Los Angeles, I'm Yours

LA: The city of angels, the city of dreams. Actually I didn't know whether LA is officially "the city of dreams", so I googled the phrase and found links for New York, Paris and Bombay. So I've been trying to find another phrase that may suit. It may not be as catchy, but I've come up with Los Angeles: the city with a 1:1 ratio of park benches to homeless people.

Although it is almost winter, it is still t-shirt weather in southern California. While the sun may be shining, there's a haze the hangs permanently over the downtown area which lends a certain suspicion towards the conditions. I asked a gas station employee if he ever had trouble breathing, and he said "It varies from season to season, Grant"

I even though I'm fairly prejudice against a city such as LA, with it's palm trees and lack of density, there's still this "Holy shit, LA!" feeling you get every time you step outside. With this in mind and with a few hours to kill before I was to head to the airport to meet Kate and hang out before we got on our separate flights, I decided to go against all my natural instincts and do something touristy. So I went to Venice Beach.





Being a Tuesday morning there wasn't really much activity going on along the beach front. But it was nice to take a bit of a walk. There was a concrete lip separating the pedestrian and bicycle parts of the walkway and I found myself some enjoyment walking along it for a good section of the beach.



When I was in New York, I spent a considerable amount of time hanging out by the basketball court on the corner of West 3rd and 6th Avenue. I was hoping that if I stood there long enough some of the guys would pick me for a game. It never happened though. I guess they thought that this cracker-ass didn't have the skillz to pay the billz. Little did they know that I have the ball-handling ability of a young Steve Carfino, as well an almost unblemished record from the free-throw line. So while New York wasn't giving me any game, I was sure that I could score some court time in LA. Unfortunately, 11am on a Tuesday morning doesn't seem to be a very popular time to play basketball down on Venice Beach as the courts were completely empty. My hoop dreams were shattered.



As the hotel I'm staying in is right next to the airport I decided to spend the latter part of the afternoon chasing planes around. Just down the road Avis have this rather large carpark that the planes pass right over as they are preparing to land. It proved an excellent spot to take some photos.





As we were both flying back to Melbourne on the same day, over the last couple of weeks Kate and I have tried several times to get on each other's flights. Unfortunately this hasn't been possible. I'm currently sitting back in my hotel after spending some time with Kate as she flew in from New York. Kate had her first burrito of her trip, and changed into her newly purchased green American Apparel tracksuit, which looks suspiciously like John Howard's power-walking tracksuit, for the flight home.



Although my flight leaves three hours after Kate's, her flight goes via Auckland and so only lands 5 minutes before mine. We've organised to meet each before going through Customs. So although we may not have been able to fly together, we'll at least give the impression that we have to the people waiting in the arrivals hall.