Vintage Rides and Drive-Thru Trees

“Where’s that tree you can drive through?” According to park rangers, this is the single most frequently asked question in California’s national parks. I asked that very question myself on our road trip in the golden state a few years ago, although we never did up finding a drive-thru tree. Of all the cheesy tourist…

You Can Check into this Motel California, but You Can Never Leave

I just got a postcard (fine, it was an email) from my favourite motel in the world, to say that they’ve opened a brand new Hicksville location! Do you remember my road trip through California back in the summer of 14? Well if you don’t, you should probably see the trailer park motel I stayed in while…

America’s Newest Ghost Town

Eagle Mountain is among the America’s best preserved ghost towns, mostly due to the fact that it’s one of the newest. In the shadows of Joshua Tree in in Riverside County, the town was founded in 1948 by Henry J. Kaiser, a.k.a, the father of modern American shipbuilding. And yet even with a great industrialist on its side, this…

Date Night at the Moonlight Rollerway

So here’s pretty much how my morning went on the internet. First, it gave me this 1970s photograph of a rapunzel-esque babe on roller skates ↓ After some googling of “long-haired roller skating girl”, I eventually find out the girl was Debra Jo Fondren, playmate of the year 1978, which later led me to this video ↓ of Playboy’s Roller Disco…

Inside the Castle in the Middle of the Death Valley Desert

On my first California road trip a few years ago, one of our stops I was looking forward to the most was Death Valley’s mysterious Scotty’s Castle, a sprawling Spanish style manor built in the middle of nowhere in the roaring twenties. We were dangerously low on gas but determined to find this isolated oasis, and to my…

A 1940s Abalone Picnic

Looking for a lighthearted distraction from life, I went diving into the Life magazine archives and found just the thing– a Hollywood beach picnic circa 1944, with pretty ladies, handsome boys and a how-to guide on preparing freshly-caught Abalone steak sandwiches. The perfect way to start the weekend… Our picnic hosts are young actresses Martha O’Driscoll, Ramsay Ames and former Yugoslav swimming…

A Compendium of Vintage Pool Parties

Some things just look like a lot more fun in vintage grainy photos. I found a ton of nostalgic of motel pool postcards on Flickr and couldn’t help but put together another little compendium of some fabulously kitsch “pool parties”. When I went road tripping in California last summer, I tried to stay in as many motels…

Muscle Beach Girl, 1954

She was dubbed the “strongest seventh grader” in the world. In the mid-1950s, April Atkins was a regular at California’s muscle beach and routinely blew spectators away with her unbelievable strength and generally kicking strongmen’s butts. If you’re looking for a little motivation to tone up for summer, these photographs I dug up in the LIFE…

Picture Perfect LA: How to Settle into the City of Angels

You should probably know that I’m a California virgin– so this was my first visit to the city of Angels! When you arrive in such an iconic city, it can be a little overwhelming to know where to start. So for any other California virgins out there, follow me and let’s head straight to Abbot Kinney Boulevard…

This Abandoned Gas Station is a Portal into a Wes Anderson Wonderland

By the road in the small town of Ojai, California, a peculiar old mid-century gas station awaits your discovery. Converted from a sorry-looking roadside relic to something rather dreamy… Pull over at the old pumping station, but you won’t be filling up the tank here– more likely, you’ll be filling up your trunk with a hoard of…