Every four years, when we’ve elected or re-elected a president, I take two weeks off. After 2012, the trip was to China, and after 2016, it was to Japan, Vietnam, and Cambodia. I realized early last year that another grand tour wouldn’t happen, so I dreamed up this LA trip, which would take me to a city I always wanted to spend more time in, and always left with a hundred things undone.
The location is important, but I don’t appreciate the time until I have it. One week off and every day is the last of them on vacation; the last Monday, last Tuesday. There is no time to screw up. An extra week? There’s the time to screw up.
Today that meant a license to do one thing: Meet my friend Peter for lunch in Venice. I drove the 30-odd minutes there and parked behind a station wagon that had two windows poked out, with junk like a “VENICE SAYS YES” sign jutting out the holes. Peter had ordered from Gjuta, a fancy deli that had at least two kinds of Banh Mi sandwiches; we got one of each.
We walked to the beach, sitting near an elderly man wearing Deadpool pajamas and sorting belongings between three mismatched suitcases. By coincidence, we were in front of the house that Peter’s company had rented when he started there; it was on the market, and over the next 20 minutes it was the scene for someone’s sun-praising stretch routine and for an arrest, the cause of which I didn’t ask about.
As the bread soaked up brisket sauce - yes, on a banh mi, ignore it - we talked about work and I felt a little refreshed. I had been avoiding anything work-like, diligently, but when pushed I’d been thinking through some of what I wanted to write when I went back.
I bought a coffee for $8 and a donut for $4 and began to head back. This was my first experience, on this trip, with the east-west traffic pattern. The 30-minute drive had expanded to 70 minutes. Not a real problem. I’d wanted an excuse to avoid the freeways and drive across LA, city to city, trying to identify the seams where each section came together.
I’d done this before, by accident, running late to a Bernie Sanders speech at a left-wing charity dinner. (He was late, too.) With time to drink it in, and no stress, it was perfect. I switched on the “Cerebro” podcast, the new Lorna Dane episode, and watched the terrain get richer (Westwood, Beverly Hills) then cheaper (WeHo, Hollywood), then influencer-friendly (Los Feliz, Glendale).
Some of it I remembered. Danny Trejo has a donut shop, painted completely pink, though I’ve never driven by when it’s been open. The movie posters, usually one of my favorite aspects of driving through the city, seemed more limited and out of date; I did see an Oscar campaign for “Cherry,” but none of the “For Your Consideration” pollution of my last trip here.
Watched the movie “Dante’s Peak” when I got back, was trying to come up with my own bad dialogue while I watched, settled on: “You play with lava, you get burned.”