I’ve been visiting LA since forever. I have family in Carson City, CA, my late friend Adam had family which he lived with for a few years in Orange County, and our mutual friend, LA Adam lived in ,at first downtown LA, then Bel-Air when he was hiding out in a bungalo because he was in some sort of trouble with his seedy underbelly community. I may or may not get back to that story.
I found myself visiting LA, probably every other year doing road trips from Chicago with my father to meet up with my mom and sisters who would fly out to LA. We would take the long way and see the whole country, taking different routes and our time, of course. We used to spend a lot of time at Manhattan Beach and Venice Beach, when things were still weird on Venice.
The pictures above are from my most recent trip to LA. Its funny how this worked out. Christine’s best friend lives out there, and Christine had asked me if I wanted to go with her. I really wanted to, but I wasn’t sure if scheduling was going to work out with my job. Once she messaged me and said she was going to book her ticket anyways, my boss called my and my co-worker, Patrick, into his office and told us that we would have to go to LA to do a video project, and it happened to be two days prior to the weekend on which Christine had asked me about. Perfect. I work for two days, then take the weekend, and an extra day off Monday to hang out in LA, all travel paid for from work. I love it when that happens. So Patrick and I booked and AirBnB and set out for LA. We stayed in Silver Lake, which is far from the beach. We’re from Chicago, we walk. No one walks in LA. We hopped on a really slow bus. We also learned that no one takes public transportation in LA. Everyone has a car. The city has smog for a reason. The whole city is so spread out, its annoying.
Anyways, we met up with my childhood friend Sandra who had been living out there, and she took us to a great Mexican fusion place that puts dried pickles on their tacos, and makes a killer Mescal Margarita. We met up with Christine and her friend Kelly, and they took us to some beach side bars, and to the beach, and we even had a chance to try and surf. Not as easy as it looks especially for us old fat kids. We eventually met up with Juan, Patrick’s brother in law, and we sat at the beach at sunset, drank beers and vodka mixers, then went out for a night of dancing and debauchery. Patrick and Juan went one way, Christine, Kelly and I went another way. We ended up going to one of the best sushi restaurants I’ve ever been to, then to some weird poshy bar that turned into a mini dance club for Christine and Kelly and her handful of female of friends, only to retire to this dive bar called the Barnacle.