Interactive Map
Jeffrey Cannon, chemistry professor
Hobby: Playing Pokémon and biking
Location: Occidental College and the Rose Bowl
“I play Pokémon Go, and I’ve had what I guess has become a lifelong obsession.”
“One of the things about Pokémon Go is that you have to go and do things, and I’ll run into students playing the game at the same time, and that’s a way that I’ll interact with students and get to share with them the same love of the game. That in itself has led to me being the faculty advisor for the Pokémon Club on campus.“
Cannon said he is a fan of playing Pokémon since the game came out when he was 10. He is the faculty advisor for the Pokémon club on campus. Cannon said he also enjoys cycling, both using it as his primary source of transportation and a sport called Randonneuring, a form of ultra-long distance cycling.
“I’ve been riding my bike for a long time but participating in that sport for about 10 years now, and what I like about the sport is that it’s not competitive, it’s not interpersonally competitive — it’s self-competitive.”
“I also have two cats that I talk about in my class a lot. Their names are Mochi and Nori, but they make appearances in class because it’s easy to personify them.”
Brendan Hughes, Theater and Performance Studies professor
Hobby: Doing stand-up comedy and fake Ted Talks in his backyard and hiking Henninger Flats
Location: Ridgewood Avenue and Henninger Flats
Outside of being a professor, Hughes said he is a director, with credits including a PBS documentary “The Metal Detector” and a feature film “Din-Din”, which will be released soon. According to Hughes, his main and favorite hobby is creating alt-comedy fake TED talks on different themes of life, many of which he does in his backyard. He has also performed outside of LA in places like New York, Boston, Cape Cod and San Francisco in front of large crowds.
“I used to do [comedy shows] like four times a year. But when I started directing this movie, I had to just stop doing it completely. I’m actually in the midst of finally getting it out the door and being done with [the movie]. So next year I’m gonna start it back up again. Next spring I think I’m going to start getting out there again when I’m done with this other podcast about my parents. I have all these creative projects that get in the way. But this is the one that I really love doing.”
He is currently making a podcast on his parents’ love story and has a 10-year-long podcast titled “Dad Jeans,” which he started with his friend when they both became dads.
“I play guitar and I play drums. An outcropping of the podcast with my friend Jeff that I do is that we created a fake Euro-synth band called Vörhörst, which doesn’t mean anything. We sometimes get together and make Euro-dance music, but it’s all with goofy lyrics about how much we love McDonald’s.”
Outside of directing and doing stand-up comedy, Hughes likes to go on hikes on Henninger Flats up to Mt. Wilson or Mt. Whitney.
“If you’re driving east on the 210, and you look up to your left way up high on the hill, there’s this flat part where there are a bunch of pine trees standing on…My family and I call it the shoulder of pines… I’d always been obsessed with [it] when I moved to LA, and one day I was like ‘I’m gonna find it!’ went on this hike, and it’s incredible…It takes three hours to get up to it, and you have to get up to Henninger Flats…”
Jorgen Harris, Economics professor
Hobby: Walking dog, playing violin and guitar at home, biking in LA and reading on campus
Location: Fiji Hill and the Eagle Rock neighborhood
“I usually play music at home. Sometimes I have a couple of friends I like to jam with,” Harris said. “I sometimes read on the Quad, especially over the summer, ‘cause it’s so beautiful… Everytime I do that, I think, ‘Why am I not doing this every day?’”
Harris also loves to bake bread, cook Mediterranean or Latin American food and sometimes likes to bring some of his baked goods to class. When his dog was younger, he used to take him up on hikes every morning on Fiji Hill.
“I go on bike rides on the weekends, which is a really nice way of seeing a city and I think a lot of times I will bring examples to class that come from things that I notice when I’m riding my bike. So my inequality class, you know, one of the things that you’ll see very clearly if you bike around the city is just sort of how massively different different neighborhoods are that are close together. And so, doing that has kind of given me more of a sense of what that looks like in LA.”
Broderick Fox, Media Arts and Culture professor
Hobby: Attending fine arts and contemporary art exhibits around LA
Locations: Exhibit at the Santa Monica Airport and The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel
“By looking at and experiencing this much art, it really does change even the way I sort of not only conceptually, but also from a cognitive science perspective, experience the world. There’s nothing more interesting for me than sort of seeing work that I find at first glance perhaps inaccessible or confronting or troublesome in some way and then having the opportunity to talk with an artist to try to understand some context around it or how it fits into a larger trajectory of history or how it seeks to push against those things.”
“I think my following of art and my exploration of art across a range of mediums is very grounding and trying to kind of grapple with a lot of those really complicated questions at this moment, and for me, the ability to engage in the experience with the art scene is not just about the artwork but also about the community formation.”
“Most of the artwork that’s on my walls at home is connected to people that I know or that I’ve had opportunities to meet through their art practice and that has really grounded me in Los Angeles and me feel like really contributes to my sense of place.”
Allison de Fren, Media Arts & Culture professor
Hobby: Going on long walks around her neighborhood
Locations: Griffith Park, Franklin Hills and former Source Family home in Los Feliz neighborhood
As a native New Yorker, De Fren said she moved to the Los Feliz neighborhood nearly 20 years ago specifically because she wanted a walkable place to live.
“Very simply, I was able to see people, other people, in my neighborhood who were also walking. I think many people began walking and hiking during the pandemic, and so it was an opportunity to get outside and even something as simple as a smile, walking by another person can help you feel more connected to the environment around you.
“I think it was a way for all of us who are walking around the neighborhood to see one another to talk at a distance. Many of my social activities revolved around walking, so if I was going to get together with a friend, we would take a walk in Griffith Park or take a walk around the neighborhood. I’ve lived here now for almost 20 years and I was humbled by, in fact, how little I knew about this neighborhood, about the streets and different parts of the neighborhood until I started walking around it and then I became addicted to walking and haven’t stopped since. It’s become a daily practice.”
“One thing I will tell you is that I discovered in my neighborhood that I went down a rabbit hole about, in fact, it’s on my way to Griffith Park. I didn’t discover it until after I started walking to Griffith Park on a regular basis, but there is a mansion that was owned by a cult in the seventies called The Source Family, and these were the people who started the health movement in Los Angeles.”
“I used to take weekly walks but it wasn’t until I was walking every day that I came to really appreciate the relationship between walking and thinking, and in fact, I, as somebody who often chained to a computer doing my work, either writing or video editing and is often trying to work things out while I’m working on the computer. It’s been really helpful for me to see how important it is to move my body and how my best ideas come while I’m walking not when I’m working and so I use it as a time to decompress, as we call ‘defrag my hard drive.’”
Yurika Wakamatsu, art history professor
Hobby: Spending time with toddler son and doing yoga
Locations: FEAST Garden and Eagle Rock neighborhood
Wakamatsu has a 20-month-old son, Sho, whom she spends most of her downtime with. Wakamatsu said that since childcare is so expensive, she often feels slightly guilty about pursuing her personal hobbies if she is paying someone else to watch Sho. According to Wakamatsu, she also enjoys doing yoga during the weekends, which helps her relax.
“[Sho’s] really discovering the world. He’s really taking joy in learning and discovering the world, And that’s really fascinating. You kind of see the world completely differently through his eyes and through his experience. That’s really special, and he’s beginning to really show his, find the interest and show his interests. So we asked him if he wanted to go see dinosaur bones a couple of weeks ago, and he said, ‘Yes.’ So we went to the Natural History Museum for the first time and he loved seeing dinosaurs bones. And my partner and I are not really into dinosaur bones, but he was so fascinated with those bones, that we kind of enjoyed looking at these bones with him. So I feel like I’m enjoying the world with him through him.”
“I’ve been so grateful for the student workers there [the FEAST (Food, Energy and Sustainability Team) Garden]. Every time we go, they always let us just go into the chicken cage and play with the chickens, and they always try to talk with my child about the chickens… There’s one student who taught my son the name of one of the chickens, Kimchi. So he kept saying ‘Kimchi, Kimchi’ every time he saw a chicken in a children’s book… I’m really thankful to the students who welcome and allow us to explore the campus, and especially the student workers at the FEAST Garden who have been so nice to my son.”
“Raising a child is a constant struggle but at the same time, he’s brought so much joy and love and happiness to our lives. We also talk about parents’ love toward the child, but it’s kind of amazing how much love the child gives to you as a parent. So it’s really special to feel the child’s love for you.”
Sheldon Schiffer, computer science professor
Hobby: Going on long hikes that last up to nine days with 45 lb bookbags
Locations: Anza Borrego Desert State Park, King’s Canyon, Blue Ridge Mountains in GA and SC, Sierra Nevada
Schiffer said he has been hiking seriously since he was 12 years old, when he began hiking every day after school in the Cleveland National Forest. His hiking hobby has now evolved into backpacking 40 to 50 miles, over six to nine days, with 40 pounds on his back.
“I’m not a rock face climber but I do like to go into the local mountains and take the trails. I hike all of them, as many as I can. I’ve hiked a lot in the Sierra Nevada, so up and down the Sierra Nevada, from areas around Kings Canyon, northern Yosemite. Here, locally, I’ve climbed Mount Baldy a couple of times and the San Gregorio Mountains, but I mean, I love hiking everywhere and I don’t always go for mountains. My wife is not into mountain climbing, more flat stuff for her, so I love desert hiking and I love Joshua Tree, Anza-Borrego [Desert State Park]. I like hiking near the ocean.”
“When you hike near the ocean, you are usually expecting southern central California, you’re expecting some cliffs with steps because typically there’s going to be a canyon that you climb away from the ocean and then back down toward the ocean, and maybe there’ll be a really cool estuary where there’s a lot more open space and there’s a lot of birds that make it their breeding ground or their hangout place.”
“Hiking in California is more strenuous for the most part. If you go to a mountain, like just a hike in Sierra Nevada, you spend the first-day suffering. That’s a fact. I always tell my friends ‘You want to go hiking with me in the Sierra Nevada, and they’re like ‘Yeah’ and then you have to realize it’s kind of not like vacation. If you go locally it can be more relaxed because maybe it’s not as steep, you can hike hard for the first four hours and then it’s more chill, but in Sierra Nevada, it’s like you park and then for one day it’s brutal.”
“It’s kind of like an astronaut, you can’t make any mistakes because it can be bad. Things happen, so you’re always thinking, ‘Be careful here, do this, do that, have fun for like 45 minutes and then like okay where’s my food, where’s my stuff, hide it from the bears.'”
Contact Francine Ghazarian at ghazarian@oxy.edu and Karen Palacios Echeverria at palacioseche@oxy.edu
Illustrations by Anissa Basnayake
Online layout by Nicholas Novak and Maeve Mascarenhas
Special thanks to photographers Luca Lennon and Abigail Montopoli
This article was updated April 3 11:50 a.m. to reflect that De Fren has lived in her neighborhood for nearly 20 years.
