Saturday, March 12, 2011

City of Angels


Los Angeles is amazing. For my entire life I have always had negative thoughts and feelings towards LA, but I had never actually been there. That all changed a month ago when I traveled to LA to visit my friends Ivy and Sierra. As the pilot came over the intercom to tell us that we were descending towards the Los Angeles metropolitan area, this was my first view. Already I was feeling more positively towards LA than I had imagined I would. Who knew LA had mountains? I didn't.



Of course as we descended further, I saw the inevitable rows upon rows of houses and buildings. However, after having lived in rural Vermont for the past 10 months, the sight of all those buildings, freeways and concrete was surprisingly exhilarating. It felt like you could fit the entire population of Vermont, and all of its buildings in one square mile of LA. Who knows, maybe you can. My friend Ivy picked me up from the airport and we spent a relaxing evening eating thai food and reminiscing.

The next morning my friend Sierra came to pick me up and we spent the afternoon at The Getty Museum. Sierra had a conference call that she had to be on for work, so The Getty was the perfect place to wander around while she took care of business. The original museum was run out of J. Paul Getty's house, beginning in 1954. An oil tycoon, he had purchased many works of art that he wanted to share with the public. Eventually his collection became too big and in the early 70's he built a replica of an Italian villa on his property to house his art collection. The Villa opened in 1974 and is still open today. After Getty's death in 1976, the museum was turned over to the Getty trust. In 1983 a 110 acre site was purchased in the Santa Monica Mountains, surrounded by 600 acres of untouched land. A 24 acre campus was designed by architect Richard Meier and took 13 years to complete, finally opening in 1997. My four hours there were barely enough to scrape the surface. I spent a large portion of my time wandering around the artfully landscaped gardens. After months spent starting out at 4 feet of snow, flowers were a sight for sore eyes.

A shot of The Getty from the freeway.

The central garden.

Oooohhhhh.....bougainvillea!


Friends!

Cactus and succulent garden.

Our evening was spent going to Sierra's work meeting, hitting up a happy hour in downtown LA that gave you a token for a 35 cent(!) first drink, walking around Little Tokyo and stopping at a super tasty restaurant for a dinner of ramen. Rest assured, this is no 25 cent grocery store ramen. It was brothy and delicious and involved pork. Yum.

Day three in LA dawned gray and rainy and our plans for a hike in Griffith Park were foiled. Fortunately, Sierra always has back-up plans. We wandered around a Mexican market where the main language spoken was Spanish, then headed to a local place for amazing fish tacos. After throwing out a few ideas for afternoon activities and hemming and hawing for a bit, I finally asked Sierra if there was anything she'd been meaning to do since moving to LA but hadn't gotten around to and she immediately thought of the Watts Towers.

The Watts Towers, also known as Simon Rodia's Towers were built by Simon, an Italian immigrant, over a 33 year period, 1921-1954. On these 90 foot towers he used no ladders, scaffolding, bolts or welding. The entire structure is made from metal and concrete and covered in mosaic from re-claimed and found materials. In a short documentary film we watched about him, it shows him climbing up the towers with a bucket and some tiles to work on the top of one of the towers. The structures were amazing, every square inch mosaiced and beautiful.

Sierra and our tour guide, Howard.



After our tour around the towers, we went into the Watts Towers Arts Center where artist Dominique Moody was having an exhibition. She happened to be leading a small tour around the gallery, so I latched onto the group while Sierra made a quick work call. After the tour, Dominique invited us down the block to the house where she is doing a 2 year artist in residency.
A 3D artist, she is legally blind and only sees in 2 dimensions. Her next project is to build an 8x20x12 foot cabin on a trailer bed which she will then, with the help of her brother, pull around the country, stopping at various art spaces and communities. She is an amazing woman with incredibly warm, positive energy and both Sierra and I felt lucky to be able to spend a couple hours with her.

After our adventure in Watts, we sped down the freeway to Norwalk, where Sierra's boyfriend, German, lives. The evening was spent eating incredible Peruvian food and catching a late night movie at the $2 theater.

Sierra and German sampling my tasty Sangria.

Saturday morning dawned bright and sunny and though both Sierra and I tried valiantly to sleep in, we only made it to 8am. Luckily, it was the perfect day for a hike in Griffith Park. Griffith Park is gorgeous, a lovely oasis in the middle of the madness that is LA. Originally when Griffith J. Griffith gifted the 3000+ acres of land to the city in 1896, the city council was reluctant to accept the gift as they weren't convinced that people would travel all the way to the park, which at that time was a mile outside of the city limits. Of course, as the years went by, LA not so slowly crept towards the park and today it is smack dab in the middle of the city. Good thing they took a gamble and accepted the gift as it is now a major center of outdoor activity in LA. The park has over 53 miles of trails and is a beautiful place to hike, jog or ride horseback. We saw a boyscout troop at the top learning "wilderness skills". I thought it was funny and tried to snap a photo, but then felt creepy, so unfortunately there is no documentation. Sierra and I had a lovely hike and I, of course, took a billion photos. Here are a few of the best.
Nature.

It's windy up here on the hill...

Birds of Paradise!

There was snow on the tops of those mountains. People were excited.

The Griffith Observatory with the LA skyline in the background.

After our hike, we met up with German and headed to Hollywood! We were there the day before the Oscars and got to see all the preparations. German had worked security for the Oscars in the past, so he had the inside scoop and gave us a great tour. The next day he and Sierra were actually going to be in the bleachers outside of the Oscars. You can read all about it at her fabulous blog Soooo....Cal. Here's a photo record of our day in Hollywood:

The setup begins.

Of course Cher wore stilettos!

Marilyn was super chill about having her picture taken with us. She didn't say much, though.


This gentleman was outside Ripley's Believe It or Not, letting people staple money to him.

With a staple gun.

What this photo doesn't show is the finale when someone stapled a $20 to his forehead.
Ouch.


Of course I knew he was an actor before he became president
(mainly due to Back to the Future III)
but I was awfully surprised when I came across his star.

After our adventure in Hollywood, Sierra and German took me to In-N-Out Burger, which is as great as everyone says it is, and then we stopped by Roosevelt High School in East LA to check out this awesome mural. It wrapped around the wall under the fence surrounding the school and the whole thing was 2 blocks long. Amazing. Here are a few photos:




There were some pretty intense scenes in it and it was refreshing that it was on a school. Often the school system tries to sugarcoat history and in this mural, there was no sugarcoating.

After our mural viewing, they drove me to Hermosa Beach to meet up with Ivy. After bidding Sierra and German farewell, I settled into the beach house Tom and Anna, Ivy's parents, were renting for the month. It was in a great location and I spent the next 3 days eating, walking on the beach, biking around, playing dominoes and generally just having a great time. We rode the ferris wheel on the Santa Monica pier, checked out the scene at Venice Beach, wandered around the Venice Canals and took lots of long walks.

The Miller's at the beach house.

Venice Beach. The guy in white was dancing up a storm.

Ivy and I on the Hermosa Beach pier. It's good to see she's representing the home state.

Ivy and Josh at the Venice Canals.

The view inland from the Manhattan Beach pier. Those houses go all the way back over the horizon.

The lovely Pacific.

Ferris Wheel!

My trip was far too short and so much fun. I can't say enough thank you's for the wonderful hospitality from Sierra, Ivy and the Miller's. I also now appreciate why people live in LA.

It's fantastic!