Los Angeles

Santa Monica Pier to Venice Beach: the whole boardwalk on foot

We flew Southwest from Austin to LA, which turned out to be a genuinely good domestic airline. We landed before check-in opened so we changed clothes and went straight out. Santa Monica Pier first, then walked the full length to Venice Beach. A street vendor sold glasses of fresh fruit on the way. The boardwalk has the skatepark and Muscle Beach, the outdoor gym where Arnold trained, which is smaller than you expect and exactly as iconic as it should be.

The next morning we joined the queue for the new iPhone that had just launched. I was buying one for a friend, Sharang for himself. The queue was long but moved. Apple gave everyone who bought one a water bottle, which felt like a reasonable trade for standing in it. We then went to meet Sriram, a friend of Sharang who lived near W Adams Boulevard. He had made a pomegranate and chocolate sandwich, which sounds like a mistake and was not. He had Canada Dry ginger ale in the fridge and I tried it for the first time. In the evening we drove up to Griffith Observatory for sunset. Hollywood sign visible, the whole city spread below, the light doing what LA light does at that hour. One of the better evenings of the trip.

The ride back from Griffith was a BMW X7. The driver parked in a disabled zone and lit a cigarette while waiting for us. This was LA in wildfire season, so a no-smoking order was in effect. The police arrived while we were still walking over. By the time we reached the car he was being handcuffed. I walked up to an officer and asked if we should wait. He said ten minutes. We waited and watched. The fine came to three hundred and sixty-three dollars for a seventeen-dollar ride. I felt genuinely bad for the man. Inside the car while things were being sorted, Sharang and I discovered the seats had individual lumbar controls and a small screen for temperature. The driver was on the phone to his wife and not happy. We sat there adjusting our lumbar support in silence. After that we went back to Sriram's, picked up our bags, and took a cab to UCLA where the Flixbus to San Francisco was departing.