Pacific Ocean Blue

15 Songs about Loneliness and Big Bodies of Water

Sat, 18 May 2013 09:42:00 -0400

“Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer” (Wanderer Above the Mist), 1818
—Caspar David Friedrich

(For Bas Jan Ader)

“Lonely Sea” – The Mitlo Sisters (1958)

“The Lonely Surfer” – Jack Nitzche (1963)

“Lonely Surfer Boy” – The Sunsets (1963)

“The Lonely Sea” – The Beach Boys (1963)

“The Lonely Sea” – The Ventures (1963)

“Lonely Surfer Boy” – The Chartbusters (1965)

“New York’s a Lonely Town (When You’re the Only Surfer Boy Around)” – The Trade Winds (1965)

“I Miss My Surfer Boy Too” – The Westwoods (1965)

“River Song” (oh, lonely river) – Dennis Wilson (1977)

“The Lonely Sea” – The Eliminators (1995)

“The Lonely Sea” – John Parker and Vicki Tucker Courtney (2006)

“Lonely Waters” – Ernest John Moeran (1931)

“Lonely Waters” – Bowen & the Tide (2010)

“Lonely Water” – The Benjamin Raubinsons (2011)

“Dark Lonely Ocean” – Naive Thieves (2011)

“From the deep waters of sleep” –A poem written by...

Sun, 12 May 2013 09:56:00 -0400

“From the deep waters of sleep”

–A poem written by Johanna Adriana Ader-Appels in 1975, soon after her son, Bas Jan, disappeared at sea

“In search of the miraculous” – Bas Jan Ader,...

Sat, 04 May 2013 15:08:00 -0400

“In search of the miraculous” – Bas Jan Ader, 1975

The artist Bas Jan Ader set sail alone, in a small sailboat called the “Ocean Wave,” from Chesapeake Bay on July 9, 1975. He intended, as part of a performance work called “In search of the miraculous,” to reach landfall in Northern Holland by the end of August or early September.

Ader never arrived, however. His boat was found, capsized and drifting in an area popular among fishing boats off the coast of Spain, on April 18, 1976. Ader was never seen again.

Seven images of Los Angeles-area swimming pools from the 2012...

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 11:53:00 -0400

Seven images of Los Angeles-area swimming pools from the 2012 Palm Springs Art Museum exhibition “Backyard Oasis: The Swimming Pool in Southern California Photography, 1945-1982”

Michael Childers, “The Hockney Swimmer,” 1978, color photo, © Michael Childers
Leland Y. Lee, “Silvertop – Hollywood Dawn,” 1972. Courtesy of the artist and Michael H. Lord Gallery © Leland Y. Lee
Loretta Ayeroff, “Pool with Silver Hand Rail and Cactus,” 1981. Collection Palm Springs Art Museum. © 1981 Loretta Ayeroff
David Hockney, “John St. Clair Swimming” (from Twenty Photographic Pictures), 1972. Sonnabend Collection, New York © David Hockney; photo credit Richard Schmidt
Ed Ruscha, “Nine Swimming Pools,” 1968. (One of the nine images.) Courtesy Ed Ruscha Studio. © Ed Ruscha
Larry Sultan, “Untitled,” from the Swimmer Series, 1978. Collection San Francisco Museum of Art. © Larry Sultan
Loretta Ayeroff, “Abandoned Pool, California Ruins, Perris Valley,” 1974. Courtesy of Loretta Ayeroff © 1974 Loretta Ayeroff

What Pacific Ocean Blue Means to Us Today

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 13:41:00 -0400

Introduction: A Bloggy Anniversary

Today marks the one-year anniversary of my very laid-back, sun-addled blog, “Pacific Ocean Blue,” and so I thought it appropriate to mark the occasion with some thoughts about what, exactly, is the point of this thing.

To begin with, you should know that Pacific Ocean Blue was the result of two factors. First, I had a growing desire to get back to blogging following the demise of two, highly rewarding, somewhat doomed-from-the-start blogging projects that had, for reasons related to the great Chinese finger trap that is the current American economy, came to an unceremoniously premature end. Second, the book agent who had agreed, on March 30, 2012, to represent me in my quest to publish a manuscript on the art of Los Angeles in the 1970s told me I needed to start a blog that would “assist in finding [an] audience and encouraging a publisher’s interest.”

But why “Pacific Ocean Blue,” you ask? Well, the simple answer is this: The name, and attendant design sensibility, comes from the 1977 album by Beach Boys’ drummer Dennis Wilson, which I happened to be fixating on throughout the winter leading up to the agent’s suggestion. For those of you not in the know, Pacific Ocean Blue was the only solo recording project that Dennis Wilson ever released, and, as such, it is the definitive statement of what the man was all about.

The Meaning of Pacific Ocean Blue

Going a bit deeper, the Pacific Ocean Blue connection between this blog and Dennis Wilson’s only solo album comes from more meaningful associations. Partially thanks to the oft-told story of how Audree WIlson, the mother of three Wilson boys, had forced Brian to include his middle brother in the original lineup of the band, Dennis Wilson had always seen himself as an afterthought in the Beach Boys. Even today, most observers suggest Dennis’ only real importance to the band was the fact that he, among all the Beach Boys, was the only member who actually surfed.

Thus overlooked and underappreciated, Dennis didn’t even attempt to compose music for the band until 1968. By then, it was more out of necessity than anything else. After Brian Wilson had failed, in 1967, to realize his original vision for the album that would’ve been Smile (but that was eventually released unfinished as Smiley Smile), he had stepped down from his role as the primary musical leader of the group. In order to keep the Beach Boys going as a creative (and financially viable) enterprise, then, other members of the band were forced to step into the creative void. The Beach Boys’ 1968 album Friends was the first to include songwriting credits by Dennis—on the songs “Friends,” “Be Still,” and, most notably, “Little Bird.” (About “Little Bird,” which his older brother had helped write without taking a songwriting credit, Brian once said: “Dennis gave us “Little Bird” which blew my mind because it was so full spiritualness. He was a late bloomer as a music maker. He lived hard and rough but his music was as sensitive as anyone’s.”)

After this first taste of success, starting in 1970 Dennis Wilson tried for several years to realize his own solo project, but it wasn’t until he sequestered himself, between the fall of 1976 and the spring of 1977, in the Beach Boys’ private Brother Studios that he was able to complete his album at last. The result of his labors, collectively called Pacific Ocean Blue, was a refreshing, and seeming out-of-the-blue surprise—an album of songs that were soulful, heartfelt, appealing, and deeply personal. Starting from its soaring, gospel-like first track, “River Song,” the album seemed to encapsulate the particular melacholy-meets-majestic beauty of Southern California at the time. Released in August 1977, Pacific Ocean Blue received fairly glowing reviews from music critics (“Its cavernous, state-of-the-art sound placed it far apart from the Beach Boys’ work of the period,” wrote a critic in 2007) and sold moderately well—charting higher than the Beach Boys’ concurrent release, 1978’s M.I.U. Album, which critics generally tore apart (said Rolling Stone in 1978: ”M.I.U. Album seems contrived and artificial right from the start. The tracks strive to recapture the dreamy, adolescent innocence of the Beach Boys’ earliest hits, and fail not so much because the concepts are dated but because the group can’t infuse the new material with the same sense of grandeur that made the old songs such archetypal triumphs.”)

On Pacific Ocean Blue, Wilson made a point of eschewing the smooth production techniques that Brian and the band had perfected through the years, choosing to alternate quiet, simple piano-and-voice passages with massively reverb-drenched and layered sections. On “Thoughts of You,” for example, Dennis tinkles the keys at first with a simple riff as he sings softly of his memories of an absent lover. Then, after he sings “I’m sorry. I miss you,” the music swells, and ominous piano chords merge with an eerily backward-reverbed voice that sings “All things that live one day must die you know, even love and the things we hold close.”

Then there is the matter of Dennis’s voice on the album, which, in 1977, sounds nothing like you’d expect from a Beach Boy. Hardened perhaps by time, and made raspy by his notorious hard living, the voice that sings on Pacific Ocean Blue is from a older, wiser, more seasoned vantage point. In many songs, in fact, Dennis sounds like he’s at the end of his rope, his voice is exhausted and gritty, and there are tinges of dark soul. It all adds to the power and strangely sad loveliness at the heart of the album.

So what’s the point of all this? Why is Pacific Ocean Blue a fitting name for a blog about a lost California childhood?

Well, the story of Pacific Ocean Blue, and of Dennis Wilson, who, because of his ongoing struggles with substance abuse, would die in 1983 and never finish another solo album, is an inspiration—not only to this blog, but to any creative endeavor. To anyone who has felt that their own, idiosyncratic and unappreciated creative efforts might never find an audience, or never even see the light of day, there is always Dennis Wilson, the afterthought of the Beach Boys, the one weak link of the band who, after years of feeling like a forgotten sore thumb, decided to make some music in his own particular way and produced a work of real beauty and gritty grace.

Pacific Ocean Blue, the album, is in the end a surprise throughout, a nearly-lost treasure that went out of print, thanks to internal band politics, a few years after its release. The album is readily acknowledged today as the fine musical effort that it is (included in Robert Dimery’s book 1011 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, in Mojo magazine’s list of “Lost Albums You Must Own,” and GQ magazine’s 2005 list of ”The 100 Coolest Albums in the World Right Now!”), and, in my opinion, it stands as the one work that has outshone all other work made by anyone associated with the Beach Boys between the 1971 release of Surf’s Up and the 2004 release of Brian Wilson presents Smile.

In sum, Pacific Ocean Blue is something all creative people can identify with—a work of art that, against all logic and expectation, came out of nowhere and made the world a better, more beautiful place.

Things you might have heard if you had just driven your brand...

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 16:30:00 -0400

Things you might have heard if you had just driven your brand new, mustard yellow 1973 Dodge Challenger to the beach at Santa Monica:

Hey hey hey. Boss ride, man.

“You can’t afford not to be Dodge material.”

Do the corduroy bucket seats come standard in that model? If so, I can’t wait to lay a gasser in them.

What? What? I can’t hear you, man! Turn down your Led Zeppelin 8-track tape! (Now that’s what I call a ‘bustle in your hedgerow.’)

Did Sam Yorty say it was all right to steal the Lakers’ uniform colors?

All right! The mustard’s definitely off the hot dog!

Dude! What a drag, too many snags!

Uh-oh! Spaghetti-O’s!

Can I get a ride to Riverside?

“Fall I,” Bas Jan Ader — Los Angeles, 1970 Likely...

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 22:46:00 -0400

“Fall I,” Bas Jan Ader — Los Angeles, 1970

Likely address of house where Ader performed “Fall I”: 550 South Indian Hill Blvd., Claremont, California (per a 1967 Claremont-area telephone book)

Approximate distance of the Ader house from the house where I lived while attending high school, ten years later: 2.9 miles

Number of times in my life I have fallen from the roof of a house: 0

Number of times I have fallen from a wall adjacent to a house and ended up in the emergency room: 2 (Ader’s wife later hinted that the artist was seriously injured while performing “Fall I”)

Reason Ader gave for why he fell from the roof of his house: “It was because gravity made itself master over me.”

Years after “Fall I” that Bas Jan Ader vanished (presumed killed) during the ostensible performance of a work called “In search of the miraculous”: 1975

Year that the Ader house (of “Fall I”) seems to have been razed and replaced by a sterile new apartment complex: 1995 (see image below)

Richard Diebenkorn, “Ocean Park #79,” 1975. (Oil on canvas, 93 x...

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 20:04:00 -0400

Richard Diebenkorn, “Ocean Park #79,” 1975. (Oil on canvas, 93 x 81 in.)

One example from one of the best, most realistic serial depictions of L.A. ever put on canvas.

“The Lonely Sea,” –The Beach Boys. Released March...

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 09:43:00 -0400

“The Lonely Sea,” –The Beach Boys.

Released March 25, 1963 (50 years ago today) on the band’s second album Surfin’ USA.

This pain in my heart,
These tears in my eyes—
Tell the truth,
You’re like the lonely sea.

Various Noms de Guerre of the Symbionese Liberation Army Explained

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 15:26:00 -0400

“Tania” – a.k.a., Patty Hearst. Named after Che Guevara’s associate “Tania the Guerilla”

“Mizmoon” – a.k.a., Patricia Soltysik. A name created by Soltysik’s lover Camilla Hall in a love poem called “Mizmoon.” A.k.a., “Zoya” from the feminine Russian and Ukrainian first name, a variant of Zoe, meaning “life” (in Arabic, it means “the gift of God”) (?)

“Field Marshal Cinqué Mtume” (pronounced “SINK-you em-tu-may”) – a.k.a., Donald DeFreeze. Cinqué came from Joseph Cinqué, the leader of the 1839 slave rebellion on the Spanish slave ship Amistad, while mtume is the Swahili word for “prophet.”

“Gabi” — a.k.a., Camilla Hall. Provenance unknown.

“Fahizah” – a.k.a., Nancy Ling Perry. “What that name means is one who is victorious, and I am one who believes in the liberation and victory of the people, because I have learned that what one really believes in is what will come to pass. So, my name is Fahizah and I am a freedom fighter in an information/intelligence unit of the United Federated Forces of the Symbionese Liberation Army.” (Source: A Letter to the People from Fahizah.)

“Cujo” – a.k.a., William (Willie) Wolfe. From the Portuguese: Pronoun, cujo m (feminine cuja, masculine plural cujos, feminine plural cujas) – whose (of whom). (?) (Note: Stephen King borrowed Wolfe’s nom de guerre for the title of his 1981 novel Cujo.)

“General Gelina” – a.k.a., Angela Atwood. Provenance uncertain; more properly Gallina? From the Italian: Noun, gallina f (plural galline) – hen. (?)

“Bo” – a.k.a., Joseph Romero. Provenance unknown.

“Osceola” or “Osi” – a.k.a., Russell Little. After Osceola, the Seminole leader who led a small band of warriors during the Second Seminole War in 1835-1842.

“General Teko” – a.k.a., William Harris. Provenance unknown.

“Yolanda” – a.k.a., Emily Harris. Provenance unknown.

“Symbionese” – In his manifesto “Symbionese Liberation Army Declaration of Revolutionary War & the Symbionese Program,” Donald DeFreeze described the origins of the neologism Symbionese: “The name ‘symbionese’ is taken from the word symbiosis and we define its meaning as a body of dissimilar bodies and organisms living in deep and loving harmony and partnership in the best interest of all within the body.”

“L.A.” –Jackie DeShannon, from the album Laurel...

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 13:28:05 -0400

“L.A.” –Jackie DeShannon, from the album Laurel Canyon, 1969

Liborio Market, Grand Opening, February 6, 1966 Opened with an...

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 23:29:00 -0400

Liborio Market, Grand Opening, February 6, 1966

Opened with an initial outlay of just $1,400, the new 1,200 sq. ft. Liborio Market carved its initial niche catering mostly to Latin American families that had settled in the neighborhoods of Central Los Angeles.

(February 6, 1966 also happens to be the day our humble blogger was born)

Hiatus-to-the-Hiatus, and An Important and Wondrous Announcement

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 21:41:00 -0500

Hiatus-to-the-Hiatus (long live the Hiatus!)

It’s March, and, as promised, the Pacific Ocean Blue blog’s hiatus is officially at an end. (Ding dong, ding dong. The hiatus is dead; long live the hiatus!)

Unfortunately, though, this doesn’t mean we’ll be returning to our former output of long, meandering, hopefully thoughtful and thought-provoking (and sometimes slightly humorous) examinations of LA’s golden past, L.A.’s imagined future, and even its tarnished present.

No, the return of the Pacific Ocean Blue blog will be, at least at present, a truncated and muted thing, its posts made up of snippy half-graphs, choppy sentences, and, as is already all too common on the tumblrsphere, photos of the most easily digestible sort.

Why? You ask. Why must you tamper with perfection? Why change Pacific Ocean Blue when everything has come together so nicely?

Well, friends and worthy readers, the answer is simple and will be made clear below (in a section I’m calling An Important and Wondrous Announcement).

An Important and Wondrous Announcement

Pacific Ocean Blue is changing its format for the duration, however long that shall be, from its meanderingly thoughtful and thought-provoking origins to a new, quick and easily digestible format because of two important and wondrous developments.

In December and January of this past winter, POB’s erstwhile author, Michael Fallon of the California Fallons, was surprised and delighted to learn that both of the two distinct-but-related (Southern California-based) unfinished book manuscripts he had been working on, in fits and starts, for the past three years had landed publishing contracts.

That is to say, in Spring, 2015, Michael Fallon’s (i.e., my) book All Tom’s Boys—which is about the politics, culture, and social history of L.A. ca. 1977-78, as seen through the lens of the Dodgers’ two World Series losses to the New York Yankees—will be published by the University of Nebraska press as part of their series of books on sports and social history. And, in Fall, 2014, my book Creating the Future of Art—about the art and artists working in Southern California in the “lost” decade of the 1970s—will be published by Counterpoint Press of Berkeley, California.

Phew! It’s certainly a rare thing in life when someone is given the chance to realize a lifelong dream—in this case for me to write, and publish, books about subjects that are near and dear to my heart. It’s also a wholly daunting and nerve-wracking challenge unlike any I’ve ever encountered before.

So, because of this, I will be in need of every possible fleeting moment to do the work necessary to make my lifelong dreams a reality. And this, unfortunately means Pacific Ocean Blue will have to take a backseat for while.

I hope you will understand. I hope you will still kinda stick around. And I hope you will be interested in reading the results of my copious labor once they’re available at your locally own purveyor of books.

See you in the book reviews (I hope)!

We here at Pacific Ocean Blue hope you had the very merriest of...

Tue, 25 Dec 2012 22:50:00 -0500

We here at Pacific Ocean Blue hope you had the very merriest of righteously bitchin’ Christmases, and you’re all stoked out for a totally far-out New Year. We look forward to catching up with you in 2013 with lots more aimless (but hopefully occasionally interesting) ruminations and observations on what (has) made (southern) California (my home state) the great and intriguing place that it is today.

For the next few months, however, we are going on hiatus — until March 1 — as we wrap our heads around a big major print project related to some of the topics we’ve been covering right here — week by week, month by month, for the better part (almost) of the past year.

If you’ve happened to learn a bit of something about a bit of something — like the most ominous H.G. Wellsian-inspired urban landmark of L.A.; the many old, mostly forgotten, but still relevant nicknames for the city; how L.A. grew to become, 3/4 of the way through the 20th c., the golden City of the Future; the Midwestern roots of the mass 20th-c. migration to L.A., of the 1960s, California-based surf craze, and of the quintessential Californian surf band, the Beach Boys; the cartoon history of traffic and sprawl; the various late-century apocalyptic and dystopian views of L.A. (in film) (and in literature); the single best filmic depiction of L.A. (ca. 1980) and all its contradictions; some thoughts on art by Angelenos like Ed Kienholz, Chris Burden, and John Baldessari; and some thoughts on the daredevil antics of Angeles like the Z-Boys of Dogtown, Steve and Chuck Yeager, and Gary Gabelich — then never fear. There’ll be lots more to come, plus a special announcement (about ways you can read more Pacificana than you ever thought to ask for) — just stay tuned!

See you in March!

In late 1963, with the Beach Boys’ popularity growing on...

Mon, 24 Dec 2012 12:10:00 -0500

In late 1963, with the Beach Boys’ popularity growing on the strength of two successful albums — Surfer Girl and Little Deuce Coup — and a brand-new six-year recording contract with Capitol records, the group decided it was time to release a holiday song.

Uncertain about how to treat the patently silly lyrics of a Brian Wilson composition, the Beach Boys borrowed heavily from two recent recordings. In one version, the band used the melody from a song called “Drive-in,” which would be held over for a 1964 album called All Summer Long, and in another, the band used the rhythm and structure of “Little Deuce Coup,” the title song of their hit album. It was this second, Deuce Coup-inspired version of “Little Saint Nick,” that would climb as high as number 3 on the holiday Billboard charts that year and eventually be considered a staple of the American holiday music rotation.

While a bit of timelessly and mindlessly catchy fun, the actual release of “Little Saint Nick” on December 9, 1963, was complicated by the death of President John F. Kennedy just a few weeks earlier, on November 22. The Beach Boys were keenly aware of, and affected by, the death of the young President — so much so, that at a concert in Marysville, Calif., on the day of Kennedy’s death, the band held a moment of silence before going out on stage. Then, later that night, bandmates Mike Love and Brian Wilson were so overcome with emotion they began working out the harmonies and melodies of a song.

“It was a spiritual night,” said Brian Wilson many years later. “We got going and a mood took over us. Something took over us. I can’t explain it.” Mike concurred: “We wrote that [song] about losing someone close. I has someone in mind…. We wrote that until three in the morning, crashed, and went to sleep.”

And that song, wrought from the band’s reaction to the death of their president and from a silly holiday season of “Little Saint Nick”, was Wilson’s first great exploration of humanity’s, and his own, dark and vulnerable side: “The Warmth of the Sun.”

Seasons Greetings from Upper Hastings Ranch, 1978 Hastings Ranch...

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 13:28:00 -0500

Seasons Greetings from Upper Hastings Ranch, 1978

Hastings Ranch is a housing development/neighborhood that lies in northeast Pasadena, California — very close to the end of the Rose Parade route. When we were kids growing up in Pasadena, every year at Christmastime our parents would pack we three boys into the family vehicle (a red Opel station wagon or, later, a red Mazda hatchback) and drive a few miles to Hastings Ranch to see an elaborate, carefully coordinated display of holiday lights and other decorations. Individual houses would decorate their house and yards with lights and other objects — in the hopes that they’d win a prize from the Hastings Ranch association. Entire streets too put up themed curbside decorations, also in the hopes of winning an award for themeselves. I recall wooden grinch placards were popular, as were images of the Peanuts characters (such as the one depicted above, from my era — ca. 1978), doves hanging from tree branches, angels, candy canes, various versions of Santa Claus, snowmen, and on and on.

According to this article, the Hastings Ranch tradition began in 1952. To make the event work, neighbors learned to pool their money and resources, then vote collectively on themes and organize into work teams. The Ranchers became, through the years, increasingly clever and innovative. Sometimes they saved up their plastic milk jugs and lit them up with their holiday lights; or else they did tricks with pie tins or they used timers to create a street-wide light show. Sometimes they projected holiday movies onto their garage doors or blasted holiday music. The few Jewish houses in the neighborhood put up menorah decorations and blue and white lights. Carfuls of gawkers (like us) came from all over the region, and sometimes from out of state. Occasionally, there were so many cars you’d get stuck in a traffic jam, but it didn’t matter, as you might just, at that moment, come across Santa giving away free candy canes, or a brass ensemble playing “Good King Winceslas,” or a cheerful roving band of carolers.

Ah, happy, well-lit memories of childhood holidays in L.A…..

Christmas Tree Lane in Alta Dena, Calif., 1938 Santa Rosa Avenue...

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 15:18:18 -0500

Christmas Tree Lane in Alta Dena, Calif., 1938

Santa Rosa Avenue in Alta Dena, Calif., was first laid out in 1885 and planted with 146 small deodar seedlings, a tree in the cedar family that came originally from the western Himalayas. (Deodar trees can grow as tall as 200 feet with trunks up to 10 feet in diameter). Since 1920, the deodar trees of Santa Rose Avenue have been decorated with an array of holiday lights.

“Following out a plan proposed some weeks ago,” explained a December 4, 1920 L.A. Times article, ”the beautiful deodar trees on that street will be festooned with colored lights and trimmings, the Kiwanis Club having voted to share the expense with the city.” The popularity of the now-christened Christmas Tree Lane soared, attracting thousands of gawkers in their cars (what else?0, and lights were added over .7 miles of the Avenue until the total eventually reached a count of about 10,000 lights.

By 1990, several of the original deodar trees had succumbed to root diseases and damage from high winds. Then, over the next few years, the grid that supported the extra lights was deemed outdated and dangerous, and Southern California Edison, long a sponsor of the Lane, struggled under deregulation and pulled its support of the grid. Fortunately, in those years Christmas Tree Lane was placed on the National Register of Historic Places and became listed as California State Landmark No. 990.

And so, even in fast-moving, ever-changing Southern California, the age-old tradition of Christmas Tree Lane continues today, nearly 100 years after it began.

Santa’s Workshop, some time in the 1980s — Christmas in...

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 16:30:00 -0500

Santa’s Workshop, some time in the 1980s — Christmas in the sunny Southern Californian mountains near Lake Arrowhead

Christmastime in L.A., ca. 1950 — View of the Roosevelt Hotel...

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 11:17:59 -0500

Christmastime in L.A., ca. 1950 — View of the Roosevelt Hotel from Hollywood Blvd

Gary Gabelich: Born 1940, San Pedro, CaliforniaRaised: In Long...

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 23:53:00 -0500

Gary Gabelich: Born 1940, San Pedro, California
Raised: In Long Beach, California

First taste of the daredevil’s lifestyle: Racing hot rods while still in high school

First job: Test astronaut for the North American Rockwell company

How he met The Blue Flame: Hired by Reaction Dynamics, Inc., after two more established drivers — Fellow Californian Craig Breedlove, holder at the time of the land speed record, wanted too much money, and Chuck Suba, a drag racer, was killed in a racing accident.

What was The Blue Flame? — A 37-foot-long, 4,950-pound vehicle powered by a liquid natural gas-hydrogen peroxide rocket engine and built to break the land speed record.

Result of Gabelich’s first attempt to break the land speed record in The Blue Flame in September, 1970: A dismal failure; the car reached a speed of only 426 mph (compared to Breedlove’s five-year-old record of 600.601 mph)

What happened on October 28, 1970, after a battery of tests and adjustments to The Blue Flame? — Gabelich drove the Blue Flame to an average speed of 617.602 mph on his first run of the day and 627.207 on the second run, for a new land speed record of 622.407.

What speed did Gabelich say that he thought The Blue Flame could reach if he was given a chance? — 750 mph

What did Gabelich do after Reaction Dynamics, satisfied with the one record-breaking run, mothballed The Blue Flame? — He became a drag racer, severing his hand in 1972 (doctors reattached it), and he was killed in a motorcycle crash in 1984.

“When I was a little kid I drew a picture of an actual rocket and put wheels on it. And here it is today and it’s a reality.” -Gary Gabelich

“They will return again to Bonneville (Salt Flats, where Gabelich broke the land speed record), those pioneers of speed. For theirs is a quest that knows no boundaries. The frontiers are as far as a young boy’s dreams. Or as near, perhaps, as tomorrow.” –Cheesy narrator at the end of a documentary about Gabelich and The Blue Flame

Number of years later that Gabelich’s land speech record was broken: 13 (by Richard Noble driving Thrust2 in 1983)

Year Gary Gabelich was inducted into the Long Beach Motorsports Walk of Fame: 2008