Color Run Selfies

Los Angeles -- A couple pose on stage for a selfie during the LA Color Run at Dodger Stadium.

If You're Happy and You Know It

Los Angeles -- Sometimes we "Angelinos" tend to wear our feelings. I took this photo during a recent Color Run at Dodger Stadium.

Another Color Run is coming up on October 25, 2014 in nearby Pomona. See you there?

The Happiest 5K

Los Angeles -- It's called "The Happiest 5K on the Planet," for good reason; you can't help but smile!

Held at Dodger Stadium, more than 15,000 runners, walkers and dancers gathered at 7am for the Zumba dance warm up, dancing to songs like, "Happy."

At 8am, the laid back, 5 kilometer run began. Participants passed through a series of five different colored gauntlets, covering the happy runners with a powdered splash of blue, pink, orange, purple and yellow before finishing through a tunnel of colored, swirling confetti.

The event ended with more dancing and throwing of rainbow powder. What a fun and clean way to kick off summer of 2014 -- LA style.

More fun photos at JohnTaylorsonPhoto.com

LA's Own Eiffle?

Los Angeles icons change throughout the decades. In the 60s, LA was known for its City Hall, Dodger Stadium, and Watts Towers.

As a kid, I had a View-Master with a disk of seven popular Western destinations. Las Vegas being one with that historic sign reading, "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas," and LA with a stereoscopic photo of the Watts Towers seemingly stretching to the heavens.

Forty-something years is a long time to finally visit the historic landmark. I followed the well-marked signs through South Central LA, across the Metro Blue Line tracks and into a neighborhood of weathered homes with chain link fences and power lines with multiple pair of shoes hanging from the wires. I looked up through my windshield hoping to find one the towers guiding my way, much like the Eiffel does in Paris. One block to go and there they were.

The Watts Towers were built between 1921 and 1954 by an Italian immigrant by the name of Sam Rodia. Over the course of 33 years, he build, by hand, 17 structures, the tallest reaching nearly 100 feet high (30 meters). The towers are made of fragments of bottles, plates, pottery, tiles--anything Sam could find. The Watts Towers are another example of vernacular architecture made popular in the early to mid 20th century.

Chavez Ravine

Pasadenaadjacent commented on my Dodger Stadium post about having friends who were evicted from Chavez Ravine. Sadely, many families were forced to leave their homes in order to make room for the new stadium and public housing.

The top photo is Chavez Ravine in 1950. The second photo was taken during a forced eviction in 1959.

You can read more about Chavez Ravine here.

Digging Out Dodger Stadium, circa 1961

Construction on Dodger Stadium began in September of 1959. Lawsuits and landslides (some things never change in LA) forced the construction to be completed a year behind schedule. On April 10, 1962, over 52,000 baseball fans crammed the new state-of-the-art stadium, built to hold 50,000 people.