I’ve been to Hollywood once when I was fourteen. We were on our way back from a short trip in Northern California visiting some family friends. We drove through majestic redwoods, convinced my younger sister that clam chowder was actually made with chicken—which she devoured in seconds—and played “who can find the most banana slugs” as we walked along the lush paths surrounding the forested house. It was a great trip.
And then we decided to head south through San Francisco and into L.A. for before we flew out of LAX. My sister and I were pretty excited to go to the land of the movie stars. We wanted to go where it was warm and where we might run into Hillary Duff and let her know how she should totally get with Gordo and leave that stupid Ethan guy with his nice-looking hair.
But what we found in Hollywood was not the blue skies and fame we expected but smog and litter. The plastic looking palm trees couldn’t compare to the entrancing redwoods. Instead of Hillary Duff, we found a 7ft tall Michael Jackson impersonator who tapped me on the shoulder and made me almost pee my pants on the Walk of Fame. We saw the top of Ryan Secrest’s spikey head over a crowd of hundreds of people as he introduced a guest star at his daily show. We went on a ‘Tour of the Stars’ bus ride were we were chauffeured around the house-covered hillside looking at the walls and gates behind which celebrities allegedly lived. In retrospect, I feel like it may have all been bullshit.
I was extremely disappointed in LA. The only thing I got out of it was a postcard of Leonardo DiCapprio.
When I found out I had the opportunity to travel to LA for a national college journalism convention hosted by the Associated Collegiate Press, I was pretty pumped, but didn’t think it would happen. I had way too much to do and didn’t think I could afford to miss a day of all three of my classes. But somehow, we got funding from Student Involvement and StuComm and were able to have free travel and lodging.
After getting in the car at 3:40am, driving to Grand Rapids, getting on the smallest airplane I have ever been on in my life, a three hour layover in Texas where I accidentally ordered the ‘healthy’ bagel sandwich—why would the assume that just because I want spinach and mushrooms, I automatically want egg whites and a ‘flat’ bagle?—followed by a 2 hour trip on the biggest plane I’ve ever been on, we landed in LA, 11 hours after we departed.
So far it has been fun, but it’s been the same LA I remember from my childhood: loud, pretty tacky, hyper-americanized, flashy and has surprise smells of bacon-covered kilbasa with roasted peppers mixed with soiled hamster cages. I’m not anti-LA, I’m just not a fan. It’s too much for me. And while the food has been good, it has also been over-priced and kind of pretentious in my opinion.
So I decided to venture out of the heart of LA and see if I could find some redemption for Hollywood. After some internet browsing I found something that sounded intriguing: NoHo. The one mile North Hollywood Art District sounded progressive and lively with over 20 different theater venues, countless art galleries and a large handful of ethnic, up-and-coming restaurants. It was only an eleven minute subway ride away from our hotel and we have six hours to spend tomorrow before we have to catch our 10:15pm shuttle back to the airport. I figured we could explore the area, check out the shops, and go to a Sushi place called Tokio Delves Sushi bar. The NoHo website said the lively bar always has a line out the door it is so popular. And sushi is the only time I let myself indulge in meat, and I do so very rarely. Why not on vacation, right?
So maybe NoHo will redeem my feelings about the plastic-filth of LA. And maybe it won’t. Either way, exploring an area we new very little about while getting some good food sounded like a good time to me.
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