L.a. Meekly

Another year another fear. Our seasonally creepy and haunted look at LA’s sordid history is back to take on ghostly hospitals, culty parks, lizardy people and more. Pray to baby Jesus and hold on to your yarmulke. We discuss the Galster Park Butcher in West Covina (1:00:12), the Gates of Hell known as Turnbull Canyon in Whittier (1:07:12), the ghost orderly at Linda Vista Communtiy Hospital in Boyle Heights (36:00), the murder and hauntings at the Greystone/Doheny Mansion in Beverly Hills (45:36), the underground secret tunnels of the Los Angeles Lizard People (19:50), and Greg talks about his field trip to the funeral for the unclaimed bodies at the L.A County morgue.

In honor of what we now know as "Thanksgiving," we’ll be talking about the native people who lived in what we now know as "Los Angeles" and what happened to them once what we now know as "the Spanish" came to take their land and put them in what we now know as "the Missions." This description is now known as "over." We cover the pre-historic and Native days of the city (3:06) and the Spanish and mission days as well (28:25).

Miss learning about LA's golden age of animation? Hear us delve even deeper into it on the This is Rad! podcast hosted by Kyle Clark and Matt Burnside. Take a listen to find out how.

Ever wonder what goes thump in the night? A new episode of L.A. Meekly downloading. This month we celebrate Halloween with the story of the golden age of Universal monster movies and the tortured men that played them (2:51) in addition to the endearingly obsessive efforts of hometown hero Forrest J Ackerman to keep their memory alive (51:10). Bonus credit to anybody who can keep count of how many wives these people had.

Nazis? The plague? Union bombings? Aliens? Crimes against civil rights? What do all these have in common you ask? We forgot. Join us this month as we shine a light on some Los(t) Angeles history that most history books and Nazi sympathizers would rather not talk about. We cover the LA Times bombing (2:35), the plague outbreak of 1924 (17:46), Murphy Ranch (37:24), the Battle of LA (48:02) and the Japanese internment (59:42).

DRAW up a chair as we ILLUSTRATE to you folks the ANIMATED story of Los Angeles’ cartoon history. We’ll TRACE it’s roots all the way from when Walt Disney first set up shop in his uncle’s Los Feliz garage (7:18), through the COLORFUL cast of characters that populated Termite Terrace (23:10), Hanna/Barbera (53:56), Jay Ward (1:02:17) up to the SYNCHRONIZED mayhem of he cartoon renaissance of the ‘90s and beyond!…INKING DEPARTMENT!

This month we talk about the extreme forms of weather Los Angeles has been subjected to throughout history. Join us as we watch the thermometer go from hot and dry to hot and wet to hot and on fire. We’ll also give you tips on what you can do to survive the city’s impending environmental doom. Hint: not much! We cover heatwaves (3:55), the Santa Ana winds (11:13), snow (21:39), tornadoes (25:06), smog (28:53), wildfires (42:14), droughts (51:26), floods (58:12) and the dreaded ARkStorm (1:11:52). (We apologize for the slight loss in audio quality this episode. Tom Bosley was being very uncooperative. (That will make sense shortly)

You must be this tall to hear this extensive history of Venice of America. Join us as we take a gondola ride through the canals, join one of LA's oldest gangs and watch the rivalry of the Venice and Ocean Park piers as their built up and burned down and built up and then burned down again. And again. And again. We cover Abbott Kinney himself (3:05), the amusements (20:08), the canals (58:25), the oil days (1:06:08), the history of Oakwood (1:11:34) and the tragedies (1:17:19). (All heights welcome).

Los Angeles was once the bank robbery capital of the world so put the money in the bag and put your headphones in as we give you a rundown on some of the cities most notorious holdups, heists and bandits from Stanley Mark Rifkin (8:35) to the Yankee Bandit (14:41) to the great Dunbar heist (41:20) to the North Hollywood shootout (49:51) and, from the old days, the legendary Tiburcio Vasquez (1:05:09).

A poisonously vital part of the puzzle from one of last episode’s stories falls into place just a little too late so we present to you our very first bonus episode to fill in one of what promises to be many gaps.

On tonight's menu we have a sampler of our proudest native dishes: the French dip (2:45), the hot fudge sundae (12:39), the chili burger (21:26), the cheeseburger (31:36), the Orange Julius (39:02) and the Cobb salad (48:25). Strap on your bib and get ready for the story of six famous foods invented in LA.

The showdown you never knew you were waiting for.  The dueling histories of the Griffith Observatory and the Getty Center.

An historic look at the rise and fall of the country's greatest moving picture theater district: Broadway. After covering the history of the street we delve into a few theaters in particular the Million Dollar (21:12), the Orpheum (27:00) and the United Artists Theater (50:48).

The first of our seasonally haunted episodes from LA's past covering the Sharon Tate murder (2:50), the Menendez Brothers (12:25), the Lincoln Heights Jail (29:23), Rudolph Valentino's ghost (40:30), Rancho Los Amigos (52:38) and the curse of Griffith Park (1:01:34).

A brief history of the Los Angeles Public Library system.