In this cafe on Sunset boulevard are playing a country song "I've been everywhere, man". I am 5 minutes away from EchoPark, one of the locations of Chinatown I have watched again few evenings ago, as a movie on Los Angelels. This morning I set in my quest for a glove department's lock for the davidmobile, as it was broken when I bought the car and I did not have the time to replace it. Remember, I got the car on a Wednesday and left for the cross country journey on Saturday morning. I first set off for a car breaker that specializes in Japanese cars. I want to get there without using the freeways and instead crossing the city. The area is southern LA. I take Broadway direction south. As I hit 5th street it is like I changed city, and I enter what reminds me of southern Europe cities, Palermo, for instance:large stores packed with stuff and with rather basic overcharged shopwidows. This lasts for only about 10 blocks. At 20th street you are already another world, like a dirty periphery, full of cheap buildings and stores. The typical one family house in wood mixes with the latino shaped houses in stone and bricks. It could well be the Mediterranean, only there would be many scooters... and different faces maybe. However, in this area I have a tendency at thinking LA as Los Angeles and reading it in castillan... My destination is not far from Long Beach Avenue that runs on both sides of an urban railway. When I get there they do not sell the lock on its own. And do not see, to have many Eclipse's parts on the side, this seems strange to me as the eclipse in the US is quite a common car.Well, I leave, direction north for a Mitsubishi dealer, in Glendale, north of Downtown LA. I leave the dirt of southern LA, cross the city centre and going north I pass by an area called Los Feliz, a nice area with cafes and nice houses, yet another environment, I border the Hollywood hill from the south and cross the LA River. Glendale is very middle class, very suburban. Very similar to S Marino and Pasadena, where The Huntington is located. S Brand Bld is long series of auto dealers of all the major makes. I get my lock and set off home without looking at the map.
Lock replaced I set on foot around the area, on Sunset Bld till Echo Park Some Mexican ladies sell corn cobs, as their men play cards on the benches across the yard.There is lots of informal business going on, people sell on the street, a shoecleaner's van, oranges, it is like Palermo but there is more on the sidewalks and there are not the cries of the sellers, maybe it reminds me of Moscow in the summer. The same informal economy sprawling along the boulevards. I set to have a one dollar crushed ice, "granita" with mango syrup.
At 5 pm I can set for the most obvious drive I have to do while in LA. Always without taking the freeways I set for Hollywood Bd, and Beverly Hills, it is very strange to see written on the walls such words as Beverly Hills clinic or something like that, then a little north I find the indications for where I want to go.
It is very long, and curvy, the sky is rather misty so it is not worth to take picture, actually it overlooks Los Angeles from many angles, It is opposite to Hollywood, and you see the famous sign: for a certain section one sees downtown LA, further down one sees north of LA, west of Hollywood, and probably some other areas. I should go back and look again at the opening scenes of the movie to try to understand which view did Lynch choose.
Too many emotions, I can go back home...
No comments:
Post a Comment