L.a. Meekly

We've got an inter-league double header for you folks tonight with a full history of the Dodgers all the way from Brooklyn to LA (3:41) followed immediately by the full history of the Kings (1:01:20) all the way from LA to slightly more north in LA. Play puck!

Buy me some peanuts and cracker jacks and we'll tell you the story of Los Angeles' baseball history before the boys in blue showed up including the upheaval in Chavez Ravine to make room for said boys in blue. We cover pre-Dodger baseball in LA (3:44) and the tragedy of Chavez Ravine (57:35).

Hop aboard for the twisting, turning, overcrowded story of the Los Angeles Railway yellow cars (LARy) (4:39) and the Pacific Electric red cars (PE) (40:23). All fares are non-refundable (NR). We are not joking (NJK).

Summer's here and you know what that means: History lessons about hot dogs! Listen up to the stories of a few of the most famous hot dog purveyors in the city. Ask for extra relish and see what happens. We cover Art's Chili Dog (5:21), Tail O' the Pup (12:31), Hot Dog On A Stick (19:43), Wienershnitzel (30:28), Carney's (38:13) and Pinks (43:50).

Put your hands and feet up and relax while we tell you the story of two of the most corrupt cops in LAPD history: Rafael Perez and the Rampart scandal (3:28) and Christopher Dorner (45:41).

Pull up a cantilevered stool and order a malt while we delve into the architectural style with the irritating name that defined the look of Los Angeles. We'll touch on the architects and establishments that made it possible from the eponymous Googie's itself to the legendary Armet and Davis. No substitutions. We'll cover a brief history of Googie as a style (5:01), Coffee Dan's and Googie's (27:28), Ships Coffee Shop (37:58), Denny's (48:56), Pann's (54:38) and Norm's (1:13:12).

TV's wackiest lady does it again.  Don't be a Mertz, come listen to the tall tale of Lucille Ball's inadvertent involvement in World War II.   

We're gonna jazz on down to Central Avenue to go over the story of LA's local Jazz scene of the early 20th century and the history of the people and culture that made it all possible. Feel free to scat along with us. We'll cover the trailblazing black community of the city from the Central Avenue neighborhood to Bronzeville (4:05), the rich Central Avenue jazz scene (56:16) and the eventual downfall of the Central Avenue neighborhood (1:45:40).

All great writers are capable of great endings.  Here's the story of how F. Scott Fitzgerald met his own.

Chinatown episode leftovers are even better than the first time around.  Here's the origin of another native Los Angeles dish: the Chinese chicken salad.

It’s Chinatown. Take a non-offensive because they actually had them rickshaw ride through the atrocious history of old Chinatown and the Chinese community of Los Angeles all the way up to the present day new Chinatown or, as you know it, Chinatown. We go over the bad days of Old Chinatown, the unforgivable Chinese massacre, the dueling New Chinatown and China City, the many laws set to keep the Chinese community down, which spawned the endlessly internal support that the community used to flourish. Listen to the early days of Chinese immigrants to the city (3:27) and the creation of China City and then Chinatown (42:02).

This month we explore two of your favorite American authors, one of your favorite heroes from the Old West and one of your favorite Beatles who all spent brief but memorable (and drunken) stays in Los Angeles. Hint: It’s not Stephen King, John Ringo, Johnny Ringo or Ringo Starr. We've got William Faulkner (2:44), Wyatt Earp (27:06), F. Scott Fitzgerald (54:35) and John Lennon (1:31:45)

In this brief bonus episode we draw out our announcement of our new episode release schedule for the new year and share a few words about some new occurences around town.

Another year another fear. Our seasonally creepy and haunted look at LA’s sordid history is back to take on ghostly hospitals, culty parks, lizardy people and more. Pray to baby Jesus and hold on to your yarmulke. We discuss the Galster Park Butcher in West Covina (1:00:12), the Gates of Hell known as Turnbull Canyon in Whittier (1:07:12), the ghost orderly at Linda Vista Communtiy Hospital in Boyle Heights (36:00), the murder and hauntings at the Greystone/Doheny Mansion in Beverly Hills (45:36), the underground secret tunnels of the Los Angeles Lizard People (19:50), and Greg talks about his field trip to the funeral for the unclaimed bodies at the L.A County morgue.

In honor of what we now know as "Thanksgiving," we’ll be talking about the native people who lived in what we now know as "Los Angeles" and what happened to them once what we now know as "the Spanish" came to take their land and put them in what we now know as "the Missions." This description is now known as "over." We cover the pre-historic and Native days of the city (3:06) and the Spanish and mission days as well (28:25).

Miss learning about LA's golden age of animation? Hear us delve even deeper into it on the This is Rad! podcast hosted by Kyle Clark and Matt Burnside. Take a listen to find out how.

Ever wonder what goes thump in the night? A new episode of L.A. Meekly downloading. This month we celebrate Halloween with the story of the golden age of Universal monster movies and the tortured men that played them (2:51) in addition to the endearingly obsessive efforts of hometown hero Forrest J Ackerman to keep their memory alive (51:10). Bonus credit to anybody who can keep count of how many wives these people had.

Nazis? The plague? Union bombings? Aliens? Crimes against civil rights? What do all these have in common you ask? We forgot. Join us this month as we shine a light on some Los(t) Angeles history that most history books and Nazi sympathizers would rather not talk about. We cover the LA Times bombing (2:35), the plague outbreak of 1924 (17:46), Murphy Ranch (37:24), the Battle of LA (48:02) and the Japanese internment (59:42).

DRAW up a chair as we ILLUSTRATE to you folks the ANIMATED story of Los Angeles’ cartoon history. We’ll TRACE it’s roots all the way from when Walt Disney first set up shop in his uncle’s Los Feliz garage (7:18), through the COLORFUL cast of characters that populated Termite Terrace (23:10), Hanna/Barbera (53:56), Jay Ward (1:02:17) up to the SYNCHRONIZED mayhem of he cartoon renaissance of the ‘90s and beyond!…INKING DEPARTMENT!

This month we talk about the extreme forms of weather Los Angeles has been subjected to throughout history. Join us as we watch the thermometer go from hot and dry to hot and wet to hot and on fire. We’ll also give you tips on what you can do to survive the city’s impending environmental doom. Hint: not much! We cover heatwaves (3:55), the Santa Ana winds (11:13), snow (21:39), tornadoes (25:06), smog (28:53), wildfires (42:14), droughts (51:26), floods (58:12) and the dreaded ARkStorm (1:11:52). (We apologize for the slight loss in audio quality this episode. Tom Bosley was being very uncooperative. (That will make sense shortly)