Los Angeles Reinvents Itself Constantly

This flickr set is awesome, albeit possibly only to residents (former & current) of Los Angeles.  Apparently, for that shitty 1990’s movie Volcano*, in which the La Brea Tar Pits erupt into a massive volcano that flows down Wilshire to the coast, pulling permits to film on the most famous section of the pre-eminent street in Los Angeles would have been cost-prohibitive, even for a big stupid expensive film.  So they did the next best thing.  They recreated the entire strip down in Torrance, from Wilshire & Fairfax (the old May Co, Peterson Automotive Museum) all the way up to the Tar Pits, crazy dying mammoth statues included.  Ridiculous.  It’s like finding a 1:1 scale recreation of Times Square over in Yonkers ’cause it’s cheaper to film there.

*Bonus note for obsessive collectors of Jonson oriented trivia - it was the trailer for this shitty movie, in combination with the shitty maudlin Counting Crows song “A Long December” that convinced me to move back from Arlington, VA to Los Angeles, where I eventually met & impregnated my wife, the missus.  So, thank you, makers of crappy Volcano based Los Angeles disaster movies.  Without you, there would be no Little Baby Cupcake.