Hollywood Sign

BEACHWOOD CANYON, HOLLYWOOD SIGN Distance: 4 miles Duration: 1.5 hours Difficulty: 3 Transportation: Beachwood Canyon DASH bus. Ample free street parking. This is a brisk city walk with a country feeling, starting high in Hollywood's Beachwood Canyon and climbing almost to the base of the Hollywood sign. Along the way are fantastic views of the Hollywood Reservoir, some famous homes and a visit to some of the area's secret public staircases.

On a steep slope, above a retaining wall with scrawled warnings ("Stay off, Stay out, Private Property"), Colin Rich begins to unpack black bags full of cameras and gear. The warnings confirm that this is where he wants to be. The secluded Echo Park hillside offers a sweeping view of downtown Los Angeles. Over the next three hours, he will take a sequence of nearly 1,000 images, studying the scene and adjusting his camera as the sun falls and the city lights emerge. PHOTOS: Los Angeles, one frame at a time Rich, a cinematographer and time-lapse filmmaker, has spent many nights in the last year photographing the city from out-of-the-way locations such as this.

Gates across streets, a viewing platform and warning signs in various languages were suggested Tuesday as ways of handling tourists who flock to see the Hollywood sign. An old idea — an aerial tram connecting Travel Town and the ridge behind the sign — was suggested by Hank Pinczower, a 50-year resident of the hillside neighborhood. "It would be a moneymaker for the city" and get tourists off local streets, he told about 120 homeowners and city officials. Tour company owner Patrick Hickey proposed that the city collect fees from each Hollywood tour bus and van that could be used for private security guards to patrol roads beneath the sign, watching for people smoking or blocking streets while they take photographs.

I can still remember the first time I saw Los Angeles. It was December 1980, I was 9 years old, and the view came from the back seat of my older brother Lee's brown Chevette as we climbed up the Grapevine. My two sisters and I were crammed into the car along with all of Lee's earthly possessions - well, most of them, anyway, since the butterfly chair he had tied to the roof flew off somewhere near Kettleman City - which amounted to stacks of paperback books, three typewriters, every issue of Starlog that had been published to date and whatever pots and pans our mother could do without.

I once went to the open house of a property that was advertised as having views of the Hollywood sign. It was within reasonable proximity to Hollywood, the kind of drab, nominally Spanish Colonial duplex (arched doorways, inadequate parking) that you find all over neighborhoods east of La Brea, so I had no reason to doubt this claim. When I arrived, however, I caught no glimpse of the landmark. That is, until I walked into a bedroom and saw, next to a lava lamp and an inflatable plastic palm tree, a framed poster of the Hollywood sign.

Spelling it out Re "Residents near Hollywood sign want tourists to get lost," Sept. 19 Headlines such as this one may sell papers, but they do not contribute to a constructive and productive conversation. Hollywoodland bears no hostility toward tourists. Unlike world-famous landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty, the Hollywood sign is surrounded by more than 4,000 acres of highly flammable brush. Unaware of this fact, tourists from around the world frequently discard cigarettes in an area subject to extremely hazardous brush fires.

The Hollywood Sign Fantasy and Reality of an American Icon Leo Braudy Yale University Press: 224 pp., $24 The jaded native tends to have fitful feelings ? or none at all ? toward his city's most popular tourist spots. Take that cliché of L.A. clichés, the Hollywood sign. Who thrills at the thought of schlepping out-of-town relatives into the hills for a close-up view? And yet USC professor Leo Braudy's "The Hollywood Sign: Fantasy and Reality of an American Icon," a short, lively book on the sign's surprisingly forlorn history, dialed back my cynicism.

A silver lining Re "Lofty hopes," Feb.10, and "Century Plaza hotel saved from demolition," Feb.11 If we are to find any bright spots in the effects of the recession on Los Angeles, maybe it is that now preservationists have better bargaining power against developers in preserving the historic places in our city, as is evident by the recent bid to acquire the property near the Hollywood sign and the deal struck to preserve the Century Plaza...

He came to their rescue when they were between a rock and a hard place. So it's fitting that Hugh Hefner will be honored with a boulder for helping the Trust for Public Land acquire Cahuenga Peak, the mountaintop next to the Hollywood sign. Leaders of the trust said Tuesday they plan to place plaques on large boulders to thank the Playboy magazine founder and two others who stepped up at the last moment to donate $1 million each to acquire the peak from its Chicago-based owners.

Los Angeles police detectives are investigating the slaying of a man believed to be of Armenian descent whose head was discovered Tuesday afternoon by two dogs off a hiking trail below the Hollywood sign. Two women were hiking with nine dogs in the rugged hills near the 3200 block of Canyon Drive when two of the dogs found a plastic bag in the brush containing the head, according to law enforcement sources with knowledge of the investigation, who asked not to be identified because the probe was still unfolding.

Growing up in Philadelphia, I could hardly avoid history. Virtually every semester in grammar school, we would be packed on to buses to visit all the approved historical stops: the Liberty Bell, Ben Franklin's grave, Betsy Ross' house, then lunch and back to improper fractions. Southern California was different. When I first arrived in the 1960s, all I could see was the absence of the East, no overhanging past, no famous history. There were palm trees and open spaces, as well as a fair number of buildings.

What a view! Re " Getting a close-up with an L.A. icon ," March 23 Now that it's a media event when a resident of the city gets permission to visit the Hollywood sign, it makes me sadly wistful for the many times throughout my youth and young adulthood when I didn't have to win a nationwide sweepstakes to get next to the landmark and take in that wonderful view of the city. I just had to hike up the hillside. William Campbell Los Angeles City Council vs. Wal-Mart Re " Council votes too late to block Chinatown Wal-Mart project ," March 24 So the L.A. City Council was outwitted by Wal-Mart, which secured its permits the day before the council voted against the discount retailer's project in Chinatown.

An online sweepstakes offering a chance to touch the Hollywood sign would have flown the winner to Los Angeles free from anywhere in the country. Instead, Gillian Singletary drove over from Los Feliz on Thursday for the chance to scramble in jeans and sneakers down a very steep, sandy, slide-prone hillside and claim the prize offered by LA Inc., the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau. That a resident won instead of a visitor couldn't have been more fitting really, given that the reason for holding the contest was to celebrate a major gift to the people of L.A. Before a campaign led by Los Angeles Councilman Tom LaBonge and the nonprofit Trust for Public Land brought in $12.5 million in donations large and small to buy nearby Cahuenga Peak, the private developer that owned the 138-acre property got it zoned for four luxury homes.

The Smoking Deaths billboard isn't famous. It's not the Hollywood sign or Rodeo Drive. Tourists don't come to town clamoring to see Disneyland, Grauman's Chinese Theatre and a billboard that counts up annual smoking deaths. But if you live in West L.A. anywhere near the 405, you know the sign. You've seen it looming over Santa Monica Boulevard, quietly toting up the number of Americans who've kicked the bucket after years of sucking on cancer sticks. The Smoking Deaths billboard is black, with big white letters that say "Smoking Deaths This Year.

As the sun set over the Hollywood Hills park where police spent Wednesday searching for human body parts, they still didn't have a name to go with the man's head discovered there a day earlier. What they did have were two hands and two feet. Authorities were optimistic that the hands were in good enough condition to obtain fingerprints. The homicide investigation began Tuesday afternoon after two dog walkers in Bronson Canyon Park noticed their dogs playing with a plastic bag and went to inspect it. PHOTOS: Body parts found below Hollywood sign Inside was a man's head.

Los Angeles police detectives are investigating the slaying of a man believed to be of Armenian descent whose head was discovered Tuesday afternoon by two dogs off a hiking trail below the Hollywood sign. Two women were hiking with nine dogs in the rugged hills near the 3200 block of Canyon Drive when two of the dogs found a plastic bag in the brush containing the head, according to law enforcement sources with knowledge of the investigation, who asked not to be identified because the probe was still unfolding.

The Mona Lisa is a magnet for visitors to the Louvre, her beatific smile luring crowd upon crowd — everyone elbowing to get their own snapshot or video of the famous painting. I kept walking. It wasn't worth battling for position. I was reminded of this after the recent uproar involving the Hollywood sign. I've seen it from the Santa Monica Freeway and admired it from Griffith Observatory countless times but never had the desire to see it up close. For months now, Hollywoodland, the neighborhood around the sign, has been struggling with how to handle the growing number of tourists.

Pity the rubes. Those wayward tourists who dawdle in their cars and tour buses along Beachwood Drive, enraging the locals as they haltingly seek that perfect Hollywood sign photo op - they know not what they do. Maybe you're not from this neighborhood either, but you have savvier Hollywood plans. They involve horse trails, hidden hotels, a magic castle, a monastery - and that's just a start. To close out our yearlong series of Southern California Close-Ups, here is a set of 10 Hollywood micro-itineraries, suitable for visitors from across town or across the planet.

The ads on Craigslist run repeatedly all year long, pleading to Los Angeles' musicians and singers. Come, they say, play. You will not be paid. In December, they seem to be everywhere. "Use your talents to bring Christmas JOY to people who really NEED us!" "Karma earned here! Join us in bringing JOY to sick, sad, lonely people. " And so men and women show up from all over the area, lugging their heavy drum sets, keyboards, amps. Singers come ready to belt out standards.