This One's For Huell Howser

This One's For Huell Howser

Last week California lost a little bit of its gold at the hands of cancer. Star of television and all around amazingly kind and down to earth guy, Huell Howser passed away. And while I don't know about everyone else who didn't grow up in range of a California Public Broadcast Station, I do know that I was essentially raised by Huell.

To a great degree, he's the major driving force as to why I go out of my way to find those hidden spots of the city. Why I love going on road trips and a major reason why I'm more than happy to talk to strangers whenever I come across them. Sometimes I'm not exactly sure how to approach them, but hey, it went to show you that he could make anything enjoyable.

Huell was not born here. He was a transplant, but I dare you to find someone who is more Californian than him. He will go down as one of our most precious commodities. Mainly due to the ability to be filled with wanderlust and excitement at the slightest things. Just look at his reaction to a dog that eats avocados.



Which has to be one of my favorite moments on his productions by far. But that was just one instance of many that showed how full of joy and carefree the man was. Perhaps you should take a look at his reporting in the early days of his career.



But as much as he was on point with a lot of those, including a Clash report, nothing can beat his programs California's Gold and Visiting with... Since he died at a young age of 67 without any heirs, he decided to give Chapman University the rights to stream all of his produced content. Which is pretty impressive and is located at the Huell Howser archives.

Tomorrow (Tuesday the 15th) at Griffith Park's Observatory, a memorial will be held in honor of the man organized by Tom LaBonge. Who Huell Howser was the master of ceremonies at LaBonge's first swearing in. But yeah, to have a Sunset Salute to a man who opened the door in showing a large part of the hidden aspects of California to many of us in his own special way... well, that's the least we can do short of putting up a statue of the man.

You know what, this man was one of my heroes. He deserves more than one blog post celebrating his life. So to be continued.....