Adventures On the Road

There’s just something about LA that makes you smile when you say, ‘I’m on my way to LA’ or ‘I’m in LA for the week’.  Sunshine, palm trees, great food and celebrity sightings, that’s what you think of when you think about LA.

For one week Fig and 9th was my home, the downtown corridor was my cafeteria, FedEx was my office and people asked me for directions.  And I could actually give people directions, instead of saying, ‘ooooh sorry, I’m not from here’.

During the Grammy’s and NBA All Star Weekend the palm trees were in abundance, it was a different trendy restaurant every night, and the celebrities flocked to town, but unfortunately the sunshine didn’t get the memo or else it had a big case of stage fright.  Not only was there very little sun, but it actually rained.  Rained.  There was drizzle, spitting, misting, rain showers, thunder showers, heavy rain and sprinkling.  (If you’re from Vancouver you know that there are endless types of rain). And people get desperate if they’re out and not expecting rain in LA.  Desperate, like paying $200 for an umbrella, desperate.  It’s a true story.

Despite the temperamental rainy weather, we did see some sunshine and the festivities continued on.  Unsurprisingly the sports enthusiasts were out in full force, rain or shine.  Surprisingly, the number of celebrity/athlete groupies that were hanging around almost matched the sport enthusiasts in number.  Teenage boys wearing basketball jerseys of their favourite team were bouncing off the walls trying to chase after the players.  Girls in short shorts and sleek flat ironed hair would teeter down the streets in their high heels.  I couldn’t help but almost feel the pain in the balls of their feet, and I did notice that although a lot of women were walking towards the stadium in their heels, they were walking away from the stadium in flip flops.

The biggest surprise were the groupies that would hang out in the lobby of the hotel.  Yes, we were staying at one of the official host hotels.  But really?  Walking into the lobby we were greeted by a crowd of girls (and a few guys) all dressed up standing in the foyer.  They weren’t sitting at the bar and casually keeping an eye on the door, they were standing in front of the door, eyes fixated on any movement at the entrance.

If I could have taken a photo without being too obvious I would have, instead, we spent time taking photos during the 1 hour of sunshine on Sunday morning.