Los Angeles, I'm Yours

[tealin]

I've just gotten back from Southern California for the second time in three months. Unfortunately, most of the most interesting places I went didn't allow photography, and I'd rather not publicly post photos of people I know for purposes of internet security (whether or not they insist they don't mind) so they're mostly landscapes. These are photos from both trips with no attempt at chronological order.

	I'd never been to Santa Monica beach before. All the beaches we'd frequented in San Diego were either natural (Torrey Pines) or small and sheltered (La Jolla Cove) so to see this vast, vast expanse of perfectly flat and perfectly clean beach, with no kelp or shells or little stones even, was foreign. We had lunch at a beachside food stand and this picture was taken from one of its tables.
	The Getty Museum was cool not only because of its collection, but also its setting, high up on a hill overlooking the city. Here's one of the gardens ...
	... and here's a plaza. (Both have a round thingy in the middle; I hadn't noticed that before.) The white stone (Limestone? Marble?) of which it was built made it look like it belonged in the mediterranean somewhere; Italy, or Greece, or the Holy Land somewhere. Most befitting of the climate and ecology but a bit hard on the eyes in the bright sunlight.
	I liked the colours in the backlit plants against the shadowed chaparral. This was taken from the parking garage at the Getty.
	Ever since that second trip back to the States after moving to Canada, when I noticed airports had extensively remodelled, I've taken a perverse interest in the gigantically wide chairs. I'm sure they have benefits to everyone, in that you can sit with your briefcase or ... um ... sit sideways ... but I'm sure they were intended to cater to the, er, 'posteriorally endowed' among us. Which is ironic, because the planes these people will be getting on still have the usual narrow seats. Anyway, here's an oversized wheelchair, with a regular (occupied) wheelchair in the background for comparison.
	Effect and cause. Every time I dip back under the border, the culture, people, and 'system' feel more and more foreign. This time I gawked at the amazing bounty of absolute CRAP available for people to buy and, presumably, eat. The friend of my sister and I, who has been around the world but never to California before, was astonished at the vast selection of sugary cereals with movie tie-ins. So was I, for that matter ... We've got all the famous cereals with their own cartoon mascots here, but we'd never seen Ariel on a box of Corn Flakes or Cars-themed marshmallow cereal.
	We made a trip to Pasadena (which is much prettier than Burbank) and had some fun exploring old buildings in Old Town. Here's an apartment building with about 350% more style than anything built recently...
	... and some architectural detail on another one. Understated, considering how gaudy the style can get, but nice.
	We found ourselves, completely by accident, in a rather nice plaza off Colorado Boulevard which reminded me quite a bit of Market Square in Victoria.
	Here's a neat little alley, again off Colorado Blvd. There was an interesting little shop there with graphic ... designy ... stuff. Hey, it's got a website, you check it out and try to decide what it is. They had 'smoking vegetables.' This alley also contains the epicentre of fantastically amazing awesomeness but I'm afraid to mention it lest someone untoward think they're clever by smashing all the windows. (You're only paranoid if you're wrong!)
	We went for dinner at C&O Trattoria, an amazing little restaurant near Venice Beach that ... wow. It ... well, everything on its website is true. Including the thing about the garlic rolls. What they don't mention is that each table is covered in paper and they give you crayons even if you're not five years old, which is just unfairly awesome for animation people. You can see some of my drawings here, including a caricature of our waitress and a guy (who turned out to look a lot like Joe Gillis) leering at my sister's drawing of a pretty girl (offscreen). Front and centre are disneyboy's doodles which really illustrate the present state of mind.
	After dinner we went to the beach where there were really BIG waves, which went a long way to remind us of the power and immutability of the ocean. What can one do when confronted by the forces of nature in the midst of the ageless night but sit in the sand and eat raspberry tartufo?
	Time for requisite Plane Photos, which I am addicted to taking, so you have to suffer through them as well. Here's a volcano in the Cascades; I think it might be Rainier.
	Interesting bands of clouds in the evening light, somewhere over interior Oregon, I think ...
	There was a plane a thousand feet or so below us which caught the sunset in the most amazing way. The photo doesn't quite to it justice, but it was HOT PINK. A glowy, hot pink plane leaving a contrail against the blue ground was just too Lisa Frank to pass up. The sky was doing interesting things as well.
	Talking about gaudy, this was the actual, unmodified sky on the way back up. Absolutely amazing. Luckily the astonishing views out the window tend to defy logic and make me forget I'm in a metal tube hurtling through the upper atmosphere.

More goodies from LA tomorrow!

disneyboy, You are SO AWESOME. THANK YOU!! Thank you thank you thank you. SO MUCH.
Katie, I would have loved to meet up with you, but we were so busy running from place to place there was no way it could have worked! Next time, though... (and there WILL be a next time) we shall have such times! Such times, indeed!

Comments

[azvolrien.livejournal.com]

I like the drawing of the whale.

I've been to a few restaurants where they give you crayons. I drew a fox on the table cloth.