The plan for last weekend was for me to visit my friends Alex and Sam in San José on Saturday, then all of us would come up to San Francisco for the How Weird street party on Sunday.
However, the Devil vomitted in our metaphorical kettle when Sam decided to go and see her mum for Mother’s Day, and it turned out that Alex’s uncle was receiving a graduate degree that Sunday morning in LA.
Seeing as there’s a crazy street party pretty much every weekend for the whole summer in San Francisco, Alex and I decided to take little road trip down to southern California!
Me and my eyepatch
I got the CalTrain down to San José to meet Alex on Saturday afternoon, and we set off pretty much immediately. As time was of the essence, we took the most direct route – the I-5 straight down through hundreds of miles of farm-land. There was one stretch of road without any sort of bend, rise or dip for about 80 miles.
Luckily, we had Taco Bell to break up the trip, my new second-most favourite fast food chain (after the incomparable In’n'Out). Bean burrito, chicken taco, cheesy beef burrito, chicken taco, cinnamon twists and a bucket of coke for $6: BOOM, that’s a recession buster.
After six hours, we dropped into LA out of the Hollywood hills at about 9pm and went to see a friend of Alex’s, Johnny. He was having a little soirée, so we played some silly games and had a few drinks with a bunch of LAers, none of whom were aspiring actors, to my surprise and disappointment.
Johnny's house
On Sunday morning, we drove across LA to Loyola Marymount University, where Alex’s uncle was receiving his graduate Theology degree. Luckily it was cloudy in the morning; Loyola Marymount appears to have the world’s largest class of educators – it must have taken them half an hour to file across the stage – and my blood’s too thick for the full-on SoCal heat.
After the ceremony, we went down to the beach for a meal in a nearby restaurant (salmon and eggs Benedict: nom), and a potter on the beach.
This is a beach
With only a few hours left in LA, Alex and I headed up to Bel Air and Hollywood to mince around the palm tree-lined streets and gawp at the never-ending parade of rat dogs, pneumatic blondes, cars worth more than my house and codpieced action figures posing for photo opportunities.
Me and Britney
Hollywood is the place most disconnected from reality I’ve ever been to.
