Old LA Zoo – Griffith Park

This past weekend, Constantine and I set out to go exploring a few different abandoned areas of Los Angeles, we started out with the one we thought would be the easiest to find and sure enough it was.

The Old LA Zoo first opened in Griffith Park in 1913, the zoo didn’t do very good and had many animal escapes and was poorly funded, during world war I many of the animals died due to food rationing. In 1965, the zoo was moved to it’s present location just south of where this one is located. This past year during the Griffith park fires, the old zoo was nearly destroyed, thankfully it survived the fires and is still amazingly well kept.

We headed up the I-5 early Saturday morning and got off at the first Griffith park exit and parked in the Merry-Go-Round parking lot. Head back across the street and up the road (away from the merry-go-round). Here you will find a trail that heads to the right along the ridge and through some trees. Go up the trail just a little ways and you will find the first group of buildings. It’s really very easy to get too. This is the back side of what appeared to be the Lion cages. There were plenty of holes in the fence that you can get through to climb around. In fact the day we were there there was some group filming a movie, which included a large fake tiger!

We continued to hike around for a while and found a few different ways to get there. In fact if you don’t want to go through the hiking part, you can actually get to the front of the zoo by going around the Merry-Go-Round to the right of the parking lot and then just follow the larger parking lot to the left.

You can download or tracks for Google Earth here, and see just how easy it is to see. You could easily spend 30 minutes or a few hours exploring this old compound and the areas around it.

Our pictures of the Old LA Zoo are here. Or you can view the GoogleEarth GeoTagged photos here. Lastly you can view the other hard data from the weekend here.

Here’s some more references:
Marilyn Carolyn
Boing Boing
Zoo Zoo Zoo

On the way home we saw this cute little PokeMan bug… Crazy LA people:

(Notice the mini one on the dashboard!)

Cloned Food.

So I was reading the yesterday that the FDA has yet again approved Cloned meat and Milk to be introduced into the food supply.

I’m sorry, but I really don’t understand what the point of cloning food is. We have NO IDEA what kind of effects it will have in the long run. This is basically the same as in breeding. They’ll be taking the most prized animals, cloning them and then breeding the clones.

It all seems very unsafe to me. This is what “selective” breeding is for anyways, it’s just being taken to a whole nother level.

I disapprove.

Not a Way to Start.

I’ve already put out one fire so far this morning. Damn computers!

So I had this random ass dream last night, about me and Skinny…. How random, cause I haven’t seen him in years! We were spending a weekend together at my grandparents for some reason. And we showered together, but nothing sexual happened. We were just hanging out as friends. Very strange. I’d really like to see Mike again, although we were never good friends, he was always fun to hang out with.

I’ve been awake since 1 this morning. Blah. 🙁

Good news! I might get to see Blake on the 13th. And depending on if he can get away from the Monster-In-Law, he might be coming all the way down to the OC! So I’m excited already, but I’ll be super duper excited once all the plans are finialized!

Got the company christmas party invites yesterday. Cocktails at 6:30 and then dinner at 7, with free passes to the park for all day. Blah!

I also got another e-mail from the guy offering me a job. It’s like the exact SA job that I want, here’s the description he gave me:

The specific duties include ordinary things like dealing with our various hardware devices & related applications – linux & mac servers, email & ftp & web servers, routers, firewalls, mac laptops, asterisk phone switch, backups, monitoring, telecom lines, network printers, etc. – mostly in support of your co-workers and sometimes for our clients. For example, we have demanding & changing security compliance requirements and we need to change/improve many things to meet those requirements. Also we want to implement enterprise-class disaster recovery (using a combination of interesting opensource technologies like xen & drbd). Also we want to implement a global ldap/directory system for our distributed offices & clients (haven’t yet decided whether to use apple’s or redhat’s ldap implementations). Also we want to implement a wikipedia-like system for our product documentation (would be used by thousands of users around the world). Also we want to upgrade our bugzilla issue tracking system and integrate it more tightly with our business partners. Also want to automate monitoring of our systems & services. As you might imagine, there is no end to the projects necessary to keep a company modern & competitive, and you would play a role in many of them.

AND they just switched from all Desktop PCs to Mac desktops! Woot! It sounds like an amazing job.. Sad thing is that I’d have to take a 15,000 pay cut. Which I really don’t want to be doing. So yeah.

I wish my cat would understand that taking these damn pills is for her own good! Stupid animals.

Blake made me watch this amazing movie yesterday called, “House of Sand and Fog.” I dunno how old it is, but if you haven’t seen it you MUST go watch it! I was crying 30 minutes into the movie and it only got sader from there… But I HATE the fucking Cop man, he’s a freaking bitch, I wish the kid would have shot him.

But you know I’ve been very emotional lately because commercials have been making me cry, so yeah.

I want to go romp around in the snow with someone sexy and make snow angels!

On Friday I was in Laguna Beach and found my next art purchase. It’s an original, 7feet wide by 6feet tall. It’s amazing. Now I just have to save money to buy it!

Adios.

What is WRONG with people!

Ok, what is wrong with people… Here are a few of todays top news storys:

1) Kids get fined $1,000 for handing out cookies to be nice

2) PA is going to fine you $50 if your underwear is showing

3) CA is banning bon fires

4) CA is banning cosmetic surgery for animals (IE, tail cuttings, ear cliping, AND CAT DECLAWING etc)

5) IA is banning spinning hubs

6) Kid gets supsended for bringing a butter knife to school to butter bread

7) Kid gets suspended for turning in a gun he found at a school bus stop

These are 5 good reasons why the law system here is fucked up… If these idiots in congress have enough time to bitch about such stupid things and to make laws about them… Then they clearly need less time in congress and less pay.

This country is turning into a moronic police state. And sadly, since most of the country follows Cali’s example, it’s going to be pretty bad. It seems you can’t fucking do anything here without breaking some law.

Gah! Let me off!

4-day weekend.

I really don’t want to be at workright now. The weekend was so nice and relazxing and I was back on a night time sleep schdule and everything. It was great.

Besides the little fuck up with the hotel, and a bit of an annoyance finding dinner, and then screaming at Ty when I had to park forever away Saturday in San Diego was fun. Though I need to go back and actually spend the night and get everything done that I want to do.

Andrew and I found the bath house in hillcrest though. I want to go, but I’m really scared at the same time. I think it’d be funny to just go in and look around.

Seawolrd was alright, though I’m not sure if the year pass will be worth it. Though I suppose now that I have it, I’ll have to make use of it. I just wish there was more places you could go watch the big animals. Fuck all the little things you can see at any fucking zoo. Bah! Though feeding the sea lions looked fun. They’re so cute.

Thursday and friday were both very relazing. Hanging out wiht people and just not doing anything in general. Not like every other day I don’t every do anything, but whatever. It’s all the same.

I did get very pissed at Ty this weekend though. Mostly because of the parking situation when I got home saturday. I had to park all the way up Alicia, just under a mile from my apartment. And I get home and find out that Chris has the pass in his truck and he’s parked in the spot. This just really annoys me because they do that all the time. Either chris has the pass and is parked i nthe spot or Ty has it and is parked in a green and I’ve asked them many times that if they are going to HAVE the pass then to use it. Not just come home and immedietly park in the spot or whatever. I thikn it’s only fair that I get use of the spot 50% of the time since I pay rent. But whatever. I was just really pissed off already that night and it was the third night in a row that I had to park all the fucking way up there. Gah!

But anyways, I went off on Ty about that and then about Chris paying rent/utilities. Apparently Chris DOES pay rent, though I doubt he pays Ty much. That really doesn’t affect me any though so I don’t care, as what i’m paying is very fair for what I get. The thing that really annoys me is that Chris DOESN’T pay any utilities. And he comes home EVERY night and washes/Dries hiis ONE TOWEL. which is a HUGE waste of energy and costs ME money. He also showers/uses the lights and everything else. Which costs ME money. I think he should be paying 1/3 of the utilities since he DOES LIVE THERE.

Ty came back with the fact that JonJon is over a lot and that maybe he should pay utiliies, which is completely UNFAIR. First he doesn’t do laundry there, second and mostly he DOESN”T LIVE THERE. He doesn’t have a key and he’s NOT THERE when I’m not there. So it’s not like he’s using any extra utilities. Every utilitie he uses is also consumed by me, because wether he’s there or not, I WOULD BE there at that time.

AND, he has cleaned our apartment/done dishes/etc. WAY more then CHRIS ever has. So I think that Ty saying JonJon should pay utilities is completely unfounded.

Needless to say, Sunday I spent looking for apartments. I didn’t find anything good in the paper though. Prrobably because it’s so close to the end of the month that everything is already rented out for Nov. I figure the first sunday of the month is probably the best time to look. So I’m going to do that.

I really want my own place, but at the same time I want to save that money. If only I could find a roommate that I can get along with. JonJOn would be a great roomie, if only he were more financially stable. He suggested Dave, who I’ve met a few times and seems to be a nice guy, but I understand he does pot a lot. Whcih I couldn’t stand. It wouldn’t be bad as long as he doesn’t keep it in the apartment. But who knows.

JonJon said he knew of a place in Dana Point that’s $900 for 1bedroom, all utilities included. So I might look into that. But that might be a little to far south for me. I’ll have to put some real thought into this. Though once you add on internet and etc, that would be about 40% of my income, which is higher then it should be. (You’re supposed to only spend 33% of your income on housing).

Umm, today I went and got a membership at 24 hour fitness. We went to the Ultra-Sport up here in Newport Beach. It’s the only one in Southern CA. The cheapest I could get for there was 24 months at $31 a month. But that was for the all club, but it came out to be twice what it was if I got an all club to the club size just one down from the ultra-sport. So that’s what I got 36 months at $20 a month. And the only club I can’t go to is that Ultra-sport. but they gave andrew and I a free one month pass to the ultra-sport.

The girl that gave us the tour was so cute though and so fun. She was new and so confused when it came to signing us up. And she gave us hugs at the end cause we were so patient with her. And her boss was a total ass to her though and I felt bad. I really liked her though. And she gave me a lead for some aparements up here in Newport that might be cheap. I’ll look into those as well.

After that we worked out for a short bit and then went back to Andrews. Ate supper and then Andrew went to his meeting. Came back and shortly after he got back we started playing FFx-2… For some reason I just could not keep my eyes open, so I took a short nap, which ended up being about 3 hours. 🙁 So I wasted the whole night hanging out with him.

He said in his journal that he’s noticed the differences in me. Yes, like i”ve said I’ve changed a lot. And honestly, for the worse. You’re seeing what I was in HS. the depressed state of me.

Umm. I don’t want to be at work right now.

My PU’s bought another batch of 700 trees. She also mentioned going to Mexico, and looking at this property that the Keebler guy bought and stuff. My PU’s are crazy. Oh, I also found it strange that my cousin steven and his girl had a child… I didn’t even know she expecting. maybe I should talk to them more offten.

I also forgot to mention that ty bought another ugly rug.