Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Part One: Los Angeles to Vegas
My first two weeks or so of international travel have been a real eye-opener. The convention has always been that setting out abroad is a way to open one's self to other cultures. For me, in a way, that's true. Never before has there been so many people to hate.
First stop: Los Angeles, California. That's in the United States of Whatever. LAX is by far the most horrible place I've ever been in my life. And I HAVE been to Lithgow. Dirty, overcrowded, enormous, totally utilitarian save for the proliferation of a symbol that was to become a recurring feature of our travels throughh the US -- the Star Spangled Banner. LAX is a harsh place, an excellent primer for the rigours of a city that in many parts seems like it's either not quite yet First World, or was, maybe 50 years ago, and has been on the slide ever since.
After a 14-hour flight from Sydney, via Fiji (where no less than NINE quality, Bic lighters were snatched away, by presumably chain-smoking nico-fiend customs officials), all we wanted was a tall G and T and a comfortable bed.
For reasons I'm still yet to fathom, this vague notion led us to Santa Monica. Maybe it was the song (Sheryl Crowe has much to answer for), or the lure of the Sunset Strip, but that's where we ended up on our first night in LA. Really, it was pretty dull, not much to report. Think Bondi, but with more Mexicans.
We stayed in an overpriced room that smelled like Laksa paste and wandered around, for a time at least, delighting in the familiar. Sunset and Hollywood Boulevardes, the Hotel California, homewares stores that stock exactly the same shit as Sydney stores -- but a season or two behind. The ciggies were cheap -- gotta love that -- and we noticed a phenomenon that would only increase the further along we made our way south, the abscence of jiggers on spirit bottles in bars. No tightarse 25ml shit in the Wild West. Its freepour all the way.
One point of interest in Santa Monica came to me when I went for a wander at four in the morning, having my body clock all out of whack. The only people around at that time of night were Mexican and Black guys getting up really early to go to work (Whitey sleeps in), and the homeless. Back in Straya, there are really only three reasons someone ends up on the streets -- madness, addiction, or choice. But here in the Whatevers, the only difference between guys driving trucks, painting houses, or kicking shit in an office and the guys pushing their meagre possessions round in a Wal-mart trolley is three months' wages. I stopped to ask a young bloke, about 23, where I could get a drink at this time of the morning. He told me everything would be closed but his friend, a bearded, dreadlocked, pockmarked old grumble-bum a few metres might have a shot for me. "Hey, you got a shot for my man from Australia here?" Dan asked the old dude. "Nah, sorry man, I don't drink" replied the old codger in a voice that could be doing voice-overs in a 7-Up commercial.
From the delicate drabness of SM, we took a bus right through town to Hollywood. Specifically, West Hollwood which is a fair bit cheaper than Beverley Hills. And I gotta say, we had a pretty fucken awesome night. The kind of night you go to the US for, the kind of night you could only have in LA. We had a few drinks just down the way from our hotel (Hollywood Downtowner) at a small bar where the drinks were cheap, but it was expected you tip $1 for every one you have. And, like Australia, it was NON-SMOKING (the two ugliest words of the English language), but that gave us a chance to reel in our surrounds, standing on the stars of Hollywood heroes whose names we did not recognise (Hey, it's the shitty end of town, remember) and laugh at the six-wheeler SUVs throating past.
We holed up at that bar for a few hours and met two people. One was a fairly cool, wordly guy who'd returned home after working for the US military's 'fun with codes' department over in London and Dublin, and another guy who was smitten with my companion and told her he'd just got back from stalking a similar-looking girl who was the lead singer of a punk band in Germany. Greeeeaaaat. He had a shrine and everything. We left the latter to his sadness and cigarellos and hit Hollywood Boulevard. We checked out some (appropriately free) political college comedy, some live music at a hippie cafe's open mic night, and then, well, we just wandered around. And around. Went to a couple of cool night clubs and soon realised that cover charges are completely negotiable and the evening culimated in what, for me, had been the realisation of a life-long dream. While standing on a corner, near Sunset and Vine, a gangsta-type, dressed in full Sean John regalia, asked me if I was straight. "Erm, am I straight?" I repeated. "I guess I am, but I really don't want to be." "OK, man, what you want? I got it all. Speed, weed, ex, rocks, yo man, what you want." Two mintues later I was in the proud possession of two big, fat rocks of coke. For only $40! Thing was, it was around 2 am, so the next hour was spent looking around for somewhere I could buy something to smoke it through. A dude hanging out at the all-night tobacconist was most hepful in telling me what I needed. One glass tube and a curly-girl later, we were on our way back to the hotel. Needless to say, the result was another sleepless night in LA. An interesting point worth making here is that cocaine is everywhere in the US. You may have heard the statistic that 90 per cent of US banknotes contain traces of cocaine. When I was grinding up the last of it to snort, I looked closely at the bedside table and noticed that the cracks between the bits of wood were filled with the shit. So I started looking at all of the surfaces in the room and I reckon, if you were desperate enopugh, you could have collected the cracks' contents and sold it in Australia for $200. Maybe that's why it's called crack. Ha!
Although we had a great time in West Hollywood, it seemed to us we'd had the best of what LA had to offer. It was time to hit Las Vegas. In a momentary lapse of reason, we rented a compact from a Rent-A-Wreck in Pasadena. The driver came and picked us up from our place the next morning and so the adventures of driving in the US began.
The right-side, left-hand-drive thing took a little getting used to, but nowhere near as difficult as I'd expected. From Pasadena, we drove what we thought was around 18 miles on the way to Vegas. As it turned out, it was actually 18 miles in the OTHER direction, which landed us in Sherman Oaks, the valley. And, dude, it was, like, sooooo valley. Squaresville, but nice enough. Had a pretty good Italian meal and stayed at a Day's Inn, where the guy on the desk made me so fucking angry I nearly chucked a Rusty (Crowe) and beat his ass down. The I-15 had taken its toll on my famous temper but I managed to control myself. For a while.
By this point, just three days in the US, our bowels had impacted thanks to a diet that was almost exclusively cheese. I couldn't beleive it but after the Santa Monica crepes, a Hollywood breakfast that gives me conniptions as I think about it even now, a couple of Burger King vege burgers (much better than OZ), the Italian salad in Sherman Oaks (lettuce and cheese), and a multitude of variations on that rennetous theme, I could my life-long love affair with mozzeralla coming to a sickening end.
Next day, we hit the I-15 (again, but in the other direction this time) and got a real taste of freeway driving. And I gotta say, I was pretty fucking impressed. The speed limit was 70 the whole way, but no-ne was doing less than 90. That's 130 km/hour, and most of the traffic was pulling a hundred, easy. Including me. I'd have gone even faster if my insistence on driving on the left hadn't slowed me down. Several hundred miles and a couple pounds of cheese later, we hit Vegas at around 4 in the afternoon. Of course, this isn't the real Vegas. Vegas only happens after dark when the lights come on.
We stayed at Excalibur Casino, mainly because it was the first exit off Frank Sinatra and I'd had enough driving by then. The level of tack was pretty much what you'd expect in a Knights of the Round Table-themed Vegas casino with 1000 rooms. It was nasty. But we lashed out and got a room with a jacuzzi, had an early night, then got in the morning so I could lose $150 on Blackjack. Outside the casino, during the night, Vegas was everything you've ever thought it to be, multiplied by a hundred. It's all that's ugly and beautiful about US culture crammed into a dry hole in the middle of the Nevada desert. Hookers, schoolies, cops hanging out at doughnut shops. And the soup of the day at the Excalibur's breakfast bar? CHEESE.
First stop: Los Angeles, California. That's in the United States of Whatever. LAX is by far the most horrible place I've ever been in my life. And I HAVE been to Lithgow. Dirty, overcrowded, enormous, totally utilitarian save for the proliferation of a symbol that was to become a recurring feature of our travels throughh the US -- the Star Spangled Banner. LAX is a harsh place, an excellent primer for the rigours of a city that in many parts seems like it's either not quite yet First World, or was, maybe 50 years ago, and has been on the slide ever since.
After a 14-hour flight from Sydney, via Fiji (where no less than NINE quality, Bic lighters were snatched away, by presumably chain-smoking nico-fiend customs officials), all we wanted was a tall G and T and a comfortable bed.
For reasons I'm still yet to fathom, this vague notion led us to Santa Monica. Maybe it was the song (Sheryl Crowe has much to answer for), or the lure of the Sunset Strip, but that's where we ended up on our first night in LA. Really, it was pretty dull, not much to report. Think Bondi, but with more Mexicans.
We stayed in an overpriced room that smelled like Laksa paste and wandered around, for a time at least, delighting in the familiar. Sunset and Hollywood Boulevardes, the Hotel California, homewares stores that stock exactly the same shit as Sydney stores -- but a season or two behind. The ciggies were cheap -- gotta love that -- and we noticed a phenomenon that would only increase the further along we made our way south, the abscence of jiggers on spirit bottles in bars. No tightarse 25ml shit in the Wild West. Its freepour all the way.
One point of interest in Santa Monica came to me when I went for a wander at four in the morning, having my body clock all out of whack. The only people around at that time of night were Mexican and Black guys getting up really early to go to work (Whitey sleeps in), and the homeless. Back in Straya, there are really only three reasons someone ends up on the streets -- madness, addiction, or choice. But here in the Whatevers, the only difference between guys driving trucks, painting houses, or kicking shit in an office and the guys pushing their meagre possessions round in a Wal-mart trolley is three months' wages. I stopped to ask a young bloke, about 23, where I could get a drink at this time of the morning. He told me everything would be closed but his friend, a bearded, dreadlocked, pockmarked old grumble-bum a few metres might have a shot for me. "Hey, you got a shot for my man from Australia here?" Dan asked the old dude. "Nah, sorry man, I don't drink" replied the old codger in a voice that could be doing voice-overs in a 7-Up commercial.
From the delicate drabness of SM, we took a bus right through town to Hollywood. Specifically, West Hollwood which is a fair bit cheaper than Beverley Hills. And I gotta say, we had a pretty fucken awesome night. The kind of night you go to the US for, the kind of night you could only have in LA. We had a few drinks just down the way from our hotel (Hollywood Downtowner) at a small bar where the drinks were cheap, but it was expected you tip $1 for every one you have. And, like Australia, it was NON-SMOKING (the two ugliest words of the English language), but that gave us a chance to reel in our surrounds, standing on the stars of Hollywood heroes whose names we did not recognise (Hey, it's the shitty end of town, remember) and laugh at the six-wheeler SUVs throating past.
We holed up at that bar for a few hours and met two people. One was a fairly cool, wordly guy who'd returned home after working for the US military's 'fun with codes' department over in London and Dublin, and another guy who was smitten with my companion and told her he'd just got back from stalking a similar-looking girl who was the lead singer of a punk band in Germany. Greeeeaaaat. He had a shrine and everything. We left the latter to his sadness and cigarellos and hit Hollywood Boulevard. We checked out some (appropriately free) political college comedy, some live music at a hippie cafe's open mic night, and then, well, we just wandered around. And around. Went to a couple of cool night clubs and soon realised that cover charges are completely negotiable and the evening culimated in what, for me, had been the realisation of a life-long dream. While standing on a corner, near Sunset and Vine, a gangsta-type, dressed in full Sean John regalia, asked me if I was straight. "Erm, am I straight?" I repeated. "I guess I am, but I really don't want to be." "OK, man, what you want? I got it all. Speed, weed, ex, rocks, yo man, what you want." Two mintues later I was in the proud possession of two big, fat rocks of coke. For only $40! Thing was, it was around 2 am, so the next hour was spent looking around for somewhere I could buy something to smoke it through. A dude hanging out at the all-night tobacconist was most hepful in telling me what I needed. One glass tube and a curly-girl later, we were on our way back to the hotel. Needless to say, the result was another sleepless night in LA. An interesting point worth making here is that cocaine is everywhere in the US. You may have heard the statistic that 90 per cent of US banknotes contain traces of cocaine. When I was grinding up the last of it to snort, I looked closely at the bedside table and noticed that the cracks between the bits of wood were filled with the shit. So I started looking at all of the surfaces in the room and I reckon, if you were desperate enopugh, you could have collected the cracks' contents and sold it in Australia for $200. Maybe that's why it's called crack. Ha!
Although we had a great time in West Hollywood, it seemed to us we'd had the best of what LA had to offer. It was time to hit Las Vegas. In a momentary lapse of reason, we rented a compact from a Rent-A-Wreck in Pasadena. The driver came and picked us up from our place the next morning and so the adventures of driving in the US began.
The right-side, left-hand-drive thing took a little getting used to, but nowhere near as difficult as I'd expected. From Pasadena, we drove what we thought was around 18 miles on the way to Vegas. As it turned out, it was actually 18 miles in the OTHER direction, which landed us in Sherman Oaks, the valley. And, dude, it was, like, sooooo valley. Squaresville, but nice enough. Had a pretty good Italian meal and stayed at a Day's Inn, where the guy on the desk made me so fucking angry I nearly chucked a Rusty (Crowe) and beat his ass down. The I-15 had taken its toll on my famous temper but I managed to control myself. For a while.
By this point, just three days in the US, our bowels had impacted thanks to a diet that was almost exclusively cheese. I couldn't beleive it but after the Santa Monica crepes, a Hollywood breakfast that gives me conniptions as I think about it even now, a couple of Burger King vege burgers (much better than OZ), the Italian salad in Sherman Oaks (lettuce and cheese), and a multitude of variations on that rennetous theme, I could my life-long love affair with mozzeralla coming to a sickening end.
Next day, we hit the I-15 (again, but in the other direction this time) and got a real taste of freeway driving. And I gotta say, I was pretty fucking impressed. The speed limit was 70 the whole way, but no-ne was doing less than 90. That's 130 km/hour, and most of the traffic was pulling a hundred, easy. Including me. I'd have gone even faster if my insistence on driving on the left hadn't slowed me down. Several hundred miles and a couple pounds of cheese later, we hit Vegas at around 4 in the afternoon. Of course, this isn't the real Vegas. Vegas only happens after dark when the lights come on.
We stayed at Excalibur Casino, mainly because it was the first exit off Frank Sinatra and I'd had enough driving by then. The level of tack was pretty much what you'd expect in a Knights of the Round Table-themed Vegas casino with 1000 rooms. It was nasty. But we lashed out and got a room with a jacuzzi, had an early night, then got in the morning so I could lose $150 on Blackjack. Outside the casino, during the night, Vegas was everything you've ever thought it to be, multiplied by a hundred. It's all that's ugly and beautiful about US culture crammed into a dry hole in the middle of the Nevada desert. Hookers, schoolies, cops hanging out at doughnut shops. And the soup of the day at the Excalibur's breakfast bar? CHEESE.
