Angel's Flight

They are actually called funicular railways, this one a historic national landmark from 1901. Basically, Angel's Flight was a very short ride, with two cars named Olivet and Sinai, that ran in opposite directions on a shared cable. Originally, there were magnificent Victorian homes along one side of the hill, later sadly replaced with buildings. 

What little I recall riding it with my mom- probably 1960, I was seven- included how scary steep it felt, the unwelcome lurching motion upward and downward, and how pointless it all seemed to me at the time. Too much like how a roller coaster begins, the slow, ominous ascent, I wasn't a fan. We rode to the top, got off, waited a bit, then rode back down, my hand gripping my mom's the whole trip. 

Then, we walked back across the street to Grand Central Market for groceries before the long bus ride back home. I recall this ride happened only a couple of times. There may have been more to see at the top, but we never explored anywhere. 

The Bunker Hill area, largely gone now, was at one time a rowdy, seedy part of downtown, as author Raymond Chandler and others have so epically described. With its dark alleys and dangerous streets, the unique neighborhood became the outdoor set to dozens of Hollywood feature films. 

Eventually eroded to bulldozed renovations, concrete, and inevitable change, it's eternally captured now in ancient photos of a Los Angeles never to return.