This morning I’ve watched a walking tour of unloved sculptures in Downtown L.A., an inordinately detailed talk about steer tongue at Langer’s and a montage of warty pigs at the L.A. Zoo set to Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful”—and my day is just that much better because of it all.
That’s right, there’s now a 24/7 stream on YouTube of episodes of Visiting… with Huell Howser, the multi-decade series that saw the late local broadcasting legend spending time with the people and places that make Southern California so unique. PBS SoCal began streaming the all-day, all-night feed earlier this week, and hopefully it’ll continue to do so until the heat death of the universe.
If you’re unfamiliar with Huell Howser, then by golly are you in for a treat. A transplant from Tennessee, Huell—because it only feels right referring to him by his first name—started hosting a series of human interest segments on L.A. educational TV station KCET in the early 1980s up until his retirement in 2012; the broadcaster passed away the following year.
Just about always dressed in a polo shirt and sunglasses, Huell would tote his microphone around to seemingly ever major and minor point of interest, statewide for his California’s Gold series and locally for Visiting. His enthusiastic interviews were peppered with a Southern-tinged “okay” and dazzled “that’s amazing!”, plus plenty of drawn-out takes and equally long handshakes. There’s a lot of unintentional comedy—as I write this, I’m watching him try to speak with a mouth full of shredded cabbage—but he also managed to make the most mundane corners of L.A. seem magical and had a knack for getting people to gush about why they love this place so much.
If the Visiting stream isn’t enough Huell for you, you can watch episodes of California’s Gold and the rest of his travelogue series between online streams and occasional TV airings on PBS SoCal as well as through the online archives at Chapman University, which also maintains an in-person exhibition at its campus in Orange. We’ve picked out five of our favorite episodes as a good starting point.