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Hollywood, California
Its a long day living in Reseda, there's a freeway running through the yard
An 11:30 pm flight out of Honolulu brought me to the confusing airport in Los Angeles in less than six hours, which isn’t really that much time to get sleep on an overnight flight. That morning, bleary eyed and damn tired, I headed to Paramount Studios where I booked a morning tour. Memorably, I was the only person on the tour, although the tour guide still spoke like he was leading 20 people through the backlot. And while I did not see any celebrities, I think I saw Chelsea Clinton in the rather small gift shop, so at least that’s something.
On this, my first visit to Los Angeles, I found time for two different movie studio tours. After Paramount (which was… ok), I went on the far better Warner Brothers Studio Tour a few days later. They allowed pictures (unlike Paramount) but only in places where nothing was happening. So while I can show you the town square from Hazzard County and the exterior sets for ER, I can not show you pictures of George Clooney and the ER cast playing a game of basketball. Go figure.
Home to Jack, Chrissy, Janet and Frank Gehry (coincidence... I think not), Santa Monica is a much happier place than its recent spate of gang related murders suggest. My tour (with my big black boots and an old suitcase) took me by the Chiat/Day Building in neighboring Venice (pictured below) as well as by the man himself (or by his truly overdesigned house, at least) in an extremely modest residential neighborhood where I tried my best not to feel like the stalker I apparently have become, which explains why only the Chiat/Day Building is pictured below.
North of my nondescript hotel (off the 405 exit for Reseda) is Valencia and the home of Six Flags Magic Mountain. I visited there on Halloween, being careful not to run down all the vampires out in the valley moving west down Ventura Boulevard. My pilgrimage to this place hinged entirely on Superman: The Escape, a ride quite similar to the one in Jackson with the exception of its scope. This one rises 40 stories and, in order to achieve that height, propels itself out of its bizarrely themed station at speeds reaching an even 100 mph, which I guess is how fast an escaping Superman is. Yes, I thoroughly enjoyed it but only rode it once due to its somewhat prohibitive 75 minute wait.
Through luck in my schedule, I managed to see an IndyCar race, the last one of the season, way out in the middle of nowhere in Fontana, California. There cars drove the same track 250 times, although of the 28 cars that started, only 13 made it the full 500 miles to the last lap. Jimmy Vasser ended up winning although my favorite driver, his Target Chip Ganassi teammate Alex Zanardi, ended up finishing third, more than enough to be declared the top driver of the overall season.
After Hollywood, Burbank, Valencia and Fontana, I headed south to San Diego for two reasons, only one of them zoo related. I have been to California before, although only to Yosemite, San Francisco and Redwoods, this was my first visit to Los Angeles and San Diego, both of which I enjoyed more than I expected.
Not only does San Diego have a world famous zoo, it actually has two. The San Diego Zoo is in Balboa Park and everything you think it is, but also, way out of town in Escondito, is the San Diego Wild Animal Park. There, the animals have a hell of a lot more land to roam and so do you. Expect a lot of walking if you go.
I find it reassuring to know that this place really exists.
This is Louis Kahn’s spectacular Salk Institute in la Jolla, just north of San Diego. I signed up for the Friday tour and when I arrived, the docent laughed at me as she explained that I would be sharing the tour with a class of fifth graders. She had reason to laugh at me- damn those kids were annoying- but it ended up working out for me in the end. After the tour she asked me to stick around and then, as a reward, she took me into spaces otherwise unseen on tours. If one of these pictures does not look like the others, it’s because she took me into the mechanical interstitial floors to see what makes the whole place run. A nice reward after such an otherwise annoying tour.
We’re ending this trip to Los Angeles and this whole damn slideshow at the brand new, just opened Getty Center. My parking reservations (parking reservations are required to visit) allowed me to arrive between 5:30 and 6:30 pm; local Friday night traffic on the 405 brought me to the Getty closer to 6:30 pm, well past dark. I parked in the garage, rode the funicular up to the top of the mountain, arrived in the plaza and started to explore. The building(s) got a lot nicer the deeper I looked, it wasn't the typical skin deep Meier building, and the stone, the stone. I liked the stone, ok.
