Explaining L.A. With Patt Morrison

The geology that cursed Southern California with earthquakes also blessed it with restorative hot springs.

Long before so many people did their shopping online, Los Angeles’ department stores -- Bullock’s, Robinson’s, May Company, Hamburger’s and more -- were the place to be.

L.A. is a place like no other. You’ve got questions. Patt Morrison probably has answers and can definitely find out.

What was life like on Dec. 6, 1941, and in the years before then for one group of people for whom Pearl Harbor would drastically alter their lives — the Japanese and Japanese Americans in Los Angeles?

When you think about it, it doesn’t make much sense for 1890s L.A. to put its port all the way in San Pedro. This is the story of how that came to be — and not the competing alternative, Santa Monica.

California has two statues representing it at the U.S. Capitol. Ronald Reagan replaced the anti-Confederacy Thomas Starr King, and it seems likely that Junipero Serra will be the next to go.

General Motors? Big Oil? Big Rubber? The demise of L.A.'s streetcars stemmed from public policy and our own appetite for automobiles.

Los Angeles’ reputation for civic corruption pales in comparison with Chicago or San Francisco. But the City of Angels has a long history of sinners in public office.

Southern California’s manufacturing helped win World War II. But the war effort and decades of polluting industry have left a toxic legacy.

For much of its history, Los Angeles didn’t have a city flag. It does now, and it stands out for its sawtooth bands of bright color, one of which is supposed to represent orange crops.

Where do Santa Ana winds come from and how did they get their name? And how does the O.C. city of Santa Ana feel about it?

Should California be split into two states? Three? Six? At the very least, we’re due for another round of intrigue on an eternal question about the Golden State.

Sept. 9 marks the day in 1850 that California became a state. It used be a major holiday in California, with parades and festivals. Nothing is stopping you from celebrating, of course.

For Labor Day, a look at company towns and socialist labor utopias in Southern California, as well as when L.A. almost elected a socialist mayor.

The city’s parking problems go back over 100 years. And by 2015, a study found, 14%, of L.A. County’s incorporated land was devoted to parking.

A politician with a gun and a badge — that’s what L.A. County’s sheriff is and has been. And the arrangement of having an elected top lawman has led to some strange situations and outsized personalities since we got our first sheriff in April 1850.

If L.A.’s architecture is a hodgepodge of styles, its churches are great examples: A-frame, Mission, modern — it’s all here.

Reggie the alligator and Bubbles the hippo captured the public imagination. Civil War-era camels were a spectacle. And the feral parrots and Catalina bison are just as Californian as any native species at this point.

The backyard swimming pool went from Hollywood status symbol to suburban must-have to dubious during the drought. Meanwhile, racial segregation played out at public pools and in the courts.

You can determine L.A.'s seasons by our plant life. For example, right now, it’s jacaranda-blooms-stuck-to-your-windshield season. And to understand the Southern California landscape you see, you have to realize that, like you, it is probably not from around here.

Look at those mountains. Look at those trees. Look at all these other songs about Los Angeles that predate Randy Newman’s not-exactly-official anthem for Los Angeles.

L.A. had Mickey Cohen, Bugsy Siegel and Jack Dragna — Al Capone even visited — but sprawl and civic corruption may have helped tamp down the violence here.

Everybody knows Angels Flight. But what about Court Flight? Or the Mt. Washington Railway? Or the Catalina Island funicular? Here’s the story of the cars that climbed Southern California’s hills and the automobiles and other calamities that all but made them extinct.

If you’re feeling the springtime itch to go look at open houses, first of all, we’re sorry about the sticker shock. But here’s a primer on the hodgepodge of home styles you’ll see around Southern California.

Native American settlements were first, and then the rancho system -- Spanish then Mexican land grants throughout California -- were built atop and near those settlements and still shape our geography and place names.

“Them: Covenant” on Amazon Prime is a reminder of the all-too-common housing covenants that restricted who could buy homes in certain neighborhoods in Compton, around Southern California and elsewhere. Determined Black people over the decades fought for their rights to live where they pleased.

Will the Cinerama Dome movie theater suffer the same fate as some L.A. movie palaces — torn down for a parking lot? Or will it be saved for future generations?

Bright lights shone from the top of a mountain and from Los Angeles City Hall. Whistles and bells rang out from Boyle Heights to the harbor. It’s the price of life in the big city.

Downtown Los Angeles is but one ‘center’ of a city that grew out, rather than up. That was (mostly) on purpose.

A deadly fireworks explosion in Ontario is a reminder of California’s patchwork of pyrotechnics laws: illegal in L.A., legal in the next town over, sometimes. The current status quo partly dates to a Sacramento corruption and sex scandal in the 1980s.

The Watts Towers, Urban Light, the Corporate Head, Four Arches, and yes, the wacky and never-quite-working Triforium offer outdoor public art.

The city of Tujunga? Eagle Rock? Watts? Nope. Those are all neighborhoods in Los Angeles. Here’s what’s going on.

Angelenos can be spotted a mile away in other locales, waiting for the walk sign while locals jaywalk with abandon. What’s that about? And what happens when people do jaywalk here?

In Los Angeles, founded for Spain and a part of Mexico for generations, we pronounce our Spanish-language place names in a unique way.

Long before Disneyland and Magic Mountain, Southern California was home to some pretty wild amusement parks, including those with lions, gators and, as one unlucky person discovered in the 1970s, an actual dead guy.

People, streets, a fire station and even a mountain have names that sketch the hardships, triumphs and hard-won progress that are part of Black history in Southern California.

Bing Crosby sang about it. “Chinatown” immortalized its centrality to L.A.'s water story. And in any other metropolis, the San Fernando Valley would probably stand on its own. Patt Morrison explains the Valley.

In Southern California, an area code can say a lot about a person. Are you a 310, a 213 or a 323? What does it mean if you have a 562 or an 818?

Along La Cienega near Inglewood. At Beverly Hills High School. In people’s backyards in Echo Park. Atop Signal Hill. Oil wells are everywhere in and around L.A. You sure don’t see that in Paris (France).

Tommy Lasorda, Tom LaBonge and Tom Bradley all contribute something special to Los Angeles history and who we aspire to be.