LA Modern Architecture - Silver Lake, CA and Valley Vineyard

My Uncle (on my mom's side) gave me a gift the other day.  He got me an app through itunes called, LA Modern Architecture.  It has 6 tours through different parts of LA that highlights famous houses built in a Mid-Century Modern style in the 40s and 50s. 

The app has recordings that you can listen to while you look at the houses.  There's also pictures and history about the architect and the people they built these unique houses for. The tour I went on today was in Silver Lake, CA.

This neighborhood is beautiful.  There are Modern houses, Victorian houses, and Spanish-style houses.  It's like people just build whatever they want..and make it fabulous.

Some of these houses weren't on the tour.. but I stopped and stared at them anyway.

The geography of this area is really cool, too.  The streets are narrow and really steep - worse than Pittsburgh, if you can believe it.  At one point I had turned on the wrong street, which was incredibly steep the and top of the road had only private gated-driveways.  So I had to do a three point turn in limited space.  There was also street parking, which congested this narrow road even more.  Every time I switched to reverse the car, it would lunge forward a good couple feet because of the pitch of the hill. Eventually I found myself almost nose-to-nose with a BMW. I had to back up or else I would have been eskimo kissing the front of this car, and only a tow truck (could they even get up this street?!) would be able to separate us. 

Enter panic and profuse sweating.  

I borrowed my grandfathers two-footed driving technique used for off-roading.  With one foot hovering over the gas and the other holding my break, I had to rapidly take my left foot off of the break and immediately hit the gas with my right. Car lunged forward, but somehow had enough horse power to switch gears and reverse back up the hill.

Resume sight-seeing.

This evening I went to Valley Vineyard church, which is close to my apt.  One of the doctors I work with invited me, and told me they have a Sunday service and a Wednesday night meeting.  Because I worked Sunday, I wanted to go tonight. The people there were so friendly.  It reminded me so much of home.  I was very comfortable.  For those of you I grew up with, it reminded me of home group in the 90s - when all of the adults would talk and laugh, and most importantly support each other and care for one another. Then watch Home Improvement after.

Tomorrow I'm going on another adventure.. join me?

:)