Some of you might have heard of the protests going on at UCLA to get the school to lower students tuitions which just recently made a dramatic hike to about 32% higher than it was. Students have been camping out in halls and occupying buildings to spread their message of disagreement with this new matter. Having activists as friends always give me something to do if I'm free, so when I heard the invite from them I thought I could get some nice pictures of protestors and maybe ask some a few questions of why they were there. We packed our bags full of snacks and warm clothes and two sleeping bags (for four of us) and bottles of water. We figured if we were there late enough we would need to make camp among the protestors since the Metro wouldn't be running that late. We didn't know then that none of our plans would actually go through.
$1.25ea. later and Angela, Maggie, Emily and I are all on the Blue line headed towards Union Station. We grab our spots and immediately pop open a bottle of red wine and split it between the four of us in tiny dixie cups. Of course this doesn't go unnoticed by metro patrons, so conversations spark and we make a new friend.
We couldn't remember his name, but we decided that we would call him the DamnWow guy due to the fact that his only response to anything we ever said was "damn!" or "wow!" He was very nice and was interested in our cause to support the students at UCLA. We also discussed vegetarianism, love of wine and what kind of snacks we brought. Angela mentioned she liked almonds and that she was like a little squirrel, which set DamnWow on a laughing frenzy due to the subtle "liking nuts" reference. About this time, Emily got a call from her source at UCLA who regretfully informed us that the group having their sit-in at the school was going home. We had missed the protest, but we were already on our way to LA so we said, "why not" and continued on our trip. DamnWow got an equally large kick out of our dilemma but was supportive of our recent choice. He was heading home and we were heading out when we parted ways at Union. We said bye to him and his gold tooth and hopped on the Purple Line.
With no destination in mind, we quickly started to brew up ideas. Emily mention that there was a "Fall of the Berlin wall" exhibit by the La Brea Tar Pits. Well, it's a good thing we never made it because the event turned out to be on the 9th not the 19th, and on Wilshire, not La Brea. But before we knew this we got off the Purple at Wilshire and Western and headed towards La Brea on foot. We considered taking the 20 bus down Wilshire, but we didn't feel like dropping the buck 60 and weren't sure how many small bills we had. This turned into our first instance of us finding out that the clothes you wear affect peoples reactions to you. We were dressed warm, had large backpacks, and a sleeping bag so we could be considered one of a few things. We looked like backpacking tourists, hippies, or 4 homeless kids. So sitting at the bus stop next to a nice lady, she helped us with directions. Then when the bus stopped we decided not to get on, the lady asked "are you getting on?" "no we are going to walk" "oh...ok...well, ill buy your tickets for you." Thats when we realized that 1) this was an extremely nice lady and 2) we looked like bums. We politely declined, discussed our appearance, cracked open another wine and started our trek.
This is the apartment complex all the girls were getting moist over. They were inches away from buzzing Ms. Rosenberg to buzz us in so we could enjoy the fire in the lobby. We never buzzed.
Peeing in an alley followed by wine refills.
No one drew on this poster. That's on the kids face in the photo.... poor kid
One face, two face, gay face, kr3w face / cool display
Some artist had cut out astroturf and glued it to this light post. Well, i hope it was an artist and not a crazy astroturf enthusiast
Walk route
When we got to the restaurant (i didn't catch the name) our second instance of homelessness kicked in when Kaylee would not let us refuse her leftovers. Which was nice of her, but put us deeper in the bum category. It was 10:30 when i took this picture and i was slightly confused at what these people were waiting for along the road of The Grove.
Turns out there was no parade, but this was actually the line to get into the midnight showing of Twilight: New Moon. A Twiline as i like to call it. Also, this line was only one of three! wow.
As Kaylee led us to her friend Tony's car, we all got in and were invited to play beer pong at a nearby bar that her boyfriend owned. Cool, we all agreed and were on our way, this time in a vehicle.
The drive led us to Capitol City where they were having their first beer pong event in their back patio. When we got there we were pretty much guests of honor since we came with Kaylee and she dates the owner. He was a really nice guy and let us put our stuff in his office, most likely so it didn't look like a shanty town during their pong-age. Right when we sat back down we were all handed white gummy bear shots and we tossed them down the hatch. After that the beer flowed like wine and we went through two pitchers of beer, still pretty full of wine and white gummy bear. Needless to say, it was an LA bar at 11pm on a thursday night so the demographic was extra douchy, but that was fine as long as the drinks kept coming.
Pong bro!
white gummy bear
Kaylee. honorable mention
i said pong bro!
"What are you wearing?" "black jacket and a hat" "shit, one of us is gonna have to change"
I broke that glass but positioned it's remains next to a pong player so he'd think it was him. It worked
When the bar was closing we thanked Kaylee and headed back down hollywood to get back to the metro. Our night felt complete so we decided it was time to go home. To our half surprise the Metro was not running. It was 2:30 now and passed their hours of operation. We wanted Del Taco but had seen a pizza shop on the way over to the metro entrance, so we back tracked and I grabbed a cup of coffee for $1.65 from the asshole behind the counter. As we sat there Emily eyeballed a guy tossing away his last piece of pizza. He caught her watching him and came over and asked us if we wanted the slice. We agreed and Emily and Maggie chowed down. The nice guy left but then suddenly came back in the parlor. "You want a whole pie? I'll buy you one."
We didn't know how to respond except to constantly say no. Our pleas phased him as much as it would James Bond and he kept pushing to buy us a whole pizza. Finally Maggie agreed to it and he bought us an entire pizza "pie." The pizza was veggie to accommodate for the 25% of our group that didn't eat meat. This was our third and final homeless sympathy we received that night and all he asked for in return was for us to remember him when we are successful, as the guy who bought us a large veggie pizza. Well we will never forget you John.....John uhhhh. John something, whatever, it's not important.
Haha, just kidding, he gave us his business card so we would never forget him.
After the pizza was done we walked back to our waiting spot at the Metro doors. A guy came up to us and asked for a cigarette. Going to bars the night before left me with a free pack of cigarettes(mainly for show) so i gave him two from my collection. Then we asked him if he wanted a slice of pizza and he agreed. He stuck around while we all had a slice and we learned his name was David and he learned ours. When he finished his slice he asked for another. Hey, no problem helping out someone who seems hungry, but it kind of surprised us. We renamed him DoubleSlice David or just Doubleslice for short (not to his face). We had noticed a homeless woman sleeping on the sidewalk on our walk from the pizza shop so Maggie went back and gave the last two slices to her and then we decided it was a better idea to walk from that Metro entrance to the next one down Hollywood blvd.
Capital City to Metro
Of course when we got to the next entrance at 3:50 we knew we had another 10 min before the doors would open.
Before they opened we noticed an old man outside counting his money out in the open. Just over and over counting it like he forgot how much he had. Then the money would go into his pocket and he would take it out and count it again. Once inside we bought our tickets home ($1.25) and saw our buddy waiting for the train as well.
It started to confuse us so we asked him
"do you feel safe holding all that money out here?"
"Yes"
"how much ya got?"
"300"
"and you just let it stick out of your front pocket like that? you aren't scared someone will try to take it?"
"No"
from another guy waiting for the train, "and you think you could take any guy that tries to steal that from you?"
*Laugh* "Yes"
The we all waited around for an hour for the train and we boarded and headed home
Empty Metro
3:57am, next train at 4:45am
sleep in the station
sleep on the train
The train took about an hour, leaving us on the platform at 6am making our entire trip around 12 hours.
If there was one thing i learned in our little walk, it was that it is extremely easy to drink in public in LA and that if you look like a bum you will be treated like a bum. I wasn't once asked for change or persuaded to go into a club or bar by a bouncer, which was quite refreshing. It also showed me how little money it took to get a good distance and how nice people really are when you take the time to talk to them.
I hope this shows you how easy it is to use the Metro in LA county and persuades whoever reads this to try it out. It really can take you everywhere in LA!
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