From the Heritage Square Museum, USC, Cal State Fullerton & CSUN
As enthusiasts for preserving the heritage of diverse groups across the Southland gather for a big event Sunday in East LA, here's also a little glimpse at some takes on the often fun, unusual history of Southern California.
In Highland Park, to start with, more than 100 'heritage' groups -- from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Museum in Beverly Hills to the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum in the City of Industry -- will gather Sunday at the Heritage Square Museum for the annual 'LA Heritage Day.' The event, which will be free to those who print out and bring along an event flyer from the Heritage Alliance, will feature tours of historic homes, presentations by the participating groups, readings, performances, cooking lessons, entertainment and, yes, Pink's hot dogs.
Click here for more info on the Heritage Square Museum
Click here for more info on the LA Heritage Alliance
In Fullerton, scholars and historians are racing to gather up oral and other historical records about an influential Orange County icon who started dishing up hot dogs and became a fast-food magnate. Carl N. Karcher, whose empire now includes more than 1,000 Carl's Jr. eateries, was a Republican and Catholic stalwart in a notably conservative period of Orange County life. Karcher (shown at right in 1997 photo taken by Diana Todoro, founder of Diana's California Cookies) was a rock-ribbed family man and helped ensure that Southern California, with its burgeouning suburbs and car culture, would send out to the world a legacy of fast, low-cost eating with the boom from this area of not only the Carl's Jr. chain but also of McDonald's and In-N-Out. The effort to document the Karcher legacy by the center on oral and public history is being underwritten, by the way, with a $50,000 grant from the Karcher Family Foundation. Results already are being shared with scholars and project advocates hope to expand the research to include other pioneers in the industry.
Documenting the legacy of fast-food king Carl Karcher
In Exposition Park, just catching up with a photographic exhibit from the Los Angeles Examiner collection that's attracting some attention with its focus on the flashy, zany, eye-catching cars that have motored around Los Angeles during recent decades. The free, public display at the Doheny Memorial Library, illustrates how space-age thinking translated into chrome, steel and passion among motorists and collectors for auto design, driven not only by developments in technology but also pop culture, including television and the movies. If that collection of vintage vehicles parked this week on Trousdale Parkway caught the eye, it, too, was part of this exhibit, just fyi.
Examining the Southland's fling with chrome, steel, space-age car design
In Northridge, the clock's ticking for those who want to RSVP to sit in for the school's fifth annual day-long presentation on Thursday (April 15) of top student papers on topics connected with California history. The young scholars, representing institutions across the area, will weigh in on subjects such as horse racing in the Bay Area, 1895-1911, to suburban feminism in Orange County in the 1970s. Students are vying for special consideration for publication of their work in journals put out by key historical societies in the state and Southern California. A prize-winning historian also will lecture in the evening, followed by a reception.
Young scholars in presentations of best work on California history
