Category Archives: Los Angeles

5AM: The Quiet Hour

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Warren Zevon’s great song, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” seems to be my mantra lately. And so it happens that 5am is my new wake-up call. 5am is the new 7am. This is a good thing for the upcoming Oscar season, as one of the biggest bummers of all is/was having to wake up early for the Oscar nominations, and the SAG nominations, and the Golden Globe nominations. Waking up is hard to do if you like to sleep. Lately I’m finding I don’t like to sleep that much. I’d much rather be up. And the key to this existence, my friends, is taking naps. You have to think like a cat, or a senior citizen. Nap the afternoon away and it will change your life.

It’s been baking hot here in Los Angeles in November. Is it global warming? Or has it always been this way? It’s hard to know, really. I’ve lived here all of my life with a few pit stops in New York and Boston – always finding myself missing the wide open spaces here, even if they are concrete spaces, smog and hipsters-cluttered mini malls.

I probably couldn’t live anywhere else.

Los Angeles is much of what Steve Martin said it was in LA Stories. People do drive the couple of blocks they could walk, and they do make fun of the valley. The sun is harsh, leaving us all feeling a little over-exposed. But there is much here to appreciate, if you can dig it. If you don’t dig it, it will chase you out in a passive-aggressive way (as opposed to the aggressive way NYC does it).

To dig it means to exploit its best offerings – Santa Monica beach, the Arclight theater in Hollywood, the Sunset Strip, the Huntington Garden and Museum, but then you have to dig it in low key ways, because that’s what we do here. We shuffle out of our homes in our sweats and sunglasses, into a coffee place – like Starbucks, but not necessarily. Try Marie et Cie on Riverside in Valley Village.

You can shop at Whole Foods for the full spectrum California experience – you are most likely to see celebs there, especially at the one on Fairfax in the ‘Wood. But try the out of the way markets too. My favorite of these is Jon’s, which seemed to buy up all of the Vons and change just the one letter. But that is perhaps my own weird theory. They all of these strange imports, mostly from Russia and the like, but they also have some from the Middle East, Mexico (like Mexican coke!), and Italy (seriously, whole wheat imported pasta — what could be better). And you have to dig the “laid back” vibe, so don’t get too tense, unless you’re behind the wheel and road raging.

LACMA, the Getty, the Natural History Museum and Science Center are also not to be missed. It’s nicest in the mornings, though, if I had to choose a time I like this city best. There is no smog at that hour, and if you listen carefully, you can almost hear the birds chirping.

100 Things to Know if You’re Coming to Los Angeles, Part 1

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I am going to break this down in parts, since I don’t really have time to sit down and do it all right this moment. Things to do, people to see, campfires to start…

I read with great interest this 100 Things to Know if You’re Traveling to Italy. It is a real eye-opener, let me tell you. Our cultures really are different. Here in LA almost anything goes. In Italy there are rules. I now know I’ve broken many of them. For instance, I’ve worn flip-flops EVERYWHERE and at EVERY MOMENT. You’re only supposed to wear them at the beach. I’ve asked to “take back” an expensive t-shirt. Our traveling companion, Emm’s dad Luca, was visibly horrified. The damned thing was too costly and I was watching my Euros. Anyway, there is no such thing as “customer service” in Italy so if you’re an entitled American you have to really think twice about kicking up a fuss. Over anything. Also, I wanted to bring home our un-eaten pizza rather than just leave it on the table. So this site says you’re not supposed to leave it and you’re not supposed to NOT eat it. But a whole pizza? I once saw a large and very fashionable (lovely, well dressed, thin) group of Romans eat plates and plates of food – they just devoured one dish after another. The mystery, as to how they remain so thin, remains unsolved.

You can’t get coffee to go, that’s a drag. But it’s just the way things are. And don’t we all kind of hope it never changes? I know I do. I’ve had enough of American culture seeping into the rest of the world – here’s to preserving the old.

Here are 100 Things to Know if You’re Coming to LA (applies to much of California), following Vanessa on Italy in SF

Part 1: GENERAL ADVICE AND TRAVEL TIPS

  1. Los Angeles is spread out. There really isn’t a money shot here. But you really shouldn’t miss the Santa Monica Pier, Hollywood Blvd (for the freak show), the Farmer’s Market (and now The Grove), Venice Beach, Sunset Blvd. and Melrose.
  2. Nevertheless, make time to less known places that make LA, and surrounding areas, so great – the Arclight Cinema (and Aboeba Records), the Huntington Gardens, Franklin and Fryman Canyons, Griffith Park Observatory, Main Street and Montana Ave in Santa Monica, Robertson and West Hollywood.
  3. Los Angeles means that anything of interest is roughly twenty minutes, give or take, away. Drive from Hollywood over Laurel Canyon into the valley and then up to Universal City. If you want to get anywhere, it’s advisable to take city streets rather than the freeway so you can get an idea of what LA is really like. It’s vast and sprawling and each area offer its own pocket of interest. Mainly, LA is made up of the West Side (Santa Monica, Venice, Brentwood, Westwood, Bel Air), and Hollywood. Don’t be fooled by the name “North Hollywood.” That’s just the valley and there isn’t much to see there. There is also downtown LA, which features a great library and the Biltmore Hotel (worth seeing and staying in). Beyond those areas, though, a trip to LA should also include Pasadena, Los Angeles proper (to find the Science Center, IMAX and the Natural History Museum), Malibu and the beaches, perhaps even a drive down South to Disneyland.
  4. Tipping IS required. In fact, it’s a disease here in LA. Everyone has a tip jar out front to supplement the minimum wages; nobody gets paid at most of these places any real amount of money – however, if the person isn’t doing anything for you is there any reason to leave a tip? It’s a constant inner struggle to figure out whom to tip and whom NOT to tip. I figure if I ask them for anything special or they go out of their way for any reason they get a tip. Sometimes I just tip because I have extra money that week. In restaurants you MUST ALWAYS TIP. 20% is standard. You can leave it on the credit card but servers always appreciate cash.
  5. Always lock your car because people will steal stuff but there aren’t really pick-pockets or muggers here – they rob you in other, far more humiliating ways; someone once broke my car window to get a Guess jeans jacket (which had been previously stolen out of a dryer). Cell phone, iPod thefts and in-home invasion robberies are more common.
  6. There are a lot of people hanging around stores who will ask you for money. You can just nod politely and say “no.” They will always be grateful to be acknowledged as a human being, whether you give money or not. It’s rude to simply ignore them, I think. They will also be at stop signs on the roads with signs. If you feel like it, drop a few coins in, or a dollar. It will make you feel good for a few minutes so why not.
  7. People hang around Starbucks and read news online. Some people still read newspapers but it’s rare. You’ll see a lot of people with their face in their electronic device of choice – laptop, cell phone, iPhone, iPod…most people talk out loud on their phones with little care of who is around them (totally annoying but it’s commonplace). Cell phone use while driving is illegal and dangerous. Don’t do it unless you’re willing to risk an encounter with the cops. If cell phones are prohibited in an establishment there will usually be a sign.
  8. Dress casually. Dressing up in LA means you wear all black. If you’re going to a big Hollywood party, a cocktail dress and heels is appropriate; men can wear suits or tuxedos, but it isn’t a big deal to go casual. This has always been the case. In Italy, you’re not supposed to wear flip-flops anywhere but the beach; in LA you can wear them ANYWHERE. You can wear jeans anywhere. T-shirts anywhere. You can even wear pajamas and no one is going to care (only if you’re a youth or a teen, though. Adults in PJs is weird, unless you’re at a hotel or camping). Dressed down is how you dress up here.
  9. Unless you’re in the valley, do not talk in movie theaters. Cinema-going is sacred in LA, especially at the Arclight (way too hipster and annoying and overpriced for my taste but cinephiles love it I suppose).
  10. Last thing, you don’t walk here. You drive. Walking over Laurel Canyon Blvd. just isn’t done.¬† We drive. We drive everywhere. We walk if we’re exercising or shopping. We jog, we bike, we go to the gym – fitness is really a part of the culture in LA and people are obsessive about it.

That’s it for now. Stay tuned for more!

Here’s Where it Starts

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At what point does a woman stop being able to pose naked, no matter how good she looks? I’m going to put the number at 50. 40 plus is still young enough, or MILF enough, that it can work on multiple levels. Post-50, we’re talking art class or black and whites, a la Man Ray. But the kind of stuff Cindy Crawford is doing here? This is a last gasp.

I have long admired Cindy Crawford – first off, I’ve always thought her to be one of the most beautiful of the beautiful – inside and out. Something about this, though, makes me feel some pressure to look like that. We are, after all, very nearly the same age. Could someone do a gal a favor and hand over the razer blades?

Anyway, speaking of naked and speaking of pressure, is anyone else a little geaked out by all of the nudity at the gym? Granted, I’m not all that used to gyms since I often work out either in yoga classes or at home or jogging outside somewhere. Recently, though, I’ve become addicted to the gym. It is the one thing I look forward to every day, as psycho as that sounds. Why do I love it? I love the treadmill, I love the weights and I especially love the sauna. One thing I don’t really like is all the naked women – of all shapes, ages and varying degrees of shame of humility. I hate it when there is some nude chick splayed out in the sauna for instance. Yesterday, there were two of them. One elderly Chinese woman was talking remedies while another much younger one was laying there in the altogether with it all hanging out. The conversation went like this, “yams are very good for lubrication.”

“Oh, that’s good for me because I have painful joints.”
“Painful, joints, yes, yams are very good for that. The body is almost completely water. A woman’s uterus is all water. You must lubricate with watery foods.”
“I eat lots of tofu.”
“Tofu is good!”

I know, it all sounds perfectly fine. It IS perfectly fine. I am the one with the problem. I totally admit this. I know that some time I won’t care about all of the naked ladies at the gym but I’m just not there yet.

The 64 Worst Things About LA

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I found myself in agreement with most of the readers of LA.Metblogs’s 64 Worst Things About LA. I mean, Scientology vs. Pinkberry, no contest. And I agree that curb sneakers are the scum of the earth, though I will admit to having done it once or twice either by accident or because I was in a hurry.

Bad drivers in this town, in my experience, are almost always female. My road rage confrontations have mostly been at females, though males have been the only ones who’ve actively dogged me after I’ve done them wrong on the road. Males tend to be more outwardly aggressive, while women tend to be more entitled and irritating, taking turns when they shouldn’t, cutting in. It’s hell on the streets.

The Whole Food vs. Wild Oats Debacle

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I don’t know why I find this story so funny, perhaps because being a So Cal girl all of my life I watched the rise of Wild Oats, followed by the advent of Whole Foods and the subsequent monopoly of it. The CEO of Whole Foods John Mackey was, for years, posting under a typical forum “handle”, which was his wife Deborah’s name spelled backwards. It wasn’t that he posted on a Yahoo finance message board it’s what he chose to post there. He all but tried to crush Wild Oats by sabotaging its stock value. One guy on a message can’t do a lot of damage but the fact that it was THIS guy, and that Whole Foods then bought Wild Oats, is what the hoopla is about. It cracks me up though because here are these two harmony and crystals health food stores where all of we liberal lefties go with our cloth bags to buy our teas and organic produce and hormone-free meats and all the while sinister goings-on were underway.

For the record, Wild Oats appears to have been the innocent “little guy” in all of this. Frankly, Whole Foods didn’t need “harobed” in the forums because they were, simply, a better store. Wild Oats has the elite part of the Westside and the best locations and didn’t seem to draw as big a traffic nightmare as Whole Foods does. I liked them. They were a fine establishment. I used to frequent the one on Montana when I lived in Santa Monica. I loved their coffees and water selection. No, they weren’t Whole Foods but they were the prototype for Whole Foods. There is certainly room for both Whole Foods and Wild Oats in Santa Monica. Trust me on that one. What that city needs in another Von’s. The person who comes up with a less expensive way for citizens to buy whole foods will win the day in the end. The Walmart of the organic market.

Here is the guy’s defense:

Once this practice became public, Mackey quickly defended his actions in a blog posting. It’s worth reading. Here are five of the seven points he makes.

“1. I posted on Yahoo! under a pseudonym because I had fun doing it. Many people post on bulletin boards using pseudonyms.

“2. I never intended any of those postings to be identified with me.

“3. The views articulated by rahodeb sometimes represent what I actually believed and sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes I simply played ‘devil’s advocate’ for the sheer fun of arguing. Anyone who knows me realizes that I frequently do this in person, too.

“4. Rahodeb’s postings therefore do not represent any official beliefs, policies, or intentions by either Whole Foods Market or by me.

“5. At no time did I reveal any proprietary information about Whole Foods on Yahoo.”

It’s like Nixon and the Watergate tapes. There is a part of them that wants the public to know just how dirty they could play the game. Meanwhile, the LA Times asks, “Should Whole Foods unplug John Mackey’s computer”

Whole Foods now has to sell all of its Wild Oats stores. Its evil plan didn’t work!