Home at last-LAX to Chicago, thence to Shopping Mall. Plane to Shopping mall was 1 hour late departing. Go figure. In a normal world-no big deal. Just start drinking beer. S.O. in tow-that’s not such an easy option. It really pissed me off watching women drinking with ease……
Anyway………..
When I first went to Japan, a long time ago and in a galaxy far away, as is the Navy way- I was scheduled to leave Reno at 10 in the morning. Now mind you, my MAC flight out of LAX-known not so affectionately as the "Patriot Express" ( or "Lowest bidder airlines") did not depart from LAX till 10:45 that evening. There was no way I was staying in the airport for twelve hours, so I stuffed all of my luggage into a wide variety of lockers. ( This was well before 9-11) and jumped into a cab. Instructions? "Go to Santa Monica".
Back in the day, when the E-2 community was forcibly evicted from its outstanding digs at Miramar, I had to go to LA from time to time. So I had done some prowling before and decided that Santa Monica was for me. I had hit the Hollywood club scene-and while the women were stunningly gorgeous, they also were not looking for someone like me, who could not even offer them the entry to a casting couch-much less the ability to do anything on one-so I had to look elsewhere. Plus I was on the long side of 40 without the wallet, or the six pack abs-the places in Hollywood require,Other locations were too far away and Santa Monica offered easy access to the PCH when I had to head up to Ventura County where my business most often was.
So out of curiosity, I dragged the S.O. with me-through Hollywood and Beverly Hills-down to the 3rd street promenade in Santa Monica. I wanted to see what had changed. Fortunately, not very much. It’s still as good a place as any for people watching in LA:
For example, you can watch people doing sketches:
There’s a rack inside there somewhere!
The other great thing about the 3rd Street Promenande is that it has street performers:
Spin to win!
Street performers are great when you are with an S.O. for one reason-they give you an ability to sneak pictures of women without getting caught!
She was selling hats with those jeans!
It also gave you the opportunity to watch kids with mothers who had way too much money and time on their hands. The child:
Whose mother was obviously not feeling the effects of the recession-you had to see her walking around to really understand why:
"Hmm…. Should I got to the Gucci store or not?"
One of the more interesting street performers was this Russian guy and his son:
Which again allowed for sneaking pictures of girls:
If you look closely, you might even see a "camel toe".
Say what you want about California-it does have all kinds of girls. You have girls every where with I-pods:
And girls who love texting:
Had to shoot it in a hurry so neither the S.O. or her would catch me zooming in on her!
And snap pictures of girls who have yet to grow up and break hearts:
One day she is going to be old enough to come here and meet her friends:
What’s up with the boots?
Even the dinosaurs got a good view:
Of the girls of course.
We did walk down a few blocks to view the Santa Monica Pier:
Where, there were lots of girls. Which I like.
There are a LOT of things I don’t like about LA. However, since I "accidentally" got the "X" out – in Santa Monica once, a several years ago- I can’t hate the place too, too, much. That’s a whole another story for a (much) later time…………
More pix tomorrow.