Mount Wilson

One of the things I love about LA is the vast variety of terrains there - not that you can always tell this when you're driving past identical strip mall after identical strip mall for mile after mile. However, aside from the bland urban landscape (which does have its own appeal...), there are beaches and deserts and mountains all within easy reach of almost any part of the city for those with a car.

On my last night in LA before heading back to New York I took a drive up to Mount Wilson. It's along the Los Angeles Crest Highway (#2 Freeway), about 20 miles away from Glendale into the mountains. The driving is great fun during the day, lots of tight hairpin curves climbing for 5700 feet. The last five miles before the Mount Wilson Observatory are so tight and windy that tonight I got a little unnerved. There weren't many cars around and off the edge of the road (along its entire length) is a sheer drop for hundreds--if not thousands--of feet down the mountainside. When I got to a certain altitude I got the feeling there might be black ice on the roads and if I spun-off, I could easily spend the rest of the winter at the bottom of a ravine until I was found by hikers in the spring. This happened to a bass player from some LA band a couple of years ago - his car crashed and he wasn't found for months. It is called the Los Angeles Wilderness after all. Quite....

This is a rare dead mans curve with a safety barrier, most didn't.



When I got to the top the view was amazing, as it always is. There was a slight dusting of snow on the ground and the car told me that it was only 28 degrees fahrenheit ( -6 celcius) outside. It was a very still cold - there was no wind but I felt it was stealing my breath. Up above the city it was very very quiet except for the cracking of branches in the nearby trees and the sound of my own feet on the gravel road.

This is looking south towards South Central and Torrance.



And this is down the mountainside into Pasadena, which is apparently 7 miles away as the crow flies....you can see the route of the 210 freeway going left to right.



LA is so vast. From Mount Wilson you can easily see to the Pacific Ocean (29 miles away to the West) and down to Long Beach to the South and out east to where the city peters-out into the desert. So many millions of people laid out flat below, so much infastructure, hundreds and thousands of cars traveling somewhere. The silence and the ice and the sheer weight of the darkness in the sky (depsite the thousands of stars visible) spooked me. It took half an hour to get back down to the freeway (18 miles) , driving with the car sitting in second gear all the way down to use the engine as a brake.

I think one very obvious option now is that I should move here for a while as I'm so fascinated with the place. I don't want to relocate permanently, but I want to get more immersed in LA in a way that one can't when one's only visiting. Not sure if I can take working in California for long as it's still a (sometimes charmingly) alien culture to me, but there's only one way to find out. If I don't go live in Asia, that is.

Btw, if the adage is true, I'm taking up cards. By rights I'd be cleaning up about now.

Here are some more pictures - these are from Runyon Canyon. I guess with the cold north winds blowing the air had been kept clear of smog and the views from Runyon Canyon are worth the climb (or you can drive up Mulholland, but really that's very lame....).




That's Catalina Island out in the distance...



And that shadowy headland on the left (below) in the far distance is Palos Verdes. The running trails cover the Hollywood hillside. I was taken with the signs that said Beware Rattlesnakes.




Finally, on my way to LAX before my flight I took a drive around Palos Verdes. This is a posh residential area south of LA and north of Long Beach, it sits on a headland that you can see from anywhere in the city. The views of San Pedro harbor are spectacular as are the views of Los Angeles to the north.

It's such a huge port, with Long Beach, and eventually Mexico, to the South.



Some surfers were out too. What a boss way to spend sunday morning.



In the far distance you can see Downtown LA through the haze. Mt. Wilson is one of the mountains beyond.



And a sailboat under the smog, looking north towards Malibu and the Santa Monica mountains.



One thing that wasn't so spectacular on the way to LAX was the detour I took. A friend of mine had made a documentary about Outsider Art featuring the Watts Towers and I've always wanted to see them. So I took a few minutes and came off the freeway to drive-by. Thing is, I was on the phone and not paying attention so I got a little bit lost and suddenly I was off the main drag and driving down some side streets. It looked just like Watts / South Central looks in every rap video and movie you've ever seen, down to the gangs of guys hanging around on the street corners. Fact is, coarse as it sounds, I was too white to be driving around there in a nice rental car, sightseeing. It wasn't my place and while there are thousands of good people there I'm sure, I would have only had myself to blame if I'd got into trouble with anyone who was looking to make a point. (Comparatively) rich white boys shouldn't go sightseeing in Watts. It's like a 21st Century version of the Dickensian sluming it. I made my way out and back onto the freeway as soon as I could. It's easy to forget in America that the line between being in an ok area and being in a bad place can be as short as a block or two. Check-out the Tenderloin in San Francisco, or north of Bourbon St. in New Orleans....easy places to make a wrong turn in. Last week in San Francisco, outside the venue we were working at, I had some clown walk along behind me trying to grab my shoelaces. I told him to Fuck off but he wasn't bothered by me, not really. I'm 6ft tall and solidly built. There were 4 cops on the corner. He only left me alone because some brothers told him to stop clowning. Lucky me, I reckon.