Olvera Street

Seventy-eight years ago, on Oct. 8, 1932, David Alfaro Siqueiros — at the age of 36 already an important Mexican artist but not yet the icon he would become — sweated shirtless on a cool fall night as he "painted for dear life," The Times' art critic, Arthur Millier, wrote at the time. He was on a deadline, and running late. The unveiling of the work "America Tropical" was just hours away, and the very center of the mural had yet to be filled in. No one except Siqueiros (and Millier)

If newspaper headlines were still set in lead type, we could keep this one handy and drag it out every few years: "Trouble on Olvera Street." The block-long alley-cum-marketplace is part of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, the Tut's tomb of the original city, Spanish Mexican style (Native American traces are long gone). The "birthplace of L.A." was a tumbledown mess in the late 1920s when Christine Sterling saved it and spruced it up and made Olvera Street a huge tourist draw.

Jack Sanchez is a descendant of the old Californios, the people who lived in Los Angeles when it was a frontier outpost of Mexico. In their day the Californios were wealthy and respected. Even after the United States conquered California and made it the 31st state in the union, most of the new English speakers here addressed them by the honorific Spanish title "don." Eventually they lost nearly everything they had. Sanchez called me to get a small bit of their glory back.

A few weeks ago, I read that the L.A. Marathon, which takes place Sunday, had set up this year's course to show off many of Greater Los Angeles' best-known landmarks. Starting at Dodger Stadium and ending at the Santa Monica Pier, it takes participants past Olvera Street, City Hall and Grauman's Chinese Theatre as well as onto the Sunset Strip and Rodeo Drive. Marathon spokesman Peter Abraham said the idea, conceived in 2008, took nine months to bring together, but now he was certain organizers had created an "inspiring route" that had become a destination marathon.

Frank Ramirez, known to generations of customers as Mr. Panchito in honor of the Mexican restaurant he owned for more than 35 years in San Gabriel, has died. He was 88. Ramirez died Dec. 18 at a San Gabriel hospital a week after having a heart attack, said his daughter Eileen Leiva. A mason by trade, Ramirez opened the popular Panchito's Restaurant in 1956 on a whim. With colleagues, he laid the bricks for the restaurant on the site of San Gabriel's first city hall and presided over it, often clothed in traditional Mexican garb, until it closed in 1993.

"The Lost Symbol," author Dan Brown's new, violent thriller, involves some strange findings at a Masonic temple near the White House (wine-filled skull and severed hand, anyone?). Brown capitalizes on the Masons' reputation as a secretive fraternal and charitable movement that has been accused by conspiracy theorists of just about everything, including plotting with extraterrestrials to take over the world. Standing in quiet contrast to such drama is Los Angeles' 151-year-old Masonic Hall.

If the city of Los Angeles were running a historic park, an annual cost to taxpayers approaching $1 million might be mildly troubling. If it were running a shopping mall, we'd want to know why the city was paying nearly $1 million to subsidize its commercial tenants. Isn't it supposed to work the other way? And if the city were operating a parking concession and still coming up short, there would be scandal.

Tourists will get a boost in downtown Los Angeles today when a new "hop-on, hop-off" bus service starts. But it will cost them. Double-decker sight-seeing buses will travel between Olvera Street and Staples Center each half hour. The route will meander past the Civic Center, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Broadway's historic movie theaters, the Central Library and other sites starting today at 10 a.m., said City Councilman Tom LaBonge. Starline Tours will offer the service, which will be similar to sight-seeing routes operated in Beverly Hills and Hollywood.

Happy birthday, Los Angeles. El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula would have 227 candles on its birthday cake today, if anyone had thought to bake it a cake. Or even to remember today's anniversary. On Sept. 4, 1781, 44 settlers walked nine dusty miles from the San Gabriel Mission to what is now Olvera Street in downtown L.A. and began the city's history, at least as far as European settlement was concerned (the basin had been settled by the Tongva centuries earlier)