Tourist Times in Tinseltown

Posted on December 11, 2015 by Tiny Tino

While a lot of my time in Los Angeles was spent hanging out with my new friends, there were a few times when I had to play the tourist card and actively make an attempt to see some of the typical or cliché LA sights. One afternoon when Jake was busy with work, I met up with a guy who I had chatted to on Couchsurfing just before my arrival in LA. This was before I had met Jake, who had assured me that he had no problems with me staying with him for the entire duration of my time in the city, but when I explained to David that I was no longer seeking a place to say, I told him that I was still keen to hang out and meet new people while seeing the city. And so that’s how David ended picking me up with his boyfriend Danny (who ended up knowing Jake because he played dodgeball – he knew everyone!), and we went for a drive from West Hollywood down to Santa Monica Pier.

Traffic was pretty terrible, and since most of the commuting I’d been doing around LA was between WeHo and the neighbouring suburbs, it was really my first experience of the notorious LA traffic. But we eventually made it to Santa Monica and found a park, and Danny and David took me to one of their favourite bars in the area that did cheap and strong margaritas. I had a couple before we wandered further down to the pier itself.

Santa Monica Pier.

Route 66, one of the original roads of the US Highway System, starts in Chicago, Illinois and finishes here in Santa Monica.

When I was told we were going to Santa Monica Pier, I didn’t know exactly what to expect. A rickety old wooden platform over the ocean with a couple of old dudes fishing on it, perhaps? I couldn’t have been more wrong: similar to Pier 39 in San Francisco, Santa Monica Pier was almost a small theme park in its own right, with carnival rides, shops, restaurants and food stands. It looked like a partial tourist trap, but it also looked like the place some of the bored teenagers on The OC used to hang out, like an outdoor mall with a Ferris wheel.

Sunset over Santa Monica Pier

We wandered down to the edge of the pier, and while it was fun to check it out and take a few pictures, I wasn’t particularly interested in any of the rides or games or shops. If I’m totally honest, the thing that probably excited me the most about being at Santa Monica Pier was seeing the sunset over the ocean. As a dweller of the east coast in my own country, a sunset over the ocean was something that was actually impossible for me to witness, and I was never one to get up early enough to watch an ocean sunrise. I suppose Hollywood being on the west coast of the US has probably played a part in the way the idea of ocean sunsets have been romanticised into popular culture, but regardless, it was still nice to watch the big burning ball of gas sink below the watery horizon.

Sunset over the Pacific Ocean.

***

“Are you going to any TV show tapings? Be a part of a live studio audience?” A few people had asked me these questions in my first few days of being in LA.
“Um… I… I don’t… is that… is that something people do?” I hadn’t made that many plans at all, but going to watch a TV show being filmed hadn’t even popped up on my radar. There weren’t any TV shows with live studio audiences that I could think of that I’d really want to watch, or at least not enough to pay for it. Maybe something like being in the audience for Ellen DeGeneres’ show, but even my experiences with The Katie Show in New York had showed me that those tapings were lengthy ordeals (although I won a computer for my efforts, so I’m not really complaining).

Enter Jake and his endless connections to people all over the city.
“Hey, Warren works at the CBS Studio Center! Perhaps I could see if he could get you into a studio audience?” So he made the call where Warren confirmed that he could, and I figured that I might as well go along and do something typically Hollywood, especially if it was free anyway. Jake drove me out to the studio and dropped me off, but not before running through the complex and helping me take a few photos of things that caught my eye. I couldn’t go past the memorial plaque of Will & Grace, and I also stopped for a picture on the outdoor set of New York City, a strip of street that was done up to look like the east coast city, which had provided the filming set for a number of shows that had been set in New York City, like Seinfeld.

New York in Los Angeles.

Afterwards, I headed to the studio where I was going to sit in on the live studio audience of the Melissa & Joey show, a sitcom that I had never previously heard of. I was excited, however, when I realised that the Melissa from the show title was none other than Melissa Joan Heart, the one and only Sabrina, the teenage witch. I’d loved that show as a kid, and while Melissa was definitely not a teenager anymore (she’s a mother of two, actually), she was still a decent comedic actress. It was also kind of interesting to be a part of the audience while the show itself was being filmed. They did each scene at least twice, even if they nailed them, just to make sure they had enough good takes during editing and producing, which meant that the filming of a 20 minute episode turned into at least a couple of hours. It was a light-hearted sitcom though, and I enjoyed watching it – if you ever find yourself watching an episode where there’s a distinct snort of laughter coming from the studio audience, you’re welcome. Warren worked on the production side of things, so I didn’t see him again until the filming was over. He came and found me once everything had wrapped up, and while I didn’t get to meet any of the actors on the show, he was able to give me a an autographed photograph of the cast. Free experiences with free souvenirs – doesn’t get much better than that. When he finished work, Warren drove me to dodgeball, where I was reunited with Jake.

***

My only other brush with anything related to TV was actually one of my biggest highlights in LA, at least as far as touristy sightseeing goes.
“Well, there is one thing that I’d really like to see,” I confessed to Jake one afternoon, when we were brainstorming about things to do. I explained to him how I was a huge fan of the TV show Charmed, and how I had been shocked to learn that the house itself was not located in San Francisco.
“Oh yeah! It’s here in LA, I think. There’s a bunch of streets over in Echo Park that are just filled with famous houses from movies and TV shows. We can totally take a drive out there.” So that’s what we did, and I finally got my photo with the Victorian style magical manor.

The Halliwell Manor – easily one of the biggest highlights of my time in LA.

***

Now, there’s probably one glaringly obvious tourist attraction in Los Angeles that I haven’t mentioned yet. But the truth is, I never really had any intention of going to Disneyland. As a child, I’d been to Disney World over in Florida, and it had been awesome, but I’d also been 9 years old. Not that I wouldn’t have had fun in Disneyland as an adult, but being on the backpacker budget that I was, it wasn’t a priority. I also learned just how enormous and spread out LA actually is when I tied to locate Anaheim on a map, and realised that it was at least an hours drive to get out there. Coupled with my lack of burning desire to go there, I had written it out of my plans. Until I remembered someone I knew who actually lived in Anaheim.

The Trans-Siberian Railway felt like almost a lifetime ago, but the friends I had made on that once-in-a-lifetime journey were still fresh in my memories and blog posts. During our emotional goodbyes in St Petersburg, I told Kaylah that I was definitely going to be in LA at the end of the year, since I already had my final flight booked out of LAX. So we made a promise that we would catch up when I was there, but it was only when I got to LA that I realised just how large the city actually was. West Hollywood and Anaheim felt like worlds away, and while I wanted to see Kaylah, I didn’t want to make her drive across the city on her day off, just to hang out in WeHo, where I’d been spending most of my time anyway. Though as fate would have it, when I mentioned it to him, Jake informed me that he actually had a reason to drive out to east LA.
“My dad actually lives out that way, and he’s got a whole bunch of furniture and other stuff that I need to pick up!” he told me. “So, if you wanna go meet her out that way, I could drive you somewhere and then go see my dad while you two hang out?” As things had seemed to be happening lately, everything turned out pretty perfectly.

We met up with Kaylah, and set a rough meeting time for later in the afternoon. I was so excited to see Kaylah again – she’d been one of my favourite people on the Trans-Siberian tour, and we’d always had ridiculous amounts of fun together. Kaylah was a correctional officer in a juvenile detention centre, and before we’d met up she told me that Knot’s Berry Farm, a rollercoaster theme park over near where she lived, was doing a free entry promotion for all law enforcement personal, a category in which she was included. Free entry was also extended to a second person, so we agreed that that would be a fun way to hang out and catch up, interspersed by some rollercoaster rides.

It wasn’t until we actually got there, though, that Kaylah admitted she wasn’t even a huge fan of rollercoasters. I started to feel bad, but she assured me that she still wanted me to go on them if I wanted to. It hadn’t been that long since I went on a bunch of rollercoasters at the Six Flags in New Jersey, but I do love them, so Kaylah took photos of me while I screamed my lungs out on the various rides. We also rode dodge ’em cars together, which was a bit of a throwback to the time Kaylah and I had rode quad bikes through the Siberian wilderness, and I had been sure that I was going to end up flipping ours and crushing us. Luckily there was slightly less chance of doing that in an LA theme park.

After a few hours at Knot’s Berry Farm, we left to grab a bite to eat at the nearby TGI Fridays. We also ordered some ciders, and it was there that I experienced for the second time what had happened to me in that little bar in Flagstaff – the waitstaff would not accept my drivers licence as a valid form of ID, saying that it needed to be federally issued. Most Americans aren’t even aware of the fact Australia actually has states, so it is pretty infuriating that they can be such sticklers about little things like that. What’s worse is that I had been using my drivers licence in every other place in California, so I knew it wasn’t actually a legal thing like it had been in Arizona.
“Look, this is my ID, I’m clearly over 21!” I tried bargaining with him.
“I’ve never seen an Australian drivers licence before though,” the guy said with a laugh, clearly nervous but trying to deflect my clearly mounting irritation. “It could be a fake.” I put the licence in my mouth and bit down on it, tugging at the plastic.
“It’s very real! And what, you know exactly what an Australian passport looks like? Do you want me to Google a New South Wales drivers licence? It’s real!”
I even sent the dude back to check with his manager, who also regretfully informed me they were unable to serve me.
“Whatever,” I said and just rolled my eyes. I mean, I didn’t need to have a drink or anything, but it was more just the principle of being refused that annoyed me.

After all that, Kaylah and I wandered down to the nearby Disneyland. There was a whole street of shops and smaller things to look at before actually entering the gates into Disneyland proper, so we just walked down that, taking photos and dodging toddlers and families and mothers with prams as they made their way to the happiest place on Earth.

Dragon and knight made entirely out of Lego.

Lego Beauty and the Beast characters, made out of more Lego. Meta.

I mainly just had fun hanging out with Kaylah, telling her all about what I’d been up to since we’d parted ways in Russia, and reminiscing about all the fun we’d had all those months ago. Eventually it was time for Jake and I to head back to WeHo, so Kaylah and I drove to meet him and then said our goodbyes once again. Though the fact that it was our second goodbye, and that we’d met each other again on a completely opposite side of the world so many months later, proved that in a world as small as ours, for travellers like us, goodbyes were only ever temporary.

Trans-Siberian Railway buddies united!

***

The day spent out in Anaheim with Kaylah was actually my last full day in LA, and that evening would be my last night before I flew out the following morning. Jake was feeling a little glum about it, considering how I’d been living with him for over a week now, and we’d been having so much fun. Yet even to the last moment, he was still thinking of cool and interesting things we could do in LA. “Something you wouldn’t know about if you weren’t from around here. I want you to leave saying just how awesome a time you had in LA.”

There’s a place up on the hills of Hollywood Heights called the Magic Castle. It’s the clubhouse of a private organisation that promotes and supports the art of magic and magicians. You have to either be a member or be signed in as a guest by a member, and of course Jake knew – through dodgeball – a member who was a magician. The dress code of the Magic Castle was formal evening wear, so I had to borrow a shirt and tie from Jake, and on my last night we made our way up to the Castle, where we were greeted by Jake’s friend Jeb. The castle itself is technically more of a Victorian mansion, and stepping inside felt like you were stepping back in time itself, with the polished wood furnishings, luxurious deep red carpets and dapper gentlemen and elegantly dressed woman gliding through the hallways. Jeb gave us a tour of many of the castles quirky and interesting rooms. I’m not supposed to give away too much, but there was a piano that plays by itself (or is played by ghost, depending on who you ask), and can even take requests (I requested Pokerface).

There was also a table in a more open area where magicians could set up and perform card tricks and other small magical shows. Jake and I sat around the table while Jeb performed one, and I wish there was more I could say to explain what he did but then if I knew I would probably be a magician… and then I definitely wouldn’t tell you. There were also a few other shows that you could attend while visiting the Magic Castle, and Jake and I got almost front row seats to a show with a mentalist. Now, I have to admit this show actually scared me a little bit. I don’t want to give away too much, but the general idea was that he could supposedly see our thoughts or read our minds. It seemed like more of a psychic than anything to do with performance magic or magicians, but I was curious. He asked for three volunteers: someone who was good with drawing, someone who was good with numbers, and someone who was good with words. I enthusiastically volunteered to the be wordsmith. After watching the mentalist successfully sketch a drawing that the first woman had secretly drawn, without ever seeing it, and know the number that another woman was thinking of, which she had picked from the top of her head and hadn’t told him, it was my turn. Out in the front of the theatre room with him, he asked me to imagine I was in a library. I was to go over to one of the shelves and pull out a book. I had a bit of a brain freeze, and for a few seconds the only book that came to mind was the Bible. But then, for some reason, I’m not sure why, The Jungle Book came to mind, and so my word that the mentalist would have to correctly identify was ‘jungle’.

He asked a handful of questions, all which had seemingly nothing at all to do with The Jungle Book or the word ‘jungle’. I was so confused. Yet when he claimed that he had it, sure enough he scribbled on a big sheet of paper and produced the word ‘jungle’ in big, black block letters. I was actually stunned. I’m not exactly a skeptic when it comes to psychics or magic, but this seemed way above the pay grade of a normal magician. I was dying to know how he knew, short of believing he was actually a psychic, but of course a good magician never revealed his secrets, and I left the Magic Castle with a burning curiosity, as well as a reluctant resignation to the fact that I would probably never find out how he’d gotten inside my head.

“So. Last night in LA. Anything else you really wanna do?” Jake said to me as we climbed into the car after the show was over. We locked eyes for a moment.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I said with I grin.
“I don’t know… I might be…?”
“Taco Bell?”
“Let’s do it!”

***

And so after having such an amazing time in LA, having more fun than I ever thought I would and meeting such a cool bunch of people, it was time for me to get travelling again. It was something that you think I would be used to by now, and while I can admit that it does get a littler easier, it’s never exactly easy. I’d travelled all around the world, and fallen in love with a handful of places, and LA was definitely high on the list of places that had actually started to feel like home. Combined with the fact that endless travel had eventually started to wear me down, I was almost reluctant to leave.

“You’re gonna have such a great time in Hawaii,” Jake said to me as he drove me through the mid-morning traffic to the airport. “I mean, I’m gonna miss you like Hell, but I’m also excited for you,” he said with a smile. I was pretty quiet. I guess saying too much during goodbyes always made them a little harder. Eventually we arrived at the airport, and Jake hopped out to help me get my bag out of the car. Then we had our final hugs and kisses, and I told him that I would definitely be back one day. How could I not? Jake had done so much for me during my stay in LA, literally driving me across the city to see things and meet people, introducing me to all of his friends, rescuing me from creepy guys and giving me a place to stay for the entire time too. He’d gone so out of his way to make sure I’d done and seen things that would make me remember my time in LA as something amazing, but in reality it had just been him being himself that had made it so awesome, and that was the reason I knew I’d one day come back.

He was parked in the cab drop-off point though, so we couldn’t draw the farewell out too long. So we said our goodbyes, I waved as he took off down the road and out of sight, and then I headed to the terminal to catch the flight to my final destination.

As weird as it sounds, even the LAX sign was a sight that I had seen in TV shows and was therefore somewhat exciting.

Life in La La Land

Posted on December 9, 2015 by Tiny Tino

I was unsure as of what to expect from my time in LA. I had been there only once before, for a period of less than 24 hours for a long layover on the way to Central America, and I hadn’t been that impressed. The parts of town I went to – which I honestly didn’t even pay attention to at the time – were kind of gross and dirty, and it didn’t appear to be anything like the glamorous California that everyone sings about in pop songs. And while I knew I couldn’t let such a brief and incomplete experience of the city be an accurate first impression, I’d also heard reviews from other people that were less than positive: that getting around was difficult, traffic was terrible, all the attractions were overrated and that staying there was more like a challenge than a vacation. Despite all that, my mother had repeatedly told me that she thought I would like Los Angeles and that I would probably fit in pretty well there. Given that I’d had very mixed feelings about some of the people I had ran into and rubbed shoulders with in New York, and the fact that New Yorkers and Angelenos are often pitted against each other and are constantly comparing their cities, I figured if I didn’t fit so well on one coast, maybe I’d have more luck on the other.

***

Waking up the morning after my first night in LA was a little surreal, given the rather dramatic events of the night before. Upon checking my phone, I found a string of more abusive texts and Facebook messages from Nathan, which I simply deleted before blocking him.
“You don’t even have to worry about him anymore,” Jake assured me. “He’s been pissing so many people off lately, he doesn’t even have that many friends left in dodgeball. His behaviour last night might actually be enough of a reason to expel him from the league.” Which Jake, given that he ran the dodgeball league, could absolutely do. I started to feel slightly guilty, but Jake would have none of it, and assured me that if anything I was finally finishing the problem instead of creating one or starting any trouble. I just had to trust he knew more about what was going on in WeHo and let it be.

“So… what do you wanna do? What was your plan in Los Angeles?” Jake asked me, before turning away and talking to himself. “What can I show you? What’s something cool, something really LA that isn’t super touristy…” The beauty about Jake’s work was that he technically worked for himself, which meant he didn’t have a regular day time job that he had to be at, which meant he had plenty of free time to hang out and show me around, which he said he would be more than happy to do. I assured him that he didn’t have to do anything special or try and entertain me – I was more than happy to just hang out and join him with whatever he did with his days. So we started out with just going for a walk through West Hollywood along Santa Monica Boulevard, where Jake showed me around and pointed out a bunch of the local spots for drinking, eating and going out. We also saw the colourful rainbow crossing, similar to the one that had been put up in Sydney for the Mardi Gras festival that year, although unlike the rainbow in Sydney, the one in WeHo was a permanent addition to the streets.

The WeHo rainbow crossing

Jake also said he had some work-related emails to send and some business stuff to take care of, so we stopped at the Starbucks, ordered our drinks, and commandeered a table for ourselves and set up our a temporary workspace.
“There’s two questions you hear every traveller ask, no matter where you go,” Jake said with a laugh. “One: is there wifi? Two: is it free?” I laughed along, although he wasn’t wrong, so I made the most of the free connection and updated my blog and sent some emails while he attended to his work stuff. It was actually quite funny just how full the Starbucks was, and securing a table was a like navigating a small-scale property market. It was full of aspiring writers working on their manuscripts and screenplays, and while I kept laughing to myself and thinking about how it sounded like something straight out of Hollywood, I had to keep in mind that right now I literally was in Hollywood. It would appear that some of those stereotypes and clichés aren’t limited to the actual movies and television shows themselves, but extend to the wider suburbs in which they’re created.

I also noticed that Jake knew a lot of people. Like, a lot. I reckon he would have finished his work in about half the time it had taken him if he hadn’t had to stop periodically to say hello to every familiar face that approached him and wanted to briefly catch up.
“What can I say? I’m kind of a big deal,” Jake said with a playful smirk when I mentioned it to him, and while he said it in a way that was more humorous than serious, I was starting to get the idea that he was somewhat of a local celebrity around the area. But not in a way that everyone knows about you and gossips about you (although I’m sure everyone does that anyway), but in a way that everyone just seemed to like him, and he was genuinely friends with all of these people. It was at that moment that I realised as long as I stuck by Jake during my time LA, I’d always be in good hands and great company.

***

That afternoon, Jake and I started out my tour of LA by checking off some of the more obvious attractions.
“Oh, I know! I’ve got a friend who works for Universal Studios. I dunno, does that kind of thing interest you? She could get us in for free.” As a backpacker I had learned to appreciate literally anything that was free, so we drove up to Universal Studios to meet Jake’s friend Alicia.

“Oh! Go to that side so I can get Australia in the picture!”

“Man, work had sucked today,” Alicia complained after coming down from her office to meet us and introducing herself to me. “It’s that time of year when half the office is away for the holidays. But there isn’t any less work so…” she waved the thought away, the conversational that would follow clearly already boring her. “Here, let’s get you in.” I just followed Jake and Alicia and did as I was told, and soon enough we were inside the paid section of the theme park, where most of the rides and popular attractions were. She caught up with Jake for a few minutes, but she hadn’t quite finished for the day so had to head back up to her office.
“But it was lovely to meet you, Robert. I’m sure I’ll see you around sometime, I’m overdue for a catch up with this guy anyway,” she said, motioning to Jake. “Always so busy with his dodgeball!” Turns out that Alicia was one of few people I would meet through Jake that weren’t somehow involved in the dodgeball league.

At Jake’s recommendation we went on The Simpsons ride, which was actually… I don’t want to say scary, but it definitely wasn’t a walk in the park. It was a 3D animation rollercoaster, so while physically you didn’t actually move that much or really go anywhere, the dizzying sensations played tricks on your mind to make you feel as though you really did enter their cartoon universe and experience a range of non-human sensations. After that we walked back through the Citywalk in Universal Studios, which had been decorated for the holiday season.

***

While Jake did have a pretty flexible schedule, he wasn’t on holiday like I was, so he did still have to work sometimes. As well as running the WeHo dodgeball league, he was also a dancer and choreographer, and during the holidays he ran dance workshops and classes for kids. So while he had to do that, I took the opportunity to do some other more touristy things that I didn’t want to have to drag anyone else along to. While I don’t know if you can technically call it a tourist attraction, Runyon Canyon was yet another Los Angeles location that I had seen numerous times in various television shows. I was probably also pretty overdue for some kind (or any kind) of exercise, so one afternoon I got Jake to drop me off at the beginning of Runyon Canyon Park before he had to go to teach his dance class.

Honestly, there were probably more locals there than tourists. It seemed like a pretty popular place to go exercising and jogging or walking dogs. I wouldn’t really consider it a “hike”, since there were pretty straightforward trails most of the way, but you cover a fair bit of ground on your way to the top, and there is a pretty decent view of the greater Los Angeles area from up there.

Los Angeles as seen from the top of Runyon Canyon, stretching into the horizon.

However, it was on my walk through Runyon Canyon Park that I discovered one of the biggest disappointments about LA: how far away the famous Hollywood Sign is. It’s definitely there, off in the distance, but you had to zoom your camera in to the point of pixilation in order to get a somewhat decent view of it in a photograph. I’m aware that this isn’t helped by the fact all my holiday snaps so far had been taken with an iPhone 4, so image quality wasn’t something I was too hung up on. Still, similar to my misconceptions of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, I had just imagined the famous visual icons of the cities to be a little closer to the rest of the action.

The Hollywood Sign, from a distance.

After working up somewhat of a sweat in my afternoon hike, it was already time to meet Jake again after he finished his class. We decided to meet down on Hollywood Boulevard, which was only a short walk away from the entrance to Runyon Canyon Park, and from there we had a quick walk up the Hollywood Star Walk, and I pointed out the names of some of the celebrities that I liked, or recognised, and laughed at some of the stranger additions. Yet this was one sight that I had seen before during my time in LA, and if I’m completely honest, I’m not one to ever get star struck or fuss that much over celebrities.

Stars on Hollywood Boulevard

Marilyn Munroe’s handprints at the TCL Chinese Theatre.

“Hey, I’ve just gotta run back to the car and put some more change in the parking meter,” Jake said after our brief stroll up the strip. “It won’t take too long.”
“Actually,” I spoke up before he had a chance to go anywhere. “Um… can we, like… just go?” I’d seen all I really needed to see of the overrated tourist trap.
“Oh, thank God,” he replied, letting out a sigh of relief. “Yes, let’s get out of here.” As we headed back to the car, he explained his own thoughts of the whole place.
“Like, yeah, I get it. If it’s your first time here, it’s kinda cool, or if you want to see the star of your favourite celebrity, that’s kind of nice. Although trying to find them is always a great way to spend the afternoon,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “I don’t mind showing it to people on their first time, but I’m so glad you’re as over it as I am!”

***

There were plenty of other touristy things that I visited during my time in LA (which I will get to in the next post), but honestly I think the reason I had so much fun in the city was because of the people I was with. After the while debacle that was my first night in LA, gossip about the events had spread pretty quickly, but in a weird way that turned out pretty well for me. I had a few people approach me with condolences or apologies on behalf of the otherwise lovely bunch of dodgeball teams, and I ended up bonding and hanging out with a bunch of the guys and girls. I felt like I was officially one of the cool kids or something, although I’m pretty sure initially befriending Jake had probably improved that situation. I went along with him to the evenings when Jake had to run the dodgeball league, where teams dressed up in themes and often battled out the competition in ridiculous costumes, which usually had hilarious results, and afterwards we would inevitably end up in Gym Bar.

File Under: Photos that seemed like a good idea at the time.

LA was also where I would experience my first bottomless mimosa brunch. Originally we had planned on doing such a brunch on my birthday in New York, but after the night Jesse and I had had, we weren’t really in any state to be drinking, or conscious, for the morning of my birthday. But luckily Warren, one of the guys from dodgeball and a good friend of Jake’s, was having his birthday celebrations on one of the weekends I was in town, and you best believe he was doing a bottomless brunch. I mean, there isn’t really much that I have to explain, right? We sat around all morning, talking and laughing and drank more mimosas and Bloody Mary’s than one should probably consume while the sun is still up. But hey, I was on holidays!

Other nights out in West Hollywood saw me visiting a string of gay bars, including Revolver Video Bar, Trunks, Mother Lode, Eleven, and the Abbey. I don’t have too many strong recollections about them: Revolver Video Bar had a lot of go-go dancers, which we weren’t that into, so instead Jake and moved next door to the much more unassuming Trunks for another drink. Mother Lode seemed a little more down to earth, even if a little seedy, and the Abbey, despite being one of the more well known places (it was the only one I’d actually heard about before my arrival in LA), was a flashy, overpriced bar with terrible service. When Jake ordered our drinks, they poured them for us, took our money, and then seconds later took them back and poured them down the sink, informing us that the bar was closing. I know they have last call at 2AM in California, but surely a bartender should have more sense than to serve someone a drink when they physically would not have the time to consume it. Jake was livid, but being shouted at by patrons at any level of inebriation is something they are most likely very used to, so in the end we just had to give up and leave, but I promised to leave them a terrible Yelp review.

Another of Jake’s dodgeball friends had a birthday at Eleven, which was a nicer and slightly classier venue on Santa Monica Boulevard. I drank a lot, so I don’t really know when the private function room opened up to the public, but suddenly there was a drag queen on one of the clubs indoor balconies introducing Carmen Electra. Now, I know I said I didn’t get star struck or care much for celebrities, but I suppose I just got caught up in the excitement with the crowd and started cheering along. I didn’t even know what Carmen Electra was famous for (and… I still don’t?), but I still stuck my hand out to get her attention as she walked through the crowds on her way out, and she held it briefly, and smiled and waved. It wasn’t exactly the highlight or my night or anything, but it was something.

Carmen Electra in Eleven.

While I always enjoy checking out the gay bars and the gay scene of any city that I was in, Jake was adamant that that simply wasn’t enough.
“What’s something I can show you,” he said one Saturday evening, wracking his brain. “There’s gotta be something that’s very LA and awesome, without being too touristy or too trashy.” I guess it’s no big secret that the celebrity soaked reputation of Hollywood and Los Angeles leaves many visitors believing the city is somewhat of a cliché, but as someone who lived in LA and enjoyed doing so, I think Jake was determined to show me more of his city. Since I was someone who preferred to actually stay with locals and see the more local side of things, and get an appreciation of what it really feels like to live in a city, I think we were perfectly matched in that sense.

After doing some research and figuring out what was going on, Jake and I headed to Bootie LA, a party where these relatively well known DJs play their signature style of musical mash-ups. At the time I had no idea who these Bootie mash-up DJs were, and it wouldn’t be until much later, when I arrived home in Sydney, that I would discover their vast collection of amazing mash-ups, all available to download online. ‘Bootie LA’ was simply the name of the party when these DJs were in town, and given the time of the year, the evening was slightly Christmas themed, although there were a bunch of other crazy costumes from the dancers that evening.

The eclectically costumed dancers at Bootie LA.

The party was a lot of fun. It was a big open space, almost like a warehouse, but the feeling inside was a lot cleaner. I think it might have been a theatre venue of some sort that had been converted for a dance party. We ran into a few of Jake’s friends here and there – because this was LA, and apparently Jake knew almost everyone – and they were all really awesome, and the music was amazing. Mash-ups always keep you guessing: it’s a bit of a tease when you get excited when you hear the beat of a particular song, only to have another songs lyrics layered over the top of it, but it always still sounded amazing. It’s honestly a skill in itself.

Afterwards we drove home, Jake assuring me he hadn’t actually drank that much (I’d definitely drank too much, so I honestly hadn’t been paying attention), and stopped in at Taco Bell on the way home. I know In’n’Out is supposed to be the Holy Grail of fast-food when it comes to the west coast, but I have to admit that despite that (and despite all the warnings I received from friends telling me that Taco Bell will go straight through you), Taco Bell was a guilty pleasure that I couldn’t get enough of. I mean, they have tacos made from Doritos chips!

Cheesy Doritos Taco Bell taco: my choice of of post-drinking fast food.

***

The best thing about my time in LA really was just hanging out with Jake and his friends and living what felt like a relatively normal life, despite being in a town where everything was so seemingly influenced by Hollywood and had a tinge of surreality. Whether it was going around to a friends house to drink and play video games and gossip, or have a sit down dinner followed by a hilarious round of Cards Against Humanity, simply hanging out and spending time with cool people turned out to be a real highlight of the city for me.

Breathtaking view of Los Angeles (obviously looked better experienced first hand) on one of our drives over to North Hollywood.

And then of course, after the almost 9 months of consistent backpacking, sometimes all I wanted to do was chill out on the couch with Jake and Peter Parker and watch Adventure Time and South Park. After being on the road for so long, no matter how much adventure you crave and new experiences you still want to seek out, sometimes it’s the little, normal things, that you’ve gone seemingly forever without, which feel the most satisfying.

The adorable Peter Parker (Jake is a huge comic book nerd) keeping my company on the couch.

The City of Angels (and Demons)

Posted on December 1, 2015 by Tiny Tino

After taking a break from my overland travels to fly from Las Vegas to San Francisco, I decided I would take my final opportunity to get that authentic backpacker feeling of travelling along the ground and catch the train down from Oakland to Los Angeles. To further this rationale, I had been told that the coastal drive down that portion of the west coast was particularly beautiful, and that view was obviously something that I couldn’t see from a plane. After all the nightmare bus rides that I’d had coming over the Southwest, I thought I would enjoy the ease of a train journey, being able to set up your own personal space in your seat while still being able to get up and walk around, and watching the different local stations pass by and observing all the different people that hopped on and off along the way. You’d think I’d have had enough of trains, what with my tour around Europe plus the Trans-Siberian Railway, but after everything I’d done, I would still have to say that it remains my favourite form of travel. Not that I’d be game enough to do the Trans-Siberian again any time soon, but perhaps in future travels I’d look into other rail adventures and see where they could take me.

The train to Los Angeles was not a short journey, with a complete journey time of roughly 10 hours. Most people told me I was crazy for doing it, considering the flight between the two cities was approximately one hour, but I had maintained that I wanted to see the beautiful west coast scenery as the train neared Los Angeles. You can imagine my disappointment, then, when I realise that I hadn’t factored time of day or hours of daylight into my plans when booking my train trip. So of course, but the time I reached the final stages of the journey, where all the beautiful scenery supposedly existed, the sun had already set and I couldn’t see a thing. There’s nothing you can do but laugh, really. Oh well, at least I’d had plenty of down time to read my book.

The not so beautiful countryside between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

***

After a long and relatively uneventful day, my train finally arrived at the station in Downtown LA. I met up with Nathan*, Gary’s friend who I had met at Brandon’s birthday in San Francisco, who informed me that his dodgeball team was currently having post-match drinks at a gay sports bar call Gym Bar. I had to ask again to make sure I’d heard correctly – dodgeball? It turns out that the West Hollywood (or WeHo for short) Dodgeball League was a popular form of adult recreation that perfectly combined sport and athleticism with sociality and everybody’s other favourite form of adult recreation: drinking. I had no idea what to expect, but I hardly knew anybody in LA so I was down for pretty much anything. Nathan drove me back to his place where I quickly showered and we had a couple of drinks – I was assured we probably had some catching up to do, since the rest of the teams would have gone straight from dodgeball to the bar. Nathan lived in WeHo, which I would soon find out was the big gay district of this part of LA – the city itself was so immense that I couldn’t confidently say it was the only gay district in the entirety of Los Angeles, but from what I can gather it is definitely the most popular and well known.

After a couple of drinks, we left Nathan’s and headed down Santa Monica Boulevard until we reached Gym Bar. It wasn’t a huge bar, but it was packed out this evening. There was plenty of room in the outdoor seating and patio areas, a long bar along the edge of the room, and a few dart boards mounted along some of the walls. Throwing darts would have been a bit dangerous this evening though – Gym Bar was a dedicated sponsor of the WeHo Dodgeball League, and in turn the dodgeballers were dedicated patrons to Gym Bar, so they were all there tonight.
“Those are my team mates over there,” Nathan pointed to a corner of the bar. “Oh, and here, let me introduce you to Jake. He runs the dodgeball league.” We weaved our way through the crowd of people, Nathan saying hello to someone every so often. Eventually we got to the bar where a man about my heights with dark hair and a scruffy face was sitting on a bar stool, having what appeared to be five simultaneous conversations with all the people around him. Clearly he was the man of the moment.

“Jake, this is my friend Robert. He’s from Australia.” Jake turned towards us, slightly torn given that he was already talking to a bunch of other people, but he must have been told about the arrival of an Australian traveller earlier in the evening, because his face lit up with a big smile when he registered who I was.
“Hi! Welcome!” he said enthusiastically as I shook his hand.
“Jake is best friends with Ke$ha. He want to Miley Cyrus’ birthday party a few weeks ago.” Nathan dropped the facts seemingly out of no where, and instantly Jake became clearly uncomfortable at having been introduced in such a way. I certainly hadn’t been expecting it, either.
“Oh… really?” I mean, I knew celebrities were everywhere in LA Hollywood so I tried to play it cool, but Ke$ha was actually a favourite of mine.
“Um… well, yeah,” Jake said, almost sheepishly, as though he didn’t want to make a big deal about it, or speak quite as blatantly as Nathan had. He probably didn’t want to seem like he was showing off, but I was actually interested.
“That’s really cool! What was it like?” Jake seemed visibly more relaxed at my reaction. Nathan had moved off for a moment to talk to someone else, so he offered to show me a couple of pictures of the party.
“I mean, I don’t wanna seem like I was too cool for it or anything, but… it was her 21st birthday”, he said as he scrolled through some photos on his iPhone. “So it was pretty trashy. And then Miley sang, and she sang Timber… Ke$ha was a little embarrassed.”
“Oh, man! How awkward!” I said with a laugh.
“Yeah, just a little. But it was still fun.”

Jake and I chatted a little bit more, and we were getting on really well. He asked me more about Australia and my travels, I asked him more about LA. He even offered to show me around sometime, and I was conscious of the fact Nathan had only offered me a place to stay for a couple of days, when I had at least ten days to spend in LA, so it was probably time to start making friends. We exchanged phone numbers, and I guess that’s when things started to get a bit flirty. He was cute, and very friendly, so I was definitely interested in hanging out with him again. I kept moving around the bar though, with Nathan introducing me to a bunch of other people as the “Australian friend I met in San Francisco.” The dodgeball league itself wasn’t strictly gay, but given that Gym Bar was a gay sports bar, most of the crowd consisted of gay men and their female friends. There were quite a few outrageous and eccentric characters, singing and dancing and screaming their way around the place, but everyone was super friendly. Everyone also seemed to know each other, so even though I actually didn’t know anyone, it reminded me of the kind of local bars back home where I could rock up on virtually any night of the week and run into a friend. And even though I’d just met most of these people, they were so incredibly welcoming right off the bat that I almost felt at home within minutes of being there. Even if it was a sports bar.

***

I chatted to Jake quite a bit more throughout the evening, and he introduced me to some of his closest friends who were there that night. We were there pretty late for a Tuesday, but after many drinks, dances, laughs and conversations, eventually the bar was closing. Jake and I had been quite brazenly flirting throughout the end of the night, so as we all spilled out of the bar and prepared to go our separate ways, we agreed that we would meet again soon. Nathan had caught up to me by then, and the three of us started walking in the same general direction up Santa Monica Boulevard to get to our respective homes. And that’s where things started to get a little pear-shaped…

There are a few detailed that I omitted from my earlier posts about San Francisco because they would be better explained in the context of what happened in LA. I first met Nathan through Gary in San Francisco, when we were celebrating Brandon’s birthday. After dinner we had all gone out to a bar to have a few drinks, although Gary and I were pretty spent after having been out so late the night before at Truck. When we decided to call it a night, Nathan asked Gary if he could also crash at his place, and Gary agreed. Now, there had obviously been something going on between Gary and myself – he was a sweetheart and I had loved every minute of the short time we’d spent together – but when we got back to Gary’s, Nathan just kind of took it upon himself to… well, invite himself into whatever was going on between Gary and I. It was slightly awkward, and I wasn’t completely down for it, but Gary didn’t really make any discernible protest – or was too drunk to really realise what was going on – so rather than standing up for myself and hitting the streets to find my way to Noe Valley in the middle of the night, I just put up with it and stuck closer to Gary for the rest of the night, waiting it out until the morning. At the time it had just seemed like some poorly managed awkwardness on my part, which is what led me to foolishly accept Nathan’s offer to stay with him when I finally got to LA, thinking I would be better equipped to manage should anything similar occur when I was there.

Fast forward to Jake, Nathan and myself walking home from Gym Bar, with Jake and I preparing to say goodnight. Out of nowhere, Nathan suddenly says, “So I guess that means we’re having a threesome, then?”
I was shocked. Jake was even more shocked.
“Um… excuse me?”
In a matter of seconds, he went from being shocked to being furious. Suddenly the two of them were raising their voices, and then they were yelling at each other and shouting in the middle of the street. I don’t even remember what they were saying, but it quickly moved from the topic of a threesome to some much more personal comments. I’d later learn that despite all the friendly and welcoming vibes I’d experienced, there was some unresolved tensions between some of the members of the dodgeball league, with Nathan apparently being right in the middle of a lot of it. There was shouting, finger pointing, name calling, and it was all getting a bit too much for me, so I did want any sensible, alcohol-filled adult would do when presented with a situation in which they’d rather not be a part of – I ran away.

The situation had gone from 0 to 100 in a matter of seconds, and while I would have liked nothing more than to run far away from it, I was conscious of the fact that all my stuff was still in Nathan’s apartment, and I didn’t have a key, so I didn’t make it very far. Eventually my phone rang, and it was Nathan. I was around the corner from his place, so I met him out the front of his building. Jake was no where to be seen, so I silently followed Nathan up to his apartment, my brain whirling at a million miles an hour.
“What are you going to do?” Nathan asked me bluntly once we were inside. It was pretty sure that the only way I could safely spend the night there was if I had sex with him. I didn’t want to have sex with him, and even if I did, safety still wasn’t guaranteed. I’d been in some pretty dubious situations during my travels, but this was one of the few times that I’d genuinely felt unsafe. I had no idea where I was going to go, but I knew I couldn’t stay there.
“I’m going to go,” I said, in as calm and collected a voice as I could muster.

What followed was an onslaught of some of the most disgusting and vile verbal abuse that I have ever had the misfortune of receiving. I don’t need to repeat the slut-shaming and traumatic insults in order to paint the picture of sheer humiliation I was feeling, but all I can say is that I was glad that I hadn’t really had a chance to unpack most of my things. I threw all my belongings into my backpack as quickly as I could, while Nathan stood over me spitting his venomous words. I was terrified the abuse might switch from verbal to physical, but luckily I had pulled everything together before he even had the chance, and I fled out the front door and never looked back, all while he hurled his final words down the hallway. I kept it together for as long as I could, but as soon as I reached street level, I let go and begin sobbing to myself. Streetlights lit up the sidewalk, and in their glow I pulled out my phone and dialled the only other number I had of anyone that lived in LA.

“Hello? Jake?” I took a few deep breaths so he would be able to understand me through the tears and the accent.
“Hello?” He was a little slow at first, and I wondered if he’d already been asleep, but he must have quickly realised who was calling. “Oh, yes! Robert! Where are you? Are you okay?”
“I’m… I’m on the street. I’m okay, but… but I had to get out of Nathan’s, I just-” I was overcome by the situation, breaking into tears again, and Jake attempted to soothe me through the phone.
“Hey, hey, don’t cry! Do you know where you are? Where are you going?”
“I… I don’t know. Jake… Jake can I please crash at yours? Just for tonight? I don’t… I don’t feel safe here.”
“Of course! I will text you my address, just get in a cab. I’ll meet you out the front.”
“Okay.” I took a deep breath, calmed by a feeling that everything was going to be okay now. “Thank you, Jake.”
“Don’t even mention it. See you soon.”

I dragged myself down to Santa Monica Boulevard, and easily hailed a cab. Jake’s place was less than a five minute drive, and he was already outside waiting when we pulled up. The first thing he did was give me a big hug when I stepped out of the car, then leaned in to pay the driver. I tried to do it myself, but Jake insisted, and I was too emotionally exhausted to resist. So I gathered up my bags, with Jake’s help, and I followed him up the stairs of his building to his apartment. He briefed me on the way up.
“So, look, I’m not trying to pull anything on you like Nathan, but.. my friend Val is sleeping on my couch tonight, so I don’t know…”
“It’s okay, Jake,” I said, smiling for the first time as I wiped my wet cheeks. “You’re not a creep like Nathan, so it’s okay.”
He just chuckled as we crept through the front door of his apartment and into his bedroom. There, I had the completely unexpected delight of meeting Peter Parker.

No matter what is happening, there is always time for a picture with a dog.

Kisses with Peter Parker.

While playing with a puppy is certain to cure the worst of any bad moods, I was exhausted from all the drama, so eventually climbed into bed, where Jake and I had a few quiet, whispered words.
“I knew that I wanted to see you again,” he said, and through the darkness I could still feel his smile. “It really sucks that it had to happen under these circumstances, but I have to say that very I’m happy to have you here.”
“Silver linings,” I whispered back contently. “Sometimes crappy situations have the best endings.”
Jake was respectful of my space, as promised, but given that I actually liked him, I asked him to hold me, and eventually I passed out in his arms.

*Name has been changed.

Tiny Tino's Travels

Just a boy trying to find his place in the world

Tag Archives: West Hollywood

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