Wall St.Journal Weekend 29Feb2020

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. **** Saturday/Sunday, February 29 - March 1, 2020 |D1

OXTAILS, YOU WIN

Recipes to make hearty stews and ragùs

with an underappreciated cut of meatD9

and giant cogs in the underbrush, remains of a ca-

ble railway that once brought Gilded Age holiday-

makers in top hats and bustle dresses to these

heights.

It was a vision of California that I, for one, had

rarely considered. Los Angeles was famously

dubbed “a city without a past” by urban geogra-

pher Michael Dear a quarter-century ago. It’s an il-

lusion that Hollywood has fostered: Thanks to the

pervasiveness of film noir, even most Angelenos

believe that their metropolis sprang from the des-

ert some time around the 1940s. But L.A. was

founded in 1781 by Spanish colonists, and it’s been

through a string of colorful incarnations. Echo

Mountain House was part of its first heyday, when

SoCal, bathed in sunshine and filled with fruit

groves, was promoted by railway companies as

“America’s Italy” and Pasadena became a winning

winter destination for rich Easterners. In 1900, the

hotel burned to the ground, like most of the old

Europhile resorts, but a little research revealed

that L.A. is still littered with survivors from for-

gotten eras. So I decided to spend a week playing

Please turn to page D4

Most visitors might smirk at the idea of ‘old’ in a city obsessed with reinvention. But L.A.’s romanticized past

is in vogue, with the newest hot spots housed in reborn relics. Here, an urban explorer’s guide

T

HE MOST ECCENTRIChistorical trail

in Los Angeles County starts on a

quiet suburban road above Pasadena.

A 3-mile steep climb, past chaparral

and wildflowers, leads to the ruined

foundations of Echo Mountain House, a 70-room

resort opened in 1894, complete with a Swiss-

style chalet and astronomical observatory. On a

recent Sunday morning, I clamored over the site’s

cracked stone steps and found rusting train tracks

BYTONYPERROTTET

I MADE THE DECISIONaround hour five. That’s five

hours of hearing Aerosmith’s “Dream On” bleed

through my wallson repeat, blasted so loudly from

my neighbor’s system that Steven Tyler’s screech

drowned out my already-cranked-to-eleven TV.

Around hour five it dawned on me: To prepare for a

weekend of binge-watching, it might be wise to in-

vest in some noise-canceling headphones. Now, a few

months later, I rarely watch shows any other way.

Please turn to page D10

BYMATTHEWKITCHEN

CHRIS GASH

Let the Right

Sounds In

Thesechoiceheadphones

letyoutuneout racketand

tuneintoasoloTVevening

OM AWAY FROM HOME

Wake up replenished at Guatemala’s

Lake Atitlan, a new-age destinationD5

SIT RIGHT

Find a couch that suits you with

counsel from our sofa psychologistD6

THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVELTY BELT

Finding a replacement for the tired

funky-sock look is a cinchD2

Inside

Fortune

Telling

Deconstructing

the price of a

luxury watch

D2 OFF DUTY

FASHION|FOOD|DESIGN|TRAVEL|GEAR

PIA RIVEROLA FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The

Secret

History of

Los

Angeles

Neither Large

Nor Charged

Lincoln’s smaller

SUV is, notably,

not electric

D10

As part of L.A.’s

downtown revival, silent movie

palaces, like this 1927 classic,

are buzzing again. In 2014,

it re-emerged as the 1,600-seat

Theatre at Ace Hotel, which hosts

concerts, comedy shows

and other events.