Another early morning flight before the sun has come up. Seriously, what did I ever do to my assistant to deserve this? Luckily, I’m able to pass right out on the flight and five or so hours later wake up at LAX.
The first thing to note about LAX, and an absolute affront to my New York sensibilities, there is no designated cab line. There is just an area where people mill about until a cab arrives, then all jump for the same cab. Didn’t we all learn how to form a line the first week of kindergarten?
The second thing I noticed was drivers clearly did not give two f*cks. I witnessed at least five near accidents involving drivers who just were not paying attention, and at least ten times when cops tried to get drivers to move on after pulling over to wait in the taxi zone. Our cab driver even tried to argue when we requested he drive along the coast to our hotel in Santa Monica. Nine times out of ten when you get in a cab in New York, the driver will ask what route you’d prefer to take. Is Los Angeles just the most uncivilized city ever?
Our hotel, the Oceana Beach Club is an adorable boutique hotel across from the beach in Santa Monica. Unlike most beach cities I’ve been to, most of Santa Monica is on a cliff overlooking the beach, and our hotel was across the street from the park that ran along the cliff’s edge. So even though there were no other structures between the hotel and the ocean, the typical ocean-front view wasn’t available.
For lunch we had the Trust Me at SugarFish. The Trust Me is a 6-course omakse menu that ran us $27 each. While good sushi is not hard to find in New York, anyone who’s been to Sushi Nakazawa or Shugko can tell you, it’s certainly not $27. No dig on either of those places, SugarFish was just a great, solid meal for a good price, and I’m a little jealous that LA has such easy access to good sushi.
And not that the Trust Me wasn’t enough food, but I’d been told there are baked crab handrolls in LA that you just cannot get in New York, so we crossed the street to Sushi Roku for dessert. The handrolls are fresh crab with drawn butter wrapped in rice and soy paper, then baked in a toaster over. Paired with a bottle of dry sake, and it was everything I needed before an afternoon of work.
I’d been very excited for dinner at Tar & Roses. The bone marrow, braised lamb belly, ricotta gnocchi and duck breast on their menu sounded fabulous, and we’d made reservations for a table in their backyard garden weeks in advance. Unfortunately, as we left the hotel to walk to dinner, we received a call saying they’d had an electrical blackout and were closed for the night. What?! How? What? Really, is Los Angeles the most uncivilized city?? I actually have to stop thinking about this now because it’s making me sad all over again…the blue crab toast, balsamic glazed ribs, roasted English peas, oxtail dumplings…Why???
Luckily there are plenty of other restaurants in the area and we were able to get a table at Boa, a very dark and crowded steakhouse.
I was intent on ordering the Wagyu until our server kindly pointed out that it was $25 an ounce, with a 6-ounce minimum. At least they had my favorite go-to wine Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc. Yes, real men drink whites. We ended up with French onion soup, beef carpaccio, crab cakes, short ribs, a Rib-Eye steak and lobster mashed potatoes. It was all good, particularly the short-ribs, but it was no braised lamb belly with minted apple chutney *sniff*
I couldn’t go to Santa Monica without visiting the world famous Santa Monica pier. Pacific Park, the amusement park on the pier was already closed, but there were plenty of signs advertising Funnel Cakes and Ice Creams, which got us thinking…
We made our way to The Misfit and ordered sea salt olive oil gelato and their house sea salt chocolate chip cookies. The gelato was a little weird to me, but the cookies were the perfect combination of sweet and salty.
The next day I was determined to spend some time at the beach. I’d noticed that even in the middle of the day it wasn’t very warm in Santa Monica, and the beaches were nearly empty. Growing up in New York, I’d had so many visions of southern California being warm, endlessly sunny with everyone at the beach all day long. I was told by locals it’s basically perfect jeans and t-shirt weather year-round, which sounds nice in theory, actually means it’s a little cold for beach weather. Nonetheless, we made our way down around 2 in the afternoon, and it was quite chilly and very windy. We lasted about 15 minutes before deciding to spend the rest of the afternoon working by the pool. Thank you, heated pool and wifi.
That night, a friend had arranged a trip to the Magic Castle. The Magic Castle is a Los Angeles institution, a private club for magicians.
We had dinner and drinks there (more short-ribs, and a delicious lobster), and headed into the main theater for the headlining act, a husband and wife duo with great tricks and fun jokes. (Did I mention there are many bars in the Magic Castle?) We were then shuffled off to our Houdini Séance, where we attempted to reach Houdini’s ghost. It was a little Disneyland-y, but still entertaining. We ended the night with a show in the Parlour of Prestidigitation, which included the traditional “pick a card, any card” trick, with a rubber ducky twist. All in good fun, though I do believe their reasonable prices for scotch heavily contributed to the fun. Since it was a weeknight, the castle was closing up early, and I don’t think we were able to experience as many things as we normally would on a weekend night – Irma, the resident ghost was already asleep when we tried to get her to play Smoke on the Water for us.
On the way back to Santa Monica, our friend treated us to two different taco trucks, because no night out experience in LA is complete without taco trucks. With all the food options in New York City, good quality Mexican food is hard to find, and I needed a good basis for comparison. The verdict: New York Mexican food is sh*t. The meat, the tortillas, everything was so much better there. Perhaps most interesting were the characters lurking around the taco trucks. While most patrons with intoxicated kids on their way home from a night out like us, there were also the “locals” who’d made the parking lot their home.
After another day of pool-side work and a day exploration of Santa Monica, we picked up our rental car and headed out to the desert. Along with visions of warm beach days, I’d always dreamt of speeding through the desert in a convertible à la Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It seems others shared this vision, as finding a convertible to rent, even with advance reservation and prepayment proved to be more difficult than expected. Two hours and some haggling with the guy at the Hertz counter later, we were finally on our way. The best thing about renting a car in Los Angeles, is KCRW – 89.9. Living in New York, it is so easy to avoid ever listening to the radio, and much harder to find new music. KCRW has an amazing mix of music genres and is never the same tired crap found on other popular radio stations. Added bonus, as a public radio station, there are no commercials. With KCRW blasting on the radio, after a quick stop for rations at Beverages and More, we made our way east.
On our way to Palm Desert we hit a stretch of freeway that seemed to have an In-n-Out at every exit. Having an In-n-Out burger has always been on my bucket list.
We stopped at the Baldwin Hills location – right next to the original In-n-Out location, and had an Animal Style double-double, a cheese burger and the off-menu Neapolitan shake. Good thing I was with someone who knew what to order. The burger, while good, didn’t have as much meat as I would have liked, but the shake was a thousand times better than anything I’ve ever had at Shake Shack. Maybe next time I’ll have to check out the 3×3 burger.
While this blog post is titled Coachella, I have to admit here that I’d driven out to the desert without an actual ticket to Coachella. A friend was meant to arrange a ticket to the sold-out festival for me, and had completed dropped the ball, which meant I was searching craigslist and brainstorming other ideas to get a ticket until the morning of the actual festival when a friend texted that she had won tickets off the radio in Los Angeles. Who even calls into radio stations anymore?? But, you know what they say about biting the hand that feeds…
The thing about winning tickets off the radio is that the tickets were in Palm Springs, where we were, and the Friend who had won them was at work in Los Angeles, and on the Friday of Coachella, the drive that had taken us an hour and a half the night before would have been at least a four hour drive. The radio station insisted the actual winner of the tickets pick them up, and there was no way Friend was going to be off work in time to make it to the desert. Luckily, I was traveling with someone who spent a good amount of time in college impersonating Friend to get into bars. We found another friend coming out to the desert earlier who could bring us her drivers license and made arrangements for the delivery.
While we waited for the id to arrive, we took a trip to the Desert Hills Premium Outlets. I’d been told about the outlets beforehand and packed with the assumption that I’d have the opportunity to buy whatever I needed for the trip there. I’m not much of a fashion guy – I basically just buy whatever fits me at Hugo Boss whenever I need new clothes, and I’ve even been told that my jeans are terrible. (How is that even a thing??) I have to admit though, the outlets are pretty awesome. I picked up some general casual wear at Rip Curl, where everything was seemingly on sale (read: so cheap), and some dress shirts and (potentially terrible) jeans at Hugo Boss. On our way out, we passed by John Varvatos. I’d received two pairs of John Varvatos shoes as gifts last year, and while I’m not particularly up on brands, I really liked them stylistically, so decided to check out the store. A few hours, and a few shopping bags later, we had some new friends at the John Varvatos store. They even gave us beers to enjoy while handing over my credit card.
I picked up a few great linen t-shirts (these are going to be clutch in the humid New York summer), and new swim shorts, which were perfect for the pool partying we had planned over the next few days. I briefly considered picking up a new suitcase to get all my new clothes home.
We went to pick up my ticket, and found a non-descript Mexican restaurant in a strip mall off the same exit. I was a bit wary of eating in a restaurant that didn’t have a permanent sign, but my friend assured me it was exactly what we wanted. We were the only people in the restaurant, but the staff all spoke Spanish and were watching futball in Spanish. Seemed authentic enough for me, and the food spoke for itself. The tacos were on par with the truck tacos in Los Angeles, and the carne quesadilla was the best quesadilla I’ve ever had.
By the time we headed to the festival, the sun was going down. A short drive, and a two wine-filled water bottles later, and we were at Coachella. We were looking forward to LCD Soundsystem, but were able to check out The Kills, Jack U, and Ellie Goulding beforehand. There were people everywhere, and it was basically impossible to get into the tent where M83 was. I was not particularly impressed by anyone until LCD Soundsystem, and even then, it was so crowded it was hard to enjoy the music.
The next day we decided to check out the dfm pool party in Palm Springs. The party was hosted at a mid century modern house on a ridge with a view of the entire surrounding area.
Great place for a party, except the pool was in the shade, and it wasn’t quite warm enough to get people into the pool. We got festival ready with some fake tattoos from Flash Tattoos, checked out watches from SaraDesigns and enjoyed some drinks by Snow Leopard Vodka in the sun on a cozy Woolrich blanket. On our way out I asked if I could take the blanket, and was told “you can try”. That blanket may or may not be my favorite souvenir from the trip.
We made it to the Polo Grounds just in time to catch the last song by CHVRCHES, danced to Disclosure, and enjoyed Ice Cube and guest Snoop Dogg(!) from the comfort of the beer garden while downing slices of Spicy Pie.
As someone who at some point spent a many mornings waking to the opening rift of Night Train, I was most excited for that night’s headliner: Guns n’ Roses. I’d heard some mixed reviews of from their warm up shows, but they really exceeded all expectations. Despite Axel’s broken foot, they played an epic 2-1/2 hour set, and if I ever closed my eyes, they sounded just as good as they did in 1986.
The most disappointing part of their set was the masses of people who’d seemed to be everywhere before had disappeared. It gave us the opportunity to get close to the stage, but I was a bit shocked that people didn’t seem that interested in what I thought was the best set of the weekend. Guess it’s true that you just can’t buy taste.
For our final day in the desert I was thrilled to find the Hilton Day Club was All Gone Pete Tong for the day. We enjoyed some Bob Moses before Pete Tong hit the decks. Great djs and gorgeous people enjoying the pool – this pool party was exactly my speed, and something we just don’t have in New York. My friends all raved about the girls at Coachella, but the girls at this party were so much hotter (seriously, if that’s your ass below, message me!) I was disappointed when it was time to leave to try to catch the Cold War Kids at the festival.
Friend (the aforementioned friend who won my ticket to the festival) had also decided she wanted to make the trip to the desert to see Calvin Harris, when we had already sold the extra wristband to a friend. She’d hoped that friend would slip the wristband off and let her use it for the day, but by that time the wristband was already at the festival. Lucky for her, Coachella requires advance registration of the wristbands, and a wristband had already been registered to her. She reported it lost, and was given a new wristband. I think this only really worked because it was the last day of the festival, and it didn’t matter that the other wristband was deactivated, since it was no longer necessary to get back into the festival. Note to future users, she also found out the actual buyer of the wristband gets precedence over any registration. So even if you are not the original purchaser of the wristband, and register the wristband, the original purchaser can still report the wristband as stolen or lost and deactivate your wristband, by showing the original credit card used for purchase.
I do wonder how many other people had pulled similar shenanigans, because there were so many people at the festival. Every stage we went to had masses of people. We were about 4 times as far from the stage for Major Lazer as we had been for Guns n’ Roses, and it was still so crowded it was nearly impossible to move. I should also mention that this was Diplo’s second set of the weekend, as he’d also performed with Skrillex as Jack U on Friday night. Exactly how popular can a dj named after a dinosaur be? (The girls we were with made sure to point out he happens to be very good looking.)
We also caught a bit of Death Grips. Honestly, they were the only stage at the time with a small enough crowd that we could see the band, but I actually liked them much more than other bands we caught whiffs of. Their drummer was seriously wailing and there wasn’t a crowd of children bumping into me while I tried to enjoy them. This might be a sign I’m getting old.
We’d planned to see Calvin Harris on the main stage to round out the night. I had to give Friend back her car keys, as I’d parked her car while she was swindling her way in, and she’d somehow found her way to the very front of the crowd waiting for CH. The very front, of a very pushy and pretty angry mob as it turned out. Trying to squish my way to her, all while apologizing profusely was definitely not the highlight of my weekend. My main objective: get out of the mob before CH actually got on stage. Turns out, that wasn’t too hard, since he never actually came on stage. We waited until 15 minutes after his set start time, then gave up and headed to Maceo Plex. In one of their least successful decisions, the organizers of Coachella had relegated the electronic djs to a smaller “yurt” away from the stages. In theory, this seems like a great place to catch these artists, but in reality there was a massive line every time we tried to get in, for Maceo Plex included. We gave up and headed home. Too much sun, wine and bouncing around all weekend had worn us out.
Monday morning, while all our housemates were still passed out we snuck out hoping to get an early jump on traffic and hit our little Mexican joint one more time on the way home. We stopped for coffee and tried to find the restaurant on google maps to find out what time they opened. Apparently it’s so cool, google maps doesn’t even know about it. Luckily, by the time we got there, it was open, and the food was as good as it had been the previous time.
Happily full we got back into the car to enjoy a sunny zip back to Los Angeles. Only there was less zip, because there was traffic. So much traffic. And more traffic. And even more traffic. I don’t even know how many hours we sat in the car, just roasting in the sun. Thank God for sunscreen. About 25 miles outside of Los Angeles we stopped for Chinese massages, which are legitimately great massages, not the sketchy ones you’re thinking of. We thought we’d have a quick drive to dinner back in Santa Monica, but there was more traffic. I finally understood why KCRW exists and why Los Angeles has a music scene like no where else – people spend so much time in their cars where there is nothing else to do but listen to music.
We had a fun dinner at Hillstone in Santa Monica, including one of their legendary hot fudge sundaes (overheard at Hillstone: “I love this sundae more than world peace”), and returned our rental car at the airport. We’d planned to shower at the American Airlines Admirals Club before our redeye, but apparently with all the renovations at LAX, our flight was not departing from a terminal with an Admirals Club with a shower. What sort of uncivilized monsters expect me to take a redeye without a shower? We quickly boarded our flight and passed out to dream happy dreams of returning to the civilization of New York.
