Tax Day, Titanic Day, Marathon bombing day. When you put it all together, it gives one
pause. However, it is also our first
full day in Los Angeles so no time for somber reflection.
It was a downtown kind of day today, checking out some of
the new and hip in Los Angeles. The Walt
Disney Concert Hall is not that new anymore, having been open since 2003 but it
sure does present a futuristic addition to the downtown skyline. There are some who think that once you’ve
seen one Frank Gehry building you’ve seen them all and they would be correct in
that assessment. But it seems that Los
Angeleños are pretty darn proud of this structure and I guess with good
reason. It is visually striking, and the
interior is refreshingly non-intimidating for housing a performance space that
is essentially dedicated to symphonic music.
While the exterior has that undulating-metal-Gehry thing going on, the
interior is quite warm with Douglas fir paneling and a vibrant carpet
reportedly inspired by Lillian Disney’s garden.
Lil got things going back in the 1980s with a $50M gift that she thought
would cover the entire project. $200+M
and 16 years later, there are quite a few more names on the donor wall! Our tour guide spent more time than we
thought strictly necessary showing us said donor walls, and we could not enter
the auditorium itself because of rehearsals.
This kind of bummed me out – they let you in at the Paris Opera for
chrissake! – but we did get to go into the charming garden and then up and up some
secret-ish stairs to the balcony snaking along the top of one of the folds. You might find yourself feeling a little dizzy,
as the walls are going every which way and you’re kind of high up and it is hot
and if you touch the wall you’ll know that.
We’re told that the original cladding on parts of the structure had a
high mirror finish which looked super cool but was in fact so reflective that
it melted wastebaskets in an adjacent condominium building. So the panels were sanded lightly, surely at
great expense to management. It’s still
pretty cool to sneak along the building high up, and we’re sorry we can’t come
to a performance while we’re here.
We have a bit of time before meeting up at Smorgasburg L.A.
so we pop across the street to the Museum of Contemporary Art. Our goal is to check out the public
restoration project on a Jackson Pollack but we’re sidetracked into an exhibit
of photographs from Brassaï, Diane Arbus, and Nan Goldin.
It’s kind of an introduction to the 20th c demimonde for
Izzy, but isn’t that the point of art, to open your eyes and imagination? Although one could argue that little is left
to the imagination in some of those photos.
We are also intrigued by the restoration of a Jackson Pollack – how do
they know where the paint goes? says Peter.
We always have a few goals on every trip, and this one is no
exception. First up: Lobsterdamus! Barbara’s husband Ramon runs his wildly
successful grilled lobster pop-up stand at Smorgasburg L.A., a vast food
festival in some old-turned-hip warehouse district. LD has the longest lines of any stand – natch
– but if you know the owner you get star treatment, whisked to the side, hugs
all around, and plates of food handed to you.
Giving away so much food to family, what kind of business model is that?
I ask Max. It’s the one we have, he
replies, sounding just like his mother.
Having worked our way through two grilled lapoos with nests (that’s a
noodle base), lobster fries and lobster nachos, we wander in the blessedly
welcome heat to identify dessert. Will it
be matcha ice cream in the bubble waffle cone?
Filipino pastries from the lonely-looking ladies or tobacco-chocolate
ice cream or macarons of many colors? We
opt to wait in line for spectacular buttes of shave ice, one covered in lilikoi
(that’s passionfruit to you Easterners) and strawberry, and one with coconut
and pineapple (you know who did not eat that one, that’s why I’m getting it
said Peter). Stuffed and now overcome by
heat we beg Bill not to drive around more but he is not impressed by our sluggishness
and insists on driving up to Griffith Observatory, site of many movie scenes
and place of spectacular views.
Apparently, the rest of L.A. has the same idea on a Sunday afternoon, and
the Observatory proved a Moreton Bay fig tree too far, as we turned
around who knows how far from the summit because of full parking lots and
snail-slow traffic.
Here’s the thing about L.A. (back to the rant). You have to drive everywhere, for
everything. No one appears to walk
anywhere, except in parks, to which they drive and then get out and walk
around. No one rides bikes, either. Maybe in local neighborhoods they do, and if
you weren’t living on the side of a really steep hill you might walk or bike a
little. Surely they bike around the
beach towns? But all the stuff you need
is just far enough away or up or down a really steep hill, that you have to get
in a car to get it. And woe to you who
wants to see a friend on the other side of town. Basically, you have to leave an hour or more
to get anywhere because it is a) far away and b) there are SO MANY CARS and c)
they are ALL TRYING TO GET SOMEWHERE.
Sometimes you get a vista of the freeway here and it is just five lanes
in either direction of CARS. They aren’t
stopped, there don’t seem to be an unusual number of accidents, and drivers
aren’t aggressive, but they just kind of drift along. If you are a person used to walking or biking
or even taking half-an-hour to drive to work, this is utterly maddening. Driving over to Jamaica Plain upon my return
never felt so easy-breezy.
I ask my friend Ann and her husband Michael about this at dinner
tonight. How do you do this? They both immediately roll their eyes and
pretty much say at the same time, it’s awful.
I guess everyone has his or her strategies for dealing with it. Michael says he just zones out to classical
music, and Ann treats it as work, scheduling calls with other hotshot
lawyers. But I’m struck by the immediacy
with which they both say how bad it is, as well as the fact that we drove 45 minutes
to meet them for dinner, and they drove almost the same – and yet we would both
say we were in L.A.!
It was super nice of Ann and fam to come out on a Sunday night, by
the way.
