CANDY CANE LANE SWEETEST STREETS IN THE VALLEY KIDS, PARENTS LOVE THE LIGHTS.Byline: Andrea Cavanaugh Staff Writer WOODLAND HILLS - In the 30 years he has lived on Candy Cane Lane, Harry Whale has considered skipping the time-consuming task of putting up Christmas decorations - but the thought was only fleeting. ``It just takes one smiley-faced kid and you're back on,'' he said. ``Kids come to the door and leave notes in the mailbox A simulated mailbox in the computer that holds e-mail messages. Mailboxes are stored on disk as a file of messages, a database of messages or as an individual file for each message. The standard mailboxes are usually In, Out, Trash and Junk (Spam). thanking us. How could I stop?'' Whale is a typical denizen An inhabitant of a particular place. A "denizen of the Internet" is a person who frequently uses the Web or other Internet facilities. of Candy Cane Lane - a half-mile-square area of Woodland Hills, just north of the Ventura Freeway The Ventura Freeway is a freeway in southern California running from Ventura to Pasadena. It is the principal east-west route through Ventura County and in the southern San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County. and east of Winnetka Avenue. Residents go all out to show their holiday spirit by festooning festooning (festoon´ing), n the process of carving the base material of a denture or denture pattern to simulate the contours of the natural tissues to be replaced by the denture. front yards with elaborate displays and ropes of twinkling twinkling, in astronomy: see seeing. lights. As Christmas draws near, the neighborhood fills nightly with a river of taillights as families drive slowly past the fanciful displays. Many of the yards evoke a winter wonderland, where forests of candy canes grow in front of sparkling Alpine villages. In some front yards, the sacred and the secular are scrambled together, with giant Snoopys or snowmen looming over Nativity scenes. The tradition of Candy Cane Lane dates back more than five decades. The neighborhood is bordered by Oxnard Street on the north, Penfield Avenue to the west, Jumilla Avenue to the east, and Martha Street to the south. At Jesse and Daniel Mercado's home on Lubao Avenue, characters from the film ``The Incredibles'' seem to streak across the lawn. For the past eight years, the Years, The the seven decades of Eleanor Pargiter’s life. [Br. Lit.: Benét, 1109] See : Time brothers have decorated their lawn with characters from a popular feature film. ``Every year, we wait to see what's out there, what the 'in' thing is, what's popular with the kids,'' Daniel Mercado said. The Mercados' decorations were a big hit with Juanita Lucas and her three children, ages 3 to 19. The North Hollywood family was touring Candy Cane Lane for the first time Wednesday. ``He keeps saying 'It's bootiful,''' Lucas said, gesturing toward her 3-year-old son. ``He wants to go play in the yards. That's why we have seat belts and car seats.'' Anita Caronna of Woodland Hills and her 5-year-old daughter, Sophia, have been touring the neighborhood for the past three years. ``I like it because it's old-fashioned, it's free, and you can stay in your car,'' she said. Lubao resident Kristi Hawley was busy Wednesday night stringing lights around the miniature village that graces her front lawn. The town includes a church, a candy shop, a gingerbread gingerbread In architecture and design, elaborately detailed embellishment, either lavish or superfluous. Though the term is occasionally applied to such highly detailed and decorative styles as the Rococo, it usually refers to the hand-carved and -sawn wood ornamentation of house and even a drive-in theater A drive-in theater is a form of cinema structure consisting of a large screen, a projection booth, a concession stand and a large parking area for automobiles. The screen can be as simple as a wall that is painted white, or it can be a complex steel truss structure with a complex , where plywood cutouts of cars are parked in front of a continuously playing ``Frosty frost·y adj. frost·i·er, frost·i·est 1. Producing or characterized by frost; freezing. See Synonyms at cold. 2. Covered with or as if with frost. 3. Silvery white; hoary. 4. the Snowman'' film clip Noun 1. film clip - a strip of motion picture film used in a telecast photographic film, film - photographic material consisting of a base of celluloid covered with a photographic emulsion; used to make negatives or transparencies . Not everyone in the neighborhood likes to put up holiday decorations, said Hawley, who has lived there for 10 years. ``Nothing happens to them,'' she said with a laugh. ``We just call them Scrooge.'' The decorating tradition is so strong in the neighborhood that the previous owners of the Mercados' home made them promise to continue, Daniel Mercado said. ``But even if nobody else did it, we would still do it,'' he said. ``It's our gift to the kids. It's just something we love to do.'' Andrea Cavanaugh, (818) 713-3669 andrea.cavanaugh(at)dailynews.com CAPTION(S): 2 photos, map Photo: (1 -- 2 -- color) Some residents of Candy Cane Lane decorate for the holidays with elaborate themes that attract thousands of spectators, top. Above, Cassidy Hawley, 9, helps ready a display in her Woodland Hills neighborhood. Gus Ruelas/Staff Photographer Map: Candy Cane Lane Daily News |
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