LA Trip: Day 2

Early the next morning, I rolled out to the Santa Monica strip, which was a recommendation of a drunk guy from one of the bars on Venice Beach. Santa Monica Beach is the beach you normally see in movies or on TV where there are big steroid addicts pumping iron along the beach front.

It's also home to a community of pothead bums.

The first sight I saw of Santa Monica Beach was a crowd of people gathered around a performer, a fast-talking Jamaican fellow with some pretty clever quips. He did a flip off of a chair and landed on a pile of broken glass, and then demanded everyone donate money into a black box. When the crowd dispersed, he angrily cursed at them for not being generous.

I thought it was peculiar for a beggar to get angry at people who wouldn't give him money, but I quickly discovered that this was actually the norm around here.

The next sight was a mime, who quickly demanded money as soon as he noticed me staring. Mimes don't fucking talk, asshole.

Around noon, a small camera crew set up around a graffitied wall and started a photoshoot with some bikini model. She was pretty damn hot, so I stood around and watched. Pretty soon a crowd of people gathered around, staring at her go through her poses. I always imagined models were sequestered on some artificial set or at least shielded from onlookers, but apparently not. By the time she was finished, there were a good dozen or more guys just standing around ogling her.

Welcome to the West Coast, Lucky, you ignorant little country boy.

The most astonishing thing I saw at Santa Monica was a gazebo along the beach, and sitting in this gazebo were two white kids in probably their early twenties and an old Asian lady in probably her fifties. And the three of them were passing around a blunt. At two in the afternoon on a weekday.

In fact, there were fully grown men and women riding their bikes along the beach, smoking marijuana, and just taking naps in the grass in the buttfuck middle of the day. California is an expensive ass place to live in; if everyone's high on the beach at two in the afternoon, who the fuck is working and paying the bills?

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I finished the afternoon at a homey little bar that feels like someone had just set up in an alleyway between two buildings and threw a roof over it. It was a bar in the classic sense, with a woodgrain counter and stools, and an old balding bartender with a full beard of white and lots of stories to tell.

I always wanted to find a bar like this back home -- a hole in the wall with bottles that aren't filled with piss liquor and a bartender that knows how to mix his drinks and tell his tales.

He carried the conversation while I muled over a Van Winkle Mint Julep, telling stories of his younger construction worker days, and of the kids that worked alongside him that lost their arms or legs or even heads to accidents.

As the five o'clock hour approached, the working class shuffled into the bar to wash away their tediums. An old school jazzy song played in the background, and the bartender mixed drinks and entertained his patrons.

I made idle chatter with the locals, trying my best but failing at pretending to not be a tourist. I talked mostly about the software industry in the area and in the Bay Area, where it has a stronger presence. I honestly don't know how serious I was about it, but I was curious if a kid like me could stack paper out West.

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Dinner was served through a door. Literally.

I ate a Mexican dish in an alleyway, right next to a door that led to a kitchen. It was a split door where the top half opened while the lower half stayed shut, and a Mexican dude took and served orders through it.

I don't remember what the plate was called, but it was beef and chicken cooked into a doughy tortilla looking thing. It was fucking delicious. And for two bucks a plate, I took two more orders for the road.

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At around midnight, I met up with Dylan, a good friend of mine from high school who had packed up his things several years ago and drove west out to Hollywood to pursue a career in the film industry -- which the locals refer to as The industry.

He showed me to a dive bar in West Hollywood that was supposed to be a popular place among the college aged kids. There were beer pong tables set up and various other drinking games. That particular night, however, was unfortunately barren and dead.

We killed maybe three pitchers of Dos Equis anyway before last call. We took a pit stop by a gas station on the way back to Dylan's apartment and grabbed three cases of beer. Apparently, they can sell beer a lot later in LA than they do back home.

Drank until the morning hours, talking about work, life, religion, and all the topics that you regret talking about as soon as you start. Crashed at Dylan's apartment.