I recently noticed something on my phone. It’s probably not something that most people would notice, but ever since I first did, it’s been driving me a little nuts.

Apple has a handy little app available for the iPhone and iPad called Find My Friends. It allows you to stalk people without their knowledge see the location of people who have given you permission so you can see how close they are, or can easily find them for say a meet-up. It’s pretty handy to be able to see where family members are so you can plan, say dinner, accordingly.
I was looking at the app one day and saw that one of my stalkees was driving by the Langham Huntington Hotel in Pasadena. I then noticed something about the Langham; its lawn was full of cars. Now this particular hotel has a rich history. It’s set in Pasadena’s most exclusive and affluent neighborhood, an area that back in the ’20s and ’30s was a spot where Hollywood’s wealthy would go to get away from it all. The Langham Hotel sits on the grounds of the former Huntington Hotel which served both the Hollywood elite as well as vacationers from the frigid Midwest wintering in balmy Southern California.
The Langham is actually a modern recreation of the classic Huntington and still serves as a destination for the well to do. As such, they don’t typically let guests park on the expanse of lawn that the hotel’s wings embrace. We have a Holiday Inn for that. That’s why it struck me as odd to see the Langham in Find My Friends with a lawn full of orderly parked cars, and it’s been driving me nuts wondering what car show this might have been.
I checked the regular Apple Maps and it told me that the Langham was in a remote section of the Australian Outback. Actually it showed the proper location, but with a different image, sans cars on the lawn. Google Maps also shows the lawn car-free.

I’ve been to car shows on that lawn in the past, but not for a number of years. This one must have been more recent than that, but I can’t figure out what show it might have been. I even emailed Apple to see if they could tell me when the map image was taken so that I could deduce the timing of the show. Sadly, Apple doesn’t seem to share my interest in finding out.
Still, I keep going back and looking at it because I know that someday they’ll update the maps and the show will be gone. While it is here, it’s sort of a comforting little bit of knowledge, that I have a car show on my phone, even if I don’t know what cars those are.