L.A. Trip: Part 2
I posted about my Cruel World experience and how fun that festival was. Now to go on since I spent 8 days in Los Angeles, mostly after the festival. It was a much needed vacation and I got to just relax and enjoy going places. The quiet of the hotel we moved to after Cruel World was much needed.
I was there with my friend AV, who lives in Tennessee. AV is my concert going friend and we get along so we tend to hang out longer than the concert we go to and make it a bit of vacation on top of the music event.
We had stayed in a quiet but not the best hotel in Pasadena for the first two nights for Cruel World. After the festival we moved to a very cool hotel in Studio City called The Garland. It was very “Brady Bunch” era in retro look but modern. I saw it was a few blocks from the Brady Bunch house and also the Wonder Years house. They had tours from the hotel but we did not go on one. We chose the hotel because it was close to Universal Studios where we were going to go while in Los Angeles.
It was a great hotel and very quiet. It had a balcony, and it felt a lot like an apartment which was a nice thing when on vacation. I so needed a vacation away from where I live. Where I live can be so stressful and draining. It made the vacation even more relaxing to be in such a quiet, calming, place.
The first place we went to is The Getty Museum.
There was a Camille Claudel exhibit going on at the time of my visit which was very interesting. The museum is a lot of religious paintings and furniture from many different time periods. I had never been to this museum before so it was interesting to see what they had in the collection. It was an fun to walk around and like a maze in the set up of buildings. We spent most the day walking around the museum until it closed. I bought a book called In Montmartre: Picasso, Matisse, and the Birth of Modernist Art in the gift shop.
After looking at all the art, we headed over to Trejo’s Tacos and tried it out. It was so LOUD at that location in Hollywood that I was unsure if I wanted to eat in the restaurant but it turned out it was a few octaves quieter in the main restuarant compared to the bar area. The food turned out being really good if a tiny bit pricy.
I have to do a sidenote and say if you are in Pasadena? Check out Poquito Mas food truck. They were amazing! Best Mexican food we had in Los Angeles.
The next place we visited was The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. I had never been to this museum either. It is fairly new and next to the La Brea Tar Pits. I wanted to go because at the time I was there, they had a John Waters exhibit going on, It turned out to be so much fun! It covered his life, movie making, and artifacts from this long career. It was laugh inspiring at times and so cool. I bought the book Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America by John Waters in the gift shop.
There were a lot of other cool movie artifacts in the museum and I really enjoyed the visit.
I also ended up visiting Amoeba Records and buying some vinyl. It is a famous record store and it was a great place to look around and do some digging in the crates. I bought two records “Germ-Free Adolescents” by X-Ray Spex and “Welcome To The Pleasuredome” by Frankie Goes To Hollywood. The later I got for $3.95 and hoped it was in good condition since it was used. I was really surprised on listening to it that there was not a scratch on either vinyl in the album. Something that can happen when buying secondhand albums.
I also went to Universal Studios while in L.A. We did not know they were closing early that day because of 9th grade graduation night. So we spent an afternoon with a friend of mine who met us there. It was fun but I was a bit bummed out that we did not get to see as much as I wanted to due to the early closing time.
We also went to Santa Monica Pier and looked around and spent time at the hotel we were staying at just chilling on the balcony. Both fun things and I was glad I got to do them.
I was really sad when I had to leave. The more I travel the more I realize that where I live is a super crappy place. It is far too white in population makeup and has all the really bad side effects of that. It is just too white, too racist (in a hidden way most the time but out loud often as well), and a dying small city that refuses to join the future so crumbles away.
I caught a horrible cold from a local idiot who was flying sick…and coughing his guts out at the gate from Seattle to Spokane. It took me two weeks to shake the cold because I had not been sick for ages due to being in the house a lot during the pandemic and not in public. I am over the cold now and trying to chill until my next travel adventure.
Next up? Seattle in July.