Treasures of the Valley » Mike lawler

Spike Jones Market Spike Jones Market was an instantly recognizable landmark in La Crescenta during the ’50s and ’60s, thanks to a gigantic neon blade sign featuring a caricature of the very famous comedian/musician Spike Jones. The neighborhood store, located on the southeast corner of La Crescenta Avenue and Foothill Boulevard, was rather small by […]

LETTERs TO THE EDITOR

Clarification on Foothill Height Limits A recent letter to the editor in the Crescenta Valley Weekly (and other publications) on the height limit of Foothill Boulevard lacked a few details. The height limit is based from the lowest point of the property. Since just about all of the south side of Foothill Boulevard properties have […]

Happy Trails

Last Friday, my wife and our home-from-Montana-for-the-summer son made an early evening escape 300 miles up Hwy 395 to Mammoth Lakes. Due to the reality of too much work and not enough vacation time, our stay was limited to the weekend. Still, we managed to come back to the Crescenta Valley Sunday night filthy, sunburned, […]

The Height Fight on Foothill

Can you envision Foothill Boulevard as a canyon of office towers? A little extreme perhaps, but a distinct possibility in a planning document currently being designed by the City of Glendale. The “North Glendale Community Plan” will guide future development in the Glendale portion of Foothill Boulevard, and a 50-foot building height limit is currently […]

LETTERs TO THE EDITOR

Shares the Joy I wish to commend Jim Chase on his CV Weekly article “Summer Job or Summer School?” [My Thoughts Exactly, Aug. 4]. I find it hard to express how proud I am of his son. As an 18-year-old teen, I gave my heart to Jesus at a youth camp in Colorado. I am […]

Offers Perspective on Community Plan for North Glendale

Glendale planners have been working with a 30-plus member committee to draft a Community Plan for North Glendale. It is working its way through boards and commissions and will have a hearing at the Planning Commission meeting of Aug. 17 (see the city’s website for details www.ci.glendale.ca.us/planning/default.asp). I appreciate all the work staff and fellow […]

Booking It

After years of struggle and sagging profits, the discount bookstore giant has finally fallen. Borders Books, whose Glendale store has been a local staple for years, was forced to succumb to its flaws and wave the white flag to the competition and the Kindle. Its death presents more questions than it answers. Will Barnes and […]

My Thoughts, Exactly » Jim Chase

Summer Job or Summer School? Last week I revisited some of the summer jobs of my long-ago youth. (And no, helping Herr Gutenberg print Bibles was not one of them.) I was reminded of this topic when my wife and I visited our youngest son recently at his summer job at Hume Lake Christian Camps […]

Treasures of the Valley » Mike lawler

Aircraft Landings in CV – Successful and Unsuccessful Because Los Angeles has been one of the greatest centers of early aircraft development, the Crescenta Valley has been used many times as an emergency landing strip for those often unreliable pioneering airplanes. One successful emergency landing took place in May of 1931. A couple of daring […]

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Where’s Our NEVs? Of all the ideas to help reduce our dependency on foreign oil, clearly the best is the NEV … Neighborhood Electric Vehicle. Our cities, towns and villages should be [bustling] with them to run the countless daily errands not requiring a large or specialized vehicle. If a third or a half or […]