A couple of years I got to spend a week in NYC completely unplugged. No business meetings, no family obligations.  Zero agenda. It was glorious. A week of roaming the island at leisure was one of my most memorable trips anywhere. I’d wake up and decide on an Uptown day for visiting Museum Mile and strolling through the posh …
Let the City Happen to Me
   There’s so much of NYC to see that no matter how many times I’ve been there, the unfamiliar always trumps the familiar. Manhattan elicits the same excitement whether I’m seeing it for the first time as a college freshman on a miniscule budget or as an executive many years later on a less restrictive business account.   It …
Esta Es Mi Ciudad
 Para celebrar el Cinco de Mayo, visitemos El Pueblo donde comenzó Los Angeles…   The city of Los Angeles was born out of a settlement forged near the Los Angeles River in 1781. It was there that some 11 families built a community now known as El Pueblo de Los Angeles (http://www.elpueblo.lacity.org/elpueb_gi2.htm), a historical landmark in downtown LA directly across the …
A Century in LA Is Like an Eon Anywhere Else
 We’re used to the commuter life here in LA and it’s hard to imagine a life without cars. But believe it or not, we do have a public transportation system. When gasoline hit over $4 a gallon, some of us learned to carpool and even take the bus or metro rail (http://www.metro.net/riding_metro/maps/default.htm). In tiny Pasadena, we have the Gold …
Secret Garden
 There are many charming small cities within Los Angeles County. And by small I mean it still takes half an hour to three times that long to get from point A to point B, depending on how lucky you are once you are on the freeway.  Past the 110 tunnels where the freeway dead ends to Arroyo Parkway, …