1890s

Myself, wearing a brown cowboy hat, a green patchwork cowboy shirt, with a red tee underneath reading "Red Dog Saloon" and featuring a cartoon image of a dog, and green courdory pants, standing in front of a museum exhibit wall that has a large image of a bear wearing a pink cowboy hat, and text reading "Imagined Wests If you close your eyes and picture ‘the American West,’ what do you see? A desert landscape? A frontier town and tumbleweeds? National parks and majestic mountains? How about the Kansas prairies, the forests of the Olympic Peninsula, or the Hawaiian Islands? Do you picture a cowboy on horseback? Native Americans? Or the variety of people in Los Angeles or another Western city? This gallery explores the tales we tell about the West, both he ones we call ‘Westerns’ and the wide rage of other stories rooted in the region. Many of our ‘Imagined Wests’ - the places and characters we picture when we close our eyes - come to us through popular culture. Film and television, music and writing, visual art and fashion, performance, and even museums have given us so many Wests. When we mix these stories together, the American West may look different from our first associations. But the West has always been home to a variety of interconnected peoples and the stories we all create here."

The Autry: A Look at the American West, both Real and Fiction

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With a love of westerns, it’s no wonder one of my favorite museums in Los Angeles is The Autry, which is dedicated to the American west. Recently they opened Imagined Wests, an exhibit that showcases how the American West is presented in pop culture. In addition to Imagined Wests, there were a few other interesting exhibits,…

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Close-up of the brooch, a hatchet with "Carrie Nation" embossed on the blade.

Remembering the Hatchet Brandishing Carry A. Nation the Unsung Heroine of Prohibition

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When the majority of Americans think about the era of Prohibition, we think of the roaring 20s, with flappers, speakeasies, and flowing illegal hooch. However, the push for outlawing alcohol started before the arrival of the 20th century, and part of it was spearheaded by a formidable woman, towering at six feet tall, dressed in…

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A waist up shot of me standing in front of Heinold's wearing a tan cowboy hat, floral cowboy shirt, and yellow tie with a horse on it.

Grab a Drink at Oakland’s Oldest Bar, Heinold’s First and Last Chance Saloon

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Resting on the banks of the Oakland Estuary sit a pair of buildings that look like they have been plucked from a wild west set; a small wooden saloon and an even smaller log cabin, making for an odd vignette among the taller glass and steel structures, railroad tracks, and sailboats. The saloon, dubbed Heinold’s…

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Myself, wearing a purple psychedelic print long sleeve dress with a gold scarf at the neck, and a purple scarf in my hair, standing in front of the lake that sits in the middle of Hollywood Forever.

Touring the Hauntingly Beautiful Hollywood Forever Cemetery

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Hollywood. The home to the stars – both living and dead. While Hollywood and the surrounding areas have multiple cemeteries where Hollywood’s elite have been laid to rest, none is perhaps more notable than Hollywood Forever. Smack in the middle of Tinsel Town, and butting right up against Paramount Studios, this is the final resting…

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