Day 59: Back to Exploring

Today I got back to my exploring days of the past two months. Today is a Monday, which for most people means the beginning of the work day, but not for me, at least not for a little while longer. My friend let me hitch a ride with him into Hollywood where he works, and pointed me in the direction of a few Hollywood attractions, and I was off.

First I went to the Walk of Fame on Hollywood Boulevard. It was just past 10am, so I thought it would be good to get this out of the way. It's a Monday, why would it be crowded on a Monday morning? But it was a madhouse, of course. With all the kids on summer break, Monday's matter to them about as much as they matter to me, so there were families everywhere.

I didn't expect much from the stars on the sidewalk, and I didn't get much. I really only recognized about one out of ten of the names, and even when I did recognize someone, it didn't really excite me at all. Turns out someone's named carved into the ground isn't as exciting as I thought. Who could have guessed?

That got a little cynical there, my bad.

When I couldn't take any more of the crowds, I walked to Melrose Avenue, a busy street filled with restaurants, art galleries, and other cool businesses. One of the first things stores I came across was a comic book store called Golden Apple. I spent maybe two hours browsing the comic selection. I'm a pretty big fan of comics, especially over the last two years when I really started reading them. I even started working on my own graphic novel, who knows how it will come out, but I'm still excited to give it a try. There's so many great writing mediums, I can't stick to just one.

After finally deciding on one comic book to buy, I found some lunch. I got a calzone at an Italian restaurant down the street, and took my time. I had a lot of time to kill before my friends got out of work and could pick me up.

After lunch I went to a store called Amoeba, which is one that I've heard about ever since my friends came out to LA. It is a giant record store (and I thought it would have comics as well, but it didn't). I remember the first thing that happened was I walked in, and they stopped me and told me to go back because I had to leave my bag at the door. Already they didn't trust me.

The store was cool, but unfortunately as someone who has pretty much completely checked out of buying CDs and doesn't have a record player, it leaves a little to be desired. I spent pretty much the whole time browsing the DVD collection. I didn't buy anything, I just looked for movies I didn't recognize and wrote down the title if it seemed interesting. Turns out there are a bunch of other giant monster movies other than Godzilla, including Gamera, Yongary, and Gorgo. So I'll be checking those out in the near future.

I killed as much time as I could in the store, I think browsing through every part of the DVD section. But after a time, the loud heavy rock music and the constant employee paging over the intercom was a little too much to handle, so I walked back out onto the streets.

Fortunately there wasn't much time left until work ended, so I walked back in the direction that I had been dropped off, and within an hour I was back among friends.

I did see the Hollywood sign today, but only from a distance. I figured if I'm going to be here for a few more days with everyone working, then I should save something to do for tomorrow and the next day. Which reminds me, I'll be home Friday. It's official. The trip will be officially over by this weekend. Both good and bad, as I've discussed many times.

To end the night we all watched the new Netflix animated movie The Little Prince, which I thought was great. It combined two styles of animation and a unique approach at storytelling to basically create two stories, and then a third by combining the first two. I hope I'm not giving too much away by saying that.

Tomorrow I think the plan is to hike up to the Hollywood sign, so that should be a good time. Gotta see the sights before I leave. I know I'll be back to visit again, but if I can get the cliche stuff out of the way the first time, then I can do all the hip stuff every other time I visit. That's me, always planning ahead.

Thanks for reading and here's to tomorrow.