HOLIDAY ADVENTURES IN LOS ANGELES

Greeters at the Swedish Fair at the Shrine Auditorium
Each year when our friends Mary and Linda plan with us for our Southern California adventures, the idea of going to the Swedish Fair comes up, along with a Christmas lunch at the Tam O Shanter Inn on Los Feliz Boulevard as it heads towards Glendale. This year, we did them both.
The Fair was great fun, and a lady even gave me a pepper-cookie. (In the good old USA, we call these ginger snaps. Little kids in Goteborg Sweden sing the cutest Christmas song about pepper cookies.)
At the Tam O Shater Inn, we all got to taste our pal Linda's winter mushroom soup - sooooo good, it was worth planning an invasion of Scotland for.
Kirsten of Copenhagen - Photo by Gerald Fecht for the Archives of The Museum of the San Fernando Valley - December 2009
Kirsten Carr (Kristen of Copenhagen) once had a jewel of a shop in Tarzana. Then the great Northridge Earthquake of 1994 devastated her business. Can you imagine the damage done to a store full of crystal and china from Sweden and Denmark? My wife Janne and I went to her store to replace our Royal Copenhagen Christmas plates and have been friends and customers of Kirsten ever since. How much fun it was to see her with Jule' treasures today at the Chistmas Fair (Everybody calls it the Swedish Fair). Today Kirsten lives in Woodland Hills.

On the way home from the Fair, we stopped at Peter Shire's amazing art studio in Echo Park to watch neighborhood dogs having their pictures taken with Santa Claus. There was stunning pottery and of course Peter's world class sculptures. I hope you have seen Peter's NoHo Arch in North Hollywood on Lankershim Boulevard.

In the early evening, Janne and I returned into the city to stop by the Christmas Party of the AIDS Lifcycle organization. It was held at the Gay and Lesbian Center in Hollywood. There, aside from visiting with friends that we have made over the years as volunteers for Ride, we saw a fine show called Boxes Exposed by Dwora Fried. The exhibit of box sculptures runs through January 30. 1125 North McCadden Place in Hollywood.