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CONCERTS BY CITY

The "Concerts by City" pages list concerts for Los Angeles County, Orange County and the Inland Empire in alphabetical order by city name. Information can be viewed by clicking the "All Cities" box to the left to view a combined list of all areas, or for a particular county by clicking on the county name. In addition, clicking on a city name will take you directly to that city's information on the "All Cities By City" concert page. Locations covered on the site this summer are included below. As has been the case for the last couple of years, new cities and venues will continue to be added as space and time allow. Please remember that although every attempt is made to bring you the most up-to-date information, all schedules are subject to change. It is recommended that you confirm any performance you wish to attend.

LOS ANGELES COUNTY CITIES

Alhambra, Altadena, Arcadia, Artesia, Azusa, Baldwin Park, Bellflower, Beverly Hills, Burbank, Carson, Cerritos, City of Industry, Claremont, Covina, Culver City, Diamond Bar, Downey, Duarte, Eagle Rock, El Monte, El Segundo, Glendale, Glendora, Hawaiian Gardens, Hermosa Beach, Hollywood, Huntington Park, Inglewood, Irwindale, La Canada Flintridge, La Habra Heights, La Mirada, La Puente, La Verne, Lakewood, Long Beach, Los Angeles (Downtown), Los Angeles (Museum District and Mid-Wilshire Area), Los Angeles (South and East), Los Angeles (West), Manhattan Beach, Marina Del Rey, Monrovia, Montebello, Norwalk, Pasadena, Pico Rivera, Playa Vista, Pomona, Puente Hills/Rowland Heights, Redondo Beach, Rosemead, San Dimas, San Gabriel, San Pedro/Wilmington, Santa Fe Springs, Santa Monica, Sierra Madre, Signal Hill, South El Monte, South Pasadena, Temple City, Torrance, Venice, Walnut, West Covina, West Hollywood, Whittier and Woodland Hills.

ORANGE COUNTY CITIES

Aliso Viejo, Anaheim, Anaheim Hills, Brea, Buena Park, Costa Mesa, Cypress, Dana Point and Dana Point Harbor, Fountain Valley, Fullerton, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, Irvine, La Habra, La Palma, Laguna Beach, Laguna Hills, Laguna Niguel, Lake Forest, Los Alamitos, Mission Viejo, Newport Beach, Orange, Placentia, Rancho Santa Margarita, San Clemente, San Juan Capistrano, Santa Ana, Seal Beach, Stanton, Tustin, Westminster and Yorba Linda.

INLAND EMPIRE CITIES

Chino, Chino Hills, Colton, Corona, Fontana, Lake Arrowhead, Montclair, Norco, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, Redlands, Rialto, Riverside, San Bernardino, Temecula and Upland.

"A major attraction of card games is that they are in general neither wholly mindless, like most dice games, nor excessively cerebral, like Chess, but offer a reasonable balance of chance and skill. The actual balance varies from game to game, enabling well-informed players to select from the vast repertoire of card games the one or two best suited to their tastes and talents."
David Parlett, The Oxford Guide to Card Games

     "If choice is essential to a game of skill, then information can hardly be less important, since an uninformed choice is no choice at all. This is where card games differ most distinctively from most board games . . . Card games play many variations on the theme of information, for example the amount of it they make available, and the ways in which it may be ascertained. It is always gradually revealed by the play of cards . . . And always it may be gained . . . by watching, studying and knowing the habits of partners and adversaries -- above all, of oneself, so as not to give the game away. Hence the Poker face."
David Parlett, The Oxford Guide to Card Games

Playing Cards

    Theories on the origins of playing cards abound, though few have been confirmed with an absolute degree of certainty. One anthropologist, Dr. Stewart Culin, writing in 1895, cited their lineage as being from Korean divination arrows, [Tilley] which "sometime during the sixth century were miniaturized into strips of oiled silk unattached to any shaft. [McManus] Given the proximity of the Korean peninsula to China, it is also speculated that these may have merged with or been influenced by Chinese money [Tilley] or Chinese "dotted cards" (a less costly version of dominoes) [McManus], and aided by the invention of paper in China.

    Other authors have traced playing cards of varying shapes and formats through Persia and Arabia into Egypt and then to Europe." [Francis] Spain and/or Italy are generally considered to be the likely entry points of cards to Europe, with "priority . . . accorded to Italy, partly because cards always spread along major trade routes, and Venice was the tradesman's entrance to Medieval Europe." [Parlett] The earliest European reference to playing cards occurs in a 1377 Latin manuscript written by a German monk, [Beal] and by the fifteenth century, card-making was already a growth industry in various European centers. [Parlett] Though legends exist as to how sailors with Columbus brought the knowledge of playing cards with them to the New World, other accounts tell of soldiers of Spain playing with leather cards in their expeditions in the 1500s . . . Cards also "were known to the early Mexicans as amapatolli from amatl, meaning paper, and patolli, meaning game." [Francis]

    Playing cards in different countries at different times have been round, long and narrow, and a variety of different sizes, but decks of playing cards as we know them today (52 cards with faces and numbers and four suits) were derived from European decks. The four suits most familiar to card players in the U.S. came from the French coeur (hearts), trefle (clubs), pique (spades) and carreau (diamonds/squares). Several of today's best-known card games also have European roots.

    One of the best known of these games is poker. Poker, as described colorfully in James McManus's book "Cowboys Full," had its most likely roots in poque, an 18th century French parlor game. McManus says of the game that it "emerged from the womb of a French vying game inflected with Persian characteristics as the flags above New Orleans were changing from Spanish to French to the Stars and Stripes around the 19th century and in the tumultuous decade that followed." The game later came into its own in New Orleans and on the Mississippi riverboats.

    Numerous card games are enjoyed today as social games and pastimes, but long before games (like bridge) were heard of, cards were also reviled by many. Playing cards were used extensively in gambling and fortunetelling and "acquired an unsavory reputation, being associated with all vices." [Francis]

Reference Sources:

Beal, George. Playing Cards and Their Story. New York: Arco Publishing Company, 1975.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1953 Edition.
Francis, Henry G., editor. The Official Encyclopedia of Bridge, 4th Edition, New York: Crown Publishers, 1984.
Parlett, David. The Oxford History of Board Games, Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
McManus, James. Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009.
Tilley, Roger. Playing Cards, London: Octopus Books, 1967.

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