My day trip to Venice

A couple of weekends ago I managed to go to Venice. Venice is a whole different world compared to East LA, so I'll just write about my basic observations.

Venice is beautiful. It is a city filled with the history of the silent movie era. It was the home of Marion Davies, Thelma Todd, and others. It is the city of canals and it sits right next to the beach. It offers art, beautiful sites, and the innovative Abbott Kinney is a clean hipster haven.

Compared to the east side, Venice shows off its wealth but denies even having it. Venice is like a rich rapper trying to claim he's from Compton, it just isn't the case. Venice is good to visit, but sometimes it can also be annoying.

I got to go see the Venice canals and eat at a restaurant called Gjelina.

I went to the Gjelina take away right after seeing the canals. I had the veggie sandwich and I asked them to make it vegan. Generally food in Abbott Kinney is quite easy to make vegan so there wasn't any problems with that request. 

The veggie sandwich was good. It wasn't AMAZING, but it was good. Using a massive variety of pickled vegetables, the sandwich becomes a standard vegetable sandwich. It wasn't awful and it did the job of filling me up. 

I only wish I was amazed.   

Venice is always a good place to visit. It is a combination of rich hipster and new age ideas that put it on the top of the map. If you have a day to spare, share it with Venice.

We're Not The Bad Guys

So it may seem like I cheated on you, but that's not the case. I promise you that I had no ability to write on this blog in any way. I was away from my computer for a whole week because I was in, sigh, the east bay.

I had to go to the east bay for a small commercial job and being there made me remember why I have such a hard time with northern California. See, living here I have always known about the North vs. the South issue in California, but I never really participated in it. To me, everyone is the same, we're either annoying or awesome no matter where we came from. However it seems that wherever I went, I was the only person that had that thought process. What I'm trying to say is, whenever I meet someone from the north, they always tend to stick their noses up when I say I'm from the south. When I went to the east bay for that job, everyone on that job was a complete jerk. 

Now, I know the argument might be the same from down here. People in LA might be rude and disgusted to hear that you're from a certain region of the world. Hell, I still feel a twinge of repugnance when I hear I have to go to the valley to get something or even when I hear someone is from the valley. However I'm trying to change that. 

I know that LA is notorious for being horrible, and, truthfully I don't get it. The people I've met have always been cordial and kind to me. They don't go out of their way to make me feel like I'm in heaven, but they treat me like a human being. People here follow a general moto; be kind to me, and I'll do the same to you.

Which is why I get so confused why the North seems so revered and the south is so criminalized. Maybe it is the people from the North that boast about their importance and amazement so much that the rest of the world believes them, or maybe it is an internalized residual prejudice from the civil war, but for some weird reason northern california is considered the best, and southern california is the shit on everyone's shoe. I simply wish that was changed.

LA is an amazing town that has as much to offer as does San Francisco. If you're lost on the subway we'll tell you where to get off or where to go, and if you need someone to take your picture, we'll push the button. We'll never boast about how amazing we are compared to you though, that's a northern thing.

My thoughts on this post is that hopefully the state will stop trying to separate each other and just accept who we are. We are Californians. We are an amazing state. We have history, and we have great food. We're all the same, and we should be happy to live on these great plains. 

Flashback Fridays #3

So here is another Flashback Friday, and this one will involve a very interesting item. It seems that I have written so far about a person, a place, and now I find it appropriate to write about a thing. Categorizing things by types of nouns is quite fun.

So here is the next historical fact...

#3 The Cobb Salad

The Brown Derby was a chain of restaurants that ruled Hollywood from the 1920s to the 1950s. Hollywood elite constructed and formed their major scandals and stories within these four restaurants. However I am not here to talk about that. What I am here for, are the Cobb salad stories.

The Brown Derby at Hollywood and Vine had a lot of historical rumors attached to it. It is supposedly where Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons ate at, and where Clark Gable proposed to Carole Lombard. It is also where the Cobb salad originated from.

I've read different stories based on how to Cobb came to be. The first one was that it was late and the restaurant was closing up. A regular, and a good friend of the owner Robert Cobb, walked in and asked for something to fill him up. There wasn't a lot of food left, since it was the end of the day and they were packing up, so the chef, Chuck Wilson, simply used what was left. When the friend asked what the salad was, the chef replied, "a Cobb salad".

Another story was that the famous Sid Grauman,  founder of the Pantages, Grauman's Chinese theater, as well as others, came in and asked for something that didn't require a lot of chewing due to the fact he had dental surgery.  The result was the Cobb Salad. 

It is disputed whether chef, Chuck Wilson, or owner, Robert Cobb were the founders or creators of the salad, but whatever the answer is, it came from the fantastic building. Sadly the building experienced fire damage in 1987, riot damage in 1992, and overall the complete wreckage in the late 2010s. The building is completely gone now, and all that is left is a parking lot (on the bottom of this article). The Cobb Salad is an item owned by Hollywood history, and, it takes its place as third flashback friday.

What I Didn't Realize...

Coming back home there was something I realized that I really didn't understand before...

We live in paradise.

Growing up in this city, I've always heard the same thing about Los Angeles being a haven for not exhibiting the extremes of weather. As I got older, I understood that. I understood others flocked here to get away from the cold, I understood that the temperature in LA has always remained consistent throughout the year (except for August and September), and I understood that here, the sun always shines. However, I always wondered why people didn't want to experience the seasons. 

I thought that until I dealt with it myself. Then I finally got it. However, that is not why I think LA is paradise.

Traveling last year and seeing LA in the past couple of weeks, I realized Los Angeles is a paradise because it is a city that didn't accept its role as a concrete jungle. 

I have always considered my town a city, but I never realized that it took a different role to that. I don't know why, or I don't know how, but Los Angeles deliberately took the role of sustaining nature as a essential aspect of its image. 

I didn't see how nature or foliage was so abundant in this town. I always figured that other towns and cities were like my own. I assumed that during the 1970s the government decided to destroy the real natural beauty of LA like it did with Jimmy Carter's reputation, but it didn't, it used it as a source of energy. 

LA is a safe haven of vegetation. Wildlife roam free, and food is abundant. Each morning there is a cool breeze omitted from the dew drops formed on the leaves, and walking around you free clean and refreshed. This was something that I did not experience last year.

Last year I was sick most of the year. I was dealing with various forms of depression based on health. Going outside was tearing away at my insides. Getting off the plane I would walk around with massive headaches. Every night, when I would wash my face, I would have a residue of black gunk. The issues of pollution in asia were endless.

However above all, I felt a large portion of Asia didn't let nature naturally run its course in the city. It never integrated itself comfortably in the city's individual atmospheres. It became two separate entities. With LA, nature and modernity, go hand in hand.  

What I didn't realize was that LA has always taken the initiative to keep the true beauty of the world alive. The city might be a growing metropolis, but it's a land that still wants Mother Earth to be apart of it.

And I am now grateful for that.