A couple of days ago, I returned to Maryland from my trip to Los Angeles. I enjoyed my trip. It wasn’t free of bullshit, but it enjoyable nonetheless. As an aside, this is probably my first time using “nonetheless.” And with that, lets start with the good!
I love eating, so it was very fortunate that I was able to eat a good variety of food that I enjoyed. Danishes from a French style bakery; samosas from some Indian place; a great quesadilla that I bought and ate on Manhattan beach; empanadas that I bought and enjoyed on Venice beach; empanadas that I bought and scarfed down at some mall called the Grove; ramen noodles from Little Tokyo… These are all good food memories. The Whataburger that was delivered wasn’t that great, but I didn’t pick that out. What I will take credit for was the Daisy Dukes breakfast that I ate in Louisiana (we also ate Don’s Seafood.) I love breakfast food!
I stayed in a hotel in downtown LA. The area seemed similar to DC and Baltimore in some respects, but what I haven’t found on the east coast that LA has is a Little Tokyo. There are a bunch of cool shops and some restaurants to eat at. I like it. My favorite is probably the bookstore with a lot of Japanese language manga in stock.
Little Tokyo from certain angles appears to be very plain and certainly is more quiet than what I like to refer to as the Mexican market district. There were a lot of stands on the sidewalk, some indoor shopping areas with a lot of individual shops inside, and a lot of seemingly good deals on goods. This was a fun area to walk through on the way to Japland.
What was less fun, but certainly interesting was the trekking through Skid Row my group did, as we got mixed up on our way back to the hotel. I do not like tents and I do not like strung-out weirdos. It was okay.
I went to a couple of beach spots… I went to the Laugh Factory with Craig Robinson as a surprise (music playing) performer… I got driven through Compton… Did some other stuff… I don’t know what to say, it was cool, and I liked being away from my normal routine.
What I did not like was the indoor mask mandate, which went into effect shortly after the trip was booked. My group did not take a direct flight to LA, so when we got stranded (fuck Spirit Airlines) in New Orleans/Kenner, I saw that Louisiana would soon be wearing masks indoor as well. Of course, within a couple of days being back home, our local indoor mask mandates have returned. I wish more people had the balls to resist stupidity…
Speaking of stupidity, I did not like having to show a door guard my room key just to be let into the hotel. Only one of them asked to see, but it was bullshit. And of course the door guard would offer us a mask before we entered the hotel, and naturally I would stop using it as soon as I was inside. I didn’t pay all this money to wear a muzzle over my face, which is why I spent a lot of time at the airport unmasked.
It disturbs me that people all over the country, all over the world can be stupid in the same way. There are areas (that I don’t live in/visit) that are sane and either don’t have, or disregard, mask mandates, but it isn’t enough…
Anyway, I took a trip to Los Angeles for the first time, and I’m glad I did. Returning to your old bullshit is hard after escaping it for a while, so endeavor to live a life free of bullshit. Easier said than done, but whatevs.