Explore Pasadena Sunday, Sept 15 with Field Trip
Pasadena, best known for the Rose Parade and Rose Bowl which act as televised ambassadors for glorious Southern California, is a city full of secret and surprises, and on Sunday September 15, you can explore and learn more about LA’s slightly northern neighbor on Field Trip Day. The free afternoon of exploration, guided by the Field Trip smartphone app, will take you from the curious to the cool, the historic and highbrow to the low down and dirty, from mansions to movie locations, with some side trips into the mysterious and mystical. (And of course some art, since CARTWHEEL is part of the Field Trip infostream).
The afternoon begins in the Mercantile Alley, right in the heart of Old Pasadena and behind Lucky Baldwin’s, a British pub named after a prominent California businessman so dubbed because he was “lucky” in both his mining investments and horse racing. This is where you and members of the CARTWHEEL team will get your start packages that will send you off on the day’s adventure.
The afternoon of exploration ends at The Hotel Green, built in 1903 and a national historic landmark, where we’ll enjoy a celebration worthy of the turn of the century high society that stayed there–complete with music, magic, wine, and clowns. The Moorish-influenced tile work and architecture of The Hotel Green are stunning, and this is a rare opportunity to spend time in this private residential hotel. Sign up here Field Trip Day
With Field Trip you can tailor Sunday, or any day, to suit your interests and sate your curiosity about wherever you go. On September 15 you can learn about some of Southern California’s most eccentric and unique characters, like pioneering chef Julia Childs and occultist/rocket scientist Jack Parsons, one of founders of the Jet Propulsion Lab (where the fictional scientists on The Bang Bang Theory work) who was a acolyte of Aleister Crowley and a member of Crowley’s occult fraternal organization, the Ordo Templi Orientis. And here’s an arty side note to Parsons, whose tenant and partner in ritual magic, L. Ron Hubbard would eventually create Dianetics and Scientology: After her husband’s death in 1952, Parsons’ second wife, Marjorie Cameron Parsons, focused on her art work, painting under the name Cameron In 1957, the Los Angeles Police Department shut down a exhibition at Los Angeles’ avant-garde Ferus Gallery. featuring Cameron and Wallace Berman. The charge? Obscenity.
Cameron’s art work was included in the Pasadena Museum of California Art‘s exhibition “L.A. RAW: Abject Expressionism in Los Angeles 1945-1980, From Rico Lebrun to Paul McCarthy.” Currently on exhibition at the PCMA, “Sam Francis: Five Decades of Abstract Expressionism from California Collections” and “Ignite! The Art of Sustainability.”
Top: Cameron’s portrait of Jack Parsons as the Dark Angel. Bottom: This image was part of the LAPD’s case against Ferus gallery. Photos of Cameron’s art from author’s snapshot collection.
