of supposed collections and in-depth histories of each of the collectors that you almost begin to believe that it is truly real.
The museum was founded by David Hildebrand Wilson and Diana Drake Wilson (husband and wife) in 1988. Wilson won a MacArthur Foundation Award in 2001. The museum’s pamphlet itself states the museum is “an educational institution dedicated to the advancement of knowledge and the public appreciation of the Lower Jurassic.” The link to the term “Lower Jurassic” and how it pertains to the museum’s collections is left unexplained.
At the end of your tour on the top floor, there is a lovely little tea room which is included in the price of admission, where you can ponder your vague, disquieting visit or reflect on the challenging originality and dry humor of the place.
Street and free meter parking were pretty easy to find on a Sunday afternoon. Admission is a donation of $8.00 per adult (well worth it!) with varying discounted costs for other visitors. Uniquely stocked gift shop to peruse at the completion of your visit. No photos allowed and the staff is amazingly friendly. This is a very small and peculiarly offbeat museum and it is well worth the time to visit and wonder about its mysterious and confusing exhibits, and the apparent randomness of it all.
You must be logged in to post a comment.