First Entry

My wife Lou and I moved to Los Angeles in March.  Each weekend we've been dedicating a day to doing some touristy thing to learn about the place.  On Monday's I've been sending letters home to friends with a brief description of our activities, and realized a blog format may work to make it more of a conversation.  So, here's the first entry.  Please feel free to comment! 

As this goes on, I'll include more pictures, and if people are really interested, more details.  Let me know!  We'd also like to hear suggestions.

A few weekends ago we took a ferry to Catalina Island, about 20 miles west of LA. It's a rocky 20 miles island with 1 city of about 3,000 people that in the past was a big tourist attraction for the rich and famous. Apparently the Chicago Cubs went there for spring training (the island was owned by the Wrigley family). Next weekend we're going to visit Venice Beach.

Last weekend Lou and I drove to the beach in Santa Monica (about 10 miles north of Redondo Beach). From there we walked to Venice Beach (about 1.5 miles south), returned and had dinner on the Santa Monica pier. Here the "boardwalk" is actually a wide pedestrian cement walk, separate from the bike / rollerblade path (which is very crowded). On Sunday, Venice had craft booths lined up and occasional street performers. It was pretty crowded, and parking was tough, but it was a nice time, and a visual treat. Lou thought the hydroponic stuff being sold was for tomatoes, and didn't believe me when I suggested otherwise. There's also a storefront medical marijuana doctor available for instant evaluations and prescriptions, which you could fill. There were lottsa tattoos walking around, and it seemed like a young 20s crowd. I kept thinking: "Madi would look at home here".

Venice is somewhat like the downtown area of Ocean City, MD with some big differences. I'm still trying to get used to the ocean being on the west side of us. The beaches here are very wide - probably 1/4th mile. The Beach Patrol drives up and down on the sand. Venice Beach looked like a much more diverse and maybe somewhat rowdy crowd. The few people over 30 were obviously tourists, gawking at the goings-on. Most of the craft booths had some kind of counter-culture ethos. One was anti circumcision (donttouchmyjunk.com). There was lottsa artists and craft people. Bong shops were called "Glass shops". We stopped and watched the "glass man" - you can see a picture of him on the Venice Beach Wikipedia entry. His thing is to walk on a pile of broken glass. His finale is to jump from a chair onto the pile. Al the while he has an entertaining running patter. We saw a woman contortionist in a box, several musicians, a man with a sign reading "Lousy Advice for a Buck!", another: "Best Wino Jokes".

There were some of the standard, junky beach shops, but there was a lot more variety then OC, MD. The clothing stores didn't seem to be as busy as the art-oriented stores. There were several tattoo and piercing shops. There's a synagogue and Jewish old age home on the boardwalk. There are a lot of dogs in the crowd. One small restaurant was called "The Original Food". We joked that it's been there a long time.

This Saturday, a new friend of Lou's from Yoga spent an hour or so driving her around Palo Verdes, a beautiful, rocky peninsula a little south of our house. So that evening, we drove around and watched the sun set over the ocean, from a cliff. It's a spectacular spot.

Lou had found an area (about 15 miles north of us) that seems to have a concentration in Kosher places - interesting what you can find on your GPS if you try. She was feeling a little nostalgic about Easter, so for Sunday brunch we drove over for a Kosher-style brund (I don't really get it eather - but it works for us). As we got there and found the first few deli-style places closed, we realized they won't have bagels because it's Passover! I didn't relish the idea of going to a restaurant to have Matzos. We stumbled on Factor's Famous Deli (www.factorsdeli.com) which we both enjoyed quite a bit. The neighborhood had a mix of mostly Jewish businesses, a number of Chinese restaurants and some stores with Arabic writing on them.

From there we drove around the empty business district to oooh and ahhh at the tall buildings. We found the Disney Concert Hall (http://www.laphil.com/philpedia/wdch-overview.cfm) a very interesting visual treat - check out the webpage for a few pictures. We found Wilshire Boulevard so jumped on that back towards downtown, and ended up on Hollywood Boulevard. We spent about 45 minutes walking around looking at the stars on the sidewalk. It's surprising how many of the there are, and how many names we recognized. We stood in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater and gawked at the crowed for awhile. Tour companies had characters dressed as superheros and stars in front encouraging people to take pictures.

We've found a few places we particularly like to eat now. Silvio's (www.silviosbbq.com/bar.htm) is a Brazilian bbq on a pedestrian street in Hermosa Beach, 1 door down from the strand (the strand = cement boardwalk). We sit out on their front deck, watch the interesting crowd while soaking up the sun. We also found a Mongolian BBQ place on Sepulveda that reminds us of a place we liked in Taiwan. Here's how it works: You go to a buffet and select your ingredients, including all the meat you want, then hand it to a guy who stir fries it up on a big cast-iron cooking surface. It also includes sesame bread. Another good thing about the place: 2 dinners with drinks and tip = $40.