USA: Los Angeles

Prologue:

NYC and by proxy the rest of the USA has been a mecca for me since 2005. Close to a decade later, I finally had the opportunity to visit a handful of its great cities (with the exception of Las Vegas, I hate that place).

The last time I wrote a blog about visiting a city, it was purely a personal reflection. Within a blink of an eye its actually been 2 years since I wrote it. This time round I thought I will combine elements of a regular travel blog with a bit of a personal reflection. I've started writing this sitting at LAX at the end of my trip (having just flown from NYC to LA with very little sleep), I hope I am coherent enough and I certainly hope this is as entertaining for you to read as it is will be for me to write.

3 weeks. I had 3 weeks to prioritise my time between about 100 different cities I wanted to see.

Obviously this wasn't possible and we had to cut our list down to 3 cities and some how Las Vegas managed to squeeze its way in.

Places that got cut included: San Diego, Washington DC, Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Orlando, New Orleans and whole lot more.

The places that we considered quintessential to our experience were of course: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas and New York City.

Los Angeles

What more can I say? Welcome to LA

Prior to visiting LA, no one had anything good to say about the city. "Its a shit hole" was the general consensus. Suffice to say, my expectations of this city weren't high.

I didn't know much about LA apart from what was taught in rap lyrics from NWA, Kendrick Lamar, Tupac and Snoop Dogg. My impression was that it was city filled with gangs and there were some beaches somewhere. Oh and of course the 3 Ws.

We didn't see much gangland warfare in the 4 days we were in LA, but the 3 Ws certainly held up. Though I won't lie, we didn't really get to meet many locals (girls).

We had 3 nights and we were willing to give this place a shot.
LAX certainly doesn't make a good first impression, it is by all means a "shit hole" of an airport. Its a draw of luck which terminal/gate your plane arrives in, another stroke of luck on how patient the TSA staff are with you that day.

Luckily though, we had some local connections who were more than hospitable and really made our LA experience something to remember (shout outs to GleeMoney aka. Young Glee aka. Doctor Gleenthumb and the rest of the crew). On the day of arrival, we had been to Beverly Hills, Hollywood, Fairfax and bunch of other neighbourhoods. Its obvious that if you didn't have your own car or someone to drive you around, you would hate LA.

Oh did I mention we saw Usher in Fairfax?
So we are about to cross the road to the Supreme store and a ridiculous car pulls over:

We had no idea who was in it, but I said "Wow, whoever drives that car must be an absolute douche bag".
We walked into Supreme and a short statured black man walks passed John and I in a purple shirt and a bush hat... lo and behold, it's Usher

Venice and Santa Monica beach were quite a sight to see. I met one of my heroes, a true west coast OG Mr. Animation doing a street show on Santa Monica pier.

The man himself: Mr Animation!

The Santa Monica area very closely resembles (in my opinion) the Bondi area in Sydney. Lots of bars and cafes and full of young professionals that don't want to live downtown, who move next to the beach "for the life style.

After spending 100s of hours playing GTA5 it was absolutely surreal to be visiting all these locations.

In fact at one stage in the car, I knew which way to go to get to the Chinese theatre, purely based on recognizing landmarks from GTA5.

Malibu was pretty cool too, in my mind I always thought of this touristy almost "Hawaiian" atmosphere (not that I've ever been to Hawaii). But it actually turned out quite the opposite, there were a lot of beach houses but beaches themselves were very very empty.

We had some great times getting absolutely shit faced drinking at a rooftop bar in LA on a Sunday and eating ourselves silly at Roscoe's fried chicken and waffles. LA definitely as a lot better than most tourists before me has let on.

Needless to say, our introduction to the US of A was seamless and absolutely fantastic. Again, shout outs to Glee Money aka. Young Glee aka. Doctor Gleenthumb and the rest of the crew (Des, Bryan and Dewan).
As well as Cindy for driving us to Malibu.

SF and NYC are just around the corner.

Notable places:

Santa Monica Beach/Pier

Venice Beach
Malibu
Abbot Kinney Blvd - Venice
Super cool area with lots of cool/cute stores and places to eat, walking distance from Venice beach.

Roscoe's Fried Chicken
If you've come from a country with a very limited selection of fried chicken beyond KFC, then you need to check this place out. The crispiest of all crispy fried chickens (not that big of a fan of the waffle+syrup combo though). If you're ready for a heart attack then try the chicken with the gravy, make sure you eat it whilst its still hot, the gravy is actually just lard and is terrible cold lol

Eight Korean BBQ - KTown
Great place for KBBQ, apparently its usually really packed. Its specialty is the 8 types of marinated meats. Very tasty!
The Boiling Crab - KTown

Most of the sights you'll want to see are really spread apart and traffic is absolutely terrible.
It took us almost 35 minutes to travel about 4km

I would almost recommend staying in Santa Monica if you can't be bothered renting/driving a car around.

I was originally going to write a section about Las Vegas too, but I can't be bothered and nothing that interesting happened there anyway.