Los Angeles: around town.

the beach

Abbey and I played frisbee for hours - it's tough on sand!

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the weird bar

Michael, Abbey, Abbey's friend, and I went out one night to the Saddle Ranch Chop House on Sunset. What an incredibly strange place. The layout had two large circles taking up space in the middle - the bar and the mechanical bull - that you had to walk all the way around if you wanted to get from one end to the other, and you could only sit down if you had reserved a table. There was a really wide range of customers from all kinds of social circles, and some were dressed to the nines while others looked like they had just stopped by on their way home from the grocery store.

The mechanical bull was the most fascinating/weeeeird aspect. When a guy got on, the operator pretty much just tried to get him off as quickly as possible - the more overconfident the guy seemed [especially the really muscular ones], the less mercy the operator showed him. When a girl got on, however, the operator of course took his sweet time, making sure to slowly move the bull to make the girl slowly undulate with it before pointing the bull's head down and shaking it to make the girl jiggle. And for some reason, each girl who got on the bull was showing more cleavage and had a shorter skirt on than the one before her. It was such a car accident - we were appalled and enthralled at the same time, wondering why on earth they would do that to themselves in this day and age - although I'm pretty sure I know the answer [alcohol and (shallow, male) attention].

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what's up dog?

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the canyon

Abbey and I walked around the canyon near her place. She made it sound like it was going to be a death march, but besides being a bit warm [the people who were running up and down were both impressive and stupid], it was actually quite pleasant, and at the top we had a view of the whole, beautiful, smog-covered city.

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the cat

I bonded with Gäb's roommate's cat. She was pretty much a tub of fur who spent all day long chilling and would just sit there and deal with it if you picked her up.

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boystown

I borrowed Steve's West Hollywood apartment for a weekend and loved it. Running in that neighborhood was the best, because I didn't have to worry about what a mess I looked like - none of those guys would be interested in me even if I were perfectly coiffed and smelled delightful - but I still had a lot of great eye candy. Perfect!

There was a furniture store a block or two away called Urban Wood. What a fitting name for that neighborhood!

The Museum of Contemporary Art was a couple blocks away in the other direction. I didn't get around to going inside, but the exterior was pretty striking:






My last night in LA, a bunch of us went out to Cherry Pop at Ultra Suede, a club in the neighborhood. At some point everyone had disappeared on me for a little bit, and a guy started talking to me. Within a few sentences, he assured me, "Don't worry, I'm not gay." And he didn't seem to know anyone else there. Straight guys, take note: going to gay bars/clubs alone just to pick up girls might be even creepier than going to any other bars/clubs alone just to pick up girls [because that means that you know girls feel more comfortable there and don't have their guards up as much] - and if, on top of that, you're 40 and hitting on girls in their mid-20s...well...

But what really got to me was that he made sure to mention, several times, things like, "I just have more money than I know what to do with." Really? Really?!? Maybe that works on some LA girls, maaaaaybe, but that's not a tactic that sets a Wisconsin girl's heart a-fluttering.

Better luck finding a gold-digger next time.