My Burbank Photo

I captured a photo in the late afternoon of a famous corner of Burbank, California on Riverside Drive. This corner of Burbank marks the unofficial dividing line between Burbank and the tiny studio village of Toluca Lake. It is a corner you have seen on television and screen, the more fitting of the numerous entryways to the media capital of the world. Unbeknownst to many of the tourists comparing their handprints with John Wayne just over the Cahuenga Pass, these are the gates to the real Hollywood. The first instant moment when viewing this photo is absorbing the vivid cheerfulness of the day, the optimistic ambiance on typical afternoons in beautiful Southern California. I spent the twilight of my teens, all of my twenties and the beginning of my thirties living in a very small radius surrounding the region in this photo. My childlike eagerness to capture this photo from the passenger seat of my friend’s car stemmed from a sort of irrational homesickness. My recent years have seen me living outside of my familiar radius; Pasadena and the San Gabriel Valley, and so I become rather enthusiastic when my endeavors take me to Burbank. It is a genuine fondness for a city I consider my hometown. A historic all-night diner and a famous producer’s stage theatre serve as the gateposts entering west on Riverside. The buildings of the studios fail to provide much of a skyline, but it is in these buildings where the keepers of Hollywood keep a home address. The designing of film and television, as well as their promotion and marketing, is commencing all along this avenue, preferring the fans and tourists celebrate their fascination on the other side of the pass. Perfectly designed is the formula for small-town America and showbiz glitterati. It all begins here. Although, the reality is that anyone can slip off a freeway into various districts of Burbank, but the most welcoming of posts is the intersection of Riverside and Rose. The competing coffee shops produce stuttering streams of casual foot traffic. Smart women in smart outfits making accessories of lattes and please-do-not-look-at-me eyes. They are the finished product of once-Midwestern girls whose small pond importance found them a completely different person in the Pacific Ocean. The peppering of studios along the drive, shadow the pockets of peaceful and well-policed subdivisions. This postcard from Burbank hides the charming small town living among the nameless and sun-blinding structures producing your stories and idols. Thick trees line and shadow the sidewalks of side streets of preserved single-story bungalows and ranch houses. The citizens groups and city hall alumni are in a successful confederacy to preserve the vintage character of the older residential neighborhoods in the wake of sprouting mansions. A few droplets of modern Hollywood are trickling into the superb school districts, parks, quaint shops and dated communities that specialize in live television audiences. Taken in the middle of the week, this photo is simply another average bright reflection of the fun and laidback California. California, the rock show state. Where the lethargic should simply relocate and free up some of the overpriced spaces for those who wish to embalm themselves in a world where life is truly a stage. The calming blue skies are as immense as the images of carhops and rock and roll; exceedingly warm nights where you have a fifty-fifty chance of accidentally having a conversation with someone famous in the most natural and spontaneous of situations. The warmth of this photo carries most of the point intended of every postcard. Burbank, California. The gates are always open, although hours of operation may vary. And, so marks the long-winded captioning of my Burbank photo.