Trashy Daydreams

I can’t really say that I remember what time we woke up….I honestly cannot remember much details of today but whatever.

We woke up and relaxed at the house for a little bit as we weren’t sure what to do today. After all, we really only had Angels & Kings planned out, but we weren’t going to go there until at least the night. After watching it pour for a while, we decided to go to Hermosa Beach since we googled it and people said it was really pretty after the rain. So after picking up some stuff, we headed over there.

It was only about a half an hour trip and well, it was a nice area…and the first area that we went to that didn’t have credit card meters. It was certainly cold out here after the rain and the wind, but the things that you noticed the most were all the fucking. It being St. Patrick’s Day, and there seems to be a lot of Irish bars there, it was nothing but a flood of green. People wearing green t-shirts, hats, even dressing up like leprechauns. It was pretty cool, but also very loud as almost everyone there was drunk. After getting Starbucks, we looked around the pier area before we decided to get something to eat. First we tried this one restaurant, but it was so packed in there, we were never actually served. Not even water or anything, so we headed out to a less crowded bar. We chose a Mexican place since well, we seemed to be eating that a lot, and it wasn’t too bad. Since we only had a few quarters and no cash, we had to go back to the meter since we were that it was almost time or already expired.

We got to the car and saw that the meter indeed was expired, but thankfully we didn’t get a ticket. I don’t know it was because of the people or the weather or the fact that in order to stay longer, we’d have to take $20 out of an ATM and exchange it for quarters, but we soon headed out and went back home. I definitely needed to take a shower and get myself ready before we headed out since once we left, we weren’t going to come back before A&K.

After leaving, we passed by a certain someone’s house again where Billy decided to be a creeper and turn off the headlights as we passed, but after that we decided to head to Hollywood once more as we wanted to say goodbye to Blair. We hung out with him for a bit longer before he gave us our hugs and said that he might come out to Chicago. I also talked to one of his friends since he enjoys photography and film and what not.

Getting to Hollywood BLvd, we parked and headed to A&K, where we immediately got in and heard the music blaring. It was nice and dark in there and the setup was pretty fucking awesome. We got some $4 PBRs and sat down. The entire time of course I was looking for any musicians that I happen to like but well, unfortunately no one came there. That still didn’t hinder the amazing time we had there though. It was just pull of people, but it wasn’t a problem, the music was great, we had 2 and a  half beers each (two being free) and we both had an Irish car bomb for we were both feeling pretty good.

I was getting a bit trashed and confessed some things to someone, but thankfully it didn’t turn out too badly. Plus we also met another person, so that was cool. After taking our mug shots, it being around 2am now, we headed out and went back to Sound Check since Blair told us to come back and just chill for a little bit. After a bit of begging to Billy, he finally went over there and well, we hung out. We went upstairs, shared a couple of 40s, had some jack, and overall it was a pretty relaxing time. Seeing as we had a half an hour drive back and it was getting near 2:30am, we soon left, but of course not before getting some more hugs from Blair.

Getting home, Billy went and passed the fuck out on the futon, and I stayed up and packed everything I didn’t need in the morning. I decided to go to bed around 4am as I had to be up at 8am. I say the night was pretty successful. 

We woke up a bit later today, around 10am, which here, yes, it’s late. I took a shower and just waited for Billy to wake up, which thankfully Nova did that for us. After we finally got ready and headed out, deciding to go back to Little Tokyo. 

We finally went to Mr. Pizza, and we had the same pizza that I had had in Korea. It wasn’t exactly the same as before, as the Koreans seem to be more…artsy with their food, but it was still damn delicious. As we were eating, I was FB chatting Blair to see if he was doing anything tonight, but he was working but he gave us plenty of things to do. He also gave me his phone number so he could text me if he finds anything for us. We soon crossed the street and went to a very weeaboo-esque anime/Jrock store, which made me laugh since the people there….yeah.

We went to a few more stores that we didn’t hit in Little Tokyo, got a red bean paste pastry, and then decided to go through this street that we passed when we were looking for parking. It was a street that had plenty of shops filled with things like pieces, bongs, accessories, etc. We found ou that almost every single store was for wholesale only, so that kind of sucked. Not like we could bring any of that on the plane, but you know. 

Next we headed to Melrose Ave, which again was suggested to me. There were tons of stores there, which was something that we liked since the areas we have been going to were all spread out. We went into a taxidermy store and I picked up some snake ribs and a dried seahorse for my sister and we headed out. We then went into a store named Japan LA. Long store short, Billy ended up buying an owl kigurumi. It’s cute. 

After walking around there for awhile, we felt pretty dead so decided to get some coffee and go to our next destination. Billy likes the touristy stuff, so our next stop was Hollywood Blvd. We tried to get into Paramount for a tour, but tours closed at 2pm and it was already past four, so we just continued to Hollywood Blvd. After paying the most that we have for parking ($20. Still cheaper than Chicago), we headed out.

Tourists. Everywhere. And therefore, that means peddlers everywhere. We went to the Hollywood & Highland mall (boring) and the Chinese theatre which had all the hand prints, we began walking down the streets and looked at all the stars. We stopped into a few shops here, but one certainly caught our attention. Outside the door it had a sign that said that it sold mushrooms and salvia, so we headed in to see what it was all about. It was definitely sketchy, that was for damn sure, and we ended up not buying anything. 

Thankfully we left the tourist trap and headed back to my home, West Hollywood. We parked at our same spot and went into a store that we missed before, and then headed back into Sound Check. Immediately we saw Blair just hanging out, and well, we all just started hanging out with him. He put on the track that he made last night, showed us youtube videos, let us go upstairs, played pinball, everything. We went to explore for a little bit more and eat before we just came back and once more chilled with him. Billy noticed that we both wore a lot of bracelets on one arm, and Blair noticed that we both have them all on our left arm.

We got a phone number that failed us, and we were going to even out the lows, but seriously, that boy gets so distracted so fast. We left around 1am and finally headed home. 

Billy passed out on the futon, Celina and I smoked, and then I finally called it a night. 

Today we started out a bit late since we went to bed pretty late, and plus with waking up at 7 the previous morning for San Diego…yeah, we woke up around 9.

 It’s starting to get to the point in the trip where we’re not exactly sure what to do since we’ve already done a lot. I had a few cigarettes as we ate oranges right from the tree in Bev’s backyard. It was definitely something that I would love to experience more often. We ended up buying tickets for American Idiot since we found out that it is here for five weeks and Billy wanted to see a play, so that was pretty perfect.

 After Billy finally got ready, we headed out and made our first stop at Denny’s. I’m pretty sure we were the only white people in the entire restaurant, but what’s the big deal? I enjoyed my avocado bacon burrito. As we ate, we discussed what to do, added more addresses to the GPS, and Billy called someone to try to get free tickets to a show. You know, like one of those Dr. Phil sorts of shows. He wasn’t successful with that as no one would get back to him, but he’s still trying.

 We decided that our first stop in the city would be Echo Park. There was only one thing I knew about Echo Park (a certain someone lives there) and well, we wanted to check it out. It was actually a great place to be. After we went past the house a few times (I have NO idea how he deals with it there. The street is so narrow, that it would be narrow as a one way street and it was actually a two way street. Plus his driveway isn’t even the length of an actual car.) We parked in the downtown area and we just started walking, stopping in a few convenience store type of shops that have EVERYTHING. Food, makeup, luggage, clothes, it was a bit crazy. He found a pawnshop, and I found a store called Echo Park Independent Co-op, which is a place that has only local fashion designer’s clothes. You know, really trendy shit. I actually found a cardigan that was $355, but 80% off so I got it only for $77 (after tax) so it was a pretty amazing deal. We talked to the owner a bit, asking her exactly how she picks out what to sell in the store, and we mentioned that we were from Chicago. She said that we didn’t have the accent but yes, while we technically do live in Indiana, I honestly have NEVER heard anyone with this “Chicago accent.” Maybe I just don’t know it, or maybe it really just doesn’t exist. Who knows.

 We went to a few thrift stores and what not there before stopping off in Walgreens, making another trip up the narrow road, and then finally heading out of that area.

 Next we stopped off at Chinatown. It wasn’t too bad, but I am really starting to notice that if you’ve been to one Chinatown, they’re pretty much all the same. All of them. Either way, the entire trip Billy was saying how he wanted a massage so well, he got one of those there. I honestly thought that they had killed him since he was only supposed to have a ten minute massage and he had been gone for almost a half an hour. I went by the store (I went to have a cigarette on a bench down the street) and well, that was a mistake. A group of Chinese ladies walked out and one tried to get me to go in there. She grabbed onto my shoulder and began to rub it, which was okay, whatever, but then she grabbed my stomach and told me that for $10 I could lose weight. Yeah, that’s when I walked away and went back to my bench. Billy emerged from the store alive and well, and we set out to find a Starbucks since it was the only thing keeping us running.

My phone’s GPS isn’t that great, and it didn’t really let us know that the Starbucks was actually in Union Station, but as we were looking for that, we noticed a little Mexican area that had tons of stalls and shops. After getting our Starbucks, we went to that little area and began to look around. We first went into a store that had TONS of amazing stuff, and lots of Day of the Dead stuff. I wanted to get everything in there, it was all just so bright and colorful and amazing. We saw that it was almost time for our parking lot to be closed so we had to go back and get the car and move it before we could check anymore out. We soon parked in a parking lot next to the alley and began to walk around there once more.

 Seeing that it was about two hours from the show, we went over to the theatre as it was in downtown and we didn’t want to get stuck in traffic and be late. This helped us see that my GPS REALLY needs to be updated since it wasn’t telling us directions fast enough for me to make the ramps/turns and what not. It recalculated about six times before we finally got there. We stopped off at Subway where their sub of the month was jalapeno tuna. I wish I fucking lived here. I read the email about our tickets since they were will call, and we freaked out since it said to pick up our tickets two hours before curtain, and it was only about an hour. So we ran over there to the Ahmanson Theatre and thankfully got them, so I finished up my sandwich and we walked around the plaza a bit.

 Getting into the theatre, we got to our seats and watched the show, which is seriously just as amazing as the first time. I noticed that one of the actors was different, but otherwise everyone was the same as the first time I saw them. At the end of the play the guy who played the main character announced that they were having signed posters for sale for an AIDS charity, so of course I made my happy ass down there and ended up meeting the guy that mind fucked us when we first saw AI. He looks exactly like Billie Joe Armstrong, height, weight, everything. I told him that and well, he seemed to enjoy it. After getting a picture with him, we asked him where we could find the other casts and he actually told is. Something that would never happen in Chicago. We headed back there, met Johnny (main character), and then made our way back to the car.

 It being around 10:30pm right now, we decided that we still weren’t really tired and we didn’t want to go home, we decided to head to West Hollywood. We parked the car (did you know that it’s free parking on the weekdays after 8pm? The fuck?) and we just began to walk around since this was a part of it that we hadn’t walked around yet. There wasn’t much to go to since it was pretty late, but we ended up walking around for a while and landed up at In-N-Out. Billy has never been there, and seeing that it was open until 1am, we headed in. He wasn’t too impressed with it, but I still love it.

 It being past midnight, we decided to finally go home and we walked to our car, and headed out. Billy was impressed by the way that I can navigate a new area just after seeing it about once. I didn’t need the GPS to get from West Hollywood to Bev’s house, and I didn’t need the GPS when our ramp was closed and I had to find a new one. I’m just that good.

 Getting off the highway, we stopped at Jack in the Box since Billy wanted it, and we ended home. Once more we evened out the lows, ate my leftovers from San Diego, and called it a night. 

Decided to head out to San Diego today since Billy’s cousin, Chris, had a day off. So after waking up at 7am, we got ready and headed out around 8:30am. 

We first stopped at Walmart since we wanted to get an iPod cord for the car (as the radio stations would be changing) and I also stocked up on some candy for the trip. After getting some Starbucks, we began to make our hour and a half trek. 

I don’t ever remember having such open roads. I mean, not like, oh, there’s nothing but fields around me on a two laned highway, but like it’s pretty empty on a five laned high way and you see nothing but mountains. It was pretty gorgeous. We listened to fun. as we made our trip, stopping at a view point that lets you look out to the ocean. 

This place was pretty amazing. Not only was the view awesome, but they also had these tiny ass squirrels there that reminded me of cats since they weren’t afraid to go up to someone and they laid down just like them. 

After snapping some photos and calling his cousin to tell him we’re behind schedule (we were supposed to get there around 10) and we headed out. 

Getting off the freeway in San Diego, it only took us a few minutes to get to Chris’s place. After sharing greetings, we headed up to his apartment to use the bathroom and look up to see what we were going to do. His apartment was AMAZING. First of all, in order to get up there we went into the elevator, he inserted a key and headed to the top floor. His door? Yeah, the elevator. As soon as the door opened we were greeted by three barking dogs, his last one joining in as he had been taking her for a walk when we met him. We looked up some Sea World coupons and Chris did things to my laptop (maybe updated it? I didn’t really ask him, but anyways, Apple employees) and after printing out our discounted tickets and looking at the view from his balcony, we headed out for some lunch. 

He took us to a place called Mo’s, which you knew was going to me interesting since the menu cover had nothing but drag queens on them. I guess season 4 of Ru Paul’s drag race went there? At least that’s what foursquare said. Billy and I ordered a lemonade and iced tea respectively, but Chris wasn’t satisfied with that and ordered us the alcoholic versions of the drink. It’s was a tad past noon, so it was okay, yeah? Chris also told them that it was Billy’s birthday so we got a free round of shots and Billy was donned with an inflatable crown and a birthday sash. 

After our meals, we headed out to Sea World. Not going to lie, it was a bit more…fun when I was a kid. I bought my sister a snowglobe, we rode a water ride (which is the reason why I have a huge, swollen bruise on my ankle), looked at the animals, saw the dolphin show. I don’t know, I suppose I kept thinking that these were all animals that I could see in Chicago, so why did we pay $53 bucks each (originally $73 before the discount). It was still a decent time though to hang out with Chris. 

After that, Billy kept saying that he wanted to go to the beach, so after some traffic and a car ride of bickering from them (Chris threatened to drop Billy off in Mexico as we were only 19miles from the border) we finally got to Coronado. This beach was pretty beautiful. After taking the trite beach pictures, seeing an awesome sand castle, we headed up to the Hotel de Coronado/resort. 

This certainly was a place that made me feel poor. Not only did a sundae there cost $10, but this place was fancy. Like. Fan-cy. We walked around for a little bit, and decided to head out since we were talking about where to go to dinner. 

We stopped off at Chris’s place once more and played with the dogs as we decided what to do before dinner, and he decided to take us to Balboa Park, which is this historical area with tons of beautiful buildings. We walked around as Chris was our little tour guide, and seeing that it was soon to meet his friend for dinner, we headed our to Hillcrest. Here we stopped off for some Starbucks first, where they asked me if I wanted room for milk in my iced coffee. I’ve never had someone ask me that before, which is probably why it took me a moment to even answer. Nothing major. 

After moving the car, we stopped into an adult store before finally headed to Baja Betty’s. This is a place owned by the same people as Mo’s, but this had a more tropical atmosphere. We met up with his friend John and he bought us two blue margaritas (tasted like tequila and Hyponotic) and we got our table. It food was pretty good, but I wished that I hadn’t been trashed when I ate my fish taco so I can remember it better. Those fuckers were strong, and as I downed one and a half of them I was pretty wasted. We talked for a little bit and they decided to head to a gay bar. 

We parted with John and I headed to a grocery store as I needed cigarettes badly, as I had finished off my pack and forgot to bring another, and plus I had been starting to feel a bit of anxiety. Cigarettes were expensive. I got a two pack package, which cost me $12. I hope that it wasn’t buy one get one free, otherwise..wow. 

Either way, I began chain smoking as we walked to the bar, and that’s when I started freaking out a bit more, telling the two of them to head in as I smoked a bit more. My phone died as I was about to text people to get shit off my chest. Balls. 

So I headed in after two straight cigarettes and Billy could tell that I wasn’t feeling too good so he took a few more sips of his drink and we headed out. We went back to Chris’s apartment one last time, said our goodbyes and took off to head back to LA. After about a half an hour Billy got tired so after getting gas I took the wheel and continued our way. On the way, we hit what was apparently an agriculture check. Being so close to Mexico, I guess they see if people are carrying contraband of animals or plants and what not. Nothing major, but it was just nothing that I had experienced before. The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful and we got back to Bev’s place around midnight. 

After taking a shower, we smoked and I finally calmed down a bit, and after polishing off an entire box of Starbursts, we decided to call it a night. 

Woke up at 8am feeling like P Diddy. No, but really, we were tired as fuck. It took me a while to fall asleep, not sure how Billy was. Either way, we got up, showered, had coffee, and I put most of the addresses that we wanted to go to in my GPS so we didn’t have to look anything up while we were already in the city. Our first stop was Santee alley. Santee ally is the place where it’s just blocks upon blocks of clothes and other flea-market like wears. Everything was cheap and you could always haggle even more, which we did. The entire time our ears were flooded with Spanish and it was certainly an enjoyable experience. And parking was only $5 all day. Right as we got out of the car we found a taco truck and got some delicious steak tacos for only $1.50 each.

After getting my hands on some accessories, paying 75 cents for the bathroom and one awkward situation with a Latino man, we decided to head to Little Tokyo next. But before I get to that, just wanted to mention the textile district. No joke, just a sea of fabric EVERYWHERE. I got a polaroid of some of it, but it just doesn’t do it justice.

Originally we were going to walk there since it said that it was only 2.5 miles away. Thank God we decided against that since 2.5 miles is certainly a long way away, and not to mention then we would have to walk those 2.5 back to the car. That would have been…yeah, no. So after finding a public lot, we paid $6 for all day parking and headed out. Our first stop was a store called Pop Killer, which was suggested to me when I was back home. It’s a little Japanese store, which has vintage, kitschy little shit and I loved it. I got a t-shirt that makes absolutely no sense and I fucking love it. After that, we tried to go to Pink Berry but Billy had to pee and well, since apparently there aren’t many bathrooms in Little Tokyo, it took him about a half an hour just to find one to use (after going store to store to store) and we headed into a Japanese supermarket. Big mistake since I found the ready-made food and I just wanted it all since I haven’t had many of the things in so long. Getting the fuck out of there, I had to resist heading into the curry place and we stopped into this little shop that had like, Hello Kitty and Totoro and what not.

Finally getting to Pinkberry, we shared a salted caramel yogurt with brownie bits, Heath, mochi, and caramel  sauce and oh God it was delicious. I definitely need to go to that again in Chicago, holy shit. After getting complimented on my hair by someone asking for change, we decided to just walk around Little Tokyo. But of course not before we stopped at a revolving sushi place that every plate was $2. That was a fucking deal for sure. We walked around for a bit more before we decided to head out and head to West Hollywood.

On the way to West Hollywood, we actually hit some LA traffic. Not as bad as people said it was, and I had been in worse traffic jams than that, so hopefully we don’t get anything worse than that. But we probably will, chances are.

Now, even before I have been here before, I felt like West Hollywood is the place that I belong in. I’m not sure if it’s because of the people I know live there or what, but it really just felt like home to be there, like it was just so….normal. After only $3 parking (seriously, what the fuck Chicago), we headed out. We hit Hustler, where we found some interesting porn.

 We then stopped at a store called Sound Check. The place caught my eye since I saw the Escape the Fate poster that the street teamers passed out, so I knew that this was my place. The moment we got in there the guy said that he “liked my style” and after he grabbed my necklace and looked at it (thanks Vince, totes had a hot guy close to me thanks to the necklace you bought me!) he started talking about all the crystals that he had and how he lost most of them when the cops raided Occupy LA, and also how basically he went back and forth from living there to living in the store (I found out later that he owns it). He was a pretty cool guy, he told us about shit that was going on during the weekend in West Hollywood. After getting the post it note from him, we headed out and went to Rainbow. Rainbow is a place that was also suggested to me, by the girl who did my nails and also by the guy at Sound Check, and well, it was pretty damn good. I suppose it’s one of those places where you can see more famous people, but well, we didn’t see anyone but that didn’t hinder how good it actually was.

As we were eating diner, I decided to tell Billy that he was my wing man and he had to go get the guy’s name at Sound Check since well, he was pretty awesome and not to mention gorgeous (and blown off his ass but hey). After some coaching of himself, he went in there as I finished my cigarette and he left the store with a friend request from Blair.

Being almost 9pm, we decided that we were exhausted for walking about ten hours so we decided to head home and call it a night.

After soaking our feet, we evened out the lows and called it a successful day. 

I figured I would write a little blog as my trip goes by…mostly for me to remember it, so I may just be putting this on private. Or as a draft. But probably not. 

We left for O’Hare around 4pm, which was a bit late to me since with the way that the TSA has been lately I had been afraid of, well, missing the plane because of all that bullshit. Getting there around 5:30, I hugged my mom goodbye as I grabbed my bags, the both of us heading into the airport. Now that everything is done “self” and on computers, we went to the self-checkin and well, no matter what we did (what codes we put in, what cards we swiped) it kept telling us that our trip needed special handling and we needed to see an assistant. The lady there wasn’t much of help to us and I still wonder why she is even getting paid to be there. Cool. 

Except for the fact that there were only three agents and a lot of people already in that line. So after a couple of calls to Travelocity (which didn’t even help us) and an hour later, we finally get to an agent and he tells us that what was wrong was that whatever/whoever did our intinerary, it put our returning time before the departure time. So because of that, we had to spend an hour and a half of what should have taken ten minutes? Sometimes I really do hate airports. 

So after getting through that and through the security (billion dollar machines not even being used, instead everyone was just going through the metal detector) and we were on our way. We got some Starbucks before heading to our gate and since thankfully we had about an hour, we decided to look at some of the shops. Nothing too exciting here. 

Getting on our flight, we see that we have special seats for some reason and therefore we actually have leg room. Great for me since I had been worrying about my knee after all. Four hours on the flight and three and a half episodes of Skins later, we get to LA around 10pm their time. 

Let’s…just say that I was expecting much more out of LAX. Maybe it was because a lot of it was under construction, but well, it was pretty jank. It took us awhile to find our baggage check since we had to actually leave the airport just to come back in at another terminal. No joke. But I digress. Get my back, get on the shuttle, pick up our car (which cost an extra $120 than we expected) and then we were finally out to pick our car. We picked a grey Nissan Versa hatchback. 

We decided just to go to Billy’s cousin Bev’s house first before we go eat since they were waiting for us and it was already midnight. We landed at ten, remember? Yeah. Anyways, we found the alternative music station and just got on the highway. Getting there, we found the quiet little neighborhood and pulled up and were immediately greeted by Bev and her step daughter, Celina. After having cigarette, we finally got inside and they made sandwiches for us, so that was awesome, we didn’t have to go anywhere to eat. We all talked until probably around two in the morning, also meeting the puppy Nova, and then we finally just went to bed.

So that ends that night. I took the couch and Billy has the futon. I love that couch and never want to give it up. Ever. 

Jet lagged and exhuasted. I need coffee. 

The view from Billy’s cousin’s house.

Viewpoint stop.

My view from my smoking spot (omgtheresapalmtree!!)