So, Tuesday was the big day that my good friend Yuri returned to Los Angeles from having been in Brazil since late August. I waited for her at the airport, standing right where the escalator comes down for baggage claim. I held a little sign with her name, and in place of the “i” was a doodle of a flower she frequently draws in margins and papers. I couldn’t help wonder what Yuri would be wearing, as she had left Brazil 30 hours earlier, having caught a connecting flight to LAX via Houston. I could only imagine that she had been wearing bikinis and flip-flops nearly all the time, and here in LA it was freezing as it had rained the previous day--- the mountains surrounding the LA basin were capped with SNOW! I thought I had spotted Yuri coming down the escalator, but it was just some random girl who was about her height and who happened to have a very similar purple shirt as Yuri. And then I saw a pair of legs in green flip flops making their way down the escalator. She spotted me with my YURI sign and stopped in shock, her eyes wide and her hands over her mouth in a I-can’t-believe-you’re-really-here-to-get-me look, and then she and I ran towards each other and hugged it out. Haha. You could feel the emotion in the air and I thought Yuri and I were going to cry---almost, but not quite. Lol.
So, I knew that one of the first things that Yuri had wanted to do when she got back in the states was to go to Coffee Bean to get a holiday latte. So we made our way over to one and she got a pumpkin latte, which she couldn’t stop gushing about, it was that good. We caught up, basking in the sun on cozy cushioned seats outside the Coffee Bean, as Yuri was wearing a black dress, a cardigan-like sweater and a pretty orange and yellow shawl from Brazil, in addition to her neon green sandals. We sat and chatted, shooing the gargantuan, mutant pigeons away from us as we exchanged stories from the past 3 ½ months. Next on our acclimatizing Yuri to America journey we went to Target. We searched for John Mayer’s latest album, tried on rain boots, and bought watches.
By then, we were more than ready for food and headed on over to Souplantation, as Yuri confessed that broccoli—or any other nutritious veggie, for that matter—had entered her mouth since before leaving for Brazil. She said she ate mostly meat, and the only vegetable she really encountered was iceberg lettuce, which does not count as a true vegetable as it is all water, really. We piled our plates high with salad, Yuri choosing straight up spinach and broccoli for the most part, untainted as she went without salad dressing, and I choosing the ready mixed Caesar salad. We enjoyed turkey soup and “pizza” (Souplantation calls it foccacia with cheese or whatever), muffins, macaroni and ice cream sundaes. We must have sat there, eating and talking, for well over 2 hours (and surprisingly, we weren’t kicked out haha). After over-indulging in food and resting our overly distended bellies, we walked across the street to the Beverly Center and perused H & M quickly, as well as Aldo. We then decided to make our way over to The Americana to bask in the seasonal holiday decorations. From the Beverly Center we made our trip to Glendale a small sightseeing tour of LA, as we took Santa Monica Blvd. all the way to Hyperion, passing through West Hollywood, Los Angeles, Los Feliz and Silverlake.
Pulling into the driveway of the Americana to enter into the parking lot, I was in awe. The street between the Glendale Galleria and the Americana is so picturesque. The Rite-Aid looks like it belongs on Main Street in Disneyland. The Americana, like The Grove in LA, is designed to have a small-town America feel, with coble roads and lighted fountains, and an overly tall Christmas tree exquisitely decorated. There’s even a trolley that takes you from one end of the shopping center to the other. The way I describe it is as if it is a mini-Disneyland for shoppers.
It was a fun romp around LA. To drop me off at home we took the 2 South to the 5 south to the 110 South to the 10 west, and so we passed by downtown's skyline. It was a nice treat.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Thursday, December 3, 2009
An LA Girl's Many Journeys
As many of you may know, I make my way around LA via the bus. There are plenty of ups and downs to taking the bus, but it certainly keeps life interesting--- be it in a good way or not quite so good. I’ve had plenty of adventures in my travels on the metro, so I’ve decided to share my stories. Some are more interesting than others, but they’re all real situations you, too, can experience if you want to see first-hand what it’s like to ride those buses.
As a preface, you never know what to expect when you ride the bus. You just have to hope that you manage to snag a seat, no overly “eccentric” people sit next to you (unless you really want an interesting experience), and that the air is filled more with hygienic smells of shampoo, laundry detergent (i.e. Suavitel) and perfume rather than bodily excrements or smelly food. It’s not appetizing when 1. It’s not yours and 2. It is unidentifiable pepperoni-like meat. Eww.
Today, unfortunately, I got on the 920 at Vermont towards Santa Monica to a crowded bus. Actually, Vermont is the first stop for the 920 heading west, and many people pushed and cut ahead of me to get on first and as I’m a polite person, I had to wait longer than I should have. Since most seats already had people in them, I chose to sit next to what I presume was a Korean girl (this is close to, if not on the edge, of Koreatown) who was about my age, possibly slightly younger. Her person exuded a scent of Asian-ness, a mixture of perhaps kimchi and garlic and while it was not appealing, it was tolerable because it was recognizable. However, at the next stop more people boarded the bus. A man about 25 stood in front of me as there was standing room only, and I was slapped in the face with the smell of an unidentifiable meat product. This scent is never tolerable and I found myself breathing in a shallow manner and pretending to rub my nose with my wrist to inhale the scent of my perfume. The best I can describe this offensive odor is as some disgusting pepperoni, like 3 day pepperoni that’s been left out of the fridge and since you’ve been sick, it definitely smells nauseating. Thankfully for my sake and my sensitive olfactory senses, this guy got off a couple stops later, but his mystery meat smell continued to linger in the air for a while longer. I was only slightly overjoyed when another girl got on the bus and she smelled like the inside of bath and body works. You can usually count on female bus riders to at least relieve you of offensive smelling bus air since they’re more likely to smell good than bad. Occasionally you come across guys who have drowned themselves in axe, but not as often as you would like or when you need some “air freshener.”
I leave my house by 6:10 am so that I can catch the 920 at 6:20ish since the earlier buses are not as crowded as buses just 20 minutes later. Because of this, I am in Santa Monica for work by 7:30 at the latest. I spend the remainder of my time at Starbucks which unto itself has also supplied interesting scenarios. The only thing significant about Starbucks today is that the baristas are starting to recognize me and therefore taking note of my name for my drinks. Oh, and there was a hottie—dark brown/black hair with green eyes—sitting in the window. Other than that, there are just the usuals, a guy who sits in the window pretty much every day with his laptop, old men talking over countless cups of coffee, slapping the table for emphasis of their stories, and new moms who meet for tea with their babies. It’s only Wednesday so I’m sure something more noteworthy will happen if not within the next 30 minutes, tomorrow or Friday. Last week there was more excitement… Well, there were definitely two incidents last week, and one more either last week or this past Monday. I can’t remember as the days are long and time seems to blend into itself. Last week, Wednesday, I was working, listening to my iTunes, cranking out those orders when I thought I heard shouting. I looked up to see most everyone looking towards the bathroom. Everything had come to a standstill, and from my vantage point I saw a HUGE black man who had to be at least 6’7, yelling with his booming voice expletives at a little white guy who at most was 5’10. See, this is the Starbucks in Barnes and Noble at Third Street Promenade and because of the amount of homeless in the area, you have to have a code from your receipt to unlock the bathroom. Between curse words, I got that the white guy had closed the bathroom door despite a line having formed of people who were obviously not homeless. All the employees ran over to the confrontation because, as I heard the guy sitting next to me say to his associate after the incident, we were all sure the giant was going to knock the little guy out with one punch. The baristas and manager calmed the man down and walked him out. And then people snapped out of their scared-silent states and resumed what they were doing before.
This next event happened in front of Starbucks, not directly in it. I had walked over to the bank on Fourth and Arizona to make a deposit in the ATM and was back at Third and Wilshire, waiting to cross the street towards Sur La Table where my office is located north of the store on Third when this huge dark blue Lexus pulls up along the curb I’m standing. All the windows are tinted (most likely) an illegal shade of darkness, but of course the front windshield is clear, and who do I see pulling up in the red zone? Ben Affleck. Yes. No joke. I googled what kind of car he drove and found pictures of him getting into the same car I saw him driving, a hybrid Lexus. He had his right hand at 12 o’clock on the steering wheel and I could see his recognizable jaw line, as if his teeth were clenched… but I think that’s just how he looks when he’s “neutral” and not smiling or whatever. Of course, my sighting was only at most 2-seconds long, so I slightly doubted myself, but I trusted my recognition because I know what I see when I see it so knew it had to be him. My third Starbucks incident wasn’t really anything too noteworthy, and now that I think of it, doesn’t even need to be repeated… ok, I’ll just say a guy with schizophrenia was sitting at a table and he was just chilling, minding his own business, and he would randomly say things like, “We’re ok. What are you talking about? Nothing’s wrong” and some people standing in line would look at him and you could see from their face that their mind was computing the situation, is this guy on Bluetooth or should I take a couple steps away in case he’s about to have some kind of fit? See, it wasn’t as exciting as the others.
The day before Thanksgiving (sorry for jumping around sporadically. I’m writing about my recollections as I remember them haha.) I got to work at Starbucks since I was just doing some order input online and also only worked for a couple hours. Anyway, after I finished with work, I walked down the Promenade to Santa Monica Blvd to catch the bus over to West Hollywood to hit up Target to make some returns and do some damage shopping. There was this late middle-aged man, balding, about 6’3 and with a gut sitting across the aisle from me. Actually, across the aisle from the girl sitting next to me as I was next to the window. Anyway, he was listening to his CD player (yes, some people still actually use them!), just chilling, but the more he listened to his music, the more he got into it, and he would start bobbing his head and kind of dancing in his seat, when randomly he would stop bouncing around and turn to his right and glare at me--- by the way, he was sitting slightly in front of me, so he had to turn a little more than 90 degrees to look at me. Well, he was either looking at me or the girl next to me, but I could see him do this out of the corner of my eye as I would just keep looking ahead, trying to read the little TV screen. Anyway, the funny thing that happened was when I had finished shopping at Target and was walking a couple blocks to Trader Joes since Trevor was picking me up for dinner. I was just walking down the sidewalk, minding my own business when I saw a man walking towards me. Ever since I was robbed, I suspect every stranger I come across as a possible threat (as a means of keeping my guard up). Anyway, as we closed the distance between us and he was about 10 feet in front of me, he says, “Orale, mami!” and keeps walking. I couldn’t help laughing, in my mind to myself mind you, that he had said that to me. I’m not used to affectionate terms, especially from strangers (obviously) so these things crack me up. Like, when I used to live in Westwood and would go to Venice every weekend, walking the boardwalk before laying out to tan, this one guy was trying to get people to listen to some CD and as I was walking by he was trying to engage me and says, “Whassup lil’ mama? Come on, don’t be like that. Give my CD a listen, baby.” I think that was the first time anyone had ever called me mama, let alone “lil mama” so, if I remember correctly, as I sped up and continued walking away I blushed from mortification that such an exchange happened. Forget riding the metro, when you’re out and about in LA, you never know what to expect.
The more I get into this first post, the more I’m thinking that this is going to be mostly centered around my encounters in and around LA via public transit, with smatterings of random memories I have from whatever is floating around my brain. I was just thinking about how when, again, I first started going to UCLA and living on the Westside (something I had ALWAYS looked forward to having grown up in the Valley) and one of the first times I took the Big Blue Bus to Venice. I got off the bus at Pacific and Windward and walked down towards the boardwalk and there was a pregnant homeless lady peddling for change and whatever else she could get. As shocking as this may be to some of you, this didn’t phase me because once, somewhere around middle school, I had gone to Mammoth with Trevor and his family for a few days in the mountains. As we stopped in Bishop for gas in the middle of the night, in the wee hours of the morning, we saw a pregnant homeless woman, or a very destitute pregnant woman, standing in a pajama nightgown-ish sort of garment and socks, no shoes, with an empty cup, trying to get people filling up on gas to give her money. Back to the Venice Beach preggers lady: a couple weeks later I was getting off the bus at Westwood and Weyburn and I saw her again, this time peddling in the Village. I’ve come to the conclusion that West LA’s homeless ride the Big Blue Bus from one end of the line to another, since fair is only 75 cents. I mean, there’s this one homeless man who I’ve seen around Santa Monica, Westwood and the BBB multiple times, and he’s totally recognizable because he has this homeless surfer look to him, with the side-swept dirty blonde hair, and he wears skinny jeans (I don’t doubt that they’re girls pants!) and sunglasses and has a knapsack.
So, I’m working with my cousin, Alisha, helping her out since she’s swamped with two jobs. As an explanation, she used to work with QD3 Entertainment, but then some stuff happened and she got another job. However, a DVD she co-produced while at QD3 was finally being released and shipped out, so they asked her to come help out. She agreed, but still has her other job as a priority, so that’s where I come in to relieve her of some stress. Anyway, QD3 doesn’t have an office anymore, so we’re currently using one of the other producer’s father’s conference room in his law office as the site of our operations. The girls who work in the law office are super nice and helpful. Most of the time it’s just me in the back, packing DVDs and placing orders in the conference room and as I don’t listen to music or anything (this is where I’m lost in my own thoughts sometimes since most of the stuff I do has become second nature and I work like a robot- stuff DVD in envelope times 45, stuff packing slip into envelope times 45, seal 45 envelopes, repeat, etc. Lol) I can hear the other people in the office talking with each other and what not. Not that I listen, like, every second, but I hear snippets of what’s going on—mostly I’m listening to hear where they decide to get lunch from for the day—but what I guess I listen for is when the receptionist talks to the other girls and says something and adds, “Girlfriend” to whatever she’s saying. Yeah, okay, not exciting, but you have to hear it. It would totally make you smile.
Well, this is more than long enough for a first post. Until I stumble across another of life's interesting episodes, bye!
As a preface, you never know what to expect when you ride the bus. You just have to hope that you manage to snag a seat, no overly “eccentric” people sit next to you (unless you really want an interesting experience), and that the air is filled more with hygienic smells of shampoo, laundry detergent (i.e. Suavitel) and perfume rather than bodily excrements or smelly food. It’s not appetizing when 1. It’s not yours and 2. It is unidentifiable pepperoni-like meat. Eww.
Today, unfortunately, I got on the 920 at Vermont towards Santa Monica to a crowded bus. Actually, Vermont is the first stop for the 920 heading west, and many people pushed and cut ahead of me to get on first and as I’m a polite person, I had to wait longer than I should have. Since most seats already had people in them, I chose to sit next to what I presume was a Korean girl (this is close to, if not on the edge, of Koreatown) who was about my age, possibly slightly younger. Her person exuded a scent of Asian-ness, a mixture of perhaps kimchi and garlic and while it was not appealing, it was tolerable because it was recognizable. However, at the next stop more people boarded the bus. A man about 25 stood in front of me as there was standing room only, and I was slapped in the face with the smell of an unidentifiable meat product. This scent is never tolerable and I found myself breathing in a shallow manner and pretending to rub my nose with my wrist to inhale the scent of my perfume. The best I can describe this offensive odor is as some disgusting pepperoni, like 3 day pepperoni that’s been left out of the fridge and since you’ve been sick, it definitely smells nauseating. Thankfully for my sake and my sensitive olfactory senses, this guy got off a couple stops later, but his mystery meat smell continued to linger in the air for a while longer. I was only slightly overjoyed when another girl got on the bus and she smelled like the inside of bath and body works. You can usually count on female bus riders to at least relieve you of offensive smelling bus air since they’re more likely to smell good than bad. Occasionally you come across guys who have drowned themselves in axe, but not as often as you would like or when you need some “air freshener.”
I leave my house by 6:10 am so that I can catch the 920 at 6:20ish since the earlier buses are not as crowded as buses just 20 minutes later. Because of this, I am in Santa Monica for work by 7:30 at the latest. I spend the remainder of my time at Starbucks which unto itself has also supplied interesting scenarios. The only thing significant about Starbucks today is that the baristas are starting to recognize me and therefore taking note of my name for my drinks. Oh, and there was a hottie—dark brown/black hair with green eyes—sitting in the window. Other than that, there are just the usuals, a guy who sits in the window pretty much every day with his laptop, old men talking over countless cups of coffee, slapping the table for emphasis of their stories, and new moms who meet for tea with their babies. It’s only Wednesday so I’m sure something more noteworthy will happen if not within the next 30 minutes, tomorrow or Friday. Last week there was more excitement… Well, there were definitely two incidents last week, and one more either last week or this past Monday. I can’t remember as the days are long and time seems to blend into itself. Last week, Wednesday, I was working, listening to my iTunes, cranking out those orders when I thought I heard shouting. I looked up to see most everyone looking towards the bathroom. Everything had come to a standstill, and from my vantage point I saw a HUGE black man who had to be at least 6’7, yelling with his booming voice expletives at a little white guy who at most was 5’10. See, this is the Starbucks in Barnes and Noble at Third Street Promenade and because of the amount of homeless in the area, you have to have a code from your receipt to unlock the bathroom. Between curse words, I got that the white guy had closed the bathroom door despite a line having formed of people who were obviously not homeless. All the employees ran over to the confrontation because, as I heard the guy sitting next to me say to his associate after the incident, we were all sure the giant was going to knock the little guy out with one punch. The baristas and manager calmed the man down and walked him out. And then people snapped out of their scared-silent states and resumed what they were doing before.
This next event happened in front of Starbucks, not directly in it. I had walked over to the bank on Fourth and Arizona to make a deposit in the ATM and was back at Third and Wilshire, waiting to cross the street towards Sur La Table where my office is located north of the store on Third when this huge dark blue Lexus pulls up along the curb I’m standing. All the windows are tinted (most likely) an illegal shade of darkness, but of course the front windshield is clear, and who do I see pulling up in the red zone? Ben Affleck. Yes. No joke. I googled what kind of car he drove and found pictures of him getting into the same car I saw him driving, a hybrid Lexus. He had his right hand at 12 o’clock on the steering wheel and I could see his recognizable jaw line, as if his teeth were clenched… but I think that’s just how he looks when he’s “neutral” and not smiling or whatever. Of course, my sighting was only at most 2-seconds long, so I slightly doubted myself, but I trusted my recognition because I know what I see when I see it so knew it had to be him. My third Starbucks incident wasn’t really anything too noteworthy, and now that I think of it, doesn’t even need to be repeated… ok, I’ll just say a guy with schizophrenia was sitting at a table and he was just chilling, minding his own business, and he would randomly say things like, “We’re ok. What are you talking about? Nothing’s wrong” and some people standing in line would look at him and you could see from their face that their mind was computing the situation, is this guy on Bluetooth or should I take a couple steps away in case he’s about to have some kind of fit? See, it wasn’t as exciting as the others.
The day before Thanksgiving (sorry for jumping around sporadically. I’m writing about my recollections as I remember them haha.) I got to work at Starbucks since I was just doing some order input online and also only worked for a couple hours. Anyway, after I finished with work, I walked down the Promenade to Santa Monica Blvd to catch the bus over to West Hollywood to hit up Target to make some returns and do some damage shopping. There was this late middle-aged man, balding, about 6’3 and with a gut sitting across the aisle from me. Actually, across the aisle from the girl sitting next to me as I was next to the window. Anyway, he was listening to his CD player (yes, some people still actually use them!), just chilling, but the more he listened to his music, the more he got into it, and he would start bobbing his head and kind of dancing in his seat, when randomly he would stop bouncing around and turn to his right and glare at me--- by the way, he was sitting slightly in front of me, so he had to turn a little more than 90 degrees to look at me. Well, he was either looking at me or the girl next to me, but I could see him do this out of the corner of my eye as I would just keep looking ahead, trying to read the little TV screen. Anyway, the funny thing that happened was when I had finished shopping at Target and was walking a couple blocks to Trader Joes since Trevor was picking me up for dinner. I was just walking down the sidewalk, minding my own business when I saw a man walking towards me. Ever since I was robbed, I suspect every stranger I come across as a possible threat (as a means of keeping my guard up). Anyway, as we closed the distance between us and he was about 10 feet in front of me, he says, “Orale, mami!” and keeps walking. I couldn’t help laughing, in my mind to myself mind you, that he had said that to me. I’m not used to affectionate terms, especially from strangers (obviously) so these things crack me up. Like, when I used to live in Westwood and would go to Venice every weekend, walking the boardwalk before laying out to tan, this one guy was trying to get people to listen to some CD and as I was walking by he was trying to engage me and says, “Whassup lil’ mama? Come on, don’t be like that. Give my CD a listen, baby.” I think that was the first time anyone had ever called me mama, let alone “lil mama” so, if I remember correctly, as I sped up and continued walking away I blushed from mortification that such an exchange happened. Forget riding the metro, when you’re out and about in LA, you never know what to expect.
The more I get into this first post, the more I’m thinking that this is going to be mostly centered around my encounters in and around LA via public transit, with smatterings of random memories I have from whatever is floating around my brain. I was just thinking about how when, again, I first started going to UCLA and living on the Westside (something I had ALWAYS looked forward to having grown up in the Valley) and one of the first times I took the Big Blue Bus to Venice. I got off the bus at Pacific and Windward and walked down towards the boardwalk and there was a pregnant homeless lady peddling for change and whatever else she could get. As shocking as this may be to some of you, this didn’t phase me because once, somewhere around middle school, I had gone to Mammoth with Trevor and his family for a few days in the mountains. As we stopped in Bishop for gas in the middle of the night, in the wee hours of the morning, we saw a pregnant homeless woman, or a very destitute pregnant woman, standing in a pajama nightgown-ish sort of garment and socks, no shoes, with an empty cup, trying to get people filling up on gas to give her money. Back to the Venice Beach preggers lady: a couple weeks later I was getting off the bus at Westwood and Weyburn and I saw her again, this time peddling in the Village. I’ve come to the conclusion that West LA’s homeless ride the Big Blue Bus from one end of the line to another, since fair is only 75 cents. I mean, there’s this one homeless man who I’ve seen around Santa Monica, Westwood and the BBB multiple times, and he’s totally recognizable because he has this homeless surfer look to him, with the side-swept dirty blonde hair, and he wears skinny jeans (I don’t doubt that they’re girls pants!) and sunglasses and has a knapsack.
So, I’m working with my cousin, Alisha, helping her out since she’s swamped with two jobs. As an explanation, she used to work with QD3 Entertainment, but then some stuff happened and she got another job. However, a DVD she co-produced while at QD3 was finally being released and shipped out, so they asked her to come help out. She agreed, but still has her other job as a priority, so that’s where I come in to relieve her of some stress. Anyway, QD3 doesn’t have an office anymore, so we’re currently using one of the other producer’s father’s conference room in his law office as the site of our operations. The girls who work in the law office are super nice and helpful. Most of the time it’s just me in the back, packing DVDs and placing orders in the conference room and as I don’t listen to music or anything (this is where I’m lost in my own thoughts sometimes since most of the stuff I do has become second nature and I work like a robot- stuff DVD in envelope times 45, stuff packing slip into envelope times 45, seal 45 envelopes, repeat, etc. Lol) I can hear the other people in the office talking with each other and what not. Not that I listen, like, every second, but I hear snippets of what’s going on—mostly I’m listening to hear where they decide to get lunch from for the day—but what I guess I listen for is when the receptionist talks to the other girls and says something and adds, “Girlfriend” to whatever she’s saying. Yeah, okay, not exciting, but you have to hear it. It would totally make you smile.
Well, this is more than long enough for a first post. Until I stumble across another of life's interesting episodes, bye!
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