PIONEERTOWN

Last weekend I went on a Los Angeles Group flickrmeet to Pioneertown and Joshua Tree National Park. For this blog post I'm sharing photos from Pioneertown. If you'd like to check out photos other people took on the meet, check out this discussion thread on flickr. Next time I post, I'll share my Joshua Tree shots.

Here's a description of Pioneertown's cinematic history according to to www.pioneertown.com:

"Pioneertown was built in 1946 as a movie set for western movies, including the movies of Gene Autry, The Cisco Kid, with Duncan Renaldo, Annie Oakley with Gail Davis, Judge Roy Bean with Edgar Buchanan, Range Rider with Jock O. Mahoney, and Buffalo Bill Jr. with Dick Jones. The movie set was to provide a place for the actors to live, and have their homes used as part of a movie set. Some of the original investors in the town were Roy Rogers, who also built thePioneer Bowl, Sons of the Pioneers, which the town was named after, Dick Curtis who was a professional villian in old movies, Bud Abbott, Russell Hayden, who played Lucky on the Hopalong Cassidy series, Louella Parsons the Hollywood gossip columnist and Philip N. Krasne: The Man Who Saved Pioneertown. Mane Street is private property and is always open to courteous pedestrians."

Pioneertown is only a two hour drive from L.A. We were graced by the beautiful presence of fresh snow all over Pioneertown.



Me on "Mane" Street. Photo by Laurie Thomson.


While most of the group wandered through the Pioneertown, I found myself drawn to the Pioneertown Motel in the back and the snow covered cars and landscape behind the Motel.













This is the motel.


The motel was very cool and had a lot of character. Each room has it's own kitchenette. It's definitely the kind of place I'd like to stay at in the future - quiet, peaceful, nostalgic.



A beautiful tree on Mane Street.


A funny snow woman by the motel.

This snow woman reminds me of Dustin Hoffman in drag as Dorothy Michaels in the classic early 80's romantic comedy "Tootsie"

It was pretty much a ghost town at Pioneertown - we were the only tourists. The only other people I saw were staying at the motel. A few of those were out walking their doggies out in the snow.

This cute doggie named Gracie was sunbathing in front of her two mommies' motel room.









As the group was getting ready to leave Pioneertown, I met these three amigos.



These guys were kind of like Jackass or Dumb and Dumber come to life. The guy on the left was a groom to be. On the way to get married, he got his car stuck in the mud. While working to get the car dug out of the mud with a shovel, he split the tux pants he was supposed to wear to the ceremony. Once they got the car out, the trio did some pre wedding celebrating with Pabst beers. This was just before 11am. The last thing I heard the groom say was something about he should have known better about getting the car stuck because he grew up driving that road and that his wife to be was going to be pissed and he probably wasn't going to be "getting any" tonight. At least he had a sense of humor about it. Good luck with the marriage buddy.

Photo credits © Lydia Marcus 2010 / www.lydiamarcus.com
Photographed January 23, 2010 in Pioneertown, CA