Sarah from San Diego/ Australia
Hiking to the Hollywood sign
Batman's Cave
In and Out burgers
Mumford's brewery
Santa Monica Pier
Angel City brewery
The Pie Hole
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Today was a phenomenal day!
I travelled with Sarah up the East coast of Australia. We both share a love of beer tasting which there was ample opportunity for in Australia, and today in LA. Sarah drove up from San Diego bringing friends with here- it was a good chance to talk to Americans in America.
There's a 3.5 mile hike from the parking lot up a very steady slope to the back of the Hollywood sign. It was quite hot by the time we were doing it, at around 10am, so it's probably for the best that it's not steep. The track weaves through the scrub covered, shade-less, Hollywood hills. There are great views of the city below- neither the fog nor the smog were too bad today. However we couldn't see as far as the ocean , which is sometimes possible. During the climb we met a few groups horses. Somehow there are stables in the valleys. They must have to ship in all of the food and looks to be around 30 horses to care for. Tourists pay for it all, taking short rides out to the sign and back. Doesn't look too exciting, I'll be honest, compared to riding in the outback of Aus or the lowlands of Middle-Earth/NZ.
At the summit we had a great view of the surrounding city and suburbs. The letters of the sign have a 7 foot fence around them, as well as cameras. This means photo opportunities are somewhat limited. Yet at the top someone was making a low budget music video. I'd been wondering why this guy was carrying the large case up the hill. Turned out to be a violin and his friend have a camera and tripod to film him playing at the cliff edge over looking Hollywood. He was really good as well!
Being Hollywood this place has been used for a lot of films. Not far from the parking lot was a very popular spot for cowboy films. Here the flat road curves around between two hills making it perfect of chase or general road scenes with horses and carriages. In the 60's some bright spark decided to blow a short tunnel through the hillside. This was used as the exit to the batcave for that era's Batman to series. Whenever he drove the batmobile out of the batcave it was filmed here. It was so good to get into the cave- it was cool and refreshing after the heat of the day.
Today the location was still being used for something. The set up of tents and cameras looked very impressive, as did the crew. Maybe they were part of it or seperate- because Indiana Jones was looking rough. Up one hillside stumbled Indiana, along with a fat man in a white suit, fez, and dodger woollen beard, followed by a small Indian guy. It's hard to know these days if it was a low budget college project or a high budget project made to look low budget.
In and Out is the USA's 16th largest food chain. Owned by one family they have successfully out competed McDonalds on much of the west coast. It's rumoured that the only reason they don't move east is that McDonalds pays them to not do so. Officially the reason is that they need the fresh produce that makes their food so good and all of their suppliers are in the west.
It's a simple menu- burger, optional cheese, optional double cheese and burger. There's also fries and really good, thick, milkshakes. Simple. Oh, and the "secret" menu, which includes such greats as 'animal style'- a covering of grilled onions, special sauce, and cheese, that can be ordered with the burgers or fries. What's more it's as cheap as McDonalds, and I'd guess it's healthier (not by much, but vs McD it's not hard)
Sarah also got me a wee paper hat. The type that the employees wear. Thanks Sarah.
It's quite shocking to drive around parts of LA. The next area we went to was near the wholesale district. On the way though I took note of the large number of homeless people living on the street, especially those who'd gone so far as to invest in cheap tents and set them up on the sidewalk. Later I would watch a news report about LA changing certain laws which limit the amount of stuff the homeless can own, that they must be able to move what they own, and that they can only sleep on the street from (fuzzy memory time-about) 11pm to 6am. The news report showed the law being enforced on the same people as we'd passed. Dear America, outlawing being homelessness doesn't cure homelessness! We tried it in Europe in the Victorian era, over 150 years ago and it didn't work. We used welfare programs, projects, and charity, mostly provided by our richest families, to help such people get into a state where they can find work and housing.
2000AD's Megacity 1 doesn't feel like such a fantasy all of a sudden.
The reason we were here was for Mumford's Brewery- one of the many new independent craft breweries in America. We grabbed a wee quarter pint of nearly everything to try. I'm not consistently the greatest fan of craft beers- they can be trying so hard to do something "original" or "different" they forget to make something worth drinking. This is, for me, particularly true when they base all of their flavour on the hops instead of the cereals, water quality and yeast. We managed to find some decent ones though and had a pint of our favourites. I went with the Koala Food which had a fruity hint of cinnamon to it.
Nearly sunset and this being the west coast we drove down to see it. Like everyone else.
Santa Monica pier is the end of Route 66 and is filled with bright flashy attractions along with food, music, and someone in a sun burnt Minnie Mouse costume. There's also a large Bubba Shrimp restaurant. Based off the Bubba Shrimp company founded by Forrest Gump in the film it sells sea food and merchandise from the film. There's a bench outside with a statue of the sneakers he was wearing, his little suitcase and box of chocolates as he told his story. This pier also happens to the place he came to when he was running coast to coast across America, hitting this spot as his most westerly point.
As the sun went down I dipped my feet in the freezing waters of the Pacific Ocean. No one was swimming in the cold. The waves were fierce too- I watched a whole family get swamped when they thought they could be brave.
That done it was time to try out a couple more breweries. Angel city was our second one and we spent a few hours here. Outside they had an area with food trucks. These are very popular here. One of them was a Pittsburgh based truck selling their traditional food including tots- a bit like hash browns in a cocktail sausage shape. So dinner was tots with pulled pork. And cheese. Everything comes with cheese here.
The beers were cool except one we tried which was very, VERY, hot. It was more a cocktail than a beer, featuring a chilli and tomato juice in the recipe. It was nice but I don't think I would have enjoyed a whole one. Especially not in the morning.
The place had been a warehouse of some kind so had a large open space. The breweries here have more than just the usual pool table and darts. There were a number of games such as one where teams of competitors threw bean bags a long distance into a small hole, and the classics of table tennis and foose ball.
On the way back Sarah stopped off to try out The Pie Hole. Savoury pies in NZ and Aus are standard snack food. Here they've made them a posh speciality, high quality and low in fat. It's ruined them! Now it's just a floury mess. But people are prepared to pay for something different.
Great day to catch up with Sarah and spend some time with Americans seeing the highlights of LA.
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