LA Post The Second Delayed

Too lazy for words. Pictures. Here. Go.

Select photos of fun times at the conference:


Me getting a little too close to The City of Orange (I think it liked me). Who else would take the time to appreciate the many, many, many neato antique shops it had? Whoa - old doorknobs and books and windows and omigosh, is that a rusty lunchbox? Ooh. I think I'm a 75 year old trapped in a 21 year old's body.


The 4th of July - yay for celebrating American independence by going to the beach! En route: Me and cute friends with my cute hat! Aren't we cute?


Beachy fun. Some poor kid(s) are now without their bucket and shovels. We found them with no one around to claim them, we swear!

End Orange County scene. Fade into Los Angeles County. Day One.

After the conference, Claudia, Susana and I took a bus, a train, a bus and another bus and two point five hours later, we were in Venice Beach. The hostel was craptacular (I don't recommend this place unless you prefer to be misled about prices, prefer to have your beds taken AFTER you spend time making them up nicely with fluffy pillows only to get not so fluffy pillows the second time around, or if you prefer to be treated like shite when all you want to do is speak nicely to the manager about his no refund poilcy - The Venice Beach Hostel = suckage). The good thing was that this view was not even one minute away from our hostel:


Don't let the pretty palm trees in the night fool you though.


Welcome to Venice Beach! Get your pepper spray for only $5 and you're all set to see the sights! ...and the lunatics. And believe me, there were some. We three girls tried extra hard to walk manlier, to look tough, to look unattractive. We gripped our keys in our pockets in case we needed to suddenly gouge something, we held cigarettes to look tough and in case we suddenly needed to burn something, we didn't gawk at anything lest we label ourselves TOURIST aka VULNERABLE. We managed to get by without the pepper spray, but it was nice to know that it was there.


Three Girls and The World. The World Cafe and Lounge that is! Damn, this place was HOT. Like, cool-HOT. HAWT if you will. I tried my first ever mojito here - a massive mixture of fresh mint, lime, alcohol and who knows what else. It's Cuban, it's good, and a giant glass only cost me $5 - that's all I know. I like how everyone and everything around me looks drunk in this photo.


Throw a Ben and a Justin into the mix and you've got a recipe for a pretty good night. We met them because we took their seats - sorry boys. They were really nice and even invited us to a beach party the next day, but Susana and I had our own plans [read: we were too cool for them], so we politely declined. Ben is so awesome that he even e-mailed me afterwards. How's that for a little Southern hospitality? (He's from Texas.)

Day Two. Phew - almost done. Looks like I wasn't too lazy for words after all, eh?

Caludia goes home. Susana and I have brekkie on the beach. We buy home-made-home-bottled pomegranate juice for $2 which we later re-name Crap Juice or Ass In A Bottle. The beach is less scary during the day and is The Place To Be. We feel really cool. We rent bikes (they call them 'Beach Cruisers' over there) and ride all the way from Venice to the Santa Monica Pier. We decide to be kids for a bit and ride the rollercoaster, screaming like little girls the entire way. Here's a view of the beach while going up the scary rollercoaster hill:


And a view of the pier from the top before we plunge down down down (it really wasn't bad at all).

After such an exhausting morning, we needed some time to relax, so into the Pacific we went. We played with the ocean, danced and sang with it. We let the waves lift us and carry us and swish us around. I hugged it and it hugged back. I love you, Ocean. I love you too.

And then we sunbathed, as most girls would.

This is me and The Pink Wonder! I loved this bike. I miss you so.


I don't have any photographic evidence of what happend next, so you'll just have to take my word for it. We (reluctantly) rode away from the beach and went back to the hostel to pack up. We headed to Hollywood that night and managed to get there on public transit and The Big Guy's good humour. We were pumped for an Esthero concert, but LA can be deceiving. Not only were tickets more expensive than what we heard, the concert was also over by the time we got there. 10:30pm. In LA of all places! Weird.

So we were stuck with nothing to do when a guy bums a smoke off Susana and they get to talking. We end up in his Jeep and him and his buddy are driving us down Sunset Blvd to The Viper Room (apparently it's owned by Johnny Depp and River Phoenix died there). We get there, manage to sweet talk the bouncer into letting us in for cheap ("We're poor little Canadian girls....pleeeease?") and most promptly get ditched by these boys. How do we get back to our place? We have no idea. I'm not thinking about it much because I've met these two guys (James and Carlos) who teach me that an Adios Motherfucker is a bright blue drink that costs $12. They buy me a smaller one for about $6. This, was very sweet of them and very dumb of me. I wasn't there at the bar when it was poured, wasn't with him as he walked back towards me - I just took it and drank it. Stupid girl. Lucky stupid girl. I'm the poster child for What Not To Do, boys and girls.

I'm introduced to Spanish hard rock that night. Imagine Korn meets System of a Down meets Disturbed. But all in Spanish. Roca Firme is their name (get it - hard rock? tee hee) and they were actually really good. It turned out that J and C were friends with the band and they had one of their own, Scripture. Anyhoo, we hit it off and we all agree that we're hungry so off we go, into their car and they drive us to goodness knows where for some (really really good) Mexican food, El Taurino style, at some wee hour of the morning.

When they drop us off at the end of the night/morning, Susana and I say to each other: Wow, five hours later and we're back where we started. We've managed to miss a concert, meet random guys and GET INTO THEIR CAR, drive down Sunset, get into The Viper Room, hear Spanish hard rock, meet more random guys and GET INTO THEIR CAR, eat really good Mexican food, and now we're back. Alive and well and un-raped and safe and sound and unharmed and unscathed and I don't know about you, but I feel a helluva lot better than just 'well'! I slept about two or three hours that night and managed to take the subway to the airport the next morning. Am I a public transit junkie or what?


I (heart) T.O., but I sure do miss L.A.
7:59 pm