How my first visit to Los Angeles was a pleasant surprise
Gettin’ Crazy
Our driver was bombastic and gave the busload of passengers a speech about L.A. traffic as he nearly rammed his way around tentative and antsy drivers with license plates from around the Union… “it’s crazy now, but not really; you’re here when it’s just starting to get crazy.” I craned my neck to look at the prices on the sign at a nearby gas station… $5.099 for Regular. The lady sitting across from me on the bus said, “does that really say $5 a gallon? Oh my god.” Our bus driver replied, “Welcome to Los Angeles!” he chortled, “It was lower a couple weeks ago, like mid-$3 but it went back up, this is what we’re used to. They don’t like us out here. Thank you Biden! (chortle).” The air was crisp and the sun was out briefly. That sounds strange for L.A. and I suppose it is. I had just flown from Charlotte, NC on a plane that was struck twice by lightning on our descent into LAX’s landing pattern. The pilots did a good job getting us around the weather system as best they could. It was impressive and a bit jolting (pun intended) to have the plane struck by lightning; that was a first for me. I found myself wondering if they now have to check the coating (paint) on the plane for any spots where paint popped off. I believe lightning strikes require logging with the FAA and maintenance records of the plane. A couple of people yelped when it happened. I raised my eyebrows and chortled, thought about electricity and metal and materials and engineering, and continued to smile. That outer skin of airplanes is thinner than a dime, but because of the high voltage skin effect of electricity, lightning usually does little damage to airplanes, and well, the electronics in airplanes – aka avionics – is SO reliable and overbuilt, the plane just was like, “lighting what huh? oh, whatever” and all systems kept going or had a partial reset and then carried on.
When I got to the rental car place, again I chortled but only internally this time – displaying only a smirk – when I saw my rental car was a Chevy Malibu. I felt like saying, “I see what you did there, ha ha, nice one… a Malibu in L.A. Very good, ha ha.” Walking around the car with the attendant, I didn’t mention it being my first time in California, but when asked if I wanted to have them fill the car or refill it with gas myself, I said, “I’ll take my chances on filling it out there,” not mentioning what were, for me, very high gas prices. How far do you think you’ll be driving?” asked the attendant. “I don’t know, this is my first time in L.A., I’m headed to Newport Beach, does that help?” I asked, hopefully. “Well,” said she, “it depends on how much you’ll be going around there, but anyway, you should be OK refilling it yourself.”
Stay in the Middle Five Lanes
There I was on “the 405” on a 55 minute journey from LAX to Newport Beach. 8 lanes wide and traffic slowdowns expected… then experienced. The windswept clouds made shadows dance on the newly wet pavement. L.A. streets looked like a car commercial, especially with some of the exotic and expensive cars I started to see driving around the airport. This odd weather system brought across the Pacific after being pushed down hard from the Arctic had just caused hail in the valley for the first time in at least 15 years according to a local I met later. The hailstorm or thunderstorm that proceeded it was what we flew through coming into LAX. The temperature was about 50, windy, and the air was surprisingly dry. I really like dry air, and air so dry it took a thunderstorm and didn’t even get saturated is the kind of air I could get used to, long term.
My GPS said I now only had 44 minutes left, and to stay in the middle five lanes to continue on the 405 as I passed a billboard for KROQ 106.7FM. “Oh yeah! K-rock! I gotta listen to that!” and fumbled with the car stereo until I got to the station. A song I had never heard was coming over the air, and it was good. I wish the stereo showed the track. I got distracted reading other signs and missed if the DJ said the track title; I found sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t! Red Hot Chili Peppers now eminated from KROQ, quite fitting it seemed, and as the hours progressed, I found that KROQ does like their home team, repeating several tracks from the Chili Peppers and also Guns n’ Roses. Good stuff, very L.A. for sure.
Bucket List Boxes Ticked
Pacific Ocean and PCH
I drove on the freeway until it ended at the town of Costa Mesa. I’ve heard of Costa Mesa, now I was there. This happened a lot as I was driving, I would see names of roads or towns that were familiar from discussions about “SoCal” but were abstract at best. I turned on to “Coast Highway” to head to my downmarket hotel – a Holiday Inn Express – that turned out to be one of the most affordable places to stay in Newport Beach. However, it didn’t occur to me that “Coast Hwy” was the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) until later that evening. I was driving around L.A. in search of a few shopping items after dinner, and coming back to the hotel I took a different route from further north and I ended up at Huntington Beach. The lights from downtown and the whole of the city between me and the Hollywood hills lit up the clouds overhead. In the foreground, I saw a gas refinery, near the beach, and it occurred to me, with an orange glow in the distance of downtown, and the orange-white glow of the sky above the refinery, that I was living in what inspired “Blade Runner”. Little to my knowledge, this theme would continue.
ReLAXing Visits to Movie Locations
Heading the other way from the traffic on both interstates and in the skies could lower the stress of flying back from L.A. Many I spoke to said they would never leave from LAX, but I found this was probably due to them needing to leave at busy times of the day and the week. A red-eye to Charlotte on a Friday night out of LAX is not that bad it turns out. I was headed the other direction from the 8-lane-wide traffic jam through central L.A., and after most of it had cleared up for the evening, and had a very short line at the TSA gates. Flying into the sunrise overnight definitely earns its red-eye reputation, though. After a breakfast meeting that surprisingly and pleasantly adjourned about 9:30AM, I had the rest of Friday to tour L.A.
I wanted to see the Frank Lloyd Wright “Ennis House” in the hills that appears in “House on Haunted Hill” and in “Blade Runner”. I wanted to see the Bradbury Building in downtown that features in “Blade Runner,” and I wanted to find the Denny’s that David Lynch based “Winkie’s” on in the film “Mullholland Drive,” where it is purported that Lynch often lunched when down in L.A.
My first stop was the Ennis House, found it and snapped a picture from the car. It’s in a neighborhood that is up some very twisty tiny streets. Interesting architecture and sure enough, it looks just like it does in the movies.
As I came down the hills, the windy and rainy weather began to return to the L.A. valley, which was such a strange thing to see; L.A. always looks warm and sunny in pictures and films I’ve seen, because, it typically is that way.
As I drove downtown to the Bradbury Building, the skyscrapers had low clouds surrounding their tops, and a light rain had started. Driving by the large “Enjoy Coca-Cola” sign on the side of a downtown building, I could not believe how much the city looked like a scene right out of “Blade Runner.” I parked a couple blocks from the Bradbury Building and thought “well, I wonder if it’s open for viewing.” Not only is the building open, but there are a couple of security people who prevent tourists from trying to use the elevator or go into private parts of the building, since it’s now up-scale apartments. I was joined by a couple of equally rained-on tourists shaking their umbrellas and taking pictures of the iconic lobby, elevator, and glass roof of the building.
It was now about lunch time, and the light rain continued in a gray-skied L.A. I sought out a nearby ramen restaurant, and found one a few blocks from the Bradbury Building. There I was, having a ramen bowl in a restaurant with raindrops dancing down the front window, with the clatter and rambunctious cooking of a couple of Chinese chefs at their woks serving up lunch for customers coming and going, also with shaken umbrellas and raincoats. Could this be any more “Blade Runner”? What was happening? Too much fun.
The rain stopped about an hour later as I got to my third location, the fictitious “Winkie’s” restaurant, which it turned out was based on a Denny’s that Lynch frequented, but wasn’t filmed at a Denny’s. I found it, on a long strip of divided highway in an industrial looking part of town with used car dealerships and used auto parts stores, discount beauty stores, and the like. It was a bit of a run down part of town. The restaurant building and windows were just like in “Mullholland Drive”, released in 2001. Well, the payphone – which might have been a prop itself – was gone from the side of the building. The tables were stacked inside, along with booth benches, and clearly it had not been occupied for some time. But, I really wanted to see what was “in back of this place” in what some have argued is the scariest scene ever put to film. Along with an audience of a couple hundred, I jumped in my seat when I saw the “Diner scene” and what was, although I’m still not sure what it was, that was in back of Winkie’s. Well, what is there in reality is another exit to the parking lot, not a dead end, and the wall separating an apartment building’s parking lot. All very quotidian. The power story-telling has, to make the world more than what it appears, is one of the reasons cities like Los Angeles exists at all.
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