first on the agenda was the hollywood bowl. no, i hadn’t managed to avoid the bowl completely for two whole years, but i’d only ever seen in in the middle of the day and empty which is really no way to see it at all. so, we (kristen, my friend blair, and myself) packed up a picnic (of baguette and crackers, three varieties of goat cheese, salami, grapes, strawberries, and berry lemonade — this all cost $20 by the way, thankyoutraderjoe), bought the cheapest seats we could, and went to see:
the only real downside of going to the hollywood bowl is the notorious parking problem. and ‘problem’ is just much too light of a word. there is not enough. not nearly enough. and even if you do manage to park at one for the bowl lots you will be stack parked. and not in the normal way (2-4 cars stacked and the parking attendant keeps your keys to he can rearrange cars as need be to let people out), no, no. they have an open lot and they just fill them 100% full. no aisles, no rows, no nothing, just cars packed in like sardines. so if you are the first in, you are the last out. period. it is crazytown.
we weren’t havin’ that.
i was informed, by an la public transportation pro, the best way to go about getting to the bowl was to take the subway from downtown to the hollywood & highland stop and then catch the shuttle (which would be free if we show our subway ticket) up the the bowl. this all sounded well and fine except that i am not what one would call and ‘la public transportation pro’ myself. in fact, the full extent of my experience is one bus trip from culver city to venice beach. so, i recruited blair, (very much so of the LAPTpro variety – when one lives in la without a car it just happens) to come with us and lead the way.
game on.
we had our food, we had our blankets, we had our tickets, we had our guide.
we had a great time!
(that’s kristen in the gray shirt, and blair with the cracker in her mouth)
pick your flavor:
after the show it was back to the streets. we decided to walk back to hollywood & highland instead of taking the shuttle and we were able to enjoy the sights of hollywood after dark. such as men riding on bicycles covered in about 1000 blinking lights and women wearing one shoe crying on the side of the road. awesome.
but once we made it to the hustle and bustle of hollywood & highland (read: glorified shopping center) i thought the last test ahead of us was the walk through downtown at night to my car. but then this happened:
oh wait, maybe i jumped too far ahead.
first this happened:
we made it to the subway station and headed down to the platform. then two nice young men had a friendly disagreement. or rather, a very loud and not so friendly disagreement about who knows what and with all of their hoodlum friends watching they made sure to put on quite a show.
that was our queue to walk down to the other end of the platform, away from all the excitement along with most of the other, innocent bystanders (except for the guy who just stood there with his iphone photographing people he didn’t know fight). but then, maybe because they didn’t like that they were loosing their audience, they followed suit and encroached on our area, again. so, we moved, again, back to where we’d been originally, but this time we got smart. we strategically placed ourselves behind a big metal box (you know, the kind that hold lit up advertisements). because we are some smart girls. once we tucked ourselves into our safe cocoon on invincibility we proceeded to forget all about the ruckus going on (or as much as you could forget about it while they kept screaming and preening and cursing) until i saw it coming.
i had my back agaist the metal box (yea the one that was supposed to protect us) and kristen was facing me and i see, coming straight at us, at a very, very high speed, the two man-boys with the issues. and although i watched them come, from far to near, they were coming so fast that i couldn’t articulate what was about to happen and next thing i know kristen is plowed over into me/the “safe” metal box and then onto the ground.
luckily the ground was sparkling clean and nicely padded…
oh… wait.. it was a filthy subway floor and tile, and as hard as tile has a tendency to be. 🙁 everything kristen had in her hands flew (purse one way, cooler another way, even her shoes came off – i’m telling you she was bowled over)!
blair meanwhile, being the subway specialist, sees the cooler fly out of kristen’s hands and open up and immediately zones in on our glass bottle of french berry lemonade and lunges for it before it can be picked up, smacked against a hard surface, and used as a weapon against us all (a la beer-bottle-at-a-saloon-brawl-style).
my plan of action was to sit there with my mouth open and say ohmygoshohmygosh and ask my friend lying on the ground if she was okay.
luckily blair didn’t need to step in and restore order because four cops appeared (literally just seconds too late from preventing the whole thing), tased one of the guys in the eye (this inference is based off of his screams of, “YOU SHOT ME IN THE EYE!”) and cuffed him facedown on the ground. the other guy ran off into the night. or maybe they caught him. i dunno.
and also (how could i forget to mention?) during this entire ordeal a a homeless mand (errr… a ‘gentleman on transient status’) was playing michael jackson’s ‘beat it’ on a keyboard. yeah. i know, right?
so now i return to this photo – which i took with the camera on my hip (so don’t judge me) as we stepped onto the train to take us away from the mayhem.
(same photo as above, but zoomed in on the perp)
so what happened to kristen?
well, she survived. whew! i would have been in BIGGG trouble had she not.
but she smacked her head on the ground (or the metal box – still not sure which) in the fall, and had a souvenir headache for the rest of the night. and then the next morning she woke to find bruises all over her legs. : |
sorry kris!!
so what did we do the next night?
play it safe and stay at home? no.
we went to a movie.
a nice, low key romantic comedy showing in santa monica? no.
we ventured back into hollywood to watch a movie outdoors…
in a cemetery… projected on a mausoleum.
…to be continued…
footnote: i do not at ALL think our subway trip was any good indication of the la subway. it was crazy. everyone i’ve told about it, thought it was crazy. blair, who rides the subway everysingleday to work, thought it was crazy. george, who i work with, also rides the subway everysingleday and has been riding said subway for yearsandyearsandyearsandyears (is that one too many ‘years’? did i just imply that george is 100 years old? he isn’t.) had never, ever heard anything like that and thought it was super crazy. it was just crazy. got it? not normal. don’t be scared.
(this might or might not be directed directly at two mothers by the names of cristina and lynne. might or might not…)
