Abandoned Yacht Club in Salton City, CA

In the 1950s Salton City, California was established and developed as a resort community along the booming Salton Sea. Roads and utilities were built in anticipation of the floods of people expected to move to the area. Instead, much of the land was purchased as investments, and in the 1970s when the sea flooded and the salinity increased the demand for property and tourism in the area dried up. What was left in Salton City was an elaborate network of roads and street signs that never saw development.

One of the many street signs on a completely vacant street.

One of the earlier success stories around the Salton Sea was the Salton Bay Yacht Club located in Salton City. It was a stunning building that echoed the optimism surrounding the sea in its heyday. Like all of the other tourist attractions it was eventually abandoned and sat vacant for years before eventually being demolished in 2000. 

I drove down the western side of the Salton Sea to check out the abandoned location in December 2014 to see what it looked like today. I knew the building was long gone, but I was curious if any clues remained. 

I arrived at the intersection of Marina and Yacht Club Drive in Salton City and was impressed by what once was. Two double-laned streets divided by a continuous row of palm trees still leads directly to the shoreline where the Yacht Club would have been revealed as you turned around the slight bend. Most (if not all) of those palm trees are dead now.

The archival shots above really sell what a place this was in its prime.

Today, you pull up to what would have been the parking lot, where the only clues that something used to be there are the curbs surrounding the dead trees. All traces of the building were removed when it was demolished, however the most startling thing is how much the sea has receded from where the Salton Bay Yacht Club once stood.

The Salton Sea has dropped several feet since my last visit in 2010, however if you look at this archival picture of the sea and the abandoned Yacht Club from the 1990s (seen below) the transition is pretty shocking. It's actually hard to wrap your head around how it went from a luxurious hangout to this.

This shot is from the 1990s. The shot below is the view looking out to the sea today.

Salton City has actually seen growth throughout the 2000s due to the rising housing costs in Southern California. The population has grown from around 1000 to 3700 in the last decade. To be honest, my impression of Salton City wasn't that it was abandoned, more so, there was just lots of vacant space between the buildings that were in use. The fire station was a prime example. It's just a little building sitting all by its lonesome in the middle of the desert.  

Looking towards the parking lot, standing where the Yacht Club was.

Editing Luke Goes Viral in Medicine Hat

This week I experienced something that hasn't happened in this site's nearly 8 year history. The post and photo series I did on the Earl Kitchener School renovation - specifically the reveal of the new private residence that it's been turned into - went viral in Medicine Hat, Alberta. 

I've photographed hundreds of locations in the last few years, and many of my Around the Hat photo sets have thousands of views themselves. They've all been moderately popular, and to this day continue to attract hits. What was different this time is that it literally happened overnight.

On Tuesday my post went live at 8am. I was out the door for an all day shoot and was cut off from updates until I got home at 5pm that night. I sat down at my computer and immediately noticed the flood of messages and updates in my inbox. I then checked my latest post and practically did a double take when I realized that 5,000 people had already viewed it.  

In 24 hours that number was over 10,000 - not counting the thousands of other views for my previous posts on Earl Kitchener and the other photo sets I'd done of Medicine Hat that people were drawn to. It was a bit surreal to see my website flooding my facebook newsfeed. Hundreds of people were sharing it and drawing in thousands of visitors to Editing Luke each hour. Everyone from the mayor to the contractors who did the project to former students of the school were sharing it. It turns out I had the exclusive on the reveal. 

Here we are 3 days later and that Earl Kitchener post has nearly 15,000 hits (plus 2100+ facebook likes) and has contributed to nearly 25,000 page views on my site in the same time. Those are some pretty good numbers for only 3 days! I'm just blown away by how quickly it all happened. As I joked on my facebook page, It seems everyone else was just as curious as I was about what the home looked like inside.

To all of those new followers that were introduced to my work, website, and photo series as a result, I want to say welcome! The Earl Kitchener post was just a small piece of a much larger project known as Around the Hat. View the complete list of locations and highlights from the project here. I hope you continue to explore the Hat with me.

Hollywood & Highland at Christmas

Opened in 2001 as part of the Hollywood & Highland complex in Los Angeles, California, the Dolby Theatre (formerly the Kodak Theatre) is a popular attraction on Hollywood Boulevard. It's been the official home of the Academy Awards since March 2002, and the grand staircase has seen countless celebrities ascend as they make their way into the Dolby Theatre for the Oscars each year. It has also hosted numerous concerts, the AFI Lifetime Achievement Awards, the Daytime Emmy Awards, and the finals for American Idol. 

I toured the location just before Christmas, and despite being here several times before, it was a different experience with all of the decorations. The large tree, lights, and music had me feeling festive. It's probably why I ending up buying an ornament for my tree here. It was the only souvenir I picked up on my trip. I previewed one of my pictures on Instagram and Twitter just before Christmas and it seemed to be a hit. Hollywood & Highland was kind enough to tweet it.  

The Centre is neighbored by the iconic Grauman's Chinese Theatre, and you can't help but get swept up in movie history while touring here. A large part of the design for the Hollywood & Highland complex was inspired by the Babylon set from D.W. Griffith's 1916 film, Intolerance. It was built on the corner of Hollywood and Sunset, and was one of the largest sets ever constructed for a single film in movie history. Over 3000 extras were needed to populate the Babylon scenes. History like that is just one more reason to love Hollywood & Highland and the Dolby Theatre.
   

Intolerance film set ca. 1916

Looking at the Hollywood Sign in the distance from Hollywood & Highland was a bit surreal, only because just a few hours earlier I had hiked from the Griffith Observatory to directly behind the iconic sign. In contrast to that experience it suddenly seemed so small.