Southern California

After finally getting settled, it was time to see a little bit of California. We stayed in Glendale in a hotel for a few days, while Jamie lined up a place to live for a little longer. Our hotel was down the street from a Yoshinoya, which made me very happy. Yoshinoya is a Japanese fast food chain, that serves beef and rice bowls among other things. When in Tokyo, I used to frequent Yoshinoya and similar places after a night out. After reliving some J-Nostalgia, Jaime and I explored the area. Across the street from our hotel was a brand new outdoor mall. The first time we walked through it was very unnerving. There was a chandelier hanging above one of the streets; a full size, crystal chandelier. If that wasn’t enough, there was a giant fountain in the middle of the whole place, and music being pumped through speakers, the first time we went it was “What a Wonderful World.” It may sound nice, and I suppose it was, but we found the whole place to be a bit bizarre. It was called the “Americana” mall, and all the buildings were done in an old timey fashion. The centerpiece was a tower that had glass elevators one could ride up to the top of an 8 floor parking garage/condo. I took some decent pictures from the top of this place.

After thoroughly exploring this area, we decided to branch out a bit. I figured it was best to avoid any areas in L.A. that I’ve heard in rap music (sorry, Compton, Inglewood, Long Beach, etc.) so we went to Pasadena. We didn’t go there much, just to check out a store, but this area was very nice. I think ‘nice’ in L.A. usually translates to ‘expensive’ as most of the places (stores, food, etc) were quite pricey.

The next day (I think were at Friday here) Jamie had to start working, so I had a day to myself. I decided to do some touristy things, so I caught a bus to Hollywood, and got a hot dog at Pinks. I walked down Hollywood Blvd for what was probably about an hour and a half, but what felt like 4 hours. To be fair most of that time was spent waiting for my next bus to arrive, but I did see all the famous things, the Chinese theater, the Hollywood sign, some of the walk of fame, Kodak Theater, and some other miscellanea. Hollywood is a very contradictory place in my humble opinion. While it stands as one of the high points of American potential, working your way to the top and all, it all shows the very bottom of the barrel. I can’t name many places where you can see celebrities who make millions of dollars a year, and in the very same breath see someone passed out on the corner in the middle of the day.

After a long, sweaty wait for a bus, I headed south to go Pinks for a hotdog. I’m sure if you watch the Food Network or the Travel Channel at any length, you’ve probably seen this place on TV (the hot dog stand of the stars!). Anywho, I waited in line for a half hour for what was a pretty decent chili dog. Albeit, you could get a dog at least this good or better at any given hot dog joint in the city of Chicago or its surrounding suburbs, but whatever, now I can say I’ve been to Pinks, so there.

On Saturday we had some free time so we drove up to Malibu to see some of the coast. There’s a lovely road called Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) which does exactly what it claims, it runs along the Pacific Coast. We headed up this road to a beach called Leo Carillo. We saw many a cool sight on the way there, from the sandy beaches to rocky tide pools. We stopped at one of the later. I love climbing up and down rocks like a ninja-schoolboy so it was fun. The scenery was very lovely, which was a good thing because we got stuck on the PCH for a good 30 minutes because of traffic.

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As I’m sitting on my flight to San Francisco, (btw Virgin airlines is pretty awesome, more on that later) I figure this is a good as time as any to jot down my overall reflections on the L.A. area based on my short time there. I’ll use a tried and true method, pros and cons.

Pros & Cons of Southern California

Pros:

• Great food, everywhere, from any place - Name any Asian country, there’s a place to get some of their food in L.A. Great Mexican food, decent Indian food, they really have anything and everything out here.
• Respectable public transportation - Busses were fairly thorough and mostly clean, and although I didn’t ride many trains, the few I did ride were clean and fairly efficient. Fares were low, lower than CTA anyway, probably due the little love affair the state of California has with democratic socialism. People actually use public transportation out here, so it was crowded sometimes, but that didn’t bother me, I did after all, live in Tokyo.
• People - The people were surprisingly nice, especially considering what I’ve heard about L.A. people being the rudest in the country (that was from someone who lived here, by the way). Granted I wasn’t even in town a week, but still, people were very cool. There were also people from everywhere out here, probably the reason for the diverse food. I’ve never heard so many languages spoken in the same place in such a short time as I did here. In two hours of walking around, I heard English, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Armenian (I think), Hebrew (I think), and a few others that I couldn’t identify.

Cons:

• Food - Everything out here is very expensive, the food being the first thing you notice. Due to a number of factors, whether it be the nature of the food you like, or the fact that there aren’t many cows or farms in this part of California, or the location you are eating in, food ain’t cheap.
• Transportation - Sure, the public transportation is done well here, but the buses I rode don’t run nearly often enough, and when you are waiting for an hour for a bus (which I did once or twice) you really feel the heat. That and this area is made for cars, period. If you don’t have a car, you are going to have a hard time. The freeways here are completely insane. We once took two different freeways to get just to the carwash. Each one has five or six lanes, and a speed limit that’s rarely posted, but people ignore it anyway.
• Contradictions – I’m sure everyone is familiar with stereotypes associated with Californians being smug and stuck up about certain things. I find this to be very contradictory of some of the realities of being here. For an “enlightened” and “progressive” place, there are just as many social problems as anywhere else, maybe more. You could cut the smog around L.A. with a butter knife, in the same day you can see countless homeless people as well as people with money to spare, hybrid cars share the road with Hummers and Escalades, the list goes on.

All and all I’ve enjoyed my time in So Cal, it is a pretty neat place, and different enough from Chicago to make it interesting. As I’m off to San Francisco, I’ll try and keep an open mind and be ready for any new adventures.

So Cal Pictures