John Wise

If we are having breakfast here at the Original Pantry Cafe, you can bet we spent the night in the L.A. area, and if you are attentive, you’ll realize that we were here in Los Angeles last weekend, too.

Arriving in Little India early in the day, the place looked like a ghost town; fortunately, everything was about to open, and Caroline got the shopping done she was looking to do here.

Over to Santa Monica at Third Street Promenade for the weekly Farmers Market on Saturday so we can start filling the ice chest that we drag back and forth between Arizona and California. While we are just a state away, the produce we get in Arizona is never picked as ripe as it is here in California for their open-air markets.

While it seems like we just ate breakfast when you are reading my blog, you should consider that going from downtown L.A. to Artesia and then to Santa Monica takes a considerable amount of time. So why not head over to Hollywood to get a giant Pastrami Burrito from the world-famous Oki Dog for lunch to satisfy that hunger for more grease in our diet? Nothing quite delivers like a couple of giant tortillas wrapped around a mountain of grilled onions, and peppers piled high with pastrami, chili, pickles, and mustard with a side of what must be at least two pounds of potatoes deep-fried to exacting French standards.

Back into downtown Los Angeles and, more specifically, Olvera Street in the historic Pueblo de Los Angeles.

Not sure if this was part of a festival or just a dance performance, but I surely should have gotten a better photograph and inquired as to the why’s.

While not the same room, the floor pattern should look familiar to everyone who’s seen Blade Runner. We are at Union Station for our first ride on the Los Angeles subway system.

Not the place you want to be should an earthquake happen.

We made it as far as Universal Studios, which is about 10 miles from Union Station, and then started backtracking.

We’re on Hollywood Boulevard, if there is any doubt.

It wasn’t the military surplus store behind Caroline that caught my interest; it was the star from Boris Karloff that did that. When I was a kid, watching old movies with Boris Karloff, Peter Cushing, Lon Chaney, Vincent Price, and Christopher Lee could keep me up well past midnight. It didn’t matter how many times I might have seen Theater of Blood, I would cringe every time I watched the character Meredith Merridew eat his dogs or be super creeped out by the music from Terror in the Crypt; I was a horror movie aficionado, and until my mid 20’s often entertained the idea of working in the movies due to my love of the horror genre.

Back on the train to where we began this afternoon’s trip across the city.

Union Station is a beautiful piece of architecture that we do not visit enough nor take advantage of the trains that depart from here.

Learned of this place called Philippe The Original that claims to have invented the French Dip and knew we had to go. The restaurant opened in 1908, but it wasn’t until 1918 when a roll dropped in the au jus, and the policeman ordering it said he’d take it anyway and then returned the next day with some buddies that the French Dip was born. Great sandwich, and will certainly return.

Philippe’s is on the edge of Chinatown, so as we were still relatively early into the night, we thought it was a good time to walk around and get a feel for this corner of the city outside of daylight hours.

We headed to our motel in Ontario at the California Inn and had to stop at Ten Ren’s Tea Time for a boba tea, a perfect dessert!

Too bad we already had French dips for dinner. We certainly would have loved to eat at Yung Ho’s, because we are always on the lookout for authentic experiences with ho’s of any age.

Not satisfied that we had already squeezed two weekends’ worth of fun stuff into a single day, we are back out in Los Angeles to capture another couple of weekends right here on Sunday. While impossible to read, that iconic sign behind us should be familiar enough to recognize that it’s the Hollywood sign.

We have reserved seats for the next screening, so we’re not worried about being in that line across the street, but soon, we’ll head over for our second viewing of Miyazaki’s newest work, Spirited Away.

Back in the day, celebrities were stars and not fetishes. They were celebrated and often filled the roles of being inspirations and mentors, even though they were flawed. Today, the spectacle of mediocrity is the celebrity. Starting in the 1960s, when the average person could be on TV, whether it was Let’s Make a Deal, The Newlywed Game, or The Dating Game, we put on the absurd, bringing us to the Jerry Springer Show, Geraldo, and Howard Stern that all allowed us to witness and take “inspiration” from the tragic in our society who then gained a certain amount of “celebrity.”

Those who used to visit Hollywood were virtually rubbing shoulders by standing in their footprints, comparing hand size, or finding their favorite star on Hollywood Boulevard. We chose Lefty Frizzell to take our picture over because other than some country and western aficionados, who knows who this guy was?

On to the subway for a ride south so we could visit the Thai Town Festival. Food, dance, music, and traditional dress were everywhere.

We even had the opportunity to have our photo taken with Ms. Thai Town.

It was getting close to having to return to Phoenix, and so we were again on the train, this time to Union Station, where we’d parked the car.

But first, a quick drive through Skid Row to keep us grounded in the reality that we are profoundly lucky to be seeing and doing what we are because the alternative could be an existence in a cardboard box without any opportunity to escape the trap of homelessness and crushing poverty.

After all the great food in L.A., we returned to Phoenix late, where our choices were relegated to McDonald’s, Denny’s, or Waffle House; we opted for the latter.

You might notice something or other about this image that should be signaling a warning, not just the speed of driving over 100 mph across the Arizona desert, but the angle of the image lets you know I’m the one who took the photo and look at the odometer. This car is two years into a lease agreement where we thought 36,000 miles was plenty adequate for us. But then we got carried away with driving, and with the lease not finished yet we are at 82,093 miles already. That’s probably going to be expensive, but if so – oh well, as it’s been well worth the price of the adventure.

Where are we going in such a hurry? Into the sunset, which can only mean Southern California. But why?

We were trying to get to the last showing of Das Experiment here at the Nuart in Los Angeles, California. I figured if we could get this in on Friday, then we’d have a ton of time for all kinds of other stuff; plus, tomorrow night, we have an event already scheduled, so to avoid the conflict, we just needed to arrive in L.A. ASAP, and we did.