Dreams, Moments, Travels
On our way to Santa Barbara, California, for the weekend, we were able to get out of Phoenix near midday but were not fast enough to glimpse a view of the ocean before dark. High winds and rain pummeled us just before leaving Arizona and crossing over the Colorado River into SoCal, but from there on, we were treated to beautiful, cool, clear weather for the rest of the weekend.
Like Eddie Izzard debating “Cake or Death?” so Caroline and I debated “Disneyland or Something Else?” It is Superbowl Sunday today, and supposedly, two out of three Americans are watching the game, implying Disneyland will be nearly empty, but since it is Sunday, our time in the park would have been short due to the drive back to Phoenix: Disneyland doesn’t open until 9:00, we would have to leave by 4:00, but knowing us we will stay until 8:00 or 9:00 pm, with the hour we lose on our drive east we won’t get home until 3:00 am in the morning. Cake or death?
How can we be so close with nothing else better to do and have to choose NOT to go to Disneyland? And so the decision was made to visit San Pedro. Like the idea of choosing cake or death, how does one come up with San Pedro as an alternative option? Easy, look at the map of L.A. and find somewhere you have not been and go there.
Ports O’ Call Marketplace was the first place to grab our attention upon reaching San Pedro. We arrived to find the place nearly empty, parked in front of the Crusty Crab restaurant, then meandered along the harbor before overhearing three old crusty crabs talking about “dagos” – their words, not mine.
We had eaten breakfast only three hours earlier, but the fish beckoned us to indulge before leaving for Phoenix. One of the fishmongers at the San Pedro Fish Market suggested we try cabrilla, so we picked one of the speckled, biggish piscine, paid for it, and hauled it across the way to have it dropped in the fryer.
While our fish boiling away in oil, we handed a bag of shrimp to another of the women behind the counter to have it prepared with fajita veggies.
We sat outside in the sun to eat our prize catch, the only Anglos amongst a few hundred Hispanics. We often wonder out loud why we are the only whites as we sit down in a Cuban bakery, stop for boba tea at Ten Ren, eat at a Filipino cafe, watch a Bollywood movie at Naz8 in Artesia, or are but one of just a few when we go shopping at Marukai – the number 1 Japanese Specialty Store in the United States. With the largest culturally diverse population in America, it is hard to fathom that we two visitors from Arizona are the only other people in all of Los Angeles who are curious enough to try new things. Everyone else must be eating cake.
Seeing we are saving so much time today by not going to Disneyland, we might as well use this little luxury to see a bit of ocean before we turn inland.
Caroline and I were in L.A. so she could attend an event sponsored by Griffin Dyeworks called A One-Day Fiber Frolic. Before she got busy dyeing fiber (and her hands) indigo blue, she met with the host of this event, Bjo Trimble. Who is Bjo, you ask? She’s the person, along with her husband John, who is credited with successfully petitioning the studio to make Star Trek back in the day by creating a third season. Not only that, they played an instrumental role in getting one of the space shuttles named Enterprise.
With that photo saved, I headed out on my own to attempt to take photos. I say “attempt to take photos” as opposed to “taking photos” because soon after snapping this image, I was locked in mad traffic of motoring hordes plowing the streets to shop, eat, and be entertained, making me a prisoner within the four doors of our car. Nowhere was I able to park for a mere few minutes to allow me to jump out to snap a quick photo. Signs offered an hour of parking for $5 or even the bargain price of $8 for all-day parking, but I only wanted twenty-five cents worth, and such a deal was not negotiable.
In the distance, a blue mountain is rising from the Pacific Ocean, that is Catalina Island off the Southern California coast. In the foreground is downtown Los Angeles, as seen from Briggs Terrace on the edge of the Angeles National Forest. Although hazy, the view was perfect as you are looking out nearly 70 miles (112km). If you click this photo and view the larger image, you might see Long Beach Harbor, where the edge of land meets the ocean. Near the cranes used to unload shipping containers sits the Vincent Thomas Bridge which spans 1,500 feet, crossing the Los Angeles Harbor and connecting San Pedro and Los Angeles with Terminal Island. The road on the bridge stands 185 feet (56 meters) over the channel. To the right of downtown, a blimp can be seen.
A parade in Chinatown created an hour-long detour, requiring a circumnavigation of the downtown area before dumping me into the City Terrace area in East Los Angeles, a neighborhood popular with gangs. Lucky for me, I had already eaten a giant pastrami chili burrito at Oki Dog, allowing me to feel as though I had at least a little bit of good fortune before grinding my teeth in frustration at moving across a city of 498 square miles (1290km2) loaded with 12.9 million people.
After I was done with my bit of frustrated exploring, it was time to return to where I’d dropped off Caroline. They weren’t quite done yet, so I had to opportunity to snap some photos for my wife’s memories, such as the outdoor natural dye lab with pots of indigo and cochineal.
Inkle looms, bringing amazement to Caroline as she’d never seen such a device.
I know you want to ask what this felt like as it appears textured, but it’s absolutely flat. This silk shawl has been dyed using salt crystals.
Caroline asked that I snap a photo of this contraption used for weaving in the Kumihimo style, whatever that is.
[That is a Marudai, John, although I did not know that at the time. – Caroline]
The results of Caroline’s day of natural dying.
Breakfast was apparently from somewhere forgettable as there are no photos of the place or an inspired dish one of us had, but who cares as we head down the road from our motel for a brief visit to the ocean.
With the eyes feasting on these sights, who needs food? Right, John, anyone who knows you is aware that the culinary delights are equally important to your sense of creating a perfect trip, so don’t even try intimating you know how to satisfy yourself with beauty alone.
Smelling the sea air, listening to the crashing waves, and feeling the marine weather before returning to the desert is an elixir that makes the sterile environment of Phoenix, Arizona, tolerable. One of the major benefits of living as far away from the coast as we do is that it’s impossible to take what California offers for granted, as so many Californians do. Of course, they deal day in and day out with traffic that would make anyone resent moving across the L.A. basin.
We visitors, on the other hand, can afford to marvel at the simple pleasures like witnessing a bunch of fishing poles cast off the pier, awaiting a fish to take the bait.
It must be Sunday because we are at the Hollywood Farmer’s Market; if it were Saturday, we’d be at the Arizona Avenue Market in Santa Monica, although Tonopah Rob’s Vegetable Farm has certainly diminished our need to drive all the way to California to get great veggies.
Not buying any music today, but parking in the area when the market is going on isn’t easy so we had to park a couple of blocks away. From here we have to point the car east and just keep on going for nearly 400 miles until we reach home again.
Those traditions that rarely change have worked on me one more time, drawing us into The Original Pantry Cafe in downtown Los Angeles. It’s not really about the quality of food that pulls at me but the nostalgia and authenticity of the old-time diner.
With some time to spare before our scheduled tour began, we drove around downtown looking for whatever, and here we found it at the Coca-Cola bottling plant on South Central Avenue.
I had booked a walking tour through Downtown Los Angeles with the Los Angeles Conservancy to introduce us to the Art-Deco influence on the city.
A nice surprise I’d not expected that we were given the opportunity to visit the interiors of some of the buildings we were learning about.
Sadly, I didn’t keep notes about any of this, and, short of researching the locations on the internet, I have nothing else to share besides the images of our walk around downtown.
With little else to share aside from these images, maybe I should have chosen fewer so I could avoid this sense of obligation to write something.
Well, that wouldn’t have worked as it was difficult enough to only go with the ones you are seeing; I could have easily included ten more photos, maybe more.
Back when labor and material were cheaper it was easier to invest in enduring, ornate architecture instead of the bland plastic utilitarian ugly that permeates modernity.
Detail of the ceiling area.
The stairs head up in the same building from the two photos above.
I believe this was a former bank. Some of these places that remain empty are occasionally used as film sets – this is Los Angeles, after all.
Same building, different view.
Back in the “Good Old Days” big money was invested in big architecture so the rich person was immortalized for all to see. Search for “Carnegie Library” on Google for examples of this. Today, wealth builds large private homes, giant yachts, and stuffed garages with a horde of expensive and rare cars.
This could be a scene out of a location in Germany.
I’m feeling about as dumb as this skylight and far less beautiful as I struggle to find something to say about it.
To walk through the streets of L.A., which I’ve done more times than I can count, you’d be excused if you failed to notice things such as I’m sharing in these photos as it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the depravity and decay that oozes over the downtown area.
Maybe the group dynamic is helpful for enabling you to slow down and gaze at the details you won’t see when you are afraid to linger lest someone else notice you are acting like a tourist and vulnerable to being robbed.
Couldn’t have asked for better weather for a walk, but we’re starting to get hungry again.
Back when I was an early teen wandering these streets, was I really so distracted by the hookers, winos, loony conspiracy theorists, homeless people, and such to not notice these things, or did I simply not care about the entire picture?
There were many more sights on this tour where the photos simply looked horrible, but it was a great investment of $15 each for a nearly 2.5-hour tour through a small corner of the history of Los Angeles. I’d gladly do this again.
Stretching out and trying new things by stopping in at Vegi-Soul Restaurant here in downtown.
I can’t say I’d ever heard of vegetarian soul food before, so this sounded like a perfect option for lunch.
A short drive of fewer than 8 miles was all that was required to bring us to our next destination.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, a.k.a. LACMA, is where we’ve decided to spend the next part of the day.
Art is what’s to be observed here in many of its myriad forms.
The first piece to catch our eyes, due to its obvious Germanness, was this painting from the German expressionist Conrad Felixmüller. The German words mean: “You stay healthy with bread and quark – that’s why a giant is big and strong.”
I needed zero verification that this work was from one of my favorite artists, Otto Dix. It was abundantly obvious, though I’d never previously seen this piece. It is titled Wounded Man.
Now, over to the Japanese Pavilion as we are here to see an exhibit of Asian art we’ve never visited before.
Notes of what’s what or maybe if I’d taken photos of the placards that explained the pieces would have been helpful, but Caroline does remind me that the Japanese Pavilion houses a great collection of netsuke, miniature carved figurines that allowed kimono-wearing folks to attach small pouches or boxes to their clothing that traditionally had no other pockets.
There was a lot more to the exhibit, but it was these tiny pieces that I enjoyed the most.
Are those pickles in my head?
Is this the feeling of uncertainty?
Dinner was at Oki Dog here on Fairfax, just a couple of miles from the museum. While I have enough photos of this landmark from my youth, this one is special as the guy who made our food heard me talking to my mother-in-law and exclaimed that he had the same name. Well, the same name as it’s spoken but with a different spelling; his name is Yuta and is Japanese, while Jutta is obviously German; we all thought this was funny.
Normally we would visit the Goleta farmers market on Sunday just before we leave for our drive back to Arizona, but this visit, we finally made it for an early morning Saturday visit to the Santa Barbara farmers market. We had heard that it was a much larger market, but we didn’t know it would be “that” much bigger! We bought about 20 pounds of fruits, veggies, and nuts. The organic strawberries were already sweet as could be; a guy selling walnuts told us that if we tried a sample, we would try the sweetest best walnuts we ever had, and he wasn’t wrong – his nuts are available from Rancho La Vina. And then, there she was, a striking pose, a fragrance that makes you stand up and notice curves that melt the soul; I’m talking about the bottles of Joelle Olive Oil. Joelle makes our favorite olive oil, the Early Harvest Manzanillo. This oil typically graces our fresh tomatoes and salads, and when an abundance of tomatoes allows me to make pasta sauce, Joelle is the only olive oil I add to it – yummers.
Note: on August 31, 2023, Joelle ceased operations and is no more.
Santa Barban’s love their Brussels sprouts, or why else would anyone bring 75 pounds of them to market? You’d never see this in Phoenix.
Wish we could have left with 4 or 5 of the most colorful ones.
By the way, Aunt Ann and Uncle Woody came with us, but Woody’s out walking the dog, and Tata (Aunt Ann) isn’t always happy to be on camera, so we’re trying to hurry through here.
Some of the photos I’m taking are to share with Tonopah Rob back in Arizona for him to see the presentation and the prices that people are paying in Santa Barbara.
I’ve seen this view since I was about seven years old back when this was still covered in walnut trees. The view is from Cathedral Oaks Road.