The outside of the former Great Maple restaurant at Del Amo Fashion Center. It opened with the new upscale wing of the mall, and closed suddenly about a year later. (Like, people showed up to work and the door was locked.) Nothing’s moved in since then, and of course nothing’s likely to move in for a while now.

The outside of a building with several tall screens of square patterns in front of it.

The facade reminds me a little of the facade on the old medical building that used to stand near the corner. It was demolished for the parking lot that came along with the mall expansion. And I have to wonder if someone was actually trying to keep a little bit of the old building’s character alive?

A two-story building with tiles and several vertical screens with square-and-diagonal patterns and an awning.

Buildings with vertical lines between the windows, but instead of painting all the way up, they're staggered like static.

They’re in the process of adding another building to this office complex in Torrance. Meanwhile, they’ve cleaned up the existing buildings a bit, replacing the traditional stripe pattern of windows and narrow strips of wall with this broken-line pattern that actually looks interesting.

Originally posted on Instagram. When I imported it here, I decided to use the wider crop and description from Flickr.

Buildings reflecting the setting sun Reflected sunset in the lobby

Monday afternoon I noticed the sun was still shining into my office window. This was a bit odd since my window looks out at another building, and the sun had already sunk behind it.

I looked, and it was reflecting off the building I was in, then reflecting off the building across the way.

Later that evening, I stepped out of the elevator to the sight of sunlight streaming into the lobby from the east.

Wait, east? At sunset?

You guessed it. Once again, it was reflecting off another building.

This part of Los Angeles is built on a North/South and East/West grid, and with the autumnal equinox approaching, it’s lining up just about perfectly with the shiny reflective buildings.

It also aligns perfectly with the mirrors in my car when I’m driving east at sunset. The triple sun is almost worse than driving straight at it.

It’s no Manhattanhenge, but it’s still interesting. One of these days I’ll look up the grid alignment for downtown LA (it’s diagonal) and try to recapture a moment from a few years ago, when I was in exactly the right spot for the sunset to light up all the towers bright orange. That was awesome