With a break in the rain and family visiting from Seattle today we decided to take a ride on the world's shortest railroad: Angels Flight, otherwise known as the funicular that connects Grand St. and Hill St. below it downtown. If you've been following the Flight's up and downs, you'll remember it reopened in March of this year after closing in 2001, when one of the two rail cars crashed into another and a rider was killed. Today, we started at the bottom and rode to the top, then came back the same way again, the cars creaking and lurching, the angle so very steep. In August, I took the same ride, in reverse, starting up at California Plaza, paying the 25 cents at the top, and ... etc. I noticed an alteration in the view today: A rooftop "garden" halfway up the hill -- belonging to a neighboring apartment building -- in August was scrubby with weeds, trash, and bare dirt, but today had been mulched and planted with shrubs. The Flight may be a relic, but the view can't be pinned down.

The view from the top of Angels Flight, late August 2010.

End of December 2010.