I flew to Los Angeles yesterday, to visit my mother for a combination Mother’s Day + 80th birthday get-together. During the trip, I’ve had a chance to take in some of the sites of the region. Here are a few notes:
– The Pacific Ocean is lovely. That beauty is marred by the horizon, where the smog lies thick. The colors are pretty, but I can’t forget what it represents.
– I walked along the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. The street has been converted Into an outdoor mall, with swank high-end shops lining the sidewalks and buskers in the middle. I watched Mister Animation’s act; he knows how to work a crowd. The environment reminded me of Covent Garden in London.
– I visited the Santa Monica Pier for the first time in about 45 years. It’s an amusement park set on a pier that juts into Santa Monica Bay. The smell of the sea overwhelms the more conventional odors of the cheap fast food. I learned that the Pier marks the end of old Route 66; the other end is in Chicago. If I traveled far enough along the “mother road”, I’d come to Seligman, AZ; no, the town is not named after anyone related to me.
– The homeless are everywhere throughout this region. It’s very sad. I thought this issue was a joke in Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-Long Blog, but it’s a serious problem here and there’s no Captain Hammer to save them.
Tomorrow: the Lakeside Shrine of the Self-Realization Fellowship. I was there four years ago. It’s lovely, and the only place outside of India where some of Gandhi’s ashes are enshrined.
— Posted using BlogPress from my iPad 3G