Secret Pop Up Coffee Experience

May 13 2017

My mate VR has some friends that are living in the LA Arts District, the new hip up and coming area within DTLA (Downtown Los Angeles).

His friends are actually furniture designers, but once a month they hold a pop up coffee shop in the front space of their factory loft for friends and clients.

It's a secret spot, unavailable to the public without invitation, so of course I jumped at the chance to visit somewhere nobody else is allowed to go.

The spread is pretty simple: a box of donuts and pressed coffee from Stumptown Coffee Roasters.

The barista gives us a complete rundown of their coffee filtration style, origin of beans, etc. etc.

To be frank I'm a huge fan of coffee.  Drinking it, that is.  Where it comes from, where it was made, how much the growers got, it doesn't really float my bean.  It's now my drug of choice, so much so, that I could honestly drink an espresso at 1am and then hit the hay.  It seems now more than ever a lot of people have a "no coffee after 5pm" policy which I think is pretty wussy.  Each to their own, though, of course!

The coffee starts out hot but is put through a series of trendy glass beakers reminiscent of the high school science laboratory before serving.  If it were me, I probably would have heated those glass beakers with hot water first, as it seems the heat came straight out of the coffee and was lukewarm by the time it was served.

However it was free, so there's no way I'm complaining privately about the temperature of the coffee.  Only in public.

The coffee did taste pretty spectacular though, and after inspecting some of the designers' amazing furtniture out the back, and chatting with some of the other patrons, we headed out to meet up with old mate DA in Bunker Hill.

We had to walk past a million stands selling all kinds of Mexican streetfood.  Each bacon wrapped hot dog smelled better than the last, so it was an unusual, self-inflicted kind of torture.

Of course I now have bragging rights to a secret pop up coffee in experience in DTLA for which I will be forever grateful.

Rocking LA with the Brasileiro

May 8 2017

I'm staying in an airbnb and while most of the people that come along are pretty friendly, I clicked in particular with VR, a very cool guy from Brazil.

We'd been hanging out a bit, talking, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and listening to Tame Impala .. the usual stuff.  He hadn't really ventured into downtown LA by day (beyond our foreposted trip to the Japanese Village) so we thought we'd do the touristy thing and check out some of the stuff down there.

We're not technically on Route 66, but we're both rock'n'roll guys, so this seems the most likely place to get our kicks, photo-wise.

We head down to City Hall, to see whether or not it can be fought.  It can't.  But you can take a picture of yourself on the dais, so I figure I'll sum up the zeitgeist of our times: dictatorship (whether real, or imagined .. after all we live in an oligarchy, not a democracy) and strike my best pose.

The view from the top is pretty impressive.  I love that LA is all-sprawl.  There's something great about having a view of the sky from anywhere in the city.  I wonder how long it will last.  It's nice to have a city that doesn't cast shadows on every corner for miles and miles from the centre.

Next stop, the oldest street in Los Angeles: Calle Olvera ... or to the white folks, Olvera Street.  It was saved from demolition in the 1920s with the idea of turning the area into a traditional Mexican style market place.  It had been up to that time dominated by Mexican and Sicilian and Chinese populations.  The Chinese moved on to nearby present day Chinatown to make way for Union Station, our next stop.

There are some beautiful craft stalls, but I'm taken aback by the hand painted tiles.  It's a little obsession of mine.  Don't ask me why because I have no idea what that's about.

After tucking into some fish and chips in China Town, which were decidedly not very Chinese at all (I'm not so fond of Chinese food) we checked out Union Station.  I'm sure we took photos but I can't find them, so ... sorry.

On the way home though we past a beautiful old mid century building covered in the most impressive mosaics I had seen in some time ... again, the tile thing.

I think you'll understand why I loved these so much.  So much detail and colour.  What's not to love?  Still very much loving LA.

Japanese Village Take Two

May 5 2017

Frustrated with our earlier attempt to get some good Japanese food, I hike down to the Japanese Village again for sashimi, take two.  I ask DA if he wants to come and join my new roomie VR to give it another go.

On the way to the village we happen to walk past a K-Pop festival.  That's Korean POP for the uninitiated, and it's actually very cool.  A little too cool, it starts to rain.  I feel bad for the organisers, but, hey: that's life in the big city.  We had no idea it was on... the things you find when you crawl out of the cocoon, huh?  Yes, that's right!  Get off your computer.  Put down your phone.  GET OUT OF THE HOUSE!  NOW!  (after you read this, of course).

It's a little bit chilly out.  Then we turn a corner, and there's the Challenger Space Shuttle!  I'd actually seen it a few years back while in LA, being driven down the road on a very wide truck trailer.  I repeat, these are the things outside your house that you're missing because you live in a cocoon.

We found a great place to eat, the boys had Ramen and Bento, but I was hellbent on getting some raw tuna.  It went down a treat, was very reasonably priced, and we weren't ripped off like we had been the other night.  VR gives it the thumbs up!  Moving-fingers-Brazilian-style.

DA and I want to show VR the bacon donuts, but I dunno, like a lot of things, the first time is the best, and I'm just not in the mood anymore, they've lost their shine.  We do have a geezer around the village and there's some very cool things to see.

Like the reflection of this 1950s astronaut from a Japanese film in the window of a manga store:

 And some uber-cool Edo Period prints for sale in the local Japanese supermarket

Let your fish flag fly!  Then there's those frustrating vending machines where you can spend $100 buying some dumb cute plush toy that would only cost $5, except for the fact that this game is TOTALLY RIGGED!!! LOL  I mean are your kids going to be really thrilled that you bought them a plush loaf of bread?? (it's possible...)

It was a pretty fun night all in all, I got my raw fish, and I'm satisfied.

My Little Barbershop

May 3 2017

There's nothing better than the feeling of getting a new haircut, especially if your hair grows as fast as mine does.

I'd previously found a barber very close to my house, but I wasn't overly impressed.  There was always a huge line up for a haircut and most of the people were lined up for the owner of the store.  The less popular older lady cut my hair, and while she did a job that was good enough, I just wasn't that happy with it.  Also, I'm just not used to women cutting my hair.  It's not sexist.  It's that men understand men's hair better than women do.  It's a thing.

Unless you're the famed 'Man From Ironbark' from the A.B.Patterson poem.

I found another place a little further away, tucked away in Mountain View Avenue.  It turns out this guy has just opened his own shop almost a year ago.  Yes, there was still a line up, but I loved that Roberto gave a lot of attention to each customer.  He seemed to take forever with each client, which is a nuisance while you're waiting but I didn't mind as it meant he would also take a long time with me.

It had been a long, hot day, and I could feel myself struggling to keep awake in the barber chair.  The buzzing of the clippers can be quite relaxing.

However, to finish up he pulled out a cut-throat razor to finish off the job.  Funny how somebody holding a very sharp knife to your head can wake you up very, very quickly. 

Just ask 'The Man From Ironbark' about that...

#california #losangeles #la #haircut #freshfade #mylittlebarbershop #abpatterson #themanfromironbark

Bacon donuts & Hannya Masks in Little Tokyo

May 2 2017
 
If I had to choose one cuisine to eat for the rest of my life, the choice would be obvious.

I choose Japanese.

Since I was a 14 year old studying a unit of Japanese language and culture, I’ve been fascinated by this culture which was closed for so long to the western world.

Then there was the famous line from the glossy lips of Molly Ringwald in John Hughes’ seminal 1980s teen flick, The Breakfast Club:

“It’s sushi”

Technically, she was wrong.  Sushi is in fact Japanese for ‘vinegared rice’, and sashimi is the name for raw fish.  Those seaweed rolls are actually Sushi Nori, but we’ll let the Ringwald have it, for now.

I’ve been itching to get down to Little Tokyo and sample some raw fish.  DA kindly offers to accompany me, as I had introduced him to sashimi about 5 years ago, when we first met in LA.

We found a restaurant, which was in Little Tokyo, but on one of the streets just outside of the Japanese Village Plaza.  Every time somebody walked in the whole staff stopped what they were doing and yelled out a japanese greeting in unison.  (I can imagine that would get very tiresome pretty quickly).  But when they did it for us, it was fun .. because it was new ; )

The food was not really filling, and ultra expensive.  Additionally, those jerks completely overcharged us (I know, because I’d added up the cost on the menu), which really sucked.  Who wants to pay $40 for a few pieces of fish and walk away hungry?  I guess the money they could have spent on the food, they spent on staff that could stand yelling out greetings in unison, all night, every night.

Grrrrr....

Afterwards, we walked around the village, to discover that there were much better deals to be had within the plaza itself.  Next time, we vowed. 

But not before chowing down on a bacon maple donut hole.  If you can’t work out why anybody would eat a bacon donut, you don't deserve to know.

It was small, but delicious enough.  I managed to get a few snapshots of those hannya masks inside one of the stores moments before they closed!  They are the Noh Theatre masks which represent jealous female demons.  There was also a very cute cement panda which looked like it was from the 1950s on the store floor, begging to be snapped.

Next time, we’ll come back and eat twice as much for half the price …. inside the village.

On the walk back to Bunker Hill, we saw a young couple draping red material from tree to tree.  I figured they probably had lots of rolls of fabric left over from something and were using it to make street art.  I asked the couple draping the material, and they confirmed my suspicions.

Looked pretty cool, but will be surprised if it’s still here tomorrow. 

#losangeles #dtla #littletokyo #ripoff #wrongrestaurant #bacon #donuts #bacondonuts #hannakemask #chichi #storedisplay #streetart #hannya #japanesevillageplaza #la

Dine Free, Un-less Delighted

April 30 2017

Today I caught up with LD for what turned out to be a very interesting lunch.

After a few near misses, we finally parked on Broadway, admiring the incredible art deco palaces that were built in the wee hours of the cinema industry.   A time when red carpet events were seen as a big affair, and the movie palaces provided a much needed respite from the drudgery of life.  The masses had a chance to not only see their favorite stars on the silver screen but were treated to opulence every step of the way, from the magnificent post baroque / rococo interiors in the foyer through to the galleries that paved the way to the cinema itself.  The chairs may have been spartan, but the surroundings were rich, lush, opulent: nothing like the homes the masses would return to once the words ‘The End’ came up, and the velvet curtains closed.

We’d hoped to catch a daytime tour of one of the more opulent cinema houses but unfortunately had the timing all wrong … too bad!!

After taking a closer look at these broadway palaces, LD suggests we go to a rather unique place for lunch.

Clifton’s is a very old cafe which was built for the post cinema crowd.  It’s really like nothing you’ve ever seen before.

It looks like a series of grottos.  There are small grottoes with different platforms, quite small, for performing jazz bands.  The design is minimalistic in intention, to force a minimal band line up, rather than the large scale bands that were to dominate the 1940s.

There’s a small prayer grotto as well, which you access through some very windy stairs.

There’s a large restaurant and buffet which is part serviced, part serve yourself.

What’s really cool about this place are all the stuffed animals placed sporadically in dioramas.  There’s a coyote chasing an antelope, mid flight. 

Here’s a coyote with a bird stuffed in its mouth, about to return to its den in a serve yourself deli buffet all of its own.

Then there’s the classic act of altruism that this place was famous for.  Their motto was ‘Pay What You Wish… Eat Free Unless Delighted’.  This was clearly a sign of the times, an oasis in the suffering that was American life during the Great Depression.

Clearly, that’s not their policy anymore.  However the good news is that when the owner died, there was a clause that if it was to be reopened, it was to be presented in its original splendor.

So, I don’t really mind paying for the food, because I’m delighted.  Yes, by the food, but ultimately that a place like this exists, and hasn’t fallen prey to the wrecking ball.

Yet.

#california #cliftons #losangeles #broadway #opulence #luxury #altruism #taxidermy #jazz #minimal #gawdy

The Hunt For a Mid-Century Modern Sideboard

April 29 2017

As it turns out LD wants to check out an antiques fair close to downtown LA.  It's supposed to be a series of vendors selling all things 1950s and 1960s.  I suspect it's going to be a bunch of dealers (which it is) and although these places typically aren't the hotbed of amazing deals and bargains.  I thought it would definitely be worth a look because I do love that era (newsflash) and thought I might at least be able to find some cool stuff, and learn a little bit about the peculiarities that distinguish American midcentury style from Australian midcentury style.

There's not a lot of differences, but some of them are quite subtle, and as my old boss used to say: Retail is Details.  I'm all about the details so it seems like a great idea.

First LD heads over after I promise to make him coffee, and you guessed it, another trip to GOOD TIME donuts.  Sorry LD, I had no idea you didn't like flavoured coffee.  Mental note: stop buying flavoured coffee grinds from the supermarket and go for the regular stuff.  Preferably from Hawaii or something.  Because I'm DAMNED if I know where to buy LAVAZZA coffee in this city!

It's a pretty hot day, so we wander around from vendor to vendor, giving prefrence to the stalls which are in the shade.  Yeah I know, that's not where the bargains are, but who cares?  It's really hot.

We managed to find the famed Herman Miller Marshmallow Sofa so couldn't resist a photo op sitting in this famous lounge.  It doesn't have the bright colours of all of the reproduction sofas, it has an unusual palette of brown, but who cares?  It's cool, and we're sitting on it.

Even if it is brown.

On the sofa, it's a pass: that's not what we're looking for.  We're looking for a 1950s/60s sideboard that will fit in LD's 50s ranch house.  Like the wooden one at the top right of this photo.

We didn't find the right one and that's OK.  Finding vintage pieces is not like going to an online catalogue and choosing the size, shape and colour.  It's more about THE HUNT.  And as with all hunts, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.  So although we didn't find the stand out piece he was looking for I really enjoyed checking out the vintage fair, getting a big eye full of collectables and memorabilia.

Winning.

Professional Karaoke Singers With Amateur Machetes

April 28 2017

My friend LD was meeting up with some of his friends at the Original Farmers Market in Fairfax.  It's been around since the early 1930s and has over 100 gourmet stalls selling all variety of cuisines.

We skipped the coffee and donuts and went for a slice of pizza.  I know, all those choices and I go for a bread and cheese, but what the heck.

We finally find his friends and they're tabled in an area with a karaoke competition going on.  It's actually pretty good as far as karaoke goes.  Particularly good are the oldies who are getting up and belting out tunes.  Not so much a series of Pat Benatar numbers by girls in their 40s.  (Don't start me, but I believe her Love Is A Battlefield was responsible for a long slew of just awful bands, led by girls who actually thought they would be the next Pat Benatar, doing the shimmy dance in front of a triangle of dancers.  The 80s <insert heavy sigh>.

After a while, something doesn't feel right.  There's a beautiful old Jewish lady in her 70s (possibly 80s) cranking out a pretty rocking tune.  She's wearing what looks like a really expensive dress, as in the type of dress an old lady would wear to the opera, sequins, beads, the whole number. If this is so random, why are the same people getting up for number after number?

We battle it out with the ridiculously loud volume in this place, trying to communicate with a bunch of people I'd just met while competing with a P.A. system that is just too, too loud.  Could be, I'm just getting older however given the number of senior citizens here, I can't imagine it's working for them, either, unless they've got their hearing aids turned way, way down.  It's loud and distorted, my voice hurts and I feel like I should be in one of those Lichtenstein paintings where planes and bombs are crashing all around.

At first what seemed so sweet, a bunch of senior citizens having their fifteen minutes of fame, it turns out that we're being had by a group of people who are desperate for attention .. in whatever way they're gonna get it.  It's most likely that these grannies and grampas are actually here every chance they get, spending their time practicing their songs in their cars, whilst driving, so that nobody can hear the REAL amateurs that they are. 

Essentially it's just like any one of those singing reality TV shows.  Semi professionals pretending to be amateurs.  It's kind of sad, really.  The truth is none of these covers will actually sound better than the original sound recordings of these songs.  Personally I'd rather much hear the original, than have some amateur hack those beautiful songs into a million bloody pieces with the machete that they call their 'voice'.  They're more similar to those singing competitions than you realise.  None of them make money doing it, none of them are creating anything new.   Sure, it's fun to get up and karaoke, especially if you've got a good ear, and can hold a tune.  But this is different.  These people are mostly professional karoake-ers with amateur machetes.

I would have taken photos to prove the point (or at least their OTT clothes) but I was in a mean mood (as if you couldn't tell).  I didn't want to give them any more attention than they deserved.  If there was a limit to how much they deserved, they had definitely already gone way, way past that.  Especially the ones that got up and sang multiple numbers.  What seemed sweet now exposed itself as being very contrived.

Afterwards, we headed through some of the strip malls that make up the market and found some very cool hollywood memorabilia.  I was particularly enchanted by these Lucille Ball, Desi Arnez and  Popeye's Olive Oyl.

Then we went out and hit the bar for a drink.  It's always great meeting new people, and this night managed to kill three birds with one stone: new friends, new experience, new location.

Our ears are both ringing from the noise, though, so let's blow this hot dog stand!

Shoot Out At the Steak Corral

April 22 2017

After getting up pretty late, I went to wake up MM who had slept in his van overnight (he swears it was more comfortable than it was).

A quick trip to the GOOD TIME donut store and a big pot of coffee later and we were ready to go on another trip around the city.

MM had bought a few vintage roadsigns on his travels, you know, the kind that belong on the walls of any self-respecting man-cave.  Something like this:

There was no way it was going to fit in a bag, so we went down to the local goodwill shop to see if they had something that it would be able to fit in.  Nailed it, found a great bag.  Went back to the van only to realise it was just a bit too small.   They wouldn't refund him but they were kind enough to swap it for a slightly larger bag which did the trick nicely.

So we walked around a small shopping mall that was nearby, for kicks.  There was a soccer match going on between Mexico and Spain ( I think) and the whole strip mall was loaded with guys watching the match.  I felt a bit uncomfortable taking the next snap but what the heck, it turned out pretty cool!  I'm sure if anybody saw us they'd be thinking "what the hell is that gringo doing?", but thankfully it didn't come to that.  They were all transfixed on the game.

Except for the guy in the grey hoodie on the right.  He just seems so disinterested.

Next stop, MM wanted to take some pics of a Randy's donuts sign, but I found a much better one for him.  The little boy from the steak corral seems slightly more inspiring for shooting:

Of course we could've used a real gun, but we're Aussies, we don't believe in that nonsense.  Not when a photo shoot is a better option.

After all the exhaustion of driving around and around checking out different kinds of 50s 3D signage we stop nearby to eat at an old diner in Whittier.  We get the steak special and it is BLEEDING FANTASTIC!  As in, we both like eating rare steaks.

Then we dug into some good old fashioned sherbert.  The type that Megan Draper really, really did NOT like in AMC's Mad Men.

Ours was really, really good.  I had pineapple and MM had lime so I guess it was a pine-lime splice.

A successfull shoot-out at the Steak Corral - MM with a proper camera, me with my dinky camera phone.

Smiles all around.

#losangeles #california #whittier #sherbert #steak #steakcorral #vintagediner #solotravel #friends #madmen #amc #splice #pinelime #football #stripmall #mancave

No Access To The Hollywood Sign

April 21 2017

One of the great pleasures of solo travel is meeting up with friends overseas.

I've known MM since the late 1980s when we ran the streets of Sydney with a very rock and roll crowd.  We drank way too much, saw more bands than you could possibly believe, and basically lived the rock and roll life style without making any music.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

MM had actually gone to the private Catholic boarding school that I was slated to go to in Lismore.  I didn't end up going because my older brother told me that I would sleep in a dormitory.  I didn't know what a dormitory was, and although I shared a bedroom with my two brothers, the idea of sleeping in a room with 20 other guys made our cramped bedroom seem very, very private.

MM became a father at a very young age, and somehow he managed to temporarily leave his wife and kids behind and do the old 'drive around the states in a campervan' thing.

He didn't anticipate traffic heading into LA and took some time to get in.  Finally got in around the late afternoon to my place in Rampart Village.

He was keen to see the Griffith Observatory so we headed up to the Hills and started our climb to the top of the hill.  Along with about 1000 other cars who had the same idea.

The sunset was beautiful from the van window but the traffic was out of control as we sped along at 2 inches per hour.  When we got to the top there was no way we could even park so we just turned around and went back down the hill.

Next stop ... Inn-N-Out burger, because: Animal Style.

There were a couple of girls behind us in the line who had such extremely OTT San Fernando Valley accents (who probably adored the Kardashians) that they couldn't have been like, more totally annoying.   We sat down to eat with what sounded like an Aussie Mum and her daughter.  The daughter was eating nothing because she was coeliac (the only type of person who gains any benefit from eating a gluten-free diet).  That seemed weird to me.  The Mum is wolfing down a double double burger and the daughter is just sitting there patiently, watching.

Odd.

Later that night I took MM to a gay bar out of purely selfish reasons.  Poor fella, I'm not sure how he coped with it internally but he seemed OK on the outside.  Naturally I didn't leave more than 30cm space between us while we were there because I was scared that a bunch of vultures might descend on him and tear him into itty bitty pieces.

We got out OK and unharmed.

MM is a budding photographer so we headed off to DTLA to take some cool pictures of the city at night.  My phone camera lens didn't quite have the same resolution but I had a go at taking what Aussies like to call the 'bogan picture'.  I just ran out of patience and this was the closest I got:

After taking too many photos, MM had one last request: he wanted to drive up to the Hollywood Sign.

Again, it fit into the 'it seemed like a good idea at the time category'.  We soon discovered that directions to the Hollywood sign were suspiciously removed from Google Maps.  So I searched for the address, put that into Maps and we headed for the hills.

After driving around for what seemed like ages around the impossibly winding roads along the canyons, we found the spot.  It had a large gate across the access, and some angry looking security guard (don't they all look angry?) came at us, so we just turned around and gave up.

We did find this very cool sign though which summed up the end of the night perfectly: