Twelfth Day - L.A.

July 18, 2007:

In the morning Janet took us down to the beach for breakfast. It was a gorgeous day and the place where we stopped to eat was right on the beach itself. There was a dozen or more beach volleyball courts set up with a number of games going at 9 am on a Wednesday. Only in California I guess (or maybe Hawaii?).

After a nice sunny breakfast, we bid adieu and hopped in the car for a quick jaunt across town to spend the day with Nathan in West Hollywood. It was an approximately 20 mile trip, but as Google Maps will tell you, it's a 35 minute trip, or up to an hour and 40 minutes in traffic. We took I-405 to I-10 and managed to get there eventually. It could have been a lot worse, compared to a 20 mile commuting trip which many of us have experienced at one time or another, but after a couple of weeks on the road, mostly on highways, we were used to knocking out 20 miles in something under 20 minutes.

It's also amazing to see how big the interstates in southern California are. The new mixing bowl in Springfield, VA is 24 lanes across at the widest point, but you can only see maybe a third of those at one time. All these major interstates are 4, 5, or 6 lanes across for miles at a time--and most distressingly full for miles at a time.

Nathan's complex is in the Park La Brea area of L.A. One of the first things we learned was that somebody from Laguna Beach or the spinoff lived in the gourmet-looking complex across the street. I think they've even filmed some pool-side shots there--not that Nathan has a view from his apartment; we checked. His apartment is a regular two bedroom apartment with a big living room and a small kitchen, like most apartments built a long time ago.

We dropped our stuff off inside and then he took us on a drive around L.A. to see the sights that us regular schlubs only hear about or see on Entourage (no, we didn't make it by the Playboy Mansion). He drove us by a couple of the tv studios nearby (CBS and NBC??); we saw the Hollywood sign from the city (face north on N Gower St at Hollywood Blvd or Franklin Ave); we drove by the Whisky a Go Go and that place where River Phoenix overdosed (the Viper Room); we drove by the Chinese Theatre; we passed through some famous L.A. intersections of pop culture such as Hollywood and Vine; we drove down Rodeo Dr and saw the naked silver torso statue as well as two Ferrarris; I think we saw three Bentleys and two Rolls along the way as well; we also drove through some of the tony neighborhoods just to see some of the houses and palm trees.

Eventually we got hungry, and fortunately Nathan took us to one of the greatest restaurants I have ever experienced: Roscoe's House of Chicken N Waffles. I think there are several locations around L.A. It was a mid-size, basic restaurant, somewhere between an IHOP and Waffle House in design and amenities. There is a full menu, but you more or less order one of several combos of waffles and fried chicken. I think most of us have eaten enough good fried chicken in our lives to have a hard time saying any one batch was the best they'd ever had; that being said, this was as good fried chicken as I have ever had. The waffle, on the other hand, was definitively the best waffle I'd ever had. We all overate dramatically, but I left that placed convinced there was some sort of drug in the waffle or its butter or syrup. Can't recommend 'Scoes enough.

We went out later for the evening and stopped at a couple of Nathan's preferred places in L.A. We hit up Barney's Beanery, which was a cool dive to have a couple pitchers. We also headed over to another place which had more of a lounge vibe going on. We ran into a couple of Nathan's friends who were Syracuse TRF (television, radio, film) grads a year or two before my brother. It was pretty cool to go back and tell my brother that people from his program are working in L.A. Eventually we made it back to Nathan's place to crash before the long and awesome PCH drive to San Fran coming up in the morning.