Glendale needs a culture shock
Nora Mossessian is absolutely right (“Local color is disappearing,” Mailbag, Wednesday). Glendale has very little that is interesting in the way of shopping, accommodations or the arts.
There was a proposal for a cartoon museum in Glendale, which would have attracted a lot of visitors from outside Glendale as well as from Glendale. The City Council dropped the ball on this, and we have no museum.
A Noise Within is one of the best repertory theater groups in California, winning Ovation award after award. The group needed a better site than the old Masonic Temple on Brand. After making many promises, the City Council dropped the ball on this project, too, and A Noise Within is moving to Pasadena.
With A Noise Within and venues like the Pasadena Playhouse, Pasadena will continue to be the theater center for the area. Pasadena is also the place I go to watch movies. The Pacific Theatres don’t show many movies that people older than 21 would want to see. And the Mann now shows exactly the same movies the Pacific shows.
The Laemmle Theatres do show movies I want to see. Barnes & Noble and Borders in Glendale are OK, but Vroman’s in Pasadena is an outstanding bookstore. Glendale has some good restaurants, but Pasadena has a lot more.
Pasadena has several excellent museums, while Glendale has none. Even after the Embassy Suites opens, Pasadena will still have more and more varied hotels.
In short, once A Noise Within leaves, there will be nothing in Glendale I would take an out-of-town visitor to see. There’s no reason to take a visitor to the Americana. There isn’t a single store in the Americana that a visitor can’t find in his or her hometown.
I always take visitors first to Pasadena. There’s a lot more to do there.
STANTON J. PRICE
Glendale
Alums renovate like it’s 1969
Alumni from the Hoover High School class of 1969 have been planning our 40-year reunion in recent months; friends and classmates have periodically descended upon Glendale for planning parties and get-togethers, all of us remembering the good times of our youth with smiles and funny stories.
It was during one of these occasions that Glenda Edwards Lewis looked out her window at the Glendale Hilton, across the homes and streets to the Hoover “H” on Mt. Verdugo, and reflected upon its sad look to a few other members of our class. It just appeared a bit neglected to most of us.
