Still on the newest job and ... LOVING it!!!
But, I'm sleepy as all get out. The blog needs an update, though. So, I'll post one that I meant to post a week and a half ago:
On TV, in the movies, Los Angeles comes across as a giant beach town. Juan les Pins is a beach town; Los Angeles is something else entirely. Towns abutting other towns? Nah. That’s not it either. Regions abutting regions could be more like it.
Driving home this morning, I was listening to KCRW’s program, “Good Food”. [In a city as vast as Los Angeles, as culturally diverse, KCRW is the only radio station that plays all different types of music – ambient, house, jazz, latin – in one giant play list.] The LA Weekly’s food critic, Jonathan Gold, was discussing $1.60/plate dim sum in Arcadia, and raving about the soup dumplings at another eatery on South Baldwin. A little under a year ago, I temporarily [no duh!] worked in South El Monte/Rosemead and I flashed back to the Dim Sum lunches Ms. C and I enjoyed. Dim Sum isn’t relegated to one or two places in downtown’s Chinatown; it’s abundant all around the San Bernadino Freeway east of the 710. Good Food
Asian food galore in the San Gabriel Valley... Latin comida aplenty in the Union District... Kosher noshing on the West Side… India is a flavor sensation waiting in Cerritos. Just like you can surf, ski, and bake in the desert in the span of one day, you can eat your way around the world if you so desire.
Mind you, you don’t just have a passport to the savory globe within the limits of your gas tank; L.A. has a basin full of immigrants. The immigration isn’t just limited to outside the U.S., you have to include – just to name a few -- the New Yorkers, Nebraskans, and Hawaiians. [Hawaii in So Cal is located in Gardena.] Unfortunately, the same vehicles that provide us access to all this variety are also the very things that keep us from human contact; we spend too much time alone in our cars.
Driving Westward the other night, I bore witness to the sun’s descent -- not into the ocean, but into a mighty marine layer. At first glance, a marine layer seems as though God’s waved a wand of cotton candy across the horizon. The nimbus tufts become even more white as the sun nears them then, suddenly, within the span of the moment it takes to fly through a bend in the 405, they lose all luminescence; the highlights morph into deep shadows and extinguish our brilliant star so rapidly you’d almost believe they possess an enhanced, gravitational pull.
Until the resulting foggy haze burns off the next late morning, it remains hovering overhead, blurring the turquoise sky from shoreline to foothills and we Angelenos wake up groggy, barely able to function. Making it even worse... We have to drive in the stuff! At least we can commiserate with our friends at a local mall’s food court, each of us with our fare from Panda Inn, Sbarro, and Hot Dog on a Stick.
OK, I may be wrong. Courtesy of the phenomenon that creeps in from the Pacific, Los Angeles is a beach town after all.
But, I'm sleepy as all get out. The blog needs an update, though. So, I'll post one that I meant to post a week and a half ago:
On TV, in the movies, Los Angeles comes across as a giant beach town. Juan les Pins is a beach town; Los Angeles is something else entirely. Towns abutting other towns? Nah. That’s not it either. Regions abutting regions could be more like it.
Driving home this morning, I was listening to KCRW’s program, “Good Food”. [In a city as vast as Los Angeles, as culturally diverse, KCRW is the only radio station that plays all different types of music – ambient, house, jazz, latin – in one giant play list.] The LA Weekly’s food critic, Jonathan Gold, was discussing $1.60/plate dim sum in Arcadia, and raving about the soup dumplings at another eatery on South Baldwin. A little under a year ago, I temporarily [no duh!] worked in South El Monte/Rosemead and I flashed back to the Dim Sum lunches Ms. C and I enjoyed. Dim Sum isn’t relegated to one or two places in downtown’s Chinatown; it’s abundant all around the San Bernadino Freeway east of the 710. Good Food
Asian food galore in the San Gabriel Valley... Latin comida aplenty in the Union District... Kosher noshing on the West Side… India is a flavor sensation waiting in Cerritos. Just like you can surf, ski, and bake in the desert in the span of one day, you can eat your way around the world if you so desire.
Mind you, you don’t just have a passport to the savory globe within the limits of your gas tank; L.A. has a basin full of immigrants. The immigration isn’t just limited to outside the U.S., you have to include – just to name a few -- the New Yorkers, Nebraskans, and Hawaiians. [Hawaii in So Cal is located in Gardena.] Unfortunately, the same vehicles that provide us access to all this variety are also the very things that keep us from human contact; we spend too much time alone in our cars.
Driving Westward the other night, I bore witness to the sun’s descent -- not into the ocean, but into a mighty marine layer. At first glance, a marine layer seems as though God’s waved a wand of cotton candy across the horizon. The nimbus tufts become even more white as the sun nears them then, suddenly, within the span of the moment it takes to fly through a bend in the 405, they lose all luminescence; the highlights morph into deep shadows and extinguish our brilliant star so rapidly you’d almost believe they possess an enhanced, gravitational pull.
Until the resulting foggy haze burns off the next late morning, it remains hovering overhead, blurring the turquoise sky from shoreline to foothills and we Angelenos wake up groggy, barely able to function. Making it even worse... We have to drive in the stuff! At least we can commiserate with our friends at a local mall’s food court, each of us with our fare from Panda Inn, Sbarro, and Hot Dog on a Stick.
OK, I may be wrong. Courtesy of the phenomenon that creeps in from the Pacific, Los Angeles is a beach town after all.
posted by Evan at
9:47 PM
