a curious uni kid takes on 'merica: Back on le Boulevard

#23

Even in winter, LA is mildly warm. The sun comes out during the day, but the evenings are cooler. Great to be back on the Boulevard folks, as soon as we arrived, I felt a strange sense of familiarity, and it was a welcoming sense of faint belonging. I've been away from my hometown in Melbourne for almost 5 months now, and so it's only natural that I've made seemingly-important bonds to the places I've already been. I was able to show Dice some good places to eat, and dragged her back to the comedy shows where I spent my nights in LA last time...after a couple of days the guys started to recognize us and shoutout to us on the Boulevard when we would walk past. Front row seats without fail, even if I had heard the jokes before and GET THIS; they even repeated a couple of gags from the night before. Same comedians, I think there are less available in winter. Good news is, I reckon I can rattle of some skits from heart now, so hit me up and get me to repeat them when I'm home. I'll even attempt the Detroit accent.

Back on le Boulevard

Out to Long Beach #foggy

Note the significant lack of people

Disappointed at the weather

two

Heading down to Venice Beach

V.E.N.I.C.E B.E.A.C.H

#torbz

One thing I like about Venice was the atmosphere. True, I did get followed around the backstreets by a homeless man for a little bit, and everyone tries to take your stuff, it's not relatively SAFE, but it's cool. One thing I found particularly interesting was that the homeless people all seem to set up camp on the beaches, and around the skate park. If you wander through, being careful not to tread on their territory (see WELCOME TO HELL warning below), you'll see how they've set up their lives with the few possessions they've got, surrounded by pet dogs and snakes (yes!), smoking pot and just generally chilling about. The best thing I saw was homeless people actually trying to sell their stuff to tourists or passers by...I passed one 'stall', and this guy had literally laid out all this trash he'd found or picked up...he tried to sell me an old aluminum bean can. I was almost tempted when he whipped out his knife and said he'd carve out a pattern and I could use it as a candle holder...and upon reflection, although I emptied my coin purse into his hat, I regret not taking the bean candle holder with me.

The skate park - the arena for status and respect

True, we were not fans of the fog on the coast that day, but as I graciously was reminded of by the sign above, smile, because tomorrow could quite possibly be worse, and even if it's not - today simple ain't that bad.