Los Angeles

Another small trip to Los Angeles is done and under the belt so to say. When I heard I was to be laid off this was the first trip I set up to keep me busy and relaxed of sort. The last time around I had stayed in Korea town, but this time around I wanted to stay downtown. It's kind of odd, but having grown up in LA I kind of spent the first 40 years of life avoiding it. What time I spent in downtown was either getting dimsum, or crewing some student film. But since I left LA, the downtown area of LA has kind of fascinated me, mostly it's been the history and all the noir films I've seen over the years. Anyway, I booked a few nights at the Stay on Main, which is a very old flop house conversion (originally the Hotel Cecil). The lobby was rather nice, the rooms were rather sparse and cheaply updated, which oddly enough was exactly what I wanted. The reason was I wanted to spend as little time as possible at the hotel. Anyway, after getting into town my early diner plans went south as my old work colleague was stuck in a long meeting and had to cancel on me. Oh well. So I headed to the hotel and spent the evening rambling about.

That first evening I mainly roamed around the hotel area, picked up some tastie proper Mexican food and snapped a few photos before it got too dark. I was happy to find some of the old downtown I was wanted, but was also struck by all the new young well to do residents who were out and about too.

I was up kind of early on Saturday, tried to have breakfast at the hotel, but really could only have a small bowl of cereal as the rest of the free food looked rather dreadful. Anyway, I left the hotel and wanted over to the LA's flower market in hopes of finding folks at work to shoot (photographically that is), but the whole hood was rather sparse. I suspect most of the bulk of the flower distribution business takes place in the early AM, so most of the folks I ran into were mainly tourist or brides to be on the look out for cutting out the middle man for their upcoming day in the sun.

After the flower market, I wandered south to check out the Santte Alley, which is kind of hidden in the middle of the downtown fashing district. It's an odd mix of local latino and korean stalls filled with stuff. I was still kind of early, but workers and owners were busy setting up for the day's activities none the less.

Around noon, I was off to valley to meet up meet up with an old friend for lunch who had been kind enough to pick up some film equipment I had won in LA auction a few weeks earlier. We spent some time catching up on all sorts of stuff and learned what was up in each others lives and what not. I did get to hear about his current attempts to get a low budget film off the ground. The premise sounded good too.

Afterwards, I headed into hollywood to visit all the places I always visit. Mainly it was old house on haunted hill, a few old record and camera shops. For dinner I met up another old friend who mentioned that the New Beverly was running double feature A Fist Full of Dollars and Yojimbo. Holly shit I cancelled my later meet up and spent the evening in wonder. Actually when we got to the theater, it was technically sold out and we waited in a line that went around the block with the hopes that we'd get one of the 100 reserved seats that they don't sell online. ANyway, the crowd was mainly male and was mainly there for the Leone film, which was rather faided and scratched too hell. It was a good showing none the less and Yojimbo was as always fantastic (and very good print too).

Sunday: I was up early again, but I also had plans for brunch in San Marino, so I didn't have much wandering time as I had on Saturday. Anyway, brunch was catching up with an old friend who I hadn't talked to in about 8 years, I think were were the only folks under 50 in this particular place to boot too. The brunch went rather long, so I headed off to Pasadena to my old friend Norton Simon, so wander the garden and catch up with Degas.

After the Norton SImon, I was off late lunch with a pair of friends I hadn't seen since I was teenager. Our meeting was one of those Facebook things of sorts, the friends in question were from my teenage years and actually slightly older then me, so when we hit college, we started seeing less and less of each other and our grown up ways really cut us off from each other too. Facebook was institute that brought us back together. So by count this as reunion 25 years in the making. Oy vay. Anyway, we caught up, but also talked about those of us who had passed on or had succumbed to mental illness. Mental illness and gamers from the 80's really do seem to walk hand in hand, as a mutual friend of all of us who had come back into contact with via facebook was obviously in midst of a his own long winding meltdown was the last subject of lunch.

Afterwards I was southward bound to Dean's shop, for a BBQ. I ended up getting back to Stay on Main around 1am. I wasn't up as early as I would have liked, so my morning was mainly spent hiking to my last get together in LA for brunch with Debra and her son. I think it had been about 15 years since I had seen my former coworker from UCLA, and I most definitly hadn't met her offspring either, so it was nice way to end my stay in LA. Afterwards it was a 8 hour drive up the 101, with occasional stop to use the xpan and back home for a few days rest.