I visited Los Angeles when I was a kid, but my only memories are vague
recollections of Mann's Chinese Theater and the long lineups at Disneyland. I
had no plans when I visited L.A. and no real list of anything I wanted
to see, other than Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall and the
Griffith Observatory.
I stayed at the
Stay on Main
hostel, downtown; you shouldn't. It's actually part of the Cecil Hotel building,
occupying a few floors of the same building, but with separate
entrances. The hostel looks very new and modern in pictures, but in
reality they've just splashed new white and orange paint over the old
Cecil rooms, and then thrown in new and weird furniture that looks like
it came out of a '60s mod movie like
A Clockwork Orange. They
have bunk beds directly under ceiling fans (sit up at night and you
might get whacked), and exposed electrical wiring in some rooms. More
problematically, they have real security issues, as it appears that they
have groups of people who will have only one person check in and pay,
and then invite their friends to stay in their room free of charge: I
had to get my room switched because of this, and no one at the front
desk seemed surprised.
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| Union Station by night. |
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The walk from Union Station to the hostel passes by L.A.'s gorgeous, art deco City Hall.
|
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| This being
car-centric L.A., there is a parking garage directly opposite the
Concert Hall. They were filming a car-intensive scene for a movie on the
garage that night (I believe it was for Fast & Furious 6,
but I have no idea), and they had light balloons deployed (they give
much softer and naturalistic light, with less noticeable shadows, than
point sources would provide). |
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| Turn the camera around 180° (and wait 12 hours), and this is the view you get. |
