October 18 - 23 -- Palm Springs to LA

I have never been more lost in my life -- in a place with one main road -- than arriving late at night into Palm Springs.  I had called the hotel for directions and the guy had assumed without asking that I was coming from LA.  The directions also included "drive toward the mountain," in the pitch, black dark, in a windstorm.  I eventually rolled up,

a little the worse for wear, having an internal conversation about what the Dalai Lama would do.  The guy eventually gave me free breakfast, and showed me to a room that, I am pretty sure, is the sample in their brochure.  (It bears an uncanny resemblance, and would seem hard to duplicate exactly.  I unpacked and repacked the car while I was there, making it more cluttery in my photo.)

I was staying at the Viceroy in Palm Springs, a Regency style resort with white stucco bungalows and rooms, a few manicured pools, and surprisingly good food -- the kind of place where the bun is not taken for granted, as in, if you order a turkey burger and the bun is not mentioned on the menu, it comes over salad.  (Maybe this is just California.)

I found the place as a Mr. and Mrs. Smith property, so I shouldn't have been surprised that there were many people of British accent floating around.  The second night I was there, I went to eat dinner in the outdoor cafe, and tripped spectacularly over a raised stone -- in red keds and a sundress.  The waiter kept checking to make sure I was okay, which always makes me feel like they are making sure I am not going to sue them.


The next morning, I went for a walk into town.  Even when I have gone somewhere for the express purpose of sequestering myself and checking out, I always want to see where the people are.  The nearest shopping strip was of the sort with literally nothing to buy -- unless you were in the market for postcards, t-shirts, and whimsical crafts sold at a gallery called "Cilantro."  Thus, I landed at the Starbucks.  (There would be a long, local coffee shop streak, starting in the next city.)


I struck up conversation with a woman who lives in Berkeley, is trained as a lawyer, and deals in art.  Twenty minutes later, she said something astrological, and I asked her about my own sign (Cancer).  She said Cancers have been tied in knots, very boxed in for about five years and they are now getting free.  She thought I would enjoy this and look for companionship, but not want to get married anytime soon, just have fun for a while.  (I couldn't tell if her soon was in months or years.)  


From Palm Springs, I awoke early on the 23rd and, in the span of a day, drove to LA, spent the day in the city, and then headed all the way up the coast to Big Sur.  It felt really normal to be in California.  Palm trees, low-slung desert, hard to believe I had driven all the way there.  

Some radio stations and songs are suited to their places.  American Pie, Don McLean, driving into LA, from the east, these big mountains and impossible palm trees and bright sun and erratic drivers. Perfect.

Having really not liked LA the first time I was there I have to say I do sort of love the place.  Soft spot.  And the effort to listen to the whole Don McLean was richly rewarded with The Romantics, Talking in Your Sleep, as I came into LA from the east on I-210.  If cities have their nature, there is something about LA that is about openness and speed.  Everyone’s rolling along in their car, Nate Dogg Regulate is on the radio.  There is simultaneously energy and floating, like the city is a big swimming pool.  It is so hard to recollect cities after the fact, a bubble of awareness easily punctured by an experience of another place. The feel of LA sticks with me.  On some trips, San Francisco washes over me, feels like a dream.

There are crazy amounts of old school rap on the radio in LA, in contrast to the not one but two Musak stations in Palm Springs.  On the way, I stopped at a gas station and saw a man in monastic robes (young and nice seeming and not un-handsome) pay for gas and then get into a car with a  bumper sticker that read:

"Half of all women who go into abortion clinics don't make it out alive." 

My first response was that the math is wrong -- more like a third, since only half of the fetuses are female, so twice as many mothers as female babies, re the total woman count.  

Something like that happens that is jarring and then you get back out on the road and have that swimming pool feeling again.  There is always something to look at.  I saw my first ever soft top Camry gold trim silver body tan top.  Otis Redding came on the radio, followed by American Pie again, making me wonder if it was a Buddy Holly anniversary.

I stopped in Pasadena, went to Vroman's independent bookstore, tooled around.  Here is a picture of Museum Legs at Vroman's:

I am lucky alphabetically that it ends up to one of my favorite books, Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees, by Lawrence Weschler about Robert Irwin.

I visited Book Soup in Hollywood, which is a great bookstore recently bought by Vroman's.  Excellent stationery buyer, who was also at the register. 

Onward to the LA County Museum of Art, where I had promised to sign their stock of books.  I met the lovely Felicia and Ben in the shop and sat at the cafe table outside to finish an essay from the Op-Ed Project.  LACMA is a hulking behemoth museum, many blocks long, of the same size as Detroit's Institute of Art.

Here is the sign for the New Topographies show, featuring the work of Frank Gohlke, fellow Hol Art books author.  The guard very kindly let me in to the member preview that day.

I was headed to Venice to see one more bookstore before driving north.  Driving through Culver City, down Venice Blvd, I started to think it looked familiar, like exactly the nondescript place where the Museum of Jurassic Technology is. 

Sure enough it was, so I parked and went in.

I asked the front desk person, Rachel, if Alexis Hyman was in because I had called her out, inadvertently, in Museum Legs -- printing her job title -- administrator - archivist - florist -- without remembering to ask.  They said Alexis was out and when I explained why I was looking for her they said she was out because it was her birthday.  I got to leave her a book as a gift.

I headed on to Equator Books in Venice, recommended by Amee's now husband Michael. Max Wheeler, the proprietor, is also the artist of a print I would have bought if it hadn't been over a thousand dollars.  In white spongy paint over baby blue background, it said "This is not an Ed Rushay" with curious line breaks.  The shop is beautiful, warm polished plywood -- it's not easy to be warm and minimalist at the same time, though serving Blue Bottle Coffee helps.  Max was super nice, though I felt, self-consciously, decidedly unlike a surf chick against the vibe of the store.

I didn't get a photo of Equator Books, but I did, without realizing it, commence the local coffee shop tour.  Down the street from Equator was, I think, Intelligentsia.  I didn't love their coffee, but I did love their space:

Here are some pictures of the Pacific Ocean, from Venice.  I had officially made it to the west coast.

Leaving LA, it was really bright in that flat white trafficy way.  Destined for a big traffic jam. I love LA in the mornings.  Jury’s still out on the afternoon.  Maybe I just like LA when I’m not driving into the sun.

Postscript:

A few days later, I got an email from college classmate Smith Glover asking what I was doing in Equator Books.  Smith lives three blocks around the corner.  Though I am really sorry to have missed him, I still have no idea how he knew I had been there.