Trashy Daydreams

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. 

My view from my smoking spot (omgtheresapalmtree!!)

I know you’re jealous of my carry-on luggage.