Hello!  The dogs and I are taking another weekend trip — this time to finish up the Orange County list that I didn’t get to last time.  I played it safe and stuck to running the dogs where it was legal:  the beach in Huntington Beach.  I got that ticket fine in the mail from a few weeks ago — Santa Monica wants $561 from me for that 10 minutes I had my dogs off leash in a park.  I will try to fight it with a court appearance in a couple weeks.  No signs, I’m not a resident so didn’t know, will never do it again, blah blah.  Ugh.

It’s 1:15 already so let’s just segue into the photos.  Shooting neon at night ran me very late — and then I couldn’t find coffee anywhere.  All the Starbucks had closed and all the gas stations were out!  So, more time wasted & I finally went to a Norm’s to get a cup to go.  Pretty mediocre-tasting but necessary.  No way I could make it thru this post without it.

From Manhattan Beach — a real jaunty sign and great a-frame.  I don’t know what was here originally:

 

 

From Huntington Beach — topiary hearts in someone’s front yard:

 

An hour-long run at the beach always works wonders (tuckering the dogs out).  Grem snuggling into Nik.  Note you can really see her freaking rear dewclaws in the sun here.  The other two dogs were dozing in the back:

 

How about a couple of tiki-style buildings from Torrance.  The Eli Kai Apartments:

and the Iris Apartments:

 

From Stanton — the Mad Greek Restaurant.  This looks like it might have been a bank originally:

 

A neat Teamsters sign in Long Beach:

 

Loads more Long Beach today — including the V Room — I’ll give you night and day shots here:

 

Everything to come in this post is from Long Beach unless I mention it.

Obviously an older sign that’s been slightly adapted.  I suspect it might be a city landmark.  Might be 1930s.  Anyone know what this sign advertised for originally?  I’m perplexed by the double sign cabinets:

 

Another oldie with affixed neon letters.  I saw a neon shot of this on Flickr — but when I went by tonight, it was dark:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ocean_rick/7189672577/

 

From Anaheim — Bauman’s Market (now vacant):

 

Let’s wrap-up with some night-time shots — this one from Whittier:

 

From Lakewood:

 

And lastly — back in Long Beach.  The Ambassador Liquor store with some missing neon:

 

Back to the beach in the morning — and then on to Newport Beach and some more inland Orange County stuff.  Then back on the freeway for home.  I’ll probably get the wrapup blog post to you by Monday night.