The City of Angels.
Aug. 11th, 2012 02:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
motodraconisI'm back, dunno if I'm jetlagged, I slept in till noon this morning but that might be because I was knackered! I saw a lot and did a lot of walking, but walking in LA does have its advantages, in that you stumble into odd but cool stuff such as Nick Metropolis' junkyard. A veritable treasure trove of kitsch!
I so wanted one of those dinos for my garden, alas, a bit too big to take onto the plane.
Visited the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits. A dinosaur free zone but full of great beasts from the Plasticine(!) era. Dire wolves and sabre-toothed cats.
There's a fishbowl lab where you can see paleontologists hard at work.
Then I went toBlackpool Santa Monica beach and had a paddle. I would really have wanted a swim, but being by myself it's not possible to swim without someone to guard your bag/purse/clothes (well technically it is possible to swim, just not so sure my stuff would still be there on my return, so I had to paddle instead. Bah!)
There was also beach volleyball being played, entirely lacking in any gorgeous bikini clad girls or stripped to the waist hunks. Bah!
Lost pants...
School buses (yeah, if you're from the US this is no big deal, but for me it was..."Eeeee! They still use those yellow buses! Eeeeeee!")
Ramones in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
Beautiful sculptures...
Ahem! Beautiful sculptures...
Not to mention wildlife and bizarre tombs.
LACMA Museum
Long Beach...
Watts Towers. Now this is a gem! My (admittedly rather old libary book copy) guidebook painted a visit to Watts Towers as a bit of a hairy experience (really poor area, scene of riots, DO NOT go there after dark) which almost put me off, but getting to it is a piece of piss with a Metro station very close. Once there, the guided tour is a must, since they take you into the site, and it is even better close up. I took masses of photos!
It has shades of Gaudi to it, but was built single handedly over the course of about 30 years by one illiterate man, Simon Rodia. Alas, Gaudi and Rodia never met or saw each others creations (being built more or less at the same time.) A shame!
Downtown LA.
Insane ballgowns! Big fat gypsy wedding eat your heart out!
There was a whole street festooned with shops selling dresses like this - including a leopard-print crinoline, alas, I didn't get a good picture of that one.
Older stuff...
Gothic cathedrals!
Funky deco...
Angels on the freeway...
I even stumbled past the filming of a cop show (can't remember what series they were filming, it didn't ring any bells for me.) Which does lead me to the unanticipated aspect of LA. My prior imaginings of America were based entirely on film, media and scary shit that American chums post in their livejournals (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
flewellyn knows full well when he posts the scary stuff, but for the rest of you it is often unintentional.) However, there was an aspect of LA that I didn't expect - or at least I did, but it was so much more in your face than I had imagined it would be. I mean, LA, when you see it from afar via television shows, is supposed to be a slick place where all the women are immaculate and have fine cheekbones and all the men are handsome, muscled and smart and the streets are shiny with glittering skyscrapers and the twinkling lights of many many cars. Etc. Etc.
Well I walked everywhere, sometimes taking an hour to walk to where I wanted to go. If it was further than that, I took the metro or a bus. Walking is great, you end up seeing unexpected gems such as Nick Metropolis' yard and this. But, you see a lot of homeless people. A lot. People sleeping on the street, camping out, third-world style. I saw people slumped in wheelchairs sleeping in the middle of the pavement, people rummaging through bins, shuffling about with trolleys piled with their belongings or bags tied to their waists. I mean, there are homeless people in the UK, and I've seen poverty in other countries. The slums of Mumbai did not freak me out, perhaps because I expected them, and perhaps because the particular slums I saw were full of industrious people working hard. The sheer quantity of homeless in LA was a shock, and the smell. LA stinks of piss. If you walk, you will never be too far from the smell of human(?) urine. I walked a different route to and from Siggraph every day, a half hour walk or more every day, and the smell was always in evidence, but on the last day I walked up Spring Street (historic downtown) and the stench was so pungent, gagworthy and unrelenting for the whole mile, it was almost unbearable.
Now I've been to some pretty grubby cities around the world, and some as hot and dry as LA. Maybe London would stink too if it wasn't being constantly rinsed down with rain, but LA smells worse than any city I have experienced, and when you're looking at vistas such as this you can't help but get something of a confused kick in the brain from the contrast. I'd pass street cafes, with people eating outside. I can't imagine how you could chomp down on your taco while surrounded by the stench of piss. Boggled. When I stepped out of the tube in North London where I live, an area which (to be frank) is pretty manky and grubby and less than upmarket, I had a moment of disorientation. It was hot and bright and sunny, someone was shuffling towards me clutching plastic bags. Something was missing. It took me a moment to get my head in gear. The person shuffling was not homeless, the plastic bags were their shopping, and the thing missing...
...no smell of piss. Anywhere. At all.
WHAT THE FUCK!
Anyway, to anyone else who has never been to LA, I recommend you piss your pants, dry them, piss them again a few times, dry them and then stuff 'em in a jar. Then when you're lounging on your sofa watching NCIS: Los Angeles you can unstopper the jar and take a good snuff every time they're out on the streets of LA, to give you the full LA experience!
So now I have visited America for the first time, has my opinion changed? Sort of, in that now I have no opinion and and have no idea what to expect if I ever return. LA is pretty unique and "special" in a good way as well as a bad way. I saw lots of cool stuff, people were either very friendly and nice or utterly, unpleasantly obtuse (there was no middle ground!) My brain has been scraped of opinion. I'll have to go back and see other cities and places in the US. If I get going with writing papers, this might happen. Who knows!
More pics on Flickr.
I so wanted one of those dinos for my garden, alas, a bit too big to take onto the plane.
Visited the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits. A dinosaur free zone but full of great beasts from the Plasticine(!) era. Dire wolves and sabre-toothed cats.
There's a fishbowl lab where you can see paleontologists hard at work.
Then I went to
There was also beach volleyball being played, entirely lacking in any gorgeous bikini clad girls or stripped to the waist hunks. Bah!
Lost pants...
School buses (yeah, if you're from the US this is no big deal, but for me it was..."Eeeee! They still use those yellow buses! Eeeeeee!")
Ramones in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
Beautiful sculptures...
Ahem! Beautiful sculptures...
Not to mention wildlife and bizarre tombs.
LACMA Museum
Long Beach...
Watts Towers. Now this is a gem! My (admittedly rather old libary book copy) guidebook painted a visit to Watts Towers as a bit of a hairy experience (really poor area, scene of riots, DO NOT go there after dark) which almost put me off, but getting to it is a piece of piss with a Metro station very close. Once there, the guided tour is a must, since they take you into the site, and it is even better close up. I took masses of photos!
It has shades of Gaudi to it, but was built single handedly over the course of about 30 years by one illiterate man, Simon Rodia. Alas, Gaudi and Rodia never met or saw each others creations (being built more or less at the same time.) A shame!
Downtown LA.
Insane ballgowns! Big fat gypsy wedding eat your heart out!
There was a whole street festooned with shops selling dresses like this - including a leopard-print crinoline, alas, I didn't get a good picture of that one.
Older stuff...
Gothic cathedrals!
Funky deco...
Angels on the freeway...
I even stumbled past the filming of a cop show (can't remember what series they were filming, it didn't ring any bells for me.) Which does lead me to the unanticipated aspect of LA. My prior imaginings of America were based entirely on film, media and scary shit that American chums post in their livejournals (
flewellyn knows full well when he posts the scary stuff, but for the rest of you it is often unintentional.) However, there was an aspect of LA that I didn't expect - or at least I did, but it was so much more in your face than I had imagined it would be. I mean, LA, when you see it from afar via television shows, is supposed to be a slick place where all the women are immaculate and have fine cheekbones and all the men are handsome, muscled and smart and the streets are shiny with glittering skyscrapers and the twinkling lights of many many cars. Etc. Etc.Well I walked everywhere, sometimes taking an hour to walk to where I wanted to go. If it was further than that, I took the metro or a bus. Walking is great, you end up seeing unexpected gems such as Nick Metropolis' yard and this. But, you see a lot of homeless people. A lot. People sleeping on the street, camping out, third-world style. I saw people slumped in wheelchairs sleeping in the middle of the pavement, people rummaging through bins, shuffling about with trolleys piled with their belongings or bags tied to their waists. I mean, there are homeless people in the UK, and I've seen poverty in other countries. The slums of Mumbai did not freak me out, perhaps because I expected them, and perhaps because the particular slums I saw were full of industrious people working hard. The sheer quantity of homeless in LA was a shock, and the smell. LA stinks of piss. If you walk, you will never be too far from the smell of human(?) urine. I walked a different route to and from Siggraph every day, a half hour walk or more every day, and the smell was always in evidence, but on the last day I walked up Spring Street (historic downtown) and the stench was so pungent, gagworthy and unrelenting for the whole mile, it was almost unbearable.
Now I've been to some pretty grubby cities around the world, and some as hot and dry as LA. Maybe London would stink too if it wasn't being constantly rinsed down with rain, but LA smells worse than any city I have experienced, and when you're looking at vistas such as this you can't help but get something of a confused kick in the brain from the contrast. I'd pass street cafes, with people eating outside. I can't imagine how you could chomp down on your taco while surrounded by the stench of piss. Boggled. When I stepped out of the tube in North London where I live, an area which (to be frank) is pretty manky and grubby and less than upmarket, I had a moment of disorientation. It was hot and bright and sunny, someone was shuffling towards me clutching plastic bags. Something was missing. It took me a moment to get my head in gear. The person shuffling was not homeless, the plastic bags were their shopping, and the thing missing...
...no smell of piss. Anywhere. At all.
WHAT THE FUCK!
Anyway, to anyone else who has never been to LA, I recommend you piss your pants, dry them, piss them again a few times, dry them and then stuff 'em in a jar. Then when you're lounging on your sofa watching NCIS: Los Angeles you can unstopper the jar and take a good snuff every time they're out on the streets of LA, to give you the full LA experience!
So now I have visited America for the first time, has my opinion changed? Sort of, in that now I have no opinion and and have no idea what to expect if I ever return. LA is pretty unique and "special" in a good way as well as a bad way. I saw lots of cool stuff, people were either very friendly and nice or utterly, unpleasantly obtuse (there was no middle ground!) My brain has been scraped of opinion. I'll have to go back and see other cities and places in the US. If I get going with writing papers, this might happen. Who knows!
More pics on Flickr.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-08-11 03:05 pm (UTC)I live on Spring, in the historic core, and it is just one block from the official border of Skid Row. LA's skid row is supposedly the largest population of homeless in America, so the collision of a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood with the poorest of the poor is a strange dichotomy.
Anyway, glad you survived and saw a lot of interesting things! It's always interesting seeing your home though the filter of a visitor, especially one from another country entirely.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-11 08:12 pm (UTC)Arf, I've pretty much spilled out my impression of LA (and it's food) unfiltered and uncensored, but I'd love to see a similar impression of London or Oxford from a visitor too!
no subject
Date: 2012-08-11 04:41 pm (UTC)Thanks for the gorgeous photos!
no subject
Date: 2012-08-11 08:05 pm (UTC)LA alas, really honked, in a shockingly pungent way. I've been to hot and dry cities elsewhere, but never smelt anything that bad. It was a bit of a surprise. Ah! The glamour of the City of Angels!
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Date: 2012-08-13 12:42 pm (UTC)and as for the Bacon Doughnut ...........................
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Date: 2012-08-13 03:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-13 03:04 pm (UTC)I'm assuming they are savoury? Not as silly a question as it might sound as I recently sampled the delights of a bacon and chocolate cupcake!
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