LA Trip: Day 3 & 4

By day three, I was burnt. Literally and figuratively.

I'd spent the last two days in a row walking along the beach under the sun drinking nothing but alcohol. And that's a generally bad idea.

My skin was peeling and my head was pounding, and I feel like I'm at an age now where I tend to listen to and abide by what my body tells me. So I stayed in bed straight through the day till the sun had gone down.

Found a small phở shop near Manhattan Beach for dinner. Turned out, however, that there wasn't a single Vietnamese person in the place -- it was owned and run by Japanese.

The food was terrible and expensive as fuck all.

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I got a hold of Audrey late at night, and I met up with her downtown for some aimless walking around. Audrey is a chick I'd met some time ago through mutual friends. We circled Little Tokyo and landed at a mom and pop Ramen shop for a late night meal at around 2am.

There was a sign-up sheet on a clipboard at the door to sign your name and wait for it to be called for seating. When Audrey and I arrived, we were the only names on the list and caught the last available seats.

After we'd been seated, I noticed a large group of maybe six to eight people sign their name on the list and then loitered outside the door on the streets. Another large group of similar size appeared after them, signed the sheet, and also dawdled about on the sidewalk.

That was one of the most peculiar things I'd ever seen. That shit would never fly back in Texas. It's hot as fuck down South, and people are grumpy and impatient; I'd have never waited in line like that for food.

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Because I'd gotten a hold of Audrey so late in the night and on the tail end of my trip, we agreed to hang out again the next morning before my flight home. She took me for a trip to Chinatown, which she refers to as "old" Chinatown because apparently there are newer, "unofficial" Chinatowns, kinda like the one I went to in San Gabriel Valley on my first night.

We checked out bootleg "Adiaas" and "Pumu" shops and haggled prices with street vendors over imposter beanie babies.

There was a sign set up in the manner of the famous Hollywood sign that read, "Chinatownland." I'm not sure why "land" was suffixed at the end of it.

I was looking for a street vendor that was willing to chop a live chicken's head off for me a la Chris Tucker's character from Rush Hour 2, but no luck.

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I milked practically every minute of my trip, and was the absolute last person to board my flight, catching it just as they were closing the boarding door.

Had I been just a minute slower, I would not have been allowed to take that trip back to tedious work life and shit weather.