Tag Archives: on location

Dino you are, but what am I?

Now, I’ve seen a lot of roadside dinosaurs in my day, but for me, nothing can top the iconic giants of Cabazon, CA. For one thing, unlike some others that come to mind, these guys are beautifully crafted and amazingly realistic (and no wonder: their designer, Claude Bell, created all the statuary at Knott’s Berry Farm in the 1940s and 50s).

For another, these dinosaurs are no mere statues: like their distant cousin Lucy, they’re buildings. And since they now house a bizarre creationist museum and gift shop (which I could not bring myself to pay money to support by entering), I think that now officially qualifies them not just as dinosaurs, but also as ducks!

Best of all, these dinos were prominently featured in the cult classic and ultimate road trip movie, Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. When I finally got here last year, it felt like completing a pilgrimage.

And yes, of course I did the Pee Wee laugh when I got there! You don’t even have to ask.

Save

Why a papaya?

Chicago may be America’s hot dog capital, but leave it to New York to own the hot dog in the most unique way imaginable. Manhattan certainly holds its own when it comes to high concentration per capita of dawg dives, but what really interests me is New York’s history of washing their franks down with papaya juice. Yes, papayas and hot dogs are a thing—at least in Manhattan.

Well, the last time I was in town, I was determined to follow through on something I’d wanted to do for years: have a papaya showdown. So I dragged the Tailor and my two best native New Yorker friends with me for brunch dawgs in the dead of winter. (I have very patient friends.) We could have made a whole day of it, as there are many sausage-and-juice purveyors in the city, but I was mostly interested in comparing the two biggest and oldest rivals. (Besides, I wasn’t sure I could actually consume two hot dogs in succession, let alone a whole city’s worth.)

The first stop was Gray’s Papaya—this is the place most people think of when they think papayas (do people think papayas?). Open 24 hours a day at its original location at 72nd and Broadway, its cameo appearances in several films has made it something of a household name. The franks have a solidly dirty-water quality to them—order the “Recession Special” and add a swig of papaya juice to round out the experience. I have to say, though, that the kitsch factor here was surprisingly low. The crepe-paper fruit hanging from the ceiling was a nice touch, but that’s about where the fun stuff ended. Gray’s has been in that location for over forty years, but everything there was a low-rent version of slick and modern.

Papaya King, on the other hand, delivered on every front. The kitsch, the colors, the history, the design, even the food. Papaya juice, it turns out, is entirely too sweet for my taste, but the dogs were downright good. And best of all, Papaya King is the original, the real deal, the very first hot doggery to come up with the fruit-n-franks idea. The King has held court on the corner of E. 86th Street and Third Avenue since 1932, and the absolutely gorgeous neon pays homage to the original decor.

Papaya King has already won one hot dog war, when Nathan’s Famous opened a franchise next door in 1976, then capitulated when it lost the resulting price war. So as far as I’m concerned, it’s no surprise it came out on top this day, too. I am still no closer to understanding why someone would want papaya juice with their hotdog, but I’ll raise a bright yellow paper cup of the stuff to the King.

The tail wagging the dog

This post is part of an ongoing series called 66 Fridays, which explores the wonders of old Route 66. Click on the preceding “66 Fridays” link to view all posts in the series, or visit the initial overview post here.

Those of you who are fans of the show Breaking Bad will recognize Fido here, but you might not know that this beauty has graced Route 66 for over half a century. But while the place is notable both for its television fame and the fact that you can get red or green New Mexico chili sauce on your dog, I was there purely for the neon.

For almost all of our Route 66 trip, I had to content myself with seeing most of the Mother Road’s neon during daylight hours only. But luckily for me, we stayed with friends in Albuquerque that night. I told them I was dying to see the Dog House at night, so after dinner we all made the trek back down to Central Avenue together.

I couldn’t decide which stage of the neon motion to sketch, so I drew them all. And that led me to an idea I’d never tried before…

…just a wee bit of sketchbook animation. I think I might have stumbled upon something I’ll keep doing again and again. After all, there’s an awful lot of animated neon out there!

Goonie weekend

I’m a bit of a movie nut—especially for anything shot on location. I’m a sucker for films that center around real places—and Astoria, OR has featured prominently in so many movies that the entire town has become a cinema icon. This Sunday marks the 30th anniversary of the release of the 1980s free-range-kid classic, The Goonies, so I thought I’d celebrate by posting my Goonie sketches from a few years ago.

First up is the most well-known location in town, and the one that’s easiest to find: the old Clatsop County Jail from the hilarious jailbreak scene. This building is so iconic that it’s now home to a museum centered around the movies filmed in Oregon.

Next up is Mikey and Brand’s house (with a glimpse of Data’s place next door). This house looks almost exactly the same as it does in the film—at least from what I could see below. I have a feeling the current owners put up with a lot of well-meaning trespassing from Goonies fans, so I wanted to be respectful of their property and stay on the sidewalk below. Oh, and incidentally, this house is literally around the corner from the school featured prominently in Kindergarten Cop (yes, I’ve sketched that, too—that’s a post for another day).

Finally, no Goonies pilgrimage would be complete without a side trip to Ecola State Park, about a half hour south of Astoria. This is the spot where the gangster hideout was, where the kids entered the underground path to pirate treasure. From here you can spy (through the holes in a 1632 Spanish doubloon, of course) Cannon Beach below, and the silhouetted bulk of Haystack Rock—which you might recognize as the seastack that looms above the final scenes in the film.

This weekend Astoria is having a big 30th anniversary celebration, but I won’t be able to get down there for the event. So instead, you can bet the Tailor and I are going to pop up some popcorn, fire up the DVD player, and have ourselves a blast from the past.

King of the missions

This is the second installment of my Mission Mondays series, exploring all 21 Spanish Missions along the California coast. You can read more about this series, and see a sketch map of all the missions, at this post.

I thought my travel itinerary allowed myself plenty of time to tour and sketch each mission—but I was proven wrong almost immediately. They don’t call San Luis Rey de Francia “King of the Missions” for nothing—the place is absolutely huge. And of all the missions, this one might just have the most details, the greatest number of interesting nooks and crannies to explore. So not only did I not sketch everything I wanted to—I didn’t even see it all. Oh, well, it’s an excellent reason to return—and I did get enough sketching in for a very good start.

Mission San Luis Rey (named for King Louis IX of France, who died 500 years before Marie Antoinette’s husband was crowned) is the second mission in geographical order. Chronologically, though, it was one of the last, the 18th of 21 to be built. It’s also one of only a handful of missions located very close to the shore (most of the rest of them are inland by a fair piece); its location brings El Camino Real into nearly overlapping proximity to the Pacific Coast Highway.

It’s the kind of place that brings to mind the quintessential idea of California: white Spanish stucco against a jewel-bright blue sky.

The exterior is stately and beautifully designed, though for the most part it has all the elements you might expect at a mission.

The inside is where most of the surprises are. My sketch here just barely hints at it, but the interior is almost entirely covered with detailed, hand-painted frescoes. Once you step one foot inside, it’s so easy to forget you’re even in the New World.

The Padres who built this place might have been primarily men of the cloth, but they were also incredible designers. Yet they didn’t design everything in this place—there’s one more surprise here that they did not intend. See that little skull-and-crossbones above the cemetery entrance? That little detail was added by Walt Disney, if you can believe it, when his studio filmed the Zorro television series here in the 1950s. It might be something of a cardinal sin to add a Hollywood touch to an historic structure, but I absolutely love that it’s still here!

Mission San Luis Rey has been impeccably maintained, so it’s absolutely gorgeous from every angle. Which makes it hard to choose a vantage point when you’re trying to sketch and you have limited time: to quote a tourist I overheard in a completely different place once, “Everywhere you look there’s a picture!”

Island haven

I did this sketch on a Friday afternoon last year, having escaped after an insane week of deadlines and project-juggling. Here I am on a similar Friday, and the thought of spending the afternoon in the sun, on an island, staring out over pristine blue water with just the breeze and the sparrows for company—well, it sounds pretty darn perfect to me.

Now where’s that ferry schedule…

Quiet on set

I loved Mork & Mindy as a kid—not simply because it was funny, but because it’s the first show I watched that had a strong sense of place. Silly comedies aside, it’s amazing how much that quality has affected me now—has affected the person I have become. And I realized that so much of Robin Williams’s work has had that inherent sense of place—The Birdcage, Mrs. Doubtfire, Insomnia, Jakob the Liar, Dead Poets Society, etc.—that I love so much, that I look for everywhere.

So thank you, Robin, for giving me so much more than a good laugh. May you be at peace.