On the week preceding L.A.’s first Superbowl at its new Sofi Stadium, downtown Los Angeles pulled out all the stops including hosting “The Superbowl Experience” at the Convention Center. For the first time in many years, every DTLA hotel was booked including the Hotel Intercontinental which was homebase for the rival Cincinnati Bengals team. It was the first time since the pandemic that the City was running at full capacity and the revenues helped many DCBID member businesses that suffered so greatly during the pandemic. Due to the huge influx of visitors from all over the country, the DCBID selected me and my other two Ambassador Guide cohorts for a special Superbowl weekend assignment at key intersections of Seventh Street where we stood and provided a wide array of visitor informatio–non-stop for up to 11 hours per day–on the final two day countdown leading up to this worldwide sporting event. I was happy to play a small, but supportive part of it.

On December 14, 2021, a few members of the longtime Southern California Tour Guide Association gathered for a year-end holiday brunch and changing of the presidential guard. In an earlier October election, I was elected 2022 voluntary president of this association which was originally founded by graduate members of the prestigious International Tour Management Institute, but was later broadened to encompass all working professional Southern California area tour directors and guides. Pictured above is a photo of myself with outgoing president John Simas and below is a group picture of all attending members at the Sierra Cafe of the Universal Hilton Hotel. I am grateful to be serving in this important role and to help lead the SCTGA into future growth and expansion.

On October 31, 2021 afternoon and evening, I had the pleasure of assisting the DCBID staff with its annual Halloween festival at Grand Hope Park for children and families including a lavish “trick or treat trail”, live puppet show, candies, hot dogs and recorded music with entertainment courtesy of Disneyland (characters from “Nightmare Before Christmas,” the “Haunted Mansion” attraction and more). I had not realized how many young families actually live in downtown L.A. A spooky time was had by all!

In June 2021, I was selected out of dozens of potential candidates to participate in ALIVE VENTURES‘ three-month-long, bi-weekly advisory committee to improve future senior-aged lifestyles through the development of new generation services and products to enhance the quality of of their lives. Alive Ventures is a Silicon Valley-based incubator company launched by entrepreneur John Zapolski. Even though I am not yet a retiree myself, I appreciated the invitation to be part of this creative process and share my personal input and viewpoints.

Then on Friday, August 6, I was fortunate to join a group of a group of  thinkers, dreamers and entrepreneurs to participate in Alive Venture’s first “Alive Adventure” at Moonwater Farm in Compton, California. Art-oriented, urban farmer/co-host Kathleen Blackistone helped lead this half day workshop exploring new, smaller scale ways to improve one’s lifestyle at any age through organic farming, aquaphonics, livestock raising and healthier food preparation. It was amazing to also learn how Kathleen literally gambled her 401k savings into this model-type, micro farm-art sanctuary which many believed could never succeed and now hosts hands-on, educational visits for school children and families of nearby lower income communities

My freelance consulting activities include working in the local Southern California tourism industry including hosting and/or helping create specialized tours such as the former Turner Classic Movies Film Location bus tour of L.A. and Princess Cruise Line’s “Beach Cities” Tour (featuring an off-the-bus, two-hour-long walking segment highlighting points of interest in Venice Beach) as well as other localized tours. Though I am not exclusively in the tourism industry, it has been a major part of my recent professional life–so much so that I voluntarily serve on the board of directors for the Southern California Tour Guide Association as its vice president of programming.

Coinciding with that important involvement, on Sunday, July 18, 2021, I hosted the Association’s SUMMER REBOUND PARTY and barbeque in the spacious and colorful backyard of my own 99 year-old California bungalow style home in Los Feliz to celebrate the post-pandemic return of our local tourism industry. To help set the mood, live steel drum music was performed by Prince Bernard originally from Trinidad. Invited were an array of local tour operators, representatives from the Los Angeles Tourism & Convention Board (aka “Discover L.A.) and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. We were also graced with the presence of City Council District 4 representative Nithya Raman and her chief of staff Najeeba Syeed.

On July 1, 2021, I ralleyed board members of the Southern California Tour Guide Association to send a letter to local City Of Los Angeles City Council officials and sent copies to Mayor Garcetti, Governor Newsom, key state government officials, the Los Angeles Convention and Tourism Board, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and various tourist area business improvement districts to encourage city officials to become more proactive about curtailing the recent explosion of homeless tent encampments that seemed to overun key parts of our city since the beginning of the pandemic–including our own City Center where City Hall, Grand Park and the Los Angeles Police Department are located.

This letter signed by each of the SCTGA board members along with increased attention in the local TV news media helped prompt a major clean up of such densely populated encampments–most noticeably along the popular Venice Boardwalk and downtown Hollywood. In addition, the state department Caltran also made a noticeable effort in the removal of such encampments–particularly along the 101 Freeway between downtown Hollywood and downtown L.A.

The Southern Tour Guide Association has also offered the volunteer assistance of its own members to help participate in efforts to resolve to the City’s complex homelessness issue. More City and State funding than ever before has recently been allocated toward increasing available shelter facilities as well as the development of new strategies to assist those in the homeless population with mental illness and drug addition concerns. This problem will certainly will not disappear entirely, but with increased attention and resources both the City and State can hopefully keep it under confrol, as well as help more of those in dire need. Kudos to all City of Los Angeles and State of California officials who recently stepped up efforts to particularly reduce those encampants that were most visible to our visitor and tourist populations which threatened the comeback of our popular local tourism industry.

Earlier this summer 2021, on Friday morning June 25, I spearheaded a visit to the historic Woodland Cemetery in Compton, California with a contigent of members from the Southern California Tour Guide Association. Woodlawn is reputedly the oldest surviving cemetery in Los Angeles County. We had the pleasure of meeting Celestina Bishop (seen holding the clipboard in the above photo montage), the founder of the new non-profit organization ONE SECTION AT A TIME who on Mother’s Day 2020 adopted this important site with the goal to save and help restore the cemetery to a more respectable condition. Woodlawn had literally become abandoned in recent years after a number of highly publicized mismanagement scandals from former operators, then became overgrown by weeds and debris.

Celestina considers the cemetery home and started coming there with her grandmother when she was only two years old, sometimes even sleeping on the cemetery grounds against the headstones of her mother and three sisters. In 1977, she was the sole survivor of a bloodbath murder scene on a night of terror in Los Angeles. In recent years after the cemetery had been locked up by county officials, she was no longer able to visit with her deceased, beloved family members and that is what prompted her to take action, get involved and allow the site to provide more proper respect and atmosphere to all those buried there and for their surviving relatives. It is also the resting place for deceased members of many prominent, early Southern California families such as the Dominguez, Bixby and Watson families, as well as 18 Civil War veterans. When the summer temperatures cool down, a group of our members intends to return the the cemetery and volunteer for one of its monthly clean up days. One of the tour guide association’s goals is to help draw attention and provide volunteer support to underserved, but deserving community organizations.

On Thursday afternoon May 20, 2021 I hosted this SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW Downtown Culver City walking tour which I curated for the Southern California Tour Guide Association (I am on its board of directors as vice-president of programming) for its first official group event since the pandemic which was followed by an enjoyable happy hour mixer at the Ugo Italian Cafe restaurant, below are a few photo highlights and other interesting historical information about Culver City which long ago designated itself as the “Heart Of Screenland.” Below is an original still photo of Judy Garland with her dog Toto from the 1939 movie the “Wizard Of Oz” and to its right is a more recent photo of famous rainbow structure by acclaimed artist Tony Tasset near the entrance of the Sony Columbia Studios (formerly home of the famous MGM movie studios) lot that pays tribute to that film classic. This $1.6 million dollar and nearly 100 foot high, painted multi-color solid steel sculpture, which the city strongly wanted to commemorate the city’s film production history, almost didn’t come into existence. But back in 2010 the Sony/Columbia Pictures Studios urgently needed the city’s approval to build a new multi-story employee parking structure, so this giant art sculpture thankfully got piggy-backed into that project’s negotiations (which the studio would have likely never paid for it on its own) and since its 2012 unveiling has become its own modern day city landmark.

Association members gathered in front of the Ugo Italian Cafe restaurant at 3865 Cardiff Avenue–the corner of Cardiff Avenue & Culver Blvd.–from where we took a leisurely, 30 minute guided walking tour throughout downtown Culver City which I hosted.

Culver City has a lot of lesser known, but fascinating history. In the 1920’s during the Prohibition-era there were two extremely popular jazz nightclubs near the western border of the city (not in downtown so were not part of the walking tour, but worth honorable mention)–one was Fatty Arbuckle’s Plantation Club that opened in 1928 at 11700 Washington Blvd. But there was the even more popular Sebastian’s Cotton Club opened in 1926 at the corner of Washington & National and was one of the first to feature exclusively black musicians (sadly both buildings were demolished by the 1950’s and no longer exist today).

One of the most famous performers to play this West Coast Cotton Club was Louis Armstrong who got arrested by police in 1930 for smoking marijuana in this Culver City club’s parking lot with his then drummer Vic Benton.

We visited the historic Culver Hotel–site of the infamous “Munchkin Orgies”–where during filming of the “Wizard Of Oz,” nearby MGM studios decided to house the “little people” actors who portrayed the Munchkins. As the legend goes the mid-sized hotel did not have enough rooms and individual beds for each performer, so they had to place them three to a bed. And when reputed alcohol consumption and the newfound excitement of starring in a major movie were factored in–it’s been said that many of these guests got so raucous and out of control that the police were summoned repeated times during the duration of filming. Judy Garland, MGM producer Mervin LeRoy and others gave colorful recounts about their transgressions that can be found on the internet for more interesting details. These incidents also inspired the production of the 1981 film comedy “Under The Rainbow” with Chevy Chase and Carrie Fisher.

After the tour we congregated at the outdoor sidewalk cafe area of the delightful Ugo Italian Cafe to network and mingle at our no-host happy hour mixer. We were able to catch up with some of our local tour industry cohorts and celebrated both Culver City’s renaissance and the post-pandemic revival of the Southern California tourism industry!