mindstalk: (glee)
Whoops, 2 weeks of catchup to do.

* My mother grew up in Hollywood, actually quite close to here, so I got to go look at the houses she grew up in. (Siblings had adjacent houses.) And discover she grew up a block from the entrance to Griffith Park. Also that the Park has a nice plant trail.

* I've had Thai food more often than not the past two weeks. Discovered I like red and yellow curry, not their green curry so much; panang is decent but rather sweet, mussumaun was pretty good though I don't know if it's worth the $2 over red and yellow.

* Also another restaurant here, Northern Thai Food Club, had northern pork curry, which was pretty different but I liked it. Reminded me of beef stew in texture and meat lumpiness, though spicier and with lots of ginger.

* Little Tokyo, discovering a kaiten place (Kura). At $2.90/plate, more expensive than the Australian places I mostly skipped, let alone Sushiro. OTOH $3/pair of nigiri is still good compared to "order your sushi places" in the US. Kura also has a lot of flavored salmon and tuna: marinated, garlic, ponzu, "umami", making it more interesting. Also the grocery story in Little Tokyo had mugicha, in proper large tea bags. Whee!

* Wandering around found an Armenian art gallery one block down.

* Aaron invited me to a trivia night with his friends, my first such. Our team won, I contributed, and the scores were close so I might even have made the difference!

* Took the train to North Hollywood (not the same as north Hollywood) to explore. Found a restaurant with savory meat pies, and a winding sidewalk on Vineland that was visually interesting, but nothing too exciting.

* This morning I was trying to get more sleep when Adam emailed about having lunch. Following my principle of seizing rare social opportunities, I met him in Little Tokyo, going to Kura again. More expensive than the udon he suggested but he liked it. He gave me a tour of City Hall, including the observation deck on the 27th floor, and various suggestions, which I followed up on: Bradbury building with its atrium and cast iron elevators, a funicular, Grand Central Market, the main library...
mindstalk: (juggleone)
S wanted her living room back and I didn't have anywhere urgent to go as I look for a new job, so I moved over to a Craigslist sublet in Hollywood for the month. My housemate Alex is a composer from Germany, very pleasant to talk to. Given that S's family has me redefining my scale of possible introversion, that's a nice change.

I've mostly been exploring locally, but I took the Red Line one station over to get to TJ, and a couple stations back today to get home after heading west for a while.

* There are open seats at 5 PM. A subway that isn't standing room only at rush hour?! Feels wrong. It's not like it's super high frequency either, just 10 minute headways (which is pretty slow for rush hour!)

* Audible but not visual stop announcements.

* Line map inside cars but no system maps.

Other notes:

* cheap Thai food; lunch specials for $5.50.

* Barnsdall Art Park, including the LA Municipal Art Gallery, which has an exhibition celebrating loitering.

* I grew up reading various books of essays, e.g. by Lewis Thomas, Loren Eisley, Russell Baker, and others, but haven't read such in a long time. The exhibit suggests The Book of Delights by Ross Gay. What I sampled was interesting, and a black essayist would add a bit of diversity to my reading.

* West eventually brings me into Hollywood 'proper': Walk of Fame, Mann's Chinese, Ripley museum, Madame Tussaud's, etc. A few cosplayers on the sidewalk: Vader, Joker, blue person from Avatar. Lots of Scientology buildings around the area, I guess it probably started in LA?

* A two-story strip mall, which at least makes more efficient use of the parking lot in the middle, though I wonder if it's in violation of the modern parking codes.

* Daiso, basically a 100 yen store. Default price $1.50, but lots of prices in yen, and scaled so that obviously maps to 100 yen. That's with a big import markup, by exchange rate 100 yen is 91 cents right now. They had bottled hojicha though it did not match my memories of Japan.

* Years ago I used to go out for Thai every week with Jane, usually ordering some curry. I never did sort out what kinds of curry were what, and the Web was young and nascent then. Since, I've tended to order basil rice, drunken noodle, larb, or pad thai, and not concerned myself with curries. But they're some of the cheap lunch options, so I finally looked them up, 26 years late...

* This place doesn't have a microwave. I haven't lacked one since some of my stays in Europe. Kind of crimps my usual approach to cooking leafy greens and broccoli, not to mention warming up leftovers.

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May 2025

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