Christina and Sarah's Excellent Adventure (Except We Never Went to Waterloo)

Christina and I, revelling in our spring breaks, decided to go explore some areas of L.A. that we either hadn't seen before or were not well acquainted. This is something that we both like to do -- familiarize.

We studied maps beforehand, looked up information on Wiki and the Los Angeles Times, but decided any kind of timeline would negate the fun of doing something on spring break. With a glorious sun shining, we set off west (because just about everywhere in L.A. is west of Pasadena). I was driving, Christina was navigating and from hence, she will be known as Christina-of-the-Divine-Map-Reading-Skills. She got us everywhere using one of my maps, not one of hers that she had studied before this trip. Yep, she's that good.

Places We Saw (or at least drove past) and Brief Thoughts (All Photos by Christina):

* The Fashion District: Very different than I thought. Not warehouses stocked with cool clothing, textiles, and flowers available to, but not really for, the general public. More like shops named "Guccy" and "Pretty Pink." All the clothes seemed to be in plastic bags. Now I now where the high school students I used to teach shopped for their clothes and their prom dresses. As we drove by, we saw lots of people out shopping, but no stores that really caught either of our eyes -- because every store looks like the same incarnation of first, just with a different name. Christina and I decided that if you were in the market for flowers or textiles, it would be more worth a stop.

* Lesson #1 - Even if we'd wanted to stop in the Fashion District, it was all meters and we had no change. This was a trend we saw all over L.A. Bring change for meters.

* Korea Town: We got on Olympic and headed west over to Koreatown, where I had never been, but Christina had been on occasion with an past roommate. Again, there were mostly meters and very crowded streets. The biggest draw of Koreatown has got to be the food. There seem to be delicious places to eat on every corner, both Latino and Korean. In addition to the Latino and Korean populations, we learned, Koreatown is the new destination for young "hipsters" who can no longer afford the prices in Los Feliz and West Hollywood. There were thousands of little shops that we could've ducked into, but we drove instead, looking for a Korean grocery store that Christina remembered. We finally found it, The California Market, on the corner of 5th and Western. A good place to stop in for sweet potato noodles, undecodable cookies, and freshly slain fish in ice buckets. Cool.

* Lesson #2 - Cute neighborhoods = expensive shops

* Larchmont Village was our next stop and it is summed up by lesson #2. Cute neighborhoods. Neat houses. Beautiful landscaping.

While the main drag had some cute shops, a spa of note called La Petit Retreat, and a neat wine shop and deli, where everyone in town seemed to be eating lunch, most of the boutiques had very unfortunate price tags. Christina and I soon tired of $375 shoes and jumped back in the car, headed down Larchmont Blvd. where it dead-ended into Melrose.

* Melrose East (which I consider to be East of Fairfax) is one of my new favorite places in L.A. One of our first tastes of the quirkyness that is Melrose was a store called "The Never Open Store." Observe.


We ate lunch at Evan Kleiman's fantastic Angeli Caffe, which I would highly recommend. I'd never been there for lunch and Christina had never been there, but we both agreed it was a great choice for a lunch stop. We got a table right in front of the window, so we got to watch all the eclectic passerbys that is Melrose East -- lots of tats, piercings, some hipsters, some punk rockers, and some teenagers. But then again, I also saw countless women in middle aged women in stretchy pants, which just shows that Melrose takes all kinds. Christina and I both scored some great items at a little store called Gossip a few blocks west of Angeli. We had a great time in this old vintage t-shirt shop that had funny shirts in decent shape. I had some addresses of touted clothing stores from a recent Lucky Magazine, so we kept walking west to see what these stores were like. The walk, the noticing, was half the fun.

Much more fun, in fact, than being in the aforementioned stores.

Lesson #3 - Never shop Melrose west of Fairfax unless your bank account has at least 10 zeros.

We got the feeling that some of the salespeople - not all, but definitely some - wanted us out of their stores as quickly as possible. So, we headed back down East, where people are funky and laid-back and not-glarey. We got some energy via iced coffee and headed off for Atwater Village.

* Atwater Village can be summed up by Christina and I looking around for it, driving a certain loop a few times over, getting there and saying, "This is worth all the hype?" It is the home of the Beastie Boys' indie record label, though, and you gotta love the boys. Oh, and there's an India Sweets and Spices on Los Feliz Blvd.

* From Atwater Village, we took Glendale Blvd. (which later turns into Colorado Blvd.) through Silverlake, Los Feliz (cool downtown, which I had never seen), Eagle Rock (another cool downtown), and across the beautiful Colorado bridge back into Pasadena. We decided to go to Aardvark's for a little more cheap shopping and we both scored with some neat purchases with the hefty price tage of $5 p/item.

It was amazing -- we had driven all over the city and only used the freeway once. Impossible, some would say.

I was watching a Sex and the City episode filmed in L.A. a few days ago, one in which they're driving up a hill and Carrie, trying to handle the stick shift, is not doing so well. "I thought L.A. was supposed to be flat," she whines, and Miranda replies, "I think they mean culturally." That is just one of the subtle barbs that pervades the general public's thinking about L.A. Everyone thinks the place is nothing but a big freeway, or one big drive-by, or perhaps one big movie star playground, but that really is just one big stereotype. Not only is L.A. rounded culturally by its history, architecture, and artrs, most of its people are rounded, too. We're - shock! - real, mostly non-pretentious types, especially (I think) over on the East side.

Leaving the freeway system is great fun, something that everyone should spend a day doing. Your orientation becomes enlightened. You finally figure out that all these freeway exit streets indeed have a role beyond being freeway exits. They actually go places. Once you know some of the main streets, Western, Wilshire, Olympic, Melrose, Los Feliz, Colorado, you begin to see all the little connections between the neighborhoods and as Dr. Sarah Arroyo always says, it's all about the connections. Because figuring out the connections between things inevitably leads to your own involvement in them.

Adele Griffin once wrote, "All it takes is one chum to shrink the world to a comfortable size." And, I would add, one good map.