You read that right, I have in fact secured gainful employment. Which is tough since I’m basically unemployable: there are evidently few wishing to engage my kind, whose lot in life is one endless discourse involving Bunker Hill. (That, coupled with this relentless need to go on and on about community mausolea and Richardsonian Romanesque and the Richfield, or any of my other pet obsessions, like Andrew Jackson Downing or Sir Thomas Urquhart or Hugo Eckener or antique embalming bottles or…you get the idea.)
And yet, I have finally fulfilled my destiny as…railroad conductor! Or at least the trolley operator of Old Bunker Hill, after all, what else should I be doing besides manning Angels Flight?
Yes, under my able hand, Sinai and Olivet shall now ferry funicular fanatics (and occasional actual commuter) up and down Bunker Hill—under my hand and dutifully watchful eye.
That being said, I really only got the job because I already had the hat:
The shot of Flight operator Al Borgus plying his trade, above, is a screengrab from the absurdly important document Angels Flight, a thirteen-minute 16mm short from filmmaker Edmund Penney. Which, why look! here it is:
So, come visit me at Angels Flight! Though I won’t be able to chat…my attention is on Sinai and Olivet.
Always.
Bunker Hill, Los Angeles 
Congrats! Angels Flight couldn’t ask for a better ambassador than the author of “Bunker Hill Los Angeles”.
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Thank you my dear!
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Congrats! Angels Flight couldn’t ask for better than the guy who quite literally wrote the book on Bunker Hill.
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That is fantastic and so very appropriate! Congratulations!
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Nathan, I also applied, but my unemployability trumps your unemployability.
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I also also applied some 13 months ago, but perhaps made the mistake of invoking your name: “I’m an old crony of Nathan Marsak of riplosangeles.com fame, who published (what he believes to be) the definitive tome on Bunker Hill (Bunker Hill Los Angeles: Essence of Sunshine and Noir) last year.” HA!
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Very Cool!
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That film is bitter-sweet. I was there as a toddler in the early part, could have been on one of those cars. Saw the wrecking ball going to work when we were forced out circa 1962. At least I got to ride it a bit…
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So very cool…
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