Tuesday, June 16, 2009

When You've Got Worries All the Noise And The Hurry Seems to Help, I Know

That could win the prize for longest blog title so far. But how do you write a post about downtown without referencing Petula Clark? You don't. So I did.

First up, my apologies. The agency meeting yesterday (I think it went well, details soon if I'm right about that) has basically taken up all my free time as I made sure my scripts and pitches were as polished and impressive as could be. Plus, I've been super busy at my real job, so no time to throw up a quick post.

Anyway, two weekends ago, Melissa and I decided to hang out in downtown LA. I had served jury duty there and was surprised by how much I liked it. Join me on my tour, won't you?

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We started out at the Civic Center/Music Center. This is where the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Mark Taper Forum, and Ahmanson Theatre (where we now have season tickets!) are located.
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It was neat, but the real highlight was across the street- The Walt Disney Concert Hall.
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As weird and cool as it looks on the outside, it's even neater on the inside. And they offer a free, self-guided audio tour narrated by John Lithgow!
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You can see me being silly in that first one. That's what I do, I'm silly. One part of the tour leads you into the gardens upstairs. It's truly gorgeous, with some great views of the skyline.
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(Melissa can be silly, too). After that, we stopped for lunch at Pastagina, a fast food place that has a patented machine that cooks individual pasta servings in 3 minutes. I want one! Of course, the free gelato offer helped draw us in.

At about that point, I got a little tired of taking my camera out everywhere. We went to the central library (it's the building with the pyramid top in the shot above from the gardens), which had a cool old movie poster section on display. Then I insisted we stop by Angel's Flight:
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This funicular railroad was basically built so rich people wouldn't have to climb a hill to go shopping. When working (it's being refurbished), it claims to be the shortest operating railroad in the world. Pretty neat.

From there, we took a train to Union Station. I wish I'd had my camera out, because the central lobby/terminal really still looks like an old train station, the kind you only ever see in movies anymore. I felt like I was on Mad Men or something.

We walked back to the Civic Center area and went home for a bit before heading for the beach. My mom had asked for a picture of the ocean at sunset that she could have enlarged to hang above the fireplace, and this is a sampling of my shots:

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We were far enough away from the Santa Monica Pier that it wasn't too crowded and a pod of dolphins (at least six) were playing about 50 feet off the shore. There were also a couple of sailboats not far off that I enjoyed shooting with my telephoto, but those were with my film camera and I haven't scanned them in yet. It was beautiful and peaceful, two things you can rarely say about LA.

I think that most people stop exploring LA not long after they move here (at least, that's the case with most people I know), and it's really a shame. The fact that I can go from the bustling skyscrapers of downtown to the beaches of the Pacific in a matter of minutes astounds me. I hope to find more time to explore soon. Until then,

Cheers,

Eli

p.s.- sorry if the font and formatting look weird here. Not sure what happened.


1 comment:

  1. Love the pictures! We think we will be using the first one you posted - we enhanced it a bit to make it a little bluer, and I love the solitary girl!

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