When I say I'm "back from LA", I live sixty miles away. To many folks, that's *in* LA and I'm one of them Califurnians with the Hollywood and the city with no 'there' there. Before I moved to the US, when I wrote for advice on living here to a Californian writer, lo these 30 years ago, he said he lived in SF and LA was "the eighth circle of hell". Or maybe seventh or tenth but you get the picture. Anyway, sixty miles is a lot. I live in a town of (according to the city limits sign) 35,000-ish people, which is smaller than the town I was born in. It has open spaces, lots of horses, and a community website filled with people who have lost cats and people who are berating them for not taking care of their pets properly.
Person 1: Help! I've lost me cat.
Person 2: You should take more care of your cat.
Person 3: Oh no I've lost muh cat plz find him
Person 4: You useless excuse for a human, how dare you lose your cat!
Person 5: Ma dog's gone missing.
Person 6: Fuck you, subpar dog owner! Don't you know there's coyotes about!
Person 3: I found mah cat,,,thanks every bod
Person 7: Don't lose him again you feckless maroon.
Person 2: I saw a coyote or maybe it was your dog at the end of the street last night.
Person 7: Here's 65 numbers for the police, animal control, agricultural extension, mayor, sheriff, vector control and dogcatcher. I've phoned them all about the rabid coyote attacking dogs at the end of your street and we should all call constantly until something is done about the coyote menace that's causing us to cower in fear in our own homes like prisoners in a world gone mad.
Person 1: I've lost me cat again. Come back little kitty I love you.
Person 2: You should be guillotined and your head displayed on a stake you vicious pet-losing animal. Your kind is worse than Hitler.
And so forth. The topic changed abruptly yesterday because someone saw a girl at one of the communal swimming pools wearing a thong, so she wrote in to tell us that we should stop destroying our children's lives by forcing them to see women's bodies at the pool, in Southern California. Not surprisingly there's been a bit of a backlashette about her opinion. Right now it's up there with the electric company's eminent domain grab of some of our prime real estate, the reactions to the guy who wants to build a farmers market on a plot of unimproved mud near the town center which will increase traffic and no doubt cause poltergeists and werewolves to break out all over town, and the guy who wants to house the town's homeless people in the empty toilet-flush factory that closed down a couple of years ago. Lost cats are temporarily put aside for such momentous matters as these.
Anyway, it's sixty miles from LA. I took a taxi down from LAX once, several years ago, and the taxi driver got increasingly agitated as we entered Orange County, and became almost alarmed as we got to south county. Eventually, he blurted: "Why do you live all the way down here?!"
Silly me, I had thought that LAX was "all the way up there" and where I lived was "right here". Glad he put me straight.
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| Angels Flight on 3rd Street, where we left off |
While I was in LA, you may recall, I visited the 3rd Street funicular, Angels Flight. A couple of streets down from there is the Grand Central Market, and next to that, the very much photographed and filmed Bradbury Building.
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| (c) Google |
I know the Bradbury Building best from Blade Runner. At the time of filming it was run-down, and Ridley Scott added creepiness and running rainwater to make it look even more desolate. It's been completely refurbished and looks stunning today. I don't know what the Grand Central Market looked like when Ridley Scott was scouting locations back there in the early eighties, but right now, it looks exactly like the LA street scenes in the movie, except for less Tik and Tok moving through the crowds. The woman who said, "Not fish scale - snake scale!" is definitely there, as is Taffy Lewis and his scummy burlesque. (At least in spirit.)
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| Bradbury Building entrance |
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| Bradbury Building's superb iconic look |
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| STB in the Bradbury hallway |
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| Bradbury entrance |
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| Bradbury Building's cage elevator |
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| The building opposite the Bradbury |
You may recognize the architectural details at the top of this theater from Blade Runner as well. It's across a full-size street from the Bradbury Building, so I don't think Roy Batty could have jumped it in the rain, however superior he was to us humans.
Inside the market, there's every food known to man.
It can be hard finding a spot to sit. I'm not surprised Deckard had to wait in the rain until he was beckoned over by the stall-holder.
No, I didn't use the photo of the Pupuseria with you in it, woman who looked aghast that I was taking photos. I might use it later, but I'll blur you out, promise.
Thai guy on the boil at the Sticky Rice shop. I had a great red curry, and STB had a wonderful sea-food soup and a chicken something-or-other. It was too good for us to keep notes.
Thai guy's pots, a lovely still life vista in the bustle of the market.
After that, it was back down south, to whyever the heck we live so far southsville and our exciting neighborhood website. I'll miss you, tenth circle of hell!
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