Lifestyle
You can now ride a train through a lovely oak grove at Descanso Gardens
All aboard! Starting this week, the Descanso Railroad train ride is open to riders once again. And model trains winding their way around a new railway garden promise to charm a generation of engine-obsessed little kids.
Imagine a garden where cedar trunks and fallen branches from nearby oaks uphold an overhead miniature railway, with more rails and trains running at toddler eye level. The landscape is dotted with small plants and miniature versions of iconic American train stations, including L.A.’s Union Station, made of natural materials like acorns and seedpods.
The experience inside La Cañada Flintridge’s Descanso Gardens was created by a company called Applied Imagination. If you’ve ever strolled through a model garden made of natural materials in a major American city, Applied Imagination likely built it. The company provided the cedar tree trunks, which are scrap from furniture factories, and built the tiny train stations out of natural materials, including some sourced from Descanso Gardens.
The garden and railways in the model train experience are permanent, but the tiny stations are not, said director of communications Jennifer Errico.
“Every six months or so, those are going to change out, and Applied Imagination will bring another exhibition to the train garden,” she said. The next rotation will be roadside attractions and include a miniature Randy’s Donuts and Corn Palace. And after that, something sure to excite the preschool crowd: dinosaurs.
Part of the Descanso Gardens model train experience is miniature versions of iconic American railroad stations, like this model of Union Station.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
The model train area is modestly sized; a brisk walk around it with brief stops to admire the tiny train stations would take only a couple of minutes. But with a lingering toddler, you could be here for hours. The walkways are wide enough to accommodate ample stroller traffic, and the low fences let kids get a full view. On the Friday before the experience opened to the public, a gaggle of children gathered in wordless thrall to witness a maintenance worker repairing an engine overhead.
The train ride — a one-eighth scale model of a diesel engine — first arrived at Descanso Gardens as a seasonal attraction in the 1980s, and became a permanent feature in 1996. Its location in the central promenade “never really made sense,” Errico said. The gardens’ director of horticulture visited one of Applied Imagination’s botanical train displays in another state, she said, and decided Descanso Gardens had to have one.
The train ride closed in 2023 for the renovation, including an upgrade to be completely electric. Riders take a 4-mph train trip that loops through the seasonal display (currently sunflowers and other summery blooms), up by the mulberry pond, through the oak grove and then down past the camellia forest. The ride lasts six minutes. You straddle a low bench to ride, rendering it not entirely skirt-friendly.
People ride the new electric train at Descanso Gardens.
(Descanso Gardens)
There is also, naturally, an on-site gift shop in the shape of a train car.
A few things to know: The model trains run from 8:30 a.m. until 6:30 p.m. (Before 9 a.m., the experience is limited to members.) The train ride runs from 9:30 a.m. until 4 p.m. Visiting the model train experience is free with admission to the Descanso Gardens; tickets for the train ride are $5 per person, with a limited number sold each day. Riders must be over 30 inches tall.
Guests admire an elevated railway with a miniature train at Descanso Gardens.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) and Carmy (Jeremy Allen White).
FX
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FX
There has always been a metaphorical parallel between The Bear, the television show, and The Bear, the fictional restaurant on the television show. Even as Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) and Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) transformed the Italian beef joint into the fancy restaurant of their dreams and wished for a Michelin star, there were undoubtedly locals who thought, “This is great and all, and I’m sure the food is good, but … I liked the beef sandwiches.” There’s still a window at The Bear to get them, but the focus is certainly elsewhere.
When it started, The Bear was mostly about the work that took place in the kitchen. The stresses of too many orders, territoriality from Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), the arrival of Sydney, and the tightly wound but undeniably talented Carmy, making everybody both extremely stressed and significantly better. Over time, it shifted and grew, putting together beloved departure episodes like “Fishes” in Season 2, which introduced a boatload of guest stars for a flashback story of a disastrous family dinner before Mikey (Jon Bernthal) died. It spent time with Sydney’s family, it explored the way Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) and Mikey originally met, it followed Marcus (Lionel Boyce) to Copenhagen, and it went with Richie to work for Andrea (Olivia Colman). All these episodes were excellent. And there was still a kitchen. But the focus seemed to be elsewhere.
At times, the show seemed to have disappeared up its own nose, to the point where you weren’t watching the show The Bear as much as you were watching the phenomenon The Bear. There were too many real-life chef cameos, until it seemed like those chefs were checking a box on a list of “things all the cool kids do.” There were too many other cameos, culminating in a rare miss from the reliably charismatic John Cena. The show placed a lot of narrative weight on Carmy’s love interest, Claire (Molly Gordon) — weight that the underwritten character couldn’t support. But even if every experiment and every diversion had worked, viewers couldn’t be blamed for missing the close focus on the kitchen and the camaraderie — for thinking, “This is all really special, but I do miss the beef sandwiches.”
The fifth and final season dispenses with the departure episodes, and it mostly dispenses with cameos. It all takes place on one day, just after Carmy tells Richie and Sydney that he wants to step back from the restaurant and give it to them and Sugar (Abby Elliott) to run, and it mostly takes place right there at The Bear. Now that the clock set by Jimmy (Oliver Platt) has run out, his money has run out as well, and a series of cascading disasters puts Sydney, Carmy and Richie behind the 8-ball from very early in the day, not least because of the tension hanging over all three of them as they prepare to tell the staff about Carmy’s decision to leave.
Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas).
FX
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We spend this day mostly with the people we know best: our three leads, along with Sugar, Tina, Marcus, and the rest of the staff — including Luca (Will Poulter), who has stayed around to keep working with Marcus. Jimmy is running around with Computer (Brian Koppelman) and a young apprentice of his named Cheese (Elsie Fisher of Eighth Grade), trying to figure out what to do about his finances since it is Jimmy, and not just the restaurant, who’s out of money.
This day takes a while to get cooking, so to speak. The first three episodes of the season are slow, the first two in particular. It’s pouring rain outside, the lighting is dim, and the score maintains the same contemplative melancholy for a long, long time. For about two and a half episodes, it feels like one extended, low-energy scene.
But after that, there’s a shift in tone as the staff looks to get through service, and through seven episodes (FX did not make the finale available in advance for critics), the rest of the season is terrific. What you see is the core story of The Bear, which is people trying to serve food and overcome problems, but through the lens of everything that has happened over the show’s run: Carmy’s retreat from his obsessiveness, Richie’s expansive (and inspiring) discovery of his gift for hospitality; Sydney’s stepping forward from second-in-command to leader; Tina’s complex relationship with the restaurant and her grief over Mikey; Sugar and Carmy’s relationship with Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis); the arrival of Marcus as a high-end pastry chef.
The question the show asks over the last four episodes is: Given all those digressions and flashbacks, given all those visits with families and others, given everything we know about where all these people have been and what they’ve experienced, how does a high-pressure service — of the same kind we used to see in that first season — look now? How do they behave differently, and how does their behavior read differently? How are they the same people we have always known, but at a different juncture, in a different context? How do their wins mean more to them, and to the audience?
On the one hand, making a season this way, there are fewer surprising grace notes, like “Napkins,” the Tina/Mikey flashback episode in Season 3, or “Worms,” the episode in Season 4 where Sydney hung out with her cousin (Danielle Deadwyler) and her cousin’s kid. The Bear feels less daring and more conventional.
But oh, when they have victories under pressure? Victories, large or small? It is immensely, richly satisfying. There’s also more comedy other than just the goofy Faks family than we’ve had in a few seasons; Richie is perhaps the MVP of the season, and that’s partly because of how often he gets to be really funny. Ayo Edebiri continues to be the show’s best reactor, showing Syd eternally a little bit surprised (dismayed?) that she’s chosen to throw in her lot with these people.
There are a couple of questions yet to answer in the finale, both little plot items and broader character resolutions. Over these seven episodes, though, there is much to cheer.
Lifestyle
John Cena wanted to step away from the WWE ring before he became ‘too slow for the show’ : Wild Card with Rachel Martin
A note from Wild Card host Rachel Martin: First a confession: I have never watched a WWE match in its entirety. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the athleticism and the performance, it’s just not my thing. But there is something about John Cena I’ve never been able to shake.
Yes, he is a wrestling legend, but he has built a career as an entertainer that transcends the ring. The first time I saw him lead a cast was the 2019 family movie “Playing with Fire” and his rapport with kids in that film didn’t seem like acting at all. The man contains multitudes!
He co-stars with Eric Andre in his newest film, “Little Brother.”
Xie Miao and Yang Enyou in The Furious.
Norachai Kajchapanont/Lionsgate
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Norachai Kajchapanont/Lionsgate
There have been some fantastic movies released this year, and we know you can’t see them all. So we’re recommending four recent movies we missed that you should add to your watchlist: The Furious, Tuner, She’s The He, and Heresy.
If you need a few more fun film recommendations, check out these episodes:
Fun movies you may have missed
Our favorite movies on Tubi
We debate the best movies to watch on an airplane
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