Frenchtown Confidential

(Dear readers: permit me, if you will, to veer slightly off topic tonight. I've been wanting to get this off my chest for quite some tim...

One estimate puts LA's historic French community at a mere 2 percent. Another estimate puts the figure at a whopping 20 percent - one ou...

I realize this blog doesn't have a strictly linear timeline. Sometimes, one location will have a story spanning centuries; sometimes sev...

I love music more than life itself, and have been to many, MANY shows. Consequently, I know Southern California venues pretty well. I was ...

Certain modern-day Angelenos say they're into their art (usually meaning they're auditioning for an art film so weird even I won...

At the dawn of the nineteenth century in Virginia, seventeen-year-old Anne Beverley Whiting, whose stepfather had squandered her family'...

While Frenchtown's residents were mostly decent people, a few bad grapes did get into the wine vat. Michel Lachenais was one of them. ...

(Image courtesy of the California State Archives. View more here .) There were four Sainsevain brothers in all, but two of them - Pierr...

Jean-Louis Vignes (pronounced "vines") was born in Béguey, France (in Bordeaux's wine country) in 1780. In 1827, at the age of...

This is, obviously, a pretty new blog covering a complex subject: the history of Southern California's forgotten French community. I o...

Quick history lesson: After French emperor Napoleon had his dérriere handed to him at Waterloo in 1815, a lot of French soldiers found t...

The French have loved California ever since they found out it existed. Theodore de Croix, Captain General of northwestern Mexico under Kin...

Look at a map of Los Angeles that includes the names of its many neighborhoods. Take the time to scrutinize it thoroughly. Something is mi...