Pages Tagged “Orange County”
Reviews
- Comics Toons N’ Toys ★★★★★ The best comic store I’ve been to in Orange County. The staff is friendly and helpful, and the selection is incredible.
- Kéan Coffee ★★★★★ Great indie coffeehouse. Good coffee, good place to hang out. Established by the founder of Diedrich Coffee, a local chain back in the 80s and 90s.
- Remembering Diedrich Coffee
Blog Posts
- The Adventures of Bus Ryder and the Busonic Woman!
Apparently this was a 1976 comic book to promote the then-new county bus system with campy knock-off superheroes (and really wonky perspective). I mean, Bus Ryder looks suspiciously like Superman, and there’s no question where the Busonic Woman got her name. Photo courtesy Orange County Archives.
- Looking Back at Camp Myford
I’ve been looking through photos from back when we could, you know, go places and found a set from the hills above North Tustin during a year that we got enough rain to turn the hills green. There were some really clear shots of Peters Canyon, Saddleback, and even some south Orange County hills that […]
- The Visible Housing Timeline
I saw an article about open space preservation efforts in Newport Beach, and decided to look up the area on maps’ satellite view. Looking around nearby areas in Newport, Laguna Beach, Irvine, Tustin, Orange, etc, I realized: the timeline of residential development in central Orange County is actually visible. Newer neighborhoods have bigger houses than […]
- County Fair-Pocalypse
On Thursday I took the day off from work and we went to the Orange County Fair. It was a particularly bizarre visit because Costa Mesa was beneath the smoke plume from the Holy Fire (so named because it started in Holy Jim Canyon) burning in the Santa Ana mountains. The sky, except for clear […]
- Saddleback Snow, New Year’s Eve
I was expecting to see more snow on the San Gabriel mountains after yesterday’s storm, but was kind of disappointed…until it became clear that the bulk of the snow was on another mountain range. Saddleback was bright white, visible shining as far away as Carson as we made our way toward Orange County. Snow not […]
- Exploring the Creek (Two Photos)
My 3-year-old son wanted to go exploring during a picnic, so I followed along. I wasn’t expecting to find a stream with water in it during a heat wave.
- California Drought Sim, Water Use, and Preserving Open Space
According to simulations, California could adapt to long-term drought. We just have to actually do it. Meanwhile, the Irvine Co. sets some limits on sprawl.
- Open Space. Good!
Final pieces of Irvine Ranch complete âopen-space puzzleâ in O.C. – LA Times This spot in eastern Orange is now part of a proposed 2,500-acre gift from the Irvine Co. to Orange County â 1,400 acres here and an additional 1,100 in Anaheim Hills. Well, good. I’ve lamented the loss of both open space and […]
- “Who puts a fountain in the middle of a library?”
I was immediately reminded of the Huntington Beach Central Library when stumbling on this line in The Magician’s Land.
- Return of Saddleback & San Gabriel Snow
The rain on Friday dropped the annual light dusting of snow on Saddleback. I caught glimpses of it while out walking with J on Saturday, but the peaks were still shrouded in clouds. Sunday, however, the sky was almost completely clear. I kind of wish that sign wasn’t in the middle there, but my Photoshop […]
- Beware Mountain Lion (Peters Canyon Hike)
A couple of weeks ago I just had to get out of the house for an afternoon and found myself at the entrance to Peters Canyon Park. The last time I’d been there, the park was closed due to recent rains. This time, it was open. Several trails run from the entrance around the edge […]
- Old Town Irvine After the Storm
Well, technically, during a lull in the storm. The clouds were moving very fast, with light and shadow moving over the empty fields and office parks, and I waited several minutes for the sun to play over this scene. I particularly liked the contrast of the dead brown tumbleweeds scattered around the bright green meadow. […]
- Crowds at the Street Fair
I’ve finally found something more crowded than Comic-Con: The Orange International Street Fair on a Saturday night.
- Laguna Fireworks Gallery
We went to Laguna Beach last night for the fireworks display, starting with dinner at Ocean Avenue and moving down to the beach at sunset. They shoot the fireworks out over the bluffs, making the beach a prime viewing spot. We could also see the fireworks from Dana Point and Newport Beach lighting up the […]
- Fireworks Ban
Most cities in Orange County have banned the sale and setting off of fireworks to and by the general public for safety reasons. Of course, fireworks are an Independence Day tradition, so most cities also put on professional displays on the Fourth of July. But a lot of people like the hands-on experience of setting […]
- Return to Temporary Wetlands
Photos: The rains have been tapering off, and the ponds that filled the empty lot have been shrinking, giving way to grasses and wildflowers.
- Cloud Puffs Over Saddleback
I’m going to have to start taking my regular camera with me to lunch. Yesterday I looked out and saw a huge, puffy cloud, virtually alone (beneath a thin layer of wispy cirrus), hovering above Saddleback. When I stopped to take a picture, I realized that there was a whole line of little puffball clouds, […]
- Office Park Ponds
Photos: Rain has turned the empty lots in the Irvine Spectrum green…and for the first time I remember, filled hollows with water to create temporary ponds.
- San Gabriel Snow and Clouds
Photos: Clouds drift past the snowy San Gabriel Mountains, the peaks lit by the morning sun.
- Stars & Lightning with Cirque du Soleil
A trip to see Kooza near a giant orange balloon, during a thunderstorm.
- Macy’s Domestic Water
Okay, obviously, these valves control the water for Macy’s, …but why Macy’s *domestic* water? Is there another pipe for foreign water?
- SJC Smoke Plume
Smoke from a brush fire near San Juan Capistrano, seen from the parking structure at the Irvine Spectrum. I wouldn’t have caught this if I hadn’t checked Twitter when I sat down to lunch and seen an update from @LATimesfires. (As it is, I still had to make do with the camera on my phone.) […]
- Great Park, Great Pumpkin
The Great Park Balloon in Irvine, California, all dressed up as a Jack-o-Lantern for Halloween. I was hoping to get a shot of it aloft, but it landed as I approached the park. It looks really eerie lit up at night, floating off in the distance. Or just floating above office buildings. It’s not as […]
- SCR at Night
Photo of South Coast Repertory Theater in Costa Mesa, early in the evening.
- Irvine Postcard
Would you believe I found a postcard for Irvine? Itâs a bunch of office buildings with mountains in the background. I guess it makes sense. I mean, what else would you put in an Irvine postcard?
- Saddleback Haze
Taken Friday morning. You can really see the layers in the haze that (I assume) has drifted down from the Morris Fire near Azusa.
- Elf Storage
ELF STORAGE, originally uploaded by conradh. A decade ago, Katie saw a self storage place with the first S missing from the sign. She didn’t get a picture, and has been looking for another sign with the same failing ever since. Last summer we spotted a sign with the S broken. It turns out that […]
- Lost Food: Panda Panda
Panda Panda was a steam table Chinese restaurant in Lake Forest around 2000, until it was replaced by Panda Express, then bulldozed for a new Panda Express.
- Deep Fried WHAT???? A Night at the Fair with Al’s Brain, Melissa Etheridge and a Ferris Wheel
Photos and remarks about Al’s Brain, fried food, Melissa Etheridge concert and a night ride on the Ferris Wheel at the OC Fair.
- Boom!
We took our annual trip down to Laguna Beach to watch the fireworks display launched off the bluffs. This time we made reservations for dinner at a restaurant we’d walked by a bunch of times, Ocean Avenue Restaurant and Brewery. Would definitely go there again. Around 7:30 we staked out a spot on the beach, […]
- Satellite Market, Fast Food Options, Ada and More
Last night I learned that the Satellite Market near Disneyland is still there, but the Sputnik-style sign has been replaced. Old & new photos. Side salad vs. fries study: Adding a healthier option caused people to choose the unhealthy option more often. It’s made me a lot more aware of what I order for lunch. […]
- South Coast Plaza Garden Show
We went to the mall during their spring garden show, with vendors taking up nearly all the hall space of one wing to show off plants, tools, decorations, etc.
- Not In New York
We went out to the “Great Park” yesterday to see if we could go up in the balloon. It turned out to be completely booked for the day (there was some big ice skating event going on) but we got in some photos on the ground, including a couple of pics with our copy of […]
- Catalina Island Inversion
The south end of Santa Catalina Island as viewed from Newport Beach this morning around 9am. The winds have cleared out a lot of the haze that would normally obscure the island, and I had a great view of its entire length. Interestingly, while the sky seemed clearer at 8am than at 9am, by which […]
- Green Lots & Venus
Walking to lunch. Vacant lots are actually green! Spotted Venus at 1 in the afternoon! Thanks, Sky Map app!
- Saddleback Snow – Two Days Later
Photos of the unusually heavy 2008 snowfall in the Santa Ana Mountains as seen from Irvine, California.
- Woodbridge Snow View
Saddleback and the Santa Ana Mountains got an amazing amount of snow yesterday, and I went out to a couple of spots this morning to take photos.
- Misty Mountains: Another San Gabriel Snow Panorama
Last January when I caught a view of the entire range of the San Gabriel Mountains absolutely covered in snow, I figured it was a once-in-a-lifetime sight. Sure, they get snow every year, but they usually don’t get that much snow. Amazingly, I got to see something similar again today. In a way, even better, […]
- Seeing LA From Irvine?
It’s an amazingly clear day morning today. So clear that I suspect I saw part of the outline of Catalina Island off in the distance, between trees and buildings, on the drive to work. So clear that I decided to drive up to the park at Quail Hill in Irvine where I once spotted what […]
- Fire Twirling With Farscape’s Chiana
Actress Gigi Edgley, probably best known to American audiences as Chiana on Farscape, has another talent: fire twirling. She’s been performing at the weekly Huntington Beach street fair with (I think) her boyfriend, and plugged the show at the latest Farscape convention in Burbank last month. My parents, also Scapers, set up a trip with […]
- Smoke Plume Above Trees
Smoke from various fires up near Los Angeles and Corona, creeping across the sky into Orange County.
- OC D&D
Something like 10 years ago, Katie saw a self-storage place in which the opening S was unlit, making it read, “Elf Storage.” She’s been looking for another one ever since, and we finally caught one in Newport Beach a few months ago. This one was even better, because the S had actually fallen off. Of […]
- Knowing too much
Finally watched A Scanner Darkly this weekend. Better than I expected. One sequence pulled me out of the film, though, and only because I live in Orange County. In the middle of the film, several characters start a road trip to San Diego. They start on the 5 freeway in Anaheim and drive south until […]
- Starbucks Overreaching
A couple of years ago, Starbucks bought all 30 or so company-owned Diedrich Coffee stores. Â There were a couple of franchise locations left (well, kiosks, really) in Orange County, and one of the Texas stores, but that was it. Â Most of them were converted or shut down, with only two keeping the Diedrich name and […]
- Under Construction Indefinitely
We went to Wayzgoose* at UCI on Saturday, which meant getting our annual taste of what’s changed about the college campus. I’d caught the new Student Center last fall, but Katie hadn’t been back since last year, before it was finished. Some of the meeting rooms buried in the hill still remain from the previous […]
- Golden to Green
Back in October, shortly before the Santiago Fire, I went sightseeing in the Tustin Foothills and snapped a picture of Peters Canyon, the hills behind it, and Saddleback in the background. A month later, I took a picture of the same view after the fire and posted the two as a before and after comparison. […]
- Con-Fusion
I knew MegaCon wasn’t in Los Angeles, but when I looked it up and saw Orange County, I was momentarily confused.
- San Gabriel Snow Panorama
We went to The District on Saturday afternoon to catch Cloverfield and check out the Auld Dubliner. I took the Warner exit to go in the back way, and noticed someone standing out on the shoulder of the ramp, taking photos. I looked out past the wide expanse of empty fields and was astonished to […]
- Green and Brown
While driving to work this morning, I looked off to the left and saw this beautiful view of fluffy white clouds hugging the mountains, and bright sunlight on the patchy green hills.* When I got into work, I went straight for the corner conference room that has a view in that direction… but the clouds […]
- Saddleback Snow: Don’t Blink
There was a little snow on Mt. Saddleback on Sunday, but not much worth mentioning. Sometime early Tuesday morning, though, a freak storm seems to have hit the mountain… and only the mountain. We certainly didn’t get any rain down here in the flatlands. At 8:20, the mountains were still shrouded in clouds: By 9:00, […]
- Yield to Confusion
Found this while wandering around the Lemon Heights area a few weeks ago, looking for scenic viewpoints. It’s on the Skyline trail, near Peters Canyon park. It seems to be saying this: Cyclists* yield to pedestrians and horses. Pedestrians yield to horses. Horses yield to no one. But if you’ve never seen it before, the […]
- Before and After
On a clear day in early October, I went driving up into the Tustin Foothills to see what I could see. I took a bunch of photos at a turnout, and also stopped at an intersection that gave me a nice view of Peters Canyon, the hills behind it, and Saddleback in the background. I […]
- Ashen Mountains
Things are starting to get back to normal, at least for those of us not directly affected by the Santiago Fire. There was a layer of haze coating the mountains Monday morning, but the air smelled normal, and the sky, when the clouds broke up, was blue. My co-worker who stayed behind in Silverado came […]
- Clouds Replace Smoke
The change in the weather has brought in clouds today (Saturday), and even the occasional sprinkle of rain. It apparently helped slow the Santiago Fire considerably. I went into work this morning to deal with some network problems (you may have noticed that this site was down for a while), then went over to the […]
- Shift
Winds have shifted northward. The good news: my workplace is no longer drenched in smoke from the Santiago Fire. I can see blue sky and wispy clouds, terrain back to the nearby hills, and the twin peaks of Saddleback rising above the smoke. Reportedly the northern peak (the one without all the radio transmission towers) […]
- A Breath of Fresh Air. Please.
The Santiago Fire has moved up into the mountains, raging through the Cleveland National Forest. The canyons are still under evacuation, but out here in the Saddleback Valley, it just looks like a really smoggy day. With yellower-than normal sunlight. It was actually cold this morning, for the first time in well over a week. […]
- Fire by Night
With the winds dying down, the smoke from the Santiago Fire clung loosely to the mountains most of the day. Unfortunately, smoke from the new fires down on Camp Pendleton drifted up the coast to take its place, bringing back the yellowish sunlight. Also, without the wind to clear them away, ashes left a thorough […]
- Smoky Sky
Had a chance to run through all my Santiago Fire photos from the last few days with Katie and my parents, and they picked out a few favorites that I hadn’t already posted. This first one was Monday morning around 10:30, as I drove into the region covered by the smoke plume. Just a few […]
- Watching the Santiago Fire
Now that the wind and smoke have shifted, watching the progress of the fire has become a nervous office pastime. It’s far enough not to threaten us here, but from the windows along one side of the building, we can see the blackened hills through the haze. And we’ve got people who live in the […]
- More Fire
The wind shifted during the day, and by mid-afternoon the sky near where I work was considerably clearer—even though the fire seemed to be getting closer. Some geography: The Santa Ana Mountains run parallel to the coast, and form the northeast border between Orange County and Riverside County. Here are a couple of photos from […]
- City of Smoke
No 3AM evacuations, though we’re several miles away from the danger zone anyway. The Santiago fire we spotted yesterday was stopped before it crossed into suburbia, but judging by the OCFA map it was a near thing. Now it’s burning southeast, into the hills and toward the canyons. Some of which are inhabited. (Yes, there […]
- Wind and Fire
The Santa Ana winds arrived in earnest overnight. We spent most of the day indoors, going about our usual business with the howling wind and occasional thump in the background. I’d glance up from my book (I’m about halfway through Regeneration, the conclusion of Julie Czerneda’s 3-part Species Imperative) and look out at the trees […]
- Priorities: Caffeine!
The new shopping center, The District (built on a corner of the former MCAS Tustin base), has an ad campaign with the slogan, “A million reasons why.” Each poster shows someone posing with a random number and something that can be found, done, or resolved by going there. Here’s a guy who has his priorities […]
- Big Orange Balloon
Today I went with a group from work to ride the Great Park Balloon, a.k.a. that big orange thing that’s been floating over Irvine for the last month. After about a decade of wrangling, the city of Irvine has started converting the former El Toro Marine Base into, well, a park. It looks like it’s […]
- The Weird…
Last night we went out to the Orange County Fair to see “Weird Al” Yankovic in concert (the Straight Outta Lynwood Tour). I don’t remember how we managed it, but we got tickets for the fifth row, putting us about 10 feet from the stage. We were off to the side, maybe 20–30 feet from […]
- Dry spell
It’s been a dry year for California. Water districts all over the state are geared up for drought conditions. The hills in the Orange County area are still golden-brown in mid-April. Last year at this time, they had finally turned green for spring. Here’s a shot from the Irvine Spectrum area from April 6, 2006: […]
- Spring Haze
On Sunday, March 11, a brush fire struck in the Anaheim Hills area. It was controlled relatively quickly, and by the next morning, the smoke had settled into a blanket of haze over Orange County. For contrast, here’s a shot from a few weeks earlier (February 23), when it was unusually clear. This was taken […]
- The Market Ace!
Actually the Lake Forest Market Place, spotted a few weeks ago.
- Pick a city, please!
A few days ago I was remarking on the signs by the side of the 405 indicating where to find the Cal State Fullerton El Toro Campus. This is odd for several reasons, namely: The signs went up years after the city of El Toro changed its name to Lake Forest. Having the two cities […]
- Smoke and Fog
Monday morning dawned foggy. By the time we left for work, most of the fog had burned off, but we looked out the car window and saw a huge, billowing gray cloud hugging close to the ground. If this had been the usual fire season, or if there had been no fog to start with […]
- This Way to the Egress
Whenever I see this freeway sign, I think of the story about PT Barnum trying to get people to leave and putting up a sign saying This Way to the Egress.
- Living in Middle Earth
A few years ago I lived in the city of Lake Forest (formerly El Toro) for a bit. One of the interesting things about Lake Forest is its collection of streets named after characters and places in Lord of the Rings. (And yes, these were around long before the movies were made.) I still drive […]
- There is no The
Every once in a while I listen to Star for a few minutes. And every once in a while I catch their station break. And I cringe whenever I hear them talk about being the whatever station for “L.A. and the O.C.” I’ve lived in Orange County most of my life, and I have never […]
- Hobbit Center
On our way out of Laguna Beach, we ended up on a side street parallelling PCH. Fortunately, we spotted this gem of a corner shopping center: Now, the nearby city of Lake Forest has had Tolkien-named streets for years (Gondor, Elrond, and others), and of course UCI has its Middle Earth dorm complex. I have […]
- This is why you plan ahead
It seems that Benton County, Oregon, has decided to stop issuing any marriage licenses until the state makes up its mind who can and can’t get married. For now, straight couples in the area will have to go to the next county over to get married. The rationale, of course, is that they “need to […]
- Smoke
The weather has been… unusual the last few days, to say the least. Tuesday afternoon I could see smoke from at least two of the fires that had broken out. There was a huge cloud billowing up from the southern horizon, and another huge cloud creeping over the hills to the north. Both seemed to […]