Los Angeles: City of fallen angels
After much too long dragging ourselves out of the quicksand of our modern lives, we touched down in the city of angels with no sleep and, by then, uncomfortable shoes. We at once found ourselves being spoken to like slow children by a large, surly black woman who had apparently seen fit to apply thick, white house paint as nail polish and eye shadow, as we negotiated passage through the broken down houses, and barred windows of Inglewood to our accom in Koreatown. After a brief glimpse of the famous Hollywood sign through the green/grey haze of the thick LA air, we arrived at our temporary home. Our driver of course, was not shy to ask me for a tip (we come from a non-tipping culture in Australia and New Zealand) an awkward exchange which consisted of him giving me change for the ride fare, and then me giving it straight back. We then stashed the bags, as we were much too early to check in and, with a much needed change into my trusty jandels/ thongs/ flip flops, set out into the 40 Celsius morning to kill some time.
Following a lot of cursing and sweating, we managed to get a tuna melt in the belly, and board one of the mobile looney bins they call buses, to the Downtown area for a quick reconnaissance mission. We stumbled into “The Last Bookstore”, and the “Grand Central Market” which was more of an immense extended food court, with great local beers, and a mind boggling array of local delicacies. With the jagged teeth of jet lag digging deeply into our ability to remain conscious, we just managed to get back to Koreatown before surrendering to sleep.
Waking sticky, but refreshed, it was back to the Grand Central market for great local beers, tongue tacos and the spiciest raw prawns I’ve had since Bangkok. Marinated in lime juice and coriander and swimming in pure evil, this refreshing bowl of prawn aguachile was the perfect catalyst for a big night out.
First stop, “Varnish.” The worst kept secret bar in LA. With a great cocktail list and super authentic prohibition era speakeasy vibe, this gem is hidden behind a sandwich shop. You enter through a door that from a distance just looks like a wooden panel wall. A few cocktails down, the best mint julep I’ve ever had, and free shots from the vibrant and knowledgeable bar staff, we did what all self respecting traveling alcoholics should do, and asked the bar keep where they go to drink. Seems simple enough right? It’s like asking chefs where they go to eat. We’ve employed this technique many times in foreign lands and have yet to be disappointed. Next to “Bar Clacson” for a beer and to watch people play pétanque on their full sized indoor pitch until I notice a lot of people emerging from the back of the bar. Another hidden space is revealed as we head through to a dark, dingier space playing punk music at high volumes and finished with arcade games. Needles to say this is much more our scene and we hold up here until we can barely stand.
As we leave, we employ the old ‘ask the bar tender where to go’ trick one last time and end up in the middle of nowhere eating tostadas and tacos from a truck with a bunch of LA natives. These taco trucks are an institution here and people are pretty faithful to their favourites. I’ll admit on our way to the “Flamin Tacos” truck, it seemed like the mother of all bad ideas; heading into the unknown with no trusty internet service or cell phone coverage to get our drunk asses back home. But as soon as I tasted the “Cubano,” a two pound sandwich filled with every kind of dead animal you could think of I realised, I am home!
As a child I can vividly remember one of my friends going to Disneyland over the school break. I can also remember being intensely jealous and vowing to get myself there some day. Well folks some 25 years later this overgrown kid got his wish, and then some. We hit three theme parks in 4 days, a deceptively exhausting exercise. I’ll spare the details in favour of a brief overview of each as we experienced them.
Universal studios. This was our first one so we were naturally pretty excited despite getting in from our taco excursion at 2.30am. In short this place is like the Gold Coast’s “Movie World” on crack! Not so many actual roller coasters, but 3D motion master type rides are the go here. The highlight was definitely Harry Potter’s Wizarding World. All the lengthy queues for rides were well shaded with big misting fans everywhere, which were a godsend in the crippling heat. Longest wait time was 45 mins for the Harry Potter ride, but it was the best!
6 Flags, Magic Mountain. Our roller coaster lust was fully sated at this park. There so many that we couldn’t possibly ride them all in one day, though we did try. This one is a long way out of town and involved us having to hire a car and drive ourselves out there. We’d had another big night the day before. This coupled with learning to drive on the right side of the road made for a pretty exhilarating experience before we even got to the park. The highlight was probably the “Tatsu” in which you are strapped in then turned to face the ground, and hurtled head first through the most terrifying series of twists and turns ever dreamed up by some sick genius engineers. It was the first ride of the day and we foolishly thought we had picked a gentle ride to warm up with, not the most intense ride in the whole park! Parts of this park where a bit run down and shabby to be fair. Also in a week of bad theme park food, the styrofoam biscuit they were marketing as a burger here was the fucking pits. Longest wait time was an hour I think, and lines were unshaded and the park overall felt poorly thought out compared to the other two. The “Superman Escape” is worth an honourable mention as I have never screamed with such honest and complete terror as I did while being shot 35 meters in the air backwards at 100miles per hour.
Disneyland. We really did save the best for last. As soon as you set foot in the magical kingdom you can’t help but revert back to an awe stricken 10 year old kid. The obsessive attention to detail was impressive to say the least. Some of these rides are at least 40 years old now, but you’d never know. Everything was so beautifully maintained, you’d swear it was built yesterday. Beautiful design and flawless staff execution, (the other parks probably had more thrilling rides) overall immersion, professionalism, and a sense of true childhood wonder made this place on point. Highlight was the “Indiana Jones “ ride which also had the longest wait, not that that mattered as the queue lead you through an ancient temple complete with booby traps and ancient relics. Also “New Orleans Town” was fucken mint! Unfortunately the “Haunted Mansion “ and “Space Mountain” where both closed which kinda sucks but this place was still the happiest place on earth. They also had the best food with the “Dole Whip”, a pineapple soft serve that actually tasted like a real pineapple, and a Moa sized turkey leg that tasted like ham and left me greasy and defeated.
We did all the other LA staples, the Hollywood walk of fame, the Chinese theatre. We saw an orchestra performance of some of John Williams finest film scores at the Hollywood Bowl which was $20, BYO, and so epic it still brought a smile to this jaded old travellers face. I was delightfully and constantly surprised at how, despite the reputation for rudeness, the people of LA were so polite, kind, and helpful. The traffic gets a bum rap here too but to be honest, Auckland traffic is much, much worse (sort your shit out Auckland!), besides once you have mastered the “hook turn” on the mean streets of the Melbourne CBD, you can basically drive anywhere it seems (except Saigon, Saigon is fucked up!). We’re told that no trip to this town is complete without a trip to “In-n-Out Burger” and to be fair it was an experience. If you’ve never seen a drive through queue spill out onto the road, around the block and hold up traffic a road over, then you ain’t seen shit son! The burgers were good, but not that good. We went to “Five Guys” burger parlour a couple of days later which was far superior in every way, and we didn’t have to wait 45 mins for burgers and battle overweight, heavy breathing burger whores for a scrap of table space to actually eat. In a town built on hype and little substance I felt like In-n-Out’s popularity is symptomatic of an age when you can be famous for simply being famous. Sure the secret menu items are kind of a cool touch, but is a secret menu really that cool if everyone, their dog and the internet knows about it?
After cramming in as much as possible in our short time, in this very large city, we decided to hit “Little Tokyo” for drinks and nibbles. Starting with “Mumford Brewing “ we demolished their range of very delicious IPA’s before striding through what was hands down the biggest homeless tent city I have come across. The stark contrast between the “haves” and the “have-nots” in this town was never so brutally apparent as while watching my back we made our way to the next port, in this sea of misery and decrepitude. We’ve seen real poverty in places like Cambodia before, but it was a cold hard slap in the face to see this happening on such a large scale in the “Greatest Nation On Earth”; for shame America.
Our night then took us to “Wolf & Crane”, where the barkeep directed us to a great sushi bar down the road (always ask the bartenders where to go), where we gorged ourselves on very well priced raw delicacies prepared right in front of us, and sipped giant Sopporo’s and tried our best to order what we could in poorly spoken Japanese. Back to Wolf & Crane for more beers, whiskey tasting flights, and eventually being held captive by the head bartender who knocked off, sat down with us, and proceeded to get us completely shit faced until the wee hours, and refused to let us pay for anything.
Suffering the most brutal hangover, in a week of foggy starts, we pulled our shit together, cleaned up the now unrecognisable food mess we had presumably purchased before retiring only a few hours before, and prepared to leave Los Angeles. We rented a car, packed up all our shit and hit the road for the California coast. The fresh sea breeze and coastal hillsides did much to mend the self inflicted mental wounds we sustained in the concrete jungle. Mile after mile of pristine coast line gobbled up by big business and wanky resorts the size of small towns, made me long for untouched New Zealand just a little, as we made our way down to the border to cross into Mexico.
Los Angeles, city of angels, home of the dodgers and of course Mickey Mouse. Where the air is thick, the water dehydrates you, and the sun is always shining. Looking back however, the angels are dodgy at best, with soiled, scabbed wings, and yellowed nubs for teeth that chatter incessantly to drug induced apparitions, while constantly scratching at the imaginary worms crawling under their skin. I’m no stranger to colourful characters coming from one of the rougher parts of Auckland, and now living in a once notoriously sketchy area of Melbourne, but as we catch the bus to downtown LA to rustle up something to eat, it strikes me that there are an extraordinary amount of damaged individuals roaming the streets in the broad, unforgiving daylight. It takes more than the far off gaze of a few broken souls to deter my appetite, but as I stare into the vast void pooling behind those dead eyes, I have to ask myself, “who is to blame for all this misery?” And then it clicks, who else could it be? The only logical conclusion is as obvious as the track marks on the arms of its victims, we must of course blame the mouse! That’s not to say that I believe a 5 foot rodent wearing gloves and pants is responsible for all the hurt on the streets here, rather it is an effective symbol for the dream, or rather, lies that lead so many hopefuls to over extend and wind up facedown in the gutter. We are all told that if we work hard we can do anything. But this is not necessarily the truth. Do you really think a man (or women) wakes up one day with the burning desire to clear away other people’s trash. Most of us have to play with the hands we were dealt. But that’s a necessary evil in our world. Simply put, if we all got what we wanted out of life by following our dreams our filth would ultimately pile up in the streets and choke society to death. Some ones gotta pick up the trash. Hollywood makes its living packaging up the lie, the dream, and selling it off piece by piece for the price of an admission ticket. So like moths flying too close to the light bulb, the hopefuls come to ‘make it’ in tinsel town, but instead crash and burn, and wind up chatting to themselves on the 720 to downtown. Possibly also the apparent lack of an effective welfare and public mental health systems could be a large contributing factor, but it’s not as fun as taking a swipe at everyone’s favourite bipedal magic vermin.
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