I'm afraid that I'm small potatoes compared to many of the posters here; but here's my background and how I arrived here (put as laconically as possible):
A lifelong love of Catalina prompted me to start collecting old postcards of same. In due course I thought that it would be fun to make a site showing early Catalina, via a fictional story. I then thought, "Well, I have to get the visitors to Catalina, don't I? I could have just a little bit about the part of their visit before they got to Catalina." And then the "little bit" in Los Angeles turned into the lion's share of the site. In researching the L.A. views, at length I found myself repeatedly googled over to Noirish L.A. . . . and spending hours reading post after post. On the encouragement of our colleague Alvaro Legido, I eventually joined . . . which however put me into a cyber holding pen for about a year, a sort of limbo in which I could neither post nor re-attempt to join. One day, I somehow was released from limbo, and . . . here I am.
Such familiarity as I have with metropolis L.A. derives from these turn-of-the-century postcards I've collected, and the research I did when putting them together and writing the story for the site.
I have a further familiarity with pre-Yankee L.A., and L.A. up to about 1875; but sadly or happily that doesn't much come into play here.
Perhaps most importantly, another keen lifelong interest of mine is horticulture, and so I'll often have something to say about trees or flowers or whatever.
I'll (nearly) end by saying that NLA posters compose the most good-natured and well-behaved group of people I've seen on any forum (and I'm on a good number of forums), our spirited, knowledgeable, and gallant preceptor
e_r leading by example.
And so, welcome to NLA, and, um,
Hurrah for us!
That is all.
