Sunday 22nd April 2007. Earth Day. Los Angeles.

Ronald Reagan earned his place on the Walk of Fame as an actor and its good to see Lassie here too.

I am off to celebrate Earth Day at the Farmer's Market which I find filled with people with dark sunglasses detoxing after the excesses of last night. There is excellent organic produce and good street performers add to the atmosphere.

My next stop is urban obscura a site specific installation by Paul H Groh. Using the principle of a Camera Obscura the installation projects a series of overlapping images, reflections and light into the space creating an abstract moving collage of people, cars, lights and time of day.

I am very lucky to stumble upon the installation at the Woodbury University School of Architecture Center for Community Research and Design site at 6518 Hollywood Boulevard where Professor Paul is open for a private viewing today...I naturally join in and spend the next three hours enjoying the views and putting the world to rights with Paul.

Here I am inside 'the camera' and the white walls are painted with a semi-gloss and the black floor is gloss to add to the reflectivity. This is a piece of installation art that grew out of its context as the idea behind it was to bring the outside in by revealing the motion that happens outside rather than simply presenting a realistic video interpretation of the outside. Here the idea was to use the Camera Obscura to reflect the rapidity of motion in modern life. This is enhanced by having the sounds of outside miced in to accompany the motions.

I then head off to eat at the Pig'n Whistle...to engage again with history.

Hollywood was after all originally just a sleepy suburb of Los Angeles before it became the world-wide centre of the movie industry with producers attracted here because of the availability of vast tracts of land at low cost.

As Hollywood boomed in the Roaring Twenties its main road Prospect Avenue (a throw back to the days of the California Gold Rush) became Hollywood Boulevard and it became the place to see and be seen. You could catch a glimpse of stars like the cowboy Tom Mix in his sports car but the highlight for many were the Palaces built to the movies such as Sid Grauman's Egyptian and Chinese Theaters or The Pantages.

The Pig'n Whistle opened its doors next to the Egyptian Theater on July 22nd 1927. A fanciful hand-carved interior welcomed stars like Shirley Temple, Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable. It also housed many gatherings after movie premieres at The Egyptian and many industry cocktails. Here you could spot Cary Grant, Jane Wyman or Walter Pidgeon. Although part of a chain, the Hollywood restaurant was more elegant and the work of the architects Morgan, Walls and Clements.

The days of the ornate organ, the balcony and the baronial banquet room fell out of favour by the early 1950's; but in 2001 it was restored from a clothing store to its Italian Renaissance splendour.

From here I head to the point on Christopher Street West where on June 28th 1970 the first ever Pride March in the USA set off. Interestingly two of the key leaders of this march were clergymen (this sets an interesting context for the current debate in the Anglican Communion).

I must point out that the Walk of Fame is a death walk in the rain, I slipped and slided everywhere on my way home!