Griffith Park: It’s central to L.A.

It’s 5:50 a.m., and sunlight finds Edward “Eddie” Landry sitting alone at a picnic table beneath a canopy of oak trees along Griffith Park Drive. Somewhere in his 60s, maybe, Landry tunes a battered transistor radio to an AM standards station, lights a cigarette and begins to tap a pair of drumsticks against the bench, a slightly arrhythmic beat he will keep for the next several hours.

“I’m trying to learn how to drum; I been coming here 15, 20 years, every day.” He wears an old red 49ers cap and the layered-jacket look of someone who sleeps outside. “I used to live in the neighborhood, now I live up on the mountain,” he says, lifting his chin to the west. “I have a blanket up there, go up at night and come down in the morning.” Why does he drum at this table? The retired North American aircraft worker thinks a moment before saying, “It makes a good sound.”

Landry is one of more than 10 million people who go to Griffith Park each year to exercise their enthusiasms. Like to hike? Griffith Park, situated in the eastern Santa Monica Mountains and one of the country’s largest urban park, has destinations that range from world famous (the Hollywood sign) to scenic (an apex where one can see downtown Los Angeles, Mt. Wilson and Catalina Island) to oddball (a bust of James Dean with a cashew-shaped head). Need a movie location? So did D.W. Griffith (for whom the park is not named), who filmed parts of “Birth of a Nation” here, as did the producers of the “Batman” TV show, who placed the mouth of the Bat Cave in Bronson Canyon.

Ah, Griffith Park. You drive by every day, you’ve been there a thousand times. Like many of us, you tend to take it for granted.

So, then you know what’s happening at the Griffith Observatory? They’re ... renovating. Actually, all systems and elements of the observatory will be rehabilitated to their original 1935 grandeur. The Planetarium Theater will be completely refurbished and reconfigured, and the observatory will be expanded to provide more public program space, including the Leonard Nimoy Theater. While you can’t go up there until 2005, there’s the Satellite -- the “observatory in exile,” where they have astronomy exhibits, a planetarium theater (opening in 2003), and a telescope to view the moon, stars and planets at night.

The bridge entryway to the Los Angeles Zoo was recently demolished to make way for the first of the zoo’s six Master Plan exhibits: the Zoo Entry Plaza, which incorporates the Children’s Discovery Center, an interactive learning center, and Sea Lion Cliffs, an outdoor saltwater exhibit for California sea lions, where visitors can see these native animals frolic above and below water. The zoo is also breaking ground on Pachyderm Forest, a 4.5-acre tropical environment for the elephants and hippos, which features an underwater “hippoquarium.”

The Department of Water & Power is donating more than $20 million in improvements to the zoo and the park. In conjunction with the Bureau of Engineers, it is preparing to install “solar trees”--steel structures with canopies of solar panels and photovoltaic cells -- that collect energy, power the zoo and send the surplus to the mother grid. The agency is also responsible for the 7th Annual DWP Light Festival, which is, in the words of Director of Recreation and Parks Manuel Mollinado, “one of the best light shows on the West Coast.”

Well, of course he’s going to say that; he wants you to come. And why shouldn’t he? The park is gorgeous this time of year: The weather is perfect, a perennial Indian summer; the oaks trees are changing colors; there’s a new koala at the zoo and, soon, a pair of golden monkeys from China. And you can always catch the show near the ranger station on Crystal Springs Drive every Sunday morning, an impromptu drumming session where dozens of people bang out a beat on steel drums.

And there are all the familiar reasons to rediscover -- or discover for the first time -- Griffith Park. Want to throw a birthday party? Stage a charity run? See exotic animals? Visit museums and attend concerts? Play tennis? Golf? Ride a horse? Or maybe you just want to spend as many hours as it would take to traverse Griffith Park’s 4,107 acres in solitude, which -- against all logic in a major city -- you can do. For despite accommodating the masses and whatever else is visited upon it (including brush fires, which flare up each year with the regularity of the tax man), Griffith Park is an easy place to walk for hours on trails overlooking the city and never see another human being.

Though one may run into a pack of ibex, but more on that later.

In the beginning ...

“It must be made a place of recreation and rest for the masses, a resort for the rank and file, for the plain people. I consider it my obligation to make Los Angeles a happier, cleaner and finer city.” So said Col. Griffith Jenkins Griffith, for whom the park is named, when he offered the land to the city of Los Angeles in 1896.

Griffith was a seminal Hollywood character: His military title was likely a sham, he was alternately lauded and vilified for the money he made in mining and real estate and during a jealous rage he shot his wife in a Santa Monica hotel room. In any case, the city didn’t want the land, which was referred to by one newspaper as a “rock pile,” but did covet the water rights and access to the Los Angeles River and so accepted Griffith’s largess. Fast-forward 100 years, and a tributary statue of Griffith is erected at the corner of Riverside Drive and Los Feliz Boulevard, the busiest of the park’s nine entrances, where today amid the sound of traffic is an anachronistic whinnying of horses and blowing of train whistles....

Kid stuff

The pony ride is just past the Los Feliz entrance to the park, and from a distance what one sees are the tops of bobbing toddlers’ heads, moving around the small corral. A different kind of ride is next door, aboard the Griffith Park Southern Railroad, a miniature train that wends past weathered “Western” installations (a saloon, a native village, a plastic fawn) and, during the holidays, makes a stop in the North Pole, where kids can alight and have their picture taken with Santa.

Also during the holidays (through Dec. 26, from 5 to 10 p.m.) is the annual Department of Water and Power Light Festival, along Crystal Springs Drive. The massive illuminated arrangements -- from a plane taking off at LAX to Lakers players -- are hokey and gorgeous, and cruising the half-mile route is about as winter wonderland as L.A. gets. (Avoid peak hours, however, or the magical 20-minute ride can turn into a two-hours-of-merciless-traffic-was-it-worth-it-to-see-Shaq-rendered-i n-twinkle-lights? experience.)

The merry-go-round, built in 1926, features 68 beautifully carved horses with jewel-encrusted bridles and a brass organ that plays more than 1,500 selections of marches and waltz music. Another kind of old-fashioned treat can be had at the Travel Town Museum, with its collection of locomotives, some dating to 1864. Kids are welcome to climb in and around the cars; parents can wander through and become nostalgic for train travel and Hitchcock movies.

And don’t miss the inside of this museum, which features milk wagons and antique automobiles, as well as this early 20th century ad: “Rambler Breaks Los Angeles-San Diego Record -- Three hundred and thirty miles in ten hours and thirty-two minutes and not a single stop for repairs.” More trains near Travel Town: another branch of the Southern Railroad and L.A. Live Steamers, a local club devoted to the preservation of locomotives through scale models. Rides are offered free to the public on Sundays when the trains are running.

This sporting life

Any given morning finds runners of every speed huffing over the hills of Griffith Park. On weekends, they share the road with charity road races, such as the Jimmy Stewart Relay Marathon, Run for a Green L.A. and the Pedigree Great L.A. Dog Walk. The park is also training ground for more serious running groups, such as the Los Feliz Flyers and the National AIDS Marathon Training Program, whose trainees, many of whom start out potato-shaped but aching to help a good cause, can be seen running in packs every Saturday; after 26 weeks, they run a marathon.

Those who prefer to go off-road have more than 53 miles of trails, at elevations from 384 to 1,625 feet above sea level. There are many well-worn fire roads to such notable places as the Hollywood sign and the summit of Mt. Hollywood, the highest peak in the park, which affords spectacular views of the entire Los Angeles Basin. People whose idea of a good time is scrambling up rock-covered ridges in the dark can check out the thrice-weekly Sierra Club-led night hikes. These hikes, which draw up to 500 participants in summer, start at 7 p.m. and meet in the second parking lot above the merry-go-round. They last about two hours and range in difficulty from an easy walk on a flat, paved road (Level 1), to shinnying up crevasses and sliding down muddy runnels butt-first (Level 6).

Other athletic activities include 28 public tennis courts, at three locations: Griffith-Riverside Pay Tennis and Vermont Pay Tennis, where courts are $8 an hour, and four free first-come, first-served courts just below the merry-go-round (whose calliope music adds a wacky touch to play).

There are four municipal golf courses: Harding (18-hole; 6,536-yard, par 72), where there’s also a full-size driving range; Roosevelt (nine-hole; 2,400-yard, par 33); Wilson (18-hole; 6,942-yard, par 72); and Los Feliz, a par-three course that’s scruffy and perfect for beginners. The Tregnan Golf Academy, a program run in conjunction with the city of Los Angeles, offers golf clinics, camps and tournaments to kids 7 to 18, regardless of ability.

“The Plunge” is Griffith Park’s public pool, open only during the summer. John Ferraro Athletic Field is a 26-acre facility with two soccer and rugby fields, home to umpteen local tournaments. The Equestrian Center is open year-round and includes boarding, training, livery and stable rentals and indoor and outdoor show arenas. Sunset Ranch Hollywood offers day and moonlight rides through the park. And armchair explorers can turn on their computers and take a virtual geologic field trip through Griffith Park or see a satellite photo of the Hollywood sign from space.

This land is their land

While Griffith Park is truly an egalitarian environment, its roads and paths shared with equanimity by joggers, equestrians, cyclists and golf carts, it is also a wild place, home to red-tailed hawks, turkey vultures, coyotes, opossums, lizards and rattlesnakes. Deer are so comfortable nibbling grass along the roadside that they barely look up when motorists pass. There’s a bird sanctuary in a wooded canyon with a small stream on Vermont Canyon Road, and a pair of golden eagles has been spotted (by yours truly) perched on an eye-level fence on parkland abutting the L.A. River.

The aforementioned band of ibex is less habituated. Eight of these mountain goats native to Asia Minor arrived at the Los Angeles Zoo in 1984 -- and jumped a fence shortly thereafter. Perfectly suited to life in a rocky tableau, the ibex are presumed to still live in the park, with one reportedly spotted as recently as last year.

Other forms of wildlife include the gazillion picnickers-birthday partyers who pack the park on weekends and holidays. There are public barbecues, tables and, sometimes, playground equipment in many of the zoo’s five picnic areas, the nicest perhaps being the Old Zoo Picnic Area, which features obsolete animal cages from the park’s old zoo.

Other scenes, also thrive in certain areas of the park. Early-morning joggers and other visitors should be wary lest they stumble upon lovers in tryst along Vermont Canyon as well as in cars pulled along the shoulder beneath the overpasses where the 5 and 134 freeways meet.

“The [park] rangers do run into situations, people drinking up in the hills at night, but overall, the park is safe,” says Mollinado. “The biggest complaints we have are traffic congestion and finding a picnic table on the weekends. And yes, there are different pockets in the park where you have sexual activity; there seem to be different areas for homosexual and heterosexual activity, and it’s not the kind of experience you want people running into when they visit the park, but we have 4,200 acres, so, that’s a lot of area to keep watch over.”

The greater scope

The 6,162-seat outdoor Greek Theatre plays host from May through October to every sort of musical act, from rock and R&B; to Ukrainian song-and-dance troops. The acoustics are such that the music washes downhill and over Los Feliz, so that early slumbering residents hear Neil Young or the Go-Gos in their dreams.

The Griffith Observatory, arguably the most dramatic location in Los Angeles, isclosed for renovations until 2005, though a modest display of astronomy exhibits, called the Griffith Observatory Satellite, is on display elsewhere in the park. From certain vantage points and on foot, one can still see the observatory’s magnificent view of the millions of lights along the avenues, gem necklaces that stretch for miles and then drop into the sea.

What one cannot, unfortunately, get near (because the area under construction is hard-hat only) is the stun-one-into-silence Astronomers Monument, a 37-foot-high statue depicting Copernicus, Hipparchus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton and Herschel and, balanced atop their wise and massive heads, an armillary sphere meant to represent the universe. There are few pleasures as exhilarating as running through the grass surrounding the monument on a dark, windy night.

Gene Autry has gotten a lot of play lately as the late owner of the World Series champion Anaheim Angels. The singing cowboy should also get props for the Autry Museum of Western Heritage, which, aside from preserving cowboy and Indian art and artifacts, hosts Western exhibits from jaunty and unusual angles, such as the current show, “Jewish Life in the American West,” and last year’s “How the West Was Worn,” which featured a stunning array of Western wear, from intricately beaded buckskins to rhinestone suits.

The Los Angeles Zoo earlier this month introduced its newest acquisition, a koala from Australia, named Baz by one of the zoo’s trustees, in honor of the Australian film director Baz Luhrmann. Other news at the zoo includes half a dozen new exhibits breaking ground, from a tropical forest for the pachyderms to an outdoor saltwater exhibit for sea lions. One zoo attraction that cannot be seen but that has a positive effect on the park and beyond is the riverine transition zone surrounding the zoo’s parking lot. This channel, replete with native California plants, collects rainwater, filters it and delivers it back to the L.A. River. More eco-news from the zoo parking lot: The Bureau of Engineers and the DWP are preparing to install tree-shaped solar panels that collect energy and send it back to the DWP mother grid.

It’s sunset, and at the far end of the zoo parking lot, Phil Young holds a Highland bagpipe, an enormous instrument with several bladders. “I come out here and blow the pipes a few times a week,” says Young, an animator for Disney who plays with a pipe and drum outfit called Sons of the Desert. A few cyclists stop and wait for him to begin. Do passersby often watch him play? “Yes -- but it’s not only me. There are other bagpipers known to play here. We come to the zoo parking lot because it’s away from residential areas -- and far enough away so we don’t give the animals heart attacks.”

With that, he begins a Scottish ballad called “Victoria Harbor.” The sound is as heavy as a bag of blood, steadfast and exultant. Then, the sound is forced into harmony with another; there is an evangelist standing on a spit of median, eyes closed, holding a Bible overhead and preaching in Korean to cars entering the 5. Both sounds -- utterly dissimilar and yet not at odds -- rise together into the mountains.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

The lowdown

Hours: The park is open daily from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., with trails closing at dusk.

Info: More information is available at (323) 913-4688 (Griffith Park ranger station) and (213) 485-5501 (Department of Parks and Recreation).

Online: Information about many of the activities in the park can be found online at www.ci.la.ca.us/RAP/grifmet/gp/

Virtual tour: The virtual geologic field trip through Griffith Park can be found on the Web at www.laep.org/target/technology/secondary/griffith/vft/VirtualFieldTri p.htm.

The long view:

See the Hollywood sign from space at https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a002100/a002108/.

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For the kids

Pony ride: Near the corner of Los Feliz Boulevard and Riverside Drive, (323) 664-3266

Southern Railroad: Near the corner of Los Feliz Boulevard and Riverside Drive, (323) 664-6788

Merry-go-round: Park Center, Griffith Park Drive, Griffith Park, (323) 665-3051

L.A. Live Steamers: 5200 Zoo Drive, (323) 662-5874

Travel Town Museum: 5200 Zoo Drive, (323) 662-5874

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Arts and mind

Greek Theatre: 2700 N. Vermont Ave., (323) 665-1927, www.greektheatrela.com.

Griffith Observatory: 2800 E. Observatory Road, (323) 664-1191, www.griffithobs.org.

Griffith Observatory Satellite: 4800 Western Heritage Way, (323) 664-1191, www.griffithobs.org/satellite.html.

Autry Museum of Western Heritage: 4700 Zoo Drive, (323) 667-2000, www.autry-museum.org.

Los Angeles Zoo: 5333 Zoo Drive, (323) 666-4650, www.lazoo.org.

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Sports in the park

Los Feliz Flyers: www.losfelizflyers.com

National AIDS Marathon Training Program: www.aidsmarathon.com

Sierra Club: (213) 387-4287, www.angeles.sierraclub.org

Griffith Riverside Pay Tennis: 3401 Riverside Drive, (323) 661-5316

Vermont Canyon Pay Tennis: 2715 Commonwealth Ave., (323) 664-3521

Harding Municipal Golf Course: 4730 Crystal Springs Drive, (323) 663-2555

Roosevelt Municipal Golf Course: 2650 N. Vermont Ave., (323) 665-2011

Wilson Municipal Golf Course: 4730 Crystal Springs Drive, (323) 663-2555

Los Feliz Municipal Golf Course: 3207 Los Feliz Blvd., (323) 663-7758

Tregnan Golf Academy: 4341 Griffith Park Drive, (323) 906-3858, www.laparks.org.dos/golf/tragnan.htm

Los Angeles Equestrian Center: 480 Riverside Drive, Burbank, (818) 840-9063, www.la-equestriancenter.com

Sunset Ranch Hollywood: 3400 Beachwood Drive, (323) 464-9612, www.sunsetranchhollywood.com