Nudie Cohn

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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Myself, wearing a cream cowboy hat, yellow shirt with a large white Cadillac and script reading "Nudie's Rodeo Tailor" and jean shorts with white stars, standing in front of blue neon reading "DeSoto Pharmacy" hangs near the ceiling. Large red neon spelling "BOWL" and the neon sign for the Palomino.

Revisiting Treasures from the San Fernando Valley at Valley Relics Museum

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Imagine loving an area so much you accidentally create a museum. That’s exactly what Tommy Gelinas did with his love of the San Fernando Valley. Gelinas owned a screen printing studio and began filling it with bits and pieces from the Valley, such as neon signs, menus, figures, and so much more. Eventually his collection…

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Myself standing in front of the Palomino sign, wearing a blue jean jacket, white t-shirt reading "Gram Parsons and the Fallen Angels" and a dark brown cowboy hat.

The One Night Revival of Hollywood’s Favorite Honky Tonk, the Palomino Club

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When people think of Hollywood, they think of searchlights rocking back and forth, glittering movie stars, and flash bulbs popping on a red carpet. But just on the other side of the Hollywood sign is North Hollywood, and the further out you go, it turns heavily industrial, and you begin to feel a long way…

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Valley Relics

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2020 Update: This post features photos from Valley Relics Museum’s older location. For a more updated look at their museum, please see this post. After visiting Corriganville, Patrick and I headed to Valley Relics Museum. Valley Relics is a museum dedicated to preserving the history of the San Fernando Valley, with a wide array of…

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