Passing out while watching a movie in bed the night before hadn't accomplished anything positive. At least I wasn't too hungover, but it certainly didn't help my dehydration. The focus of the whole day would be on enduring the again relentless sun and drinking lots of fluids. I must have drank a gallon of bottled iced teas, lemonades and iced water throughout the day, and, probably a good indicator of dehydration, I didn't pee much out and not until evening. I vowed that this experimentation of reacquainting myself with drinking, under the excuse of "vacation," wasn't a great idea. So I had no more.
I was determined to make the best of it though and set out around 9:30 for LACMA, the art museum the tour bus went by yesterday. Here are some shots of the streetscape on the way from the hotel to the Metro station. Cool sculpture at the entrance to the Ernst & Young Building. Not sure what the office workers passing this each day think about it. To me, it seems to be making a "head in the sand" reference to the idea of the mindless corporate drone white collar worker archetype.
I was determined to make the best of it though and set out around 9:30 for LACMA, the art museum the tour bus went by yesterday. Here are some shots of the streetscape on the way from the hotel to the Metro station. Cool sculpture at the entrance to the Ernst & Young Building. Not sure what the office workers passing this each day think about it. To me, it seems to be making a "head in the sand" reference to the idea of the mindless corporate drone white collar worker archetype.
The subway only goes as far west on the Purple Line under Wilshire Blvd. to Wilshire and Western. I had to get out there and continue down Wilshire to Fairfax via bus. LA buses are horrible. Old (compared to Orlando's new LYNX line) and poorly air-conditioned. The buses, like the subway, and so many sidewalks also have the ever-present homeless too. I knew there would be a sizable and visible homeless population before arriving, of course, but the numbers are daunting, even when compared to my experiences of New York City. I really don't think I could endure seeing this day-in and day-out. And, sorry, but some of them reeked so bad, what with my already queasy stomach, I was nearly losing the banana I had for breakfast.
I got off at Fairfax and feeling a bit better after a block of walking in the fresh air and shade, I decided first to head over to the Farmer's Market and The Grove. Again I was surprised to find the walk a lot farther than I'd planned out weeks ago on Google Maps. And much of it was shadeless. So I was again feeble, sweating and tired.
I thought low-blood sugar may have something to do with it too so I decided to have a fairly hearty lunch of a grilled BLT and fresh-squeezed lemonade at Short Order, a small overly-pretentious eatery just on the outskirts of the Farmer's Market. The wait staff seemed to take it personally when I had them take back the "diet Coke" I'd ordered since it was some local brand diet cola, not diet Coke, and was a flat, chemical-tasting assault to my taste buds. This place was a bit "organic, all-natural, local grown" hippie-dippy and the soda was undoubtedly a beloved hand-crafted, all-natural soda maker. Well, maybe it was naturally carbonated by Mother Nature's farts, but it definitely was sweetened with the decidedly un-natural artificial sweetener saccharin. The lemonade I ordered to replace it was pretty good although it tasted just like a Mike's Hard Lemonade without the alcohol. The BLT...well, how can you fuck up a BLT? Well, come to think of it, the bacon was way overdone. Aw hell, the lunch sucked. And at $17 for a soft drink and a sandwich, before tip, it was overpriced too.
As I made my way into the alleyways of the Farmer's Market proper, I saw multiple concessions I could have ordered good eats at. Damn!
I took a couple of pics of the stalls at the Farmer's Market but they came out very blurry so I didn't include them. Instead, here's a few pics of The Grove, the somewhat posh shopping/dining area adjoining the Farmer's Market. The trolley is an operational one, but it runs only back and forth from The Grove to the Farmer's Market...a short walk even in my condition so I saw no reason to ride it. The old-tyme car is outside the Farmer's Market.
Made my way in the brutal sunshine back down Fairfax to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) which had this long walkway under this huge boulder. (Notice the people under the boulder in the first pic as size reference.) Cool looking, but as I was making my way up the walkway from the gully under the rock, in the searing heat, I was grunting and sweating like a pig.
Before entering the museum proper, I opted to view a special exhibit by a minimalist artist who set up one huge room with special lighting and covering designed to reflect the ambient colorful light to create quite the visual equivalent of an acid trip. I was made to take off my shoes and don little white gauze foot protector slipper-things and stepped up a few stairs into this room which was sloped, had no discernible boundary between floor, walls, and ceiling and had a glowing portal at the far end, down the slope, that the docent said would have a four-foot drop off and I was cautioned to avoid. It took only a couple of minutes and I was again thoroughly dizzy and nearly nauseous. Great, just what I needed.
In the Contemporary Art building there were some interesting pieces and this huge glass-walled room-sized elevator (which also made me more queasy). On the top floor there was a walkway to the outdoor stairs which, despite the slight vertigo to add to my symptoms, afforded these views...note the Hollywood sign again off in the distance.
