LA Story

As usual I’m writing this blog about LA in Monterey [but posting in SF - ed], so I need a little music to set the scene.

… as the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard … with apologies to Sheryl Crowe.

Crowe may not be the only one looking for some fun in the city of angels, but they’re all sure to be doing it in a car driven very fast and recklessly. As we discovered, our beloved and faithful RV George didn’t cut the mustard.

George gets the death wobbles at anything over 70 miles an hour and in LA’s 14 lane freeways and five storey freeway loops, our introduction to the city was…well…terrifying. What was to be an hour and a half afternoon jaunt from Palm Springs to an RV camp site for our final night, ended up being abandoned at about 7pm at the first motel we could find. Along the way we discovered that in vast swathes of LA Spanish is the preferred lingo and that the term “beach” in a suburb name doesn’t necessarily mean it's on the coast.

LA is a city based on the car. So we had to get one. We said goodbye to George and at great expense said hello to Bob, the world’s ugliest Chrysler, who will stay with us until we head home from San Francisco.

We also said hello to Venice Beach, which I must admit is a pretty cool place. It’s kind of like Bondi only seedier and a bit more colourful There were more drug casualties per square inch on Venice Beach than I have ever seen. Bums quite literally hold up signs reading “Willing to work for marijuana”. However, the homeless are everywhere in LA, even – and I had to admire this guy – in Disneyland. He must have had a very very good hiding spot because I doubt he was fronting the entry fee.

The LA beaches are ok, but not much on Sydney beaches. I really like their ocean piers, but the beaches we saw were about 200 meters wide which give a decidedly desert feel. The water is also quite murky and at this time of year very cold.

The next day we made the compulsory trip for tourists along the Santa Monica Boulevard to Beverley Hills and Hollywood. It being Oscars month the kids got to hold an academy award as part of the academy’s PR attempt to compete with Cannes and Sundance, but in general the walk of fame, Sunset Boulevard, etc were a bit lame.

One thing that was interesting was just how much film production seems to go on in this city. It’s a cliché, but every second conversation overheard in a café seems to be about the film business and we saw at least three major film crews at work in the time we were in the city.

The next day was Disneyland and that’s worthy of its own blog … hopefully tomorrow.