Elysian Park
Yesterday me and Sean went exploring. This time we went looking for Echo Park, but ended up in what later turned out to be Elysian Park, a huge park just 5 minutes drive from Downtown. As always in Los Angeles, you find the most unexpected things just around the corner. We were able to drive up a rather large hill, to catch a very nice view of Downtown, as seen in the background of the picture.
Cinco de Drinko at TBWA Chiat Day
Since it’s been a while since my last post, I should probably first of all announce that I’ve moved on to another job here in Los Angeles. I now work at TBWA\Chiat\Day. While you may or may not have heard of TBWA, you probably know their work. Among other things they are responsible for all Apple and all Absolut commercials. And with 12.000 employees in 258 TBWA offices worldwide, Chiat\Day is the biggest one. Needless to say I am very excited to start working for a company of this magnitude. And so far, it is really enjoyable.
God is in the details, like the saying goes. Details like having a Cinco de Mayo celebration with tequila and beer on a wednesday afternoon, and announcing it with Sombrero wearing chiuahuas declaring the day “Cinco de Drinko”. Stuff likes that really makes work endurable, you know!
Oh yeah, Sean dislocated his shoulder monday night by the way. That’s a tale for another time though, but the moral of that story is: Do not get sick in the US… Healthcare here is a joke.
The Human Party
On April 24 2010, my good friends in Los Angeles threw one of the most, in the true sense of the word, epic parties ever seen.
At The Couch.
Set on top of a mountain in the Hollywood Hills, this noble undertaking was nothing less than a farewell to the last public land in Los Angeles.
It was supposed to be a sleepover, but a police helicopter came and broke the party up. The helicopter came around a few times, with threats of sending police officers up the mountain to arrest us. Some brave souls called their bluff, and stayed until the helicopter ran out of fuel and had to pull out, but sadly most of us had already made our way down by then, and the party was over. Nevertheless, we had many hours of fun, and it will be something that won’t soon be forgotten.
Huge thanks to Max, Sarah and Sergio, and everyone else who made the party happen.
Click image for full size.
Earthquake!
Last week I experienced my first “big” earthquake! It was 6.9 on the Richter Scale with it’s epicentrum a couple of miles off the coast, not too far from Los Angeles. I got pretty seasick from the house rocking back and forth. Freaky!
Hiking and Ziplining in the Hollywood Hills
This is another hike, this time in the Hollywood Hills. This post is also way overdue, since it happened the day after the Malibu hike, which is now about 3 weeks ago. Max, Sarah and Matt asked us if we wanted to go to “The Couch”, which actually is exactly that, a couch… This couch is in a pretty sweet location though, it’s right on top of one of the Hollywood Hills. We went, and after an excruciating hike up the hills (I’m terribly out of shape) we finally arrived at our destination. And it was even better than I could ever imagine.
The skyscrapers in the distance are Downtown Los Angeles. Beverly Hills to the far right, and Hollywood below.
On this particular peak we had a 360 view of most of the areas in Greater Los Angeles. Down below us on this side is Universal Studios, to the far right.
This is The Couch. A raggedy old thing that someone, Max presumably, has dragged all the way up here. No idea how or how long it took, but it must have been a lot of hassle. But totally worth it!
Max is extremely crafty by the way. He has somehow built a zipline(!) that runs between the hills! And we got to ride it!!!
This is the couch seen from the other side of the canyon, after riding the zipline. As you can see, the zipline is pretty long.
The reason for my grunting noises, shaky camera and weird laugh is because I am actually riding the zipline more or less upside down, getting my balance back just in time for the landing. EPIC ride!
High on adrenaline and very happy.
When the sun was about to start setting, we started hiking down the hills again. But this great day was not over yet.
We drove our cars to a vantage point below the Hollywood sign (which is on the hill next to the one we climbed, we were above and behind it), and had a barbeque on the pick-up truck. We stayed until sundown, and then we headed home again, happy and very content.
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Hiking in Malibu
It’s actually been 2 weeks since this happened, but it’s worth posting. Me and Sean met up with Sergio, who we first met at the Movits! concert, for the march Art Walk. He brought 2 friends with him, Max and Sarah. Then Sergio had to bail (which later has been established as “pulling a Sergio”), so me and Sean just hung out with Max and Sarah for the rest of the evening. We pretty much instantly hit it off as we were cruising around the bars. We made tons of plans, as usual when drunk, but this time it actually felt like we were going to do most of them.
And only 2 days later the first plan was put to action, hiking in the mountains above Malibu.
We went up a hill, down a valley, and up a trail, following a stream of water which eventually brought us to a pool of water where a waterfall was flowing down form the mountain above.
It seemed like most people didn’t go higher than that, but we decided to climb the mountain to get to the waterfalls source. After some climbing we managed to get to an even bigger waterfall. And behind the waterfall was a cave!
The waterfall from behind. The awesomeness doesn’t really show in the clip, but it was just amazing.
The rock was covered in some cozy green stuff, but it wasnt slippery as I first imagined, so climbing was easy. Staying dry was impossible though, I was soaked when we were done climbing the waterfall.
This is as high as we could get. We couldn’t get on top of the waterfall, but we got on top of the cliff next to it. If you look closely, you¨ll see that the rock we are sitting on is just shooting out straight into mid air, and below is a really deep canyon. Far behind us you can see some houses on a hill, which gives you a hint on how high up we are, and behind that is only ocean and sky.
Ever so eventful
A lot of stuff has been going on lately. I’ve made a bunch of new friends, been hiking in both Malibu (where we found a waterfall and climbed into a cave behind it! Stunning!) and the Hollywood Hills (where Max had built his own zipline, which we got to ride! Stupendous! Marvelous! Magnificent!!!), among other things. These events are documented on both film and in pictures, will post them shortly.
(Seriously, shortly!)
Slow Sunday in Downtown
Today we went sightseeing a bit in Downtown. MOCA, The Museum of Contemporary Arts, is located just a few blocks from us, so we decided to go check it out. It wasn’t as great as I expected though. The Modern Museum in Stockholm was actually a lot better in my opinion. Both bigger and more diverse. Besides the MOCA in Downtown, there is also another one down in Little Tokyo. Our tickets allowed admission to both museums, so we took a stroll to Little Tokyo and had a look. This one was slightly better, but most of the stuff was just plain boring. Then again, I’m usually not impressed at all with modern art, in fact I found at least 50% of what we saw today to be utter bullshit. Well, on our way back from there we found this awesome wall painting though. Notice the resemblance?
On our way back up to Downtown(yes, down is up) we went by an entrance to a minimall in Little Tokyo that we had seen before but never actually entered, so we decided to eat dinner there. We ate at the Ramen place in the picture, which only had 3 things on the menu… and they were all noodle soups.A funny thing was that after you decided which soup you wanted, you also had to tell the waitress how spicy you wanted it on a scale of 1-7. I picked the Soy Soup with a hotness of 4, which was spicy enough to make me cry and cough throughout the meal… And I consider myself fairly resistant to spicy food. I don’t even want to know what a 7 is.
This is on our back home after the noodle soup, which actually was the best noodle soup I’ve ever had. Here’s looking east on Spring Street, i.e. “our street”. Our apartment building is just beyond the red lights to the right.
Yellow Raspberries
Here’s another nice little curiosity that I stumbled upon. Yellow raspberries! They taste exactly the same as regular raspberries though. It’s interesting how you can fool your brain depending on just the color of what you eat. When your brain is execting one thing and your taste buds disagree.