downtown is where it's at

The Los Angeles metro is an honor system, and even more, it's packed when I ride it to find the library, so although people are constantly telling me that it doesn't go anywhere, there are still lots of people taking it to places that are obviously somewhere. If nobody takes it, then who are these somebodies? The stations are so slick and whimsical, but also so delightfully seedy and safe at the same time; weird people come up and ask me if I'm lost. The security cops wave me away when I ask how to verify my ticket. Silly tourist!

and popping out into downtown, I had this really weird feeling that I could also be somewhere in downtown Mexico City although I've never been to Mexico City. Weird stalls selling hip hop hoodies from handsome latino men with fades, but I'm too broke to buy what I really want, and it's all sized for men anyway, and the stuff they offer women is just weird floral tight crap, and i don't want to look like a spandexed sausage. Nobody knows enough English to give me the right directions to the library, which is an opportunity to get lost in the crowds.

And it feels so wonderfully much like some weird NYC downtown, only with Chinatown style stalls opening up onto the street spilling out all manner of weird leather jackets, gangster t-shirts, and weird plastic charms and toys. Passing by the Biltmore hotel, you can see the gaudy and excessive opulence inside and the annonymous cars with tinted windows pass by with their annonymous rich people who are shuttled in and out and never take a step onto the street on the weekend in the daytime.

I was here last Friday and it was so empty, a strange experience, maneuvering the rental car into a scary parking garage. I looked so ridiculous and lost that the security guard followed me down, worried that I was going to hurt myself. At night downtown is so airy and dark, bicyclists flying by and then the film crews with their men hanging from cranes in the air filming cars trailing them packed with actors reciting lines.

O, and last Friday night, it was delightful to hear dubstep so loud and out in the open. Outside! You couldn't blast that kind of bass outside anywhere in Berlin, or the neighbors would call the police. It was a weird and intensely pleasurable experience, and the crowd really really loved the music, which always makes me happy. I like parties at just that size... just enough so that the DJ can see the faces of the people and react to them, and the girls are really so pretty here and can dance. But there are always dancehall queens & kings, and I just love the raw and spontaneous emotions that seem to swim out of these California people so freely.

The Los Angeles Central Library looks like a huge Egyptian temple made into a skyscraper, and while it's impeccably clean and slick, it's also six floors of books and more books, and there is even a massive foreign language section to boot. There are all sorts of strange people waiting in line, and the librarians are even stranger still, but so friendly and helpful and handling some kind of yelling drama somewhere.

It's surreal to ride up and down the escalator 3 stories below, to pass the fancy Stanford admissions reception table staffed with proper ladies in nice dresses herding young people into large conference rooms full of fruits and pastries. There are bookstacks full of books about the history of economics and huge rows of shelves full of Lonely Planet and Moon guidebooks, and then there's always a peaceful corner in the back to read and read and read the day away.

I love libraries and the Los Angeles Central Library gets my thumbs up. It atones for so many sins! And then the librarians themselves are always whiling away the time with strange insider conversations that we are privy to, conspiracy theories and gossip about what the people upstairs are doing. What a wonderful place to escape the relentless sunshine outside...