JoelNothman.com

So on Thursday I woke up in the sweltering heat of LA. And fell back to sleep again. I got up a while later and — well, I just spent the last minute trying to remember what I did for breakfast, and then realised it was a fast day, and so I had none — wandered down the street to find a public telephone to call a rabbi to find out whether he could find me somewhere for lunch. He said he’d get back to me on the phone I still don’t have yet, so I gave him Ilana’s number.

Soon enough Ilana came and picked me up to go to the Getty Museum (which she’d never been to before, but had been suggested by Alex). That is, if we could get there. LA is a huge city, with very poor public transport and a lot of cars at the road—especially at midday it seems, when we decided to head out.

The Getty is known for its galleries of art, as well as its gardens and architecture, and although we could only stay for a short while, all were beautiful and fascinating. The current featured exhibition showcased works by Brueghel and Rubens, both painters, and how they collaborated together in a number of paintings. It was interesting to see both how each painter’s style was evident in the final product, and how they would modify each other’s work during the composition (much of this has been made known through X-Ray, etc, techniques).

That afternoon, I went to check out Hollywood (Ilana had to go home). It turns out there’s not much there. Okay, so there are a bunch of stars on the footpath (sidewalk?) but otherwise it’s just a big commercial centre. I managed to find there a good deal for a pre-paid mobile (cellular) phone, although I had no idea it was a good deal until the next day, so I didn’t get it. I also visited the wax museum there, and although it was fun and has some neat models of Hollywood /tars, it certainly wasn’t worth the exorbitant price. Then again, most things here seem quite expensive.

I tried getting back to Ilana’s house in Beverly Hills where we were going to break the fast, by walking down to Highland and Sunset and getting a #2 bus (public transport a rare thing) back towards her place. I boarded, paid, sat down, and soon enough it was the last stop and I was being herded off the bus. Excusing myself as a tourist, I suggested that I’d missed my stop- but no, I’d just got on a bus that doesn’t go all the way. The bus driver suggested I should ask in the future and was nice enough to give me an all-day pass so I could go find another #2 on Sunset. This one I knew would take me far enough, but even then I missed requesting my stop by a few metres…

After breaking the fast, we went down to Universal Citywalk with a couple of Ilana’s friends. I didn’t take the dare of a bull-ride, but think I have to later in my US travels, but I did get to try my first Ben and Jerry’s ice-cream. mmmm. They have some strange specialty stores there, and we spent some time in one whose walls were covered in various fridge magnets, and the rest of the store had novelty items like what you might find in Granny May’s.

Friday morning I managed to wake up nice and late again, and got out a bit before midday. Ilana had gone away with her parents for shabbat, so although I could have gone to one theme park or another (I’ll come back with kids ), I was instead going out to see the town and to try and find myself a cell-phone. First I picked up some lunch—of course, oversize and packaged in a foam box—in this case not very good food from some kosher American-Chinese place. I have leftovers in the fridge that I am considering consigning to the bin. I wandered up towards a bus-stop that would take me to a shopping centre (I had considered walking but Ilana told me it would take an hour). I sat for ten minutes and read, waiting for the bus- and finally it arrived, a few minutes early and so caught me off-guard and drove right past despite me getting up and hailing it (I think the driver even saw). So I did in the end walk through the streets of LA to get to a Westfield shopping town- which was strangely mostly outdoors. It also didn’t have much in the way of phones, and what it did have cost twice what I had seen in Hollywood the day before. From there I continued down through Beverly Hills, looking for phone shops and considering going to Hollywood again (despite the difference). Shops in Beverly Hills agreed that giving me a prepaid phone would cost me a few limbs, and I then realised that they don’t want to sell pre-paid phones to locals, only to tourists, so the best deals will be in tourist areas. So I’ll try again in Vegas! So just about the only things that I ended up getting out of Friday’s adventure was that it is very hard to get around LA without a car, that my thongs (flip-flops) are wearing thin, and also a bit of a tan-line.

Shabbat was pleasant. In the end, although I had called a rabbi in attempt to organise someone else to eat with, I ate with Sylvia for both dinner and lunch, and went to a couple of different shuls. The day was overall very relaxing- I learnt a little, sang a little, met a few people and—as is typical of my time in LA—ate a lot.

After dark, I sorted out a few things for my trip to Vegas. That is, I had tried calling some people, but only now did I realise that I didn’t know I needed to stick a 1 in front of a non-local number (in Australia non-local numbers are recited prefix and all) and so felt very stupid by the time I finally got onto my contacts there at 11pm. Ilana had invited me out to a bar that she probably wouldn’t get into (being only 20), for a friend’s 21st birthday. Because everyone drives everywhere, there is a lot of expensive valet parking on some of the main nightlife streets (in this case Sunset Blvd). The parking lot at our destination hotel was full, so we parked across the road- for $20 (US)!!! Yikes. It seems that others paid $15, but it’s all too much. We lined up to get into the bar, and when we arrived to the front some guys came and started asking the bouncer woman to skip the line (being special and all). Ilana, scared her fake ID (her sister’s) wouldn’t work, was next to me, hopeful but worried. But between these annoying line-jumpers and my charming Aussie accent, the bouncer didn’t recognise the different face on Ilana’s card, and we were in. I’m glad there was good company inside, because the price-list wasn’t worth it. $7 for a 12-oz (350 mL) bottle of local beer (plus taxes)! So I only had one.

Here I am, a short while later, writing to my blog instead of packing my bags for Vegas. Tomorrow, after waking up from a short sleep, will mostly be spent on an air-conditioned bus, and I’m set to arrive in Vegas after 6 hours’ drive at 4pm.