I got back last night, just in time to take Miss Possible to the airport for a trip back to the East Coast for weekend full of baby showers, hoping that she doesn’t get any funny ideas. I spent just about a day and a half in Los Angeles, and that was more than enough time for me.
Business aside, the city itself was interesting, to say the least. We booked our hotel online at a place called The Beverly Pavillion, on Wilshire just blocks from the famed Rodeo Drive in a lovely area known as Beverly Hills. Looking at the photos online, we were thrilled to be in such a luxury hotel in such a great area of the city.
One of my co-workers brought his Tom-Tom (or as we called her Luella) Portable Navigator so that we were able to get around the city without much need for directions. As we were coming down Wilshire, we heard Luella say “100 yards to your destination” — but all we saw was an ugly brick building covered with scaffolding. As we pulled into the Hotel Garage, we began to get very nervous as it served several purposes at once: Garage/Valet Drop, Hotel Lobby, Registration Desk.
As we pulled up the sound of drilling and jackhammers was so loud you could barely hear yourself think. It made for a very bad first impression.
We had a 2:30 meeting with a client and arrived at LAX around 11am, thinking this was plenty of time. Their office was just blocks from our hotel — and yet somehow — we barely made it due to the traffic. Unbelievable. I knew that the city had bad traffic, but this was ridiculous. Even the carpool lane on 405 was creeping along at a whopping 5 mph.
Dinner was great. We took our clients out to a restaurant called Lucques which was amazing. We were actually sitting at a table next to Jane Lynch, most known for her role in Best in Show. Of course, I didn’t see her until we left (and needed to have her pointed out to me), but that’s just me. I can never spot famous people.
I failed to mention this earlier, but when we checked into our hotel… we felt a glimmer of hope. The rooms were amazing. There were these leather pads along the wall, and this bar graph type mirror thing along the ceiling. Not to mention the strange ball-shaped lights that hung from the ceiling. One of the most contemporary rooms I had ever stayed at — that’s for sure.
After dinner, we ended up hitting the oldest Irish Pub in all of LA — a place called “Tom Bergins” on Fairfax near Wilshire. A great bar. They have four-leaf clovers covering every wall labeled with people’s names. I had asked who these people were, and the bartender explained that these were all the regular customers that the bar has had over the years. Some of the names were so old you could barely read the names. A very neat place.
We made it back to the hotel late, and I crashed — we only had to meet up with a client for lunch the next day, so we were able to sleep in.
Or so we thought. By 8:30, the drilling began and after a 30 minutes I had developed the world’s worst headache comprised of 2 parts Guinness, 5 parts construction. I turned on MSNBC in an attempt to drone out the noise and managed to get some restless sleep for another hour or so. We met up around 11:30 to prepare for lunch, which I had found out was going to be around the corner at a little place called Spago.
We patiently waited at the table, while our client was 15 minutes late (traffic). I notice out of the corner of my eye that Wolfgang Puck was talking to a couple at a table across the room. It took quite a bit of convincing, but my co-workers finally believed me that it was him. Three quarters the way through lunch, I noticed him continuing his rounds and making his way towards our table. He came over, shook each of our hands and thanked us for coming — as we thanked him for coming by and saying hi. A very LA moment indeed.
The meal was divine, and the restaurant was amazing. But despite all of these great meals, LA still rubbed me the wrong way. The people were so ridiculous — I don’t even know where to begin. MP asked me what I meant by this.. and I can’t quite put it into words. The world of Entourage couldn’t be more correct, I felt as though everyone was trying to look the part of “Vincent Chase”. Absurdly expensive clothing, too cool for school, and thought they were someone they weren’t. Yick.
All in all, it was a great trip. It was a good experience, but.. I was very thankful — at the end of the day — to be back in The Cats
