sha in LA

contrasting rooftops

Sitting here on top of a roof in the Hollywood area I just realized this view would be a hell of a lot better with some buildings in the background. From my vantage point now I can see the trees and hear the freeways. When it comes to buildings or branches I prefer a little of both but the buildings definitely win out. Always have.

You?

x

home is where the heart is

I meant to post this earlier today but the day got away from me, as most do these days.

Today (the 17th) was the month anniversary of "the fire" and exactly how long since I've called what used to be my apartment my home. I spent a few of the first days at The Compound™ and since then at a place nearby my apartment at the home of a very gracious individual. I've become settled in my daily routine of living out of a suitcase and various other pieces of baggage and the trunk of my car, all of which have random possessions (mostly clothing) that I need access to on a rather consistent basis.

My belongings, other than what I have with me, are being cleaned and stored and last I checked the apartment is being repaired. And even though the living situation is the best I could have ever asked for I still long to be back in my space, not invading another's. No amount of "no worries" will appease my mind into thinking that this extended stay is OK....knowing full well that if the situation were reversed I'd gladly offer my home in a similar fashion.

So in between all the City Race winnin', 'gina eatin' and tour givin' (USC this Saturday) it's easy to forget about the reality of it all, until I start the drive home.

x

pick one color.....please

A few weeks ago I drove by the Belmont Learning Center or Hermosa Vista or whatever it's called and saw a similar paint job but just with the tan/yellow colors and I thought they were testing things out, kinda like when you paint a few different patches on your house to figure out which one you like best.

It's getting worse by the week, this past Saturday I drove by and spotted the mess pictured above. Please LAUSD, let's just pick one main color and one accent color and be done with it. You're going to seriously screw up the youth of this city by exposing them to this on a daily basis.....and that's not even taking into account the toxicity of the soil.

x

eatin' 'gina

Numerous bloggers and regular folk from the 3BN were in attendance at Pastagina last Friday night for a taste test.

Angelenic enjoyed some 'gina and claimed it was finger lickin' good!

Trained Monkey agreed.

5th and Spring seemed to enjoy her Chicken Carbonara 'gina.

Central City East has a mouthful of....yeah, you get the idea.

I ate 3 different 'ginas due to a slight kitchen mishap. First receiving the Primavera, then receiving Celia's and finally getting the Chicken Mushroom that I had originally ordered. (I liked Celia's best).

Overall everyone agreed that I was better than we had expected. After having our fun with the jokes we got down to business and had a very productive meeting regarding various ongoing issues. And oddly enough, I was craving Pastagina on Saturday night....

x

A Taste of 'Gina

Ready or not, here we come. A slew of various people will be gathering at the newly opened Pastagina in Little Tokyo this coming Friday Rocktober 12th at 7pm for the official Taste of 'Gina.

And by no means is this an exclusive event, the invitation is open to all. Although I hear it's not a big place so it may get a little cramped...no mind though, we can eat it anywhere. We can eat it in a chair or we can eat it in the air, we can eat it in our car, we can eat it at the bar! There are a number of places to eat 'gina in Downtown!!!

x

a belated broadway and beyond post

A few weeks ago, actually the same week that I did the impromptu pub crawl in Downtown, a friend was in town. That Saturday a boat load of us went on Neonboy's Broadway Theatre Tour with the Los Angeles Conservancy. In light of how late it is, both from the actual date of the tour and elsewise, here is a photographic retrospective of the day with commentary.

We started out at the Million Dollar Theatre however due to poor lighting I wasn't able to get a decent shot of the interior. It was my first time in the theatre and it was beautiful. On the heels of a restoration by the current owners, it's a living monument to the construction practices of the day, in and of itself.

Pizza, Tacos, Greek, Sandwiches, Salads and Lotto, oh my! The have it all don't they?

[The International Food Court]

Hands down, the most spectacular interior movie theatre in town.

[The Los Angeles Theatre]

The 2nd most spectacular theatre in Los Angeles. Seriously, check out the Last Remaining Seats program run every year (June and July) through the Los Angeles Conservancy.

[The Palace Theatre]

[Exterior of The Chapman]

One would assume this is a Fish Sandwich....

[Sea Burgers]

Give me a ladder and the light of midnight and I can make that say sha in LA in no time....

The Rialto

[The Orpheum]

[The Eastern Columbia....lofts]

[Our trusty guide]

[The mighty Wurlitzer Building]

Dim Sum and then some from somewhere in Chinatown. Thankfully I just had this experience and now I know. And now, in the future, I can politely decline the offer.

[Dim Sum]

After having Dim Sum and while exploring Chinatown we stumbled upon the newly restored and precisely upkept offices of You Chung (Y.C.) in the Hong Building which sits squarely in the center of Gin Ling Way in Chinatown. Recently restored by the current owner, Richard Liu, and graciously on display to the general public for a mere $3 it's well worth the investment to see this time capsule of an office.

Afterwards we spotted...

[interesting signage in Chinatown....]

[The exterior of the Bradbury Building from above; Pan American Lofts Penthouse Rooftop]

On the walk back to my car a fellow tour participant and I decided to check out the Pan American Lofts. I've been wanting to go check it out for a while and since I had a compatriot in the adventure I figured, why not? We got to see one lower level unit and one "penthouse" unit. The above and below referenced shots are from said unit. Obviously the above shot is from the rooftop where this particular vantage point had a nice view of the backside of Downtown (no extra exterior pictures due to sun placement) and the oft underviewed top of the Bradbury Building. It was a nice touch, a private rooftop area, to say the least, and an acceptable view to boot. The below referenced snaps are of the interior including the double (?) or triple high ceiling of the lavatory.

[Living; Pan American Lofts]

[Kitchen; Pan American Lofts]

[The bottom side of the bathroom; Pan American Lofts]

[The topside of the bathroom; Pan American Lofts]

That was my Downtown adventure a few weeks ago, sans the semi-urban-adventure of the Pershing Square Building....again. I'll post about that later....look at the time!

x

a girl walks into an airport terminal...

What kinda town is it that you can't find the local football game on any TV's at the airport? Oh that would be Boston. I think you know where I'll end up with this story...

So Friday morning I arrive in Boston just in time for morning rush hour. In LA that would mean sitting in traffic for god knows how long. In most other major cities it means finding just enough room for you and your luggage on a crowded subway car. The latter is fun for a while but I can see how it would harden a person.

A few stops later and I was in Cambridge and ready for a nap. Laying down flat versus being cramped in an uncomfortable chair was all I needed to get me back to normal. A lovely half hour walk to the college in unseasonably warm 80º heat was not so fun but the sheer joy of being in a new place overshadowed that small nuisance. An evening of Figaro at the ART, a cracked out waitress named Rita and watching the Sox win a playoff game in a bar filled with Sox fans rounded out the evening.

Saturday was another lazy morning, and a little groundhog day-ish in the walk to the college. The Empress and I made our way into Boston-proper late in the afternoon and hit the Freedom Trail, which all references thereof were lost on me the night before. Along the way I took a few pictures of noteworthy items of interest:

Ben Franklin and Old City Hall

Imagine my utter shock and horror at hearing a guide tell tourgoers that Old City Hall was the ugliest building in the city. There must be more to that story but i didn't stick around to find out...and I'd hardly call that building ugly.

The Freedom Trail for Dummies

Some cities have the Red Light District, Boston has the Red Line District....follow the Red Line on the ground to access historical sites from Boston's past.

Paul Revere's house

The Empress made me take the picture. A long ago relative rode with Paul for about 15 minutes before escaping according to the timeline. Prescott is a family name.

Paul Revere Statue

Chowda from America's Oldest Restaurant

The Empress had this thing about the chowda and everyone I spoke to prior to going to Boston said the same....so chowda it was. The hour wait for our table was spent at the bar watching Jim work. Yes, I make friends fast especially if they are a tender of bars. What can I say, it's in my genes, my dad was a bartender and my mom was a patron. But I digress. We asked good old Jim for some rec's on places to hit up afterwards and he pointed us in the direction of Silvertone. We managed to find it by nearly sheer luck. Upon looking for "City Hall and a graveyard" we found Old City Hall as referenced above with a graveyard behind it. However little did we know that a block away was New City Hall and a graveyard in front of it...which is where Silvertone was located. I can see how it could have been fun but there was no where to camp out so after a quick shot in The Duchess' honor we decided to hit up "the friendliest bar in town" the Hub Pub which was the epicenter of 4 random people meeting and sharing a beer. Libby was a doe-eyed 21 year old who just got out of the Army 2 weeks ago and on his way via train to South Carolina to work as a security guard. Ben was a charming 21 year old community college student still figuring out a lot about life. They had both met on the train and somehow found their way to Hub Pub. We all had a drink and the 2 of them were on their separate ways as we found ourselves heading back to Cambridge.

Back on the other side of the river we had and uneventful drink at Cambridge Commons then walked directly across the street to Westside and found our 2nd favorite bartender of the evening, Dave. He was skilled at altering drinks and created a lovely concoction for The Empress' sensitive taste buds. I wished to stay here for the rest of the evening but my unruly partner determined that we should keep moving....so the final drink of the evening was spent at New Towne Pub (or something like that). Football talk between me, Fred the bartender and Jason a patron somehow ended up in both us girls walking out of the bar with Boston Red Sox pint glasses. Yeah, I don't know how that happened either....but no mind...it was far better than any t-shirt I could've bought.

Hollywood Empress Video

The great thing about our mini pub crawl? Traveling via subway and foot the entire time.

The great thing about the east coast? First football game of the day is at 1pm. I was in bed at 2:30am and didn't have to get up at 9:15...it was sooooooo nice to sleep in.

Since we had made such good friends at New Towne we decided to go back to watch the Browns get pummeled by the Patriots. Mind you I am a Browns fan so I cheered very gently on the 2 good plays we had in the first half. Since my fight was leaving at 6pm I decided to go to the airport semi-early and catch the last quarter of action in the terminal because surely it would be on a TV somewhere at the airport right? I mean c'mon we were in Patriot land for heaven's sake. No, we had the 3 TV's in the bar trained on the Red Sox game and all the other TV's in the terminal on the FOX network feed which consisted of the Steelers/Seattle debacle. I watched the ticker. 10 - 20 Patriots (not bad considering). 10 - 27 Patriots (damn). 17 - 27 Patriots (we got a TD!). And in the final minutes 17 - 34 (damn, now it actually looks like we did worse than maybe we really did....what do I know though, I'm just getting numerical updates).

So that's my long winded story about an airport, a football game and my weekend in Boston.

Go Browns!

x

a wicked good time

Liveblogging from the Haaavad area. What happened to the lovely fall weather? It's 80º degrees out here. This is so wrong.

Watched the end of the Red Sox game last night at some random college bar.

Going into Boston proper later today for some Freedom Trail action.

Tomorrow morning afternoon I'll be watching the Brownies play the Patriots from a local sports bar that carries the DirecTV package so it'll feel a bit like home. I wonder if Patriot-nation is as bad as Raider-nation...

x

these shoes were not made for walkin'

Walking over 2.91 miles in the shoes that I was wearing is quite a feat. No pun intended.

I just wrote a kick ass post but accidentally deleted it so this is all you get the 2nd time around.

Will attempt to recreate it tomorrow

We started out the night at Hank’s which is located off the Lobby of the Stillwell Hotel. As soon as I walked in it was time for the group to transition to the 2nd bar of the night, the Figueroa Hotel Pool Patio. We sat outside for a bit then were shuttled inside where 6 of us lounged on the canopied bed. It was nice. Part of our group was very content to stay whilst others were determined to create this elaborate pub crawl atmosphere. Those of us who were perfectly happy in our surroundings were shuttled out onto the street and we were off to the 3rd destination of the night, the Golden Gopher.

The GG was nice and chill on this particular Wednesday, just how I like it. There was a friendly face behind the bar which always adds a little something-something to the vibe. Again, we all crowded onto a big community couch and continued with our quite lively discussion of various odd topics. And once again we were rousted from our comfy roost after a bit to continue on to the 4th bar of the night, Craby Joe’s. By this point our outing had become an actual pub crawl but most of us were drinking water….sans for the ONE person who didn’t have to drive NOR get up very early in the morning. Of course, this was also the person who kept trying to get us to keep drinking with him so a few had to appease the beast for fear of disastrous repercussions. One drink at Craby’s and then we said our heartfelt goodbye’s to Ginni, the most wonderful bartender I’ve ever met to date in Los Angeles, and were off to the 5th bar of the night, King Eddie’s.

During the walk to King Eddie's we encountered the backside of Jim and Celia’s residence and attempted to encourage them to join us, but the lights were out and they no doubt were sleeping seeing as how they just returned from Germany this past weekend. A few years ago it would have been easy to get Celia out for a drink at the drop of a hat but now that she’s hitched and has the cutest puppy on the face of the earth I can totally understand why she’d be curled up with her men, sleeping like a baby versus gallivanting around town like we were at that hour.

Upon arrival at KE I immediately felt like I had been there before however that’s probably due to the whole filming aspect of most places in Downtown. Or maybe it reminded me of my college days down in the LBC. Hard to tell really. While enjoying a moment to sit and take a load off of my aching feet, lest I remind you of the non-appropriate footwear I was sporting, a girl in our party decided that she was tired and was going to walk back to her car. By herself. Which was conveniently located many blocks away near our starting point for the night. We all attempted to nix that idea but she was adamant about leaving, so unfortunately we left as quickly as we arrived.

During the long walk back to our cars we stopped into Casey’s to grab a water and use the facilities. The door guy was kind enough to let us in even though they had technically closed for the evening. Continuing on after the brief rest stop Eric and I accidentally took a 3 block detour as we were so engaged in conversation we took an inadvertent right when we shouldn’t have adding approximately .5 of a mile to the trek total.

I like how at the beginning of the night I claimed that I was only gonna go to the Figueroa Hotel but instead ended up going along for the entire ride so to speak. Guess I'm a sucker for a good time.

x