The Velaslavasay Panorama and the Cristo del Arbol de la Calle 22

So on Friday, I checked out a few of LA’s lesser known attractions. The Velaslavasay Panorama is a kind of a throwback to a previous century before movies, when some creative artists recreated the travel experience by means of a large 360-degree panoramic painting, augmented with model-train-like scenic dioramas in front of the painting. If you remember the old “America The Beautiful” 360-degree movie at Disneyland, these panoramas are something like that, but with a painting rather than a movie. The experience is enhanced with dynamic lighting and a soundtrack, so that as you wander around the panorama, you hear ambient sounds – people talking, birds, crickets, street noise, passing trains – and over the course of a half-hour you might see day turn to night and back again. It’s quaint and charming (think of the Disneyland Railroad diorama), and for people 100 years ago who didn’t have benefit of the Travel Channel, the device can give you a surprisingly decent sense of place. The currently installed panorama is of Shengjing, a city in the Northeast of China, as it was circa 1920. It had been installed in an old Chinese restaurant in Hollywood, but the whole thing has been installed now at the Union Theatre in West Adams, itself a bit of local history: built in 1910 as one of the first movie houses, it was later used as a play house, and then a hall for the tile workers’ union local. The main theatre space still looks as it did in 1920, with an old organ about to accompany the silent film, and a side stage for a puppet show at intermission. The panorama is above. You enter via a spiral staircase that comes up in the middle, where you suddenly find yourself atop a hill in the middle of northern China. After enjoying the panorama, the funky Asian garden in back, and another diorama of an Arctic trading post, I was about to head home when I learned I was only a couple blocks away from the Cristo del Arbol de la Calle 22. Of course I had to see what that was. Apparently, on a modest West Adams residential street, there was an old dead tree between the sidewalk and the curb that some guy looked at and saw possibility. So he carved the crucified Jesus out of the tree. From the waist down, you still see the tree trunk, but above you see a nice folk art carving of Jesus, two branches in the perfect configuration for his outstretched arms, painted with stigmata. It’s become a local shrine, with a protective covering, and offerings of flowers and toys left for Jesus of the Tree of 22nd Street.