Many years ago, when my high school cross country team played a road game in Paris, I brought a black shirt to wear with black jeans, thinking that this would make me look less like a tourist. Sure enough, in a bookstore, someone spoke to me in French.
It took maybe a decade to realize I’d just run into people who didn’t speak English, couldn’t fake it, and wouldn’t try. The feeling lingered that I had blended in, and this was a lot more fun than being a tourist.
My approach to LA on this trip has been to blend. I went to the supermarket in the morning and got two kinds of iced coffee and a muffin top, a Seinfeld joke that apparently was made real years ago. I hiked up to the Batcave from the old Adam West show. I went to Huntington Gardens. I ate vegan ahi watermelon. I read more of the Chet Baker bio, which is winning me over fast.