Category Archives: Uncategorized

In past posts, we’ve written about two other large plants on the South Bay coastline, the AES power plant in Redondo Beach, and the Hyperion sewage treatment plant a bit further up the coast in Playa del Rey. So the time seems right to look into another major plant along the coast, the Scattergood GeneratingContinue reading “Meet the man from whom the Scattergood Generating Station takes its name”

Hawthorne Municipal Airport, one of the busiest, most thriving general aviation airports in California, began as a dirt landing strip built by the city of Hawthorne in 1939. It was part of a deal the city made the year before to entice an aviation entrepreneur to build his factory there. The one- mile long, 700-foot-wideContinue reading “Hawthorne Municipal Airport’s roots lie in the early days of the aerospace industry”

Putting labels on the varied career of Charles David “Bub” Thomas takes a little while. The baker, bartender, boxer, sports cartoonist, ventriloquist, professional barbershop quartet singer, stand-up comic, night club owner and caricaturist spent a couple of decades entertaining the South Bay during the 1950s and 1960s. Thomas was born in Lewiston, Montana on JulyContinue reading “Bub Thomas: From barbershop quartets to The Roaring 20s to Disney World”

Restaurateur Ralph Wood Jr. may be best known in the South Bay for opening the Admiral Risty Restaurant, named for his wife, Barbara “Risty” Wood, in the Golden Cove Shopping Center on October 10, 1966. Wood passed away on Jan. 25, 2015, at the age of 90, just a year before the 50th anniversary ofContinue reading “Woody’s Smorgasburger pioneers the dress-it-yourself hamburger”

Aviation pioneer Charles F. Dycer was a busy man in the 1920s. He raced airplanes and also built and sold them, converting the Curtiss JN-4D, also known as the Curtiss Jenny, into a variation he called the Dycer Sportplane. He operated the first Dycer Airport at 136th Street and Western Avenue in Gardena, and locatedContinue reading “Charles Dycer stirs up derring-do, controversy – and dust – at his airports in the 1920s and 1930s”

  Redondo Beach became the first city in the South Bay to incorporate in 1882, but for the first 15 years of its existence, it had no central city hall. The city housed its operations in office space rented in a private building. As the city grew, so did the grumblings from its employees aboutContinue reading “1952 Earthquake helps convince Redondo Beach leaders to build a new city hall”

Marine Fenders International, a company that makes foam-filled buoys and floating cushions to protect docking ships, currently does business in an odd-looking building at 909 Mahar Avenue, located in an industrial area in Wilmington. The building it occupies dates back to 1930, and it once played a central role in community life in the HarborContinue reading “The Wilmington Bowl’s glory days”

The recent location filming for the upcoming Bryan Cranston/James Franco comedy “Why Him?”at the lifestyle wing of the Del Amo Fashion Center mall in Torrance got us to thinking about films and television shows that have used South Bay and Harbor Area settings. We’ve talked about films using the South Bay and Harbor Area forContinue reading “The South Bay and Harbor Area have been popular location choices for filmmakers”

The name of author Upton Sinclair came up last week when we took a look at the history of the longtime San Pedro jail known as “Seventh Heaven,” and his involvement with a strike at the Port of Los Angeles in 1923 seemed worth telling. So here’s the story of Sinclair’s San Pedro adventure. TheContinue reading “Author Upton Sinclair causes a commotion in San Pedro in 1923”

Deputy LAPD chief James Lyons called it “the finest jail in America.” The date: Oct. 11, 1928, the occasion of the opening of the new jail on the seventh floor atop the San Pedro Municipal Building at 638 Beacon Street. The new jail, which took up the entire floor, was designed to house approximately 60Continue reading “San Pedro’s ‘Seventh Heaven’ a relic of a bygone era”