Of plastic, freaks and tacos

LA is our nomination for ‘most overrated city in the world’ – huge, dirty, car dominated and as plastic as its most celebrated inhabitants, the movie, tv and music stars and all their wannabe hangers-on.

Melrose Ave

We had a couple of days at Santa Monica and Venice Beach followed by a couple in West Hollywood at The Standard www.standardhotel.com, pretty good value and they’re ‘so hot right now’ you can even get a tatt at their hair salon / drug store.
Highlights were: the buskers including one who just played a tape and stood there swaying and the Jewish Orthodox rap crew; the Getty Museum; shopping Melrose Ave; newspapers, taxis and billboards covered with advertising for every type of plastic surgery imaginable; pharmacies with DIY botox and collagen injections.

We had dinner and cocktails on Sunset Boulevard and saw “Goodnight and Goodluck” in Santa Monica (which got ovations from the lefty audience).

Taxi: $20; shirt: $15; finding Chuck Norris' star: priceless. If only we’d had a concrete saw, oh well, make do with http://www.chucknorris.com/

One of the most entertaining moments was chatting to our airport shuttle drivers who were either Chef’s parents from South Park or the Klumps. We weren't sorry to be leaving; LA had seemed like a good idea at the time.

We hopped up north to San Francisco to test Dan’s generosity (of course he passed with flying colours) and deposited ourselves in his place in leafy Fremont. It’s more like the mid west there than SFO but he seems pretty comfy, throws himself into his work and everything is convenient and clean and of course SFO is not far away on the BART.

Chinatown

Dan’s technique for dealing with the blandness of Fremont is to spice up the evenings with as much blood as possible by watching gorillas pound each other to death on TV in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, while he offsets his work stresses during the day by hitting on impressionable young office staff.

Our approach to Fremont was to sleep in and watch trash television like Judge Extreme Akim decide who gets the baseball bat of justice to bash their opponent while Kato Kalin (OJ Simpson’s houseguest) adds sideline comments. Oh and we discovered that we have Restless Leg Syndrome and there’s a medication we need to take to treat it.

Extreme hands down judgement

Dan took us on excursions to the Napa Valley, bars and nightclubs, Haight / Ashbury (original 60s hippy area a la Newtown), North Beach (Italian area), golf at Berkeley and drinks at Berkeley Marina with Ines and Luis (Spaniards working with Dan); and to the Castro and Mission areas (a la Darlinghurst) for Halloween.

Dan, C and Anya waiting for a taxi at about 4am

Dan captures C looking happy and me with a stupid expression while going for a hike near his place

For Halloween, all the streets were full of costumed freaks. C borrowed the spider hat below from a friend whereas I’ve been growing my hair for a while now. Here we are in a Mission taqueria (taco shop).

All that and some preparations for our road trip kept us busy for about a week.

We then picked up the car from San Jose, bargained our way into a Chevy Trailblazer SUV, thanked Dan and tried to convince him to visit us here in Spain and headed off for a town called Mariposa (butterfly in Spanish) next to Yosemite. The pic below is when we set off, little did she know the starvation and trials that lay ahead on our three week journey to the other side of the country!

The US in A

Next stop NY and a visit with Julio who has been studying medicine there and is now working with a hospital in New Jersey. The trip there was one of ups and downs preceded by the usual 5am start from Santiago after a couple of hours sleep.

Immigration refusing to let us leave Spain due to C’s new passport not being machine readable (nice to see the Spanish consulate in Sydney is still using obsolete passports) was a serious setback. After some terse words in the airport and reviewing various worst case scenarios C found herself with a new passport (to complement the old one) 15 minutes later at a cost of about $20. Amazing how easily things can be done when they really need to be; all that bureaucracy is just a job creation scheme.

The kitchen and our two chairs in Yonkers

The upper was getting bumped to business class for the flight with Iberia, Spanish service isn’t quite BA or Singapore but a whole letter better than economy. We arrived in NY about 8pm and had no entry problems (despite not quite meeting some of the tourist visa requirements) and after a two hour odyssey around Queens and the Bronx in the airport shuttle bus arrived at what we suspected was Julio’s place in Yonkers about a half hour north of Manhattan. Luckily it was his place and we set up camp in his large but Spartan (i.e. bed and two chairs, no tv or radio) pad for the next two weeks.

Our travelling companion Jeero in Yonkers

We're looking forward to staying in a plush Manhattan pad next time as Julio has since landed a job but Yonkers was an authentic and 'character-building' retreat.

A rainy day in Times Square

Julio unfortunately couldn’t make it as he was delayed in Spain waiting for his work visa but we did share the place with a foul smell that we put down to broken plumbing but later found out was a skunk that had set up under the floorboards to escape the torrential rain that plagued our first week there. A taxi (walking at night dangerous) and train ride away from the city, Yonkers is a working class suburban but with lots of characters from the friendly Honduran taxi drivers; to the locals who gave us directions and paid our fares; to the courteous homies from the hood with whom we shared rides; to the many menacing looking guys hanging on the corners and the various Mafiosi that were arrested while we were there (including a guy who was also an actor on the Sopranos and shot a cop dead). Lots of local colour.

Near Wall St and Ground Zero

New York is my favourite city in the world for its energy, diversity, size, style and history. Two weeks there gave us the chance to:

Get cultural and see all the major museums and spots such as Times Square, Park Avenue and Central Park.

South side of Houston St (i.e. SoHo)

You & I getting about in cabs

We wandered and shopped ‘til we got tired and grumpy in Soho, Brooklyn, East Village, Meatpacking and the Upper West Side. Then ate some great food at places from Zabars www.zabars.com, to little Mexican joints, to flash Chelsea and Soho restaurants.

East village street art

C takes a break on the way to Brooklyn and the world's best cheesecake at Junior's on Flatbush Ave

Go on a cruise and do the Empire State which C underestimated until she got up there and was blown away by the view.

Cruising past Brooklyn

Wifey enjoying the Empire State commentary, beats listening to me

Stay a night in a uber trendy hotel www.hotelonrivington.com with great views over the city, awesome food and a great location.

Looking from East Village hotel towards Downtown

East Village 'La Caverna'. They were filming next door, 'Law and Order' perhaps?

NY being NY and us being us, we couldn't leave without name dropping so we: bumped into Woody Allen on Park Ave; hung out with Missy Elliot at Adidas in Soho; got stopped by Charlize Theron and her minders outside Warner Bros; and saw Drew Barrymore on Brooklyn Bridge; and Fran Drescher (the Nanny) at the movies, but not sure that last one is really worth mentioning.

Back out to JFK and onto an American flight to LA.