The Third Street Promenade is a range of shops, mostly clothes, in the form of a street mall. From there the beach is just a couple of streets away, and it basically extends for miles along the coast. There was quite a few people sleeping by the side of the beach, unless I was mistaken it actually seemed to be a mix of homeless and travelers / backpackers.
The pier at Santa Monica is a bit of a tourist thing, a small carnival and some souvenir shops. Some kind of circus was there too.
 |
| Third Street. |
 |
| They use this big roller to keep the beach flat. |
A (fairly) short walk south of Santa Monica and Venice Beach takes over. Although it was a Saturday morning, the weather was in the low 20's and it wasn't high tourist season, so the beaches were pretty empty. They do run for miles though, and there's plenty of parking, so it would probably be a great place at other times of the year.
You'll know you're at Venice when you reach the beach-side stalls. Just like the beach, they go on for miles, all selling a random assortment of junk. It went for so long that I eventually had to give up any plans of reaching the end and turn back to get some lunch. Although I had planned for less walking today, I mapped out the day and it came in at around another 12 kilometres.
On the bus ride down I noticed a sports card shop out the window, so decided to walk back to that before finding a bus back. The bus ride down to Santa Monica seemed to make stops every street or two, but after waiting for, then seeing a bus just go straight past what I thought was the bus stop someone told me the next stop is either 4 blocks west or 4 blocks east from there. Why so far I have no idea.
I hadn't been paying attention to what day was halloween when organising the LA part of the trip, so rather than doing something for halloween, tickets for the Clippers vs Mavericks had already been purchased. Before the game we were having dinner in a local Mexican fast food place (Sharky's) and about 20 cops all came in at once for a meal. It appears as though they were about to start a shift in Hollywood for halloween, but it reminded me of a segment from the Letterman show where people in costumes get sent into a store all at once.
The Clippers and Mavericks game was quite similar to the previous game. The Clippers were a bit up and down, before falling behind in the third quarter and never getting back in it. The people (stats and/or radio guys I think) sitting just in front of us in many of these photos seem to have the easiest job in the world. One guy was on Facebook half of the time, others were just looking at box scores on Yahoo, and others just seem to be sitting there. The only real work I saw done by the whole group was whenever there was a timeout or break in play. At this point they'd print out the player stats of the game in progress, some guy would come and collect the printouts then run across to the other side of the court and give them to the coaches.
 |
| At half time they got a whole bunch of people onto the court to do the Thriller dance. |
Getting back to the hotel took longer than expected as they'd shut down the Hollywood & Highland train station due to halloween. Therefore we had to get off one stop earlier at Hollywood & Vine and walk the rest. Walk is a bit of an exaggeration, because we were barely moving due to the sheer size of the crowds on the streets, most of which seemed to be moving in the opposite direction - some event must have just finished up, but I don't know what or where. The outfits people had on, and just the whole area, was something of an experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment