Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Gridded Garden Grove, Charming if Repetitive and Automobilized

Last Friday I participated in a group classwork project that involved doing lite ethnographic work in Garden Grove, a city in north Orange County. I knew I'd be grossed out by the automobilized streets, but I didn't expect to be so charmed by the midcentury architecture.

Garden Grove was incorporated as a city in 1956.
It looks it.


A lot of the houses look like this little ranch number.


This is the high school auditorium that sits in their civic center.


An apartment building.


The only gated community in Garden Grove, according to a native.


Typical channelized waterway. This one cuts through a neighborhood and appears to be ignored as much as possible.


Little gingerbread cottages with lovely yards and cute eaves, facing a busy four lane collector street.


On Chapman Avenue, a busy arterial, I saw a lone bicyclist on that rainy Friday morning.


At the Garden Grove Promenade, a glorified strip mall, bicycle wheels can apparently compress themselves enough to fit on this rack that sits about twelve inches from a stucco wall. Or it's useless, one or the other.


Post office, in style.