Smog - What Smog?
(Los Angeles, CA & vicinity, various)

Part I - The First Trip

Right before my first trip to Los Angeles, I have to admit that I didn’t think I would really like the city. I guess I expected the people to be stuck up beach bums with nothing in common with me. I figured the place would be dirty and smoggy. Boy was I wrong.

I hadn’t really planned on going to L.A. the first time I went. It came about quite by accident in fact. It was the summer of 1992 and all my friends had planned to have a huge beach weekend at Ocean City. Summer was approaching and I was working on remodeling my basement with my friend Matt, and I happened to ask him and Brandi, who was also there, what was up with the trip. I hadn’t heard about it for a while and figured it had fallen by the wayside. As it turned out, however, one friend of mine, Shea, who was still mad at me because my friend West and I got into a 2 minute long fight at a Ratt concert over whether West would help sneak in some alcohol, had decided that he wouldn’t go if I went under any circumstances. The funny thing is all of the rest of my so called friends sided with him. So they booked the hotel rooms and nobody ever told me. Needless to say, I was quite mad when I found out.

My friend Danny Solerio had moved out to L.A. about a year before with some friends (John Engle, Joe Burke and Alan Sobel). At this point he was living in an apartment in Venice Beach with his then girlfriend Lisa, (John, Joe and Alan were all back here by then). While Danny and I were like best friends earlier, I hadn’t really talked to him much since he left. But one thing I was sure of was that I wasn’t going to sit at home pissed off while every single one of my so called friends were laughing it up in Ocean City. So I decided that during the time everyone else was going to Ocean City, I was going to go to L.A. and visit Danny. There were two problems though, one was whether Danny even want me visiting, and the second was how was I going to afford this! At the time I was working at Lion Recording making only around $7.00/hr.

So I called up Danny, speaking to him for the first time in months, and, fortunately, he was all for it. One down one to go. I managed to procure some additional money by means I won’t get into here, but then, just as I was trying to figure out how I was going to be able to afford a $350 round trip air ticket and still have money left over for the trip itself, down came a sign from God. He (she) must have took pity on me and the fact that all of my so called friends had cast me aside. The countries first bona-fied half price air fare war erupted out of no where, and I was able to secure round trip tickets for $189. (In fact fares were so good that Dave, Steve and I bought tickets for our first trip to Las Vegas at the same time). So everything was set, and so as all the rest of my so called friends set out to Ocean City (where it, unfortunately, did not rain the whole week), I flew out to Los Angeles.

I arrived on a Thursday in the afternoon while Danny and Lisa were still at work. I drove my rental car (which I rented for a couple of the days because I couldn’t afford it for the whole week) to their house 2 blocks inland from Venice Beach. I had about 2 hours to kill so I went to the beach. Being in the middle of the work day I was not very crowded, and as I walked onto the beach the very first thing that I noticed was a beautiful woman lying on the beach getting a tan…topless. Maybe L.A. wasn’t that bad after all.

Venice Beach is a very interesting place. It’s a combination of beautiful woman, muscle bound men working out at the outdoor gym, a handful of street performers juggling chainsaws or balancing people on their heads, and the requisite number of T-shirt, souvenir and head shops. It really isn’t as scummy as the east coast touristy beaches (like the fore mentioned Ocean City), and appeals to everyone from families to burned out dope addicts.

Danny met me down at the beach after a while and we watched some of the street performers juggle and balance things before retiring to his apartment. When Danny first moved out to L.A. with his friends he lived in Hollywood (which is not a good neighborhood) and basically hung out doing every drug known to man. This is where he met Lisa, and fortunately for me they decided to clean up their act, become vegetarians, and move to Venice Beach together. And while I’m not too high on vegetarianism, I must admit Danny cooked up some really good potatoes with honey and other stuff. Danny is probably the most interesting friend I know. A bit spoiled because his mom pays for him, and he rarely works, but he goes through phases every so often. One time he’ll be convinced that drugs are the way to enlighten the mind, the next time drugs are bad, and vegetarianism and fasting are the way to go. Or he may decide that red meat is the only good food. He had dabbled in everything from survival school to photography to being the singer in a rock band.

Every so often you’ll see a movie or TV show shot in L.A. with our hero standing on top of a mountain at night with all of the lights of L.A. glittering like fire below. It looks pretty dramatic, and so on the first evening, while Danny and Lisa went to bed early because they worked the next day, I set out to drive up Mount Wilson. The drive is a beautiful jaunt about 5000 feet up the mountain, made more dramatic by the fact that you drive up the back side of the mountain where you can’t see the L.A. valley. Then, just as your almost at the top, you take a turn and the whole L.A. valley explodes from below. (The picture here does not do the view any justice).

I arrived just before sunset which is the best time to get there. L.A. is famous for it’s smog, but it never bothered me at all while I was there. But at the top of the mountain looking down, you can see the layer of smog like a light, whippy cloud blanketing the whole valley, with only Beverly Hills sticking up above it. As it gets darker, slowly the lights of L.A. come on, then a really beautiful thing happens. Since the lights have to go through that layer of smog, they twinkle, much like the stars in the sky and take on an orange glow. Only these ‘stars’ are much brighter, and there are many more of them visible then in the sky. By the time it is fully dark, the valley is ablaze in a sea of fire. It is one of the most beautiful sights I have seen in all my travels.

Over the weekend Danny showed me around. We went to his old place in Hollywood which was, basically, a dump of an area. We decided to see a movie at the famous Mann’s Chinese Theatre, and went to get tickets. Batman II was showing, but was sold out for the upcoming show, so we bought tickets for the next show and killed the hours walking along the Walk of Fame and visiting the stores. The church of Scientology has a place right across from the theatre, and we spent some time debating philosophies with them.

While Batman II was only an average film, the theatre was not. Ornate to the maxim, with all the velvet and crystal chandeliers I expected and a screen the size of a house, it was the sound system that most blew me away. With subwoofers under the seats the whole theatre shook as Batman throttled away in his Batmobile. I only wish that the Generic Mall Cinema 12 would invest in the pictures and sound quality that Mann’s has.

Driving around Beverly Hills is an attraction in itself. The mansions are absolutely incredible. That is those that you can see, as most are buried so far back on huge lots that you can barely see the houses.

Another night I took Danny up to Mt. Wilson to see the view he had never even heard of. We snuck into the Mt. Wilson Observatory afterwards to take a close up look at the giant telescopes there. We also went to the Cat Club that night and saw some local band that I have long since forgot.

I found the people of L.A. to be mostly normal, nothing like the dumb surfer reputation I envisioned. Maybe because half the people immigrated to L.A. from other places, there really is no true L.A. person. Generally most people there seem to be more open minded and more tolerant of others lifestyles then in other areas. But overall everyone was very friendly.

Overall the trip was a grand success, and I knew that I would be back there again. While the rest of my so called friends seemed to have a good time in Ocean City, I’m glad I went to L.A., as I’ve been to Ocean City before, and would be there again. Little did I know, however, that I would soon would work for a company that would send me out to L.A. for free!

Oh, and as a final footnote, yes I still hang out with all the same so called friends that snubbed me that trip, including Shea. Heck, you can’t stay mad forever.

Part II – Free L.A. Vacations

I went to work for TRW in Feb. 1995, on a project that is based in D.C. and in Las Vegas. I also met a college intern that worked with us over the summer and Christmas named Tom Vaughan. He is the son of one of the secretaries which is how he got the job (not that I can complain, I got my job because my mom worked for TRW). Tom goes to a college outside of L.A. called Harvey Mudd College. I bided my time the first year, but finally they started sending me to trips out west, both to Las Vegas (where the other half of our project is) and to Los Angeles where our TRW department is headed. I have since been on 3 trips that took me to Tom’s college and the L.A. area.

The first trip was to Las Vegas for the Comdex computer show, where I made the mistake of going to work Friday morning, flying out Friday afternoon to L.A., and then trying to stay out late Friday night with Tom. Didn’t work too well, this little thing called jet lag.

My second trip was for a TRW confrence in Manhattan Beach. The conference was on a Tuesday and Wednesday, but I made a long week out of it, going to San Diego by myself on Thursday, and staying with Tom on Friday and Saturday. This was a much better time.

Manhattan Beach is south of Venice Beach and a little less weird people wise. I flew out with my boss Thom Schwartz and met a couple of my co-workers from the Las Vegas site who were also there. We had dinner and drinks at this restaurant/bar right on the beach where you can sit on the outside deck, sit and talk while watching the waves splash on the beach.

That was on Monday night, on Tuesday the conference broke up, and I was determined to see that beautiful view from Mt. Wilson again. Unlike last trip, this trip I had my 35mm SLR camera and tripod, so I could take some really beautiful long night exposures. So Tuesday afternoon I headed north through L.A.’s famous rush hour traffic and then started up the mountain. Now mind you, the L.A. area is a very spread out place, and it the trip from Manhattan Beach to the top of Mt. Wilson is almost a 2 hour drive. It was a cloudy day, but the clouds seemed real high in the sky. Or so they seemed. Up Mt. Wilson I went and just as I was about one stinking lousy mile from where the road turns and I can see L.A. I hit the clouds. It was thick pea soup, and I couldn’t see 5 feet in front of me, much less down a mountain side. Pissed off, but so close I kept driving, and right as I got to the spot where you view the whole valley I broke through the clouds. So I stood there looking down, but instead of seeing the valley below I saw the tops of clouds. Mind you this was still kind of interesting, it really looked like you could just walk out on the clouds. (Fortunately for me I was not on an acid trip at the time and didn’t attempt this). However, this was not the view I really wanted to see. So I had no recourse but to drive all the way back sans pictures.

Tom goes to school at Harvey Mudd College. Harvey Mudd is a genius school. It’s one of those schools that hardly anyone has heard of, but those who have know how good it is. It’s equal to MIT in stature. You basically need a 4.0 GPA from high school, 1400+ SATs (and a lot of money) to get in. All the students at this school are geniuses, and before the first time I went there I was a little apprehensive, after all I was 10 years older then these kids, yet there 10 times brighter then me. Fortunately I quickly came to the realization that college kids are college kids. Whether it be Harvey Mudd or Back Woods Community College, all college kids like to get drunk and have a good time.

Being a genius school has some advantages in the partying department too. Since the kids at this school actually put getting an education above drinking and having fun (unlike when I went to college) there are less restrictions on alcohol and parties. It seems that on a Friday and Saturday night the kids will actually study and get there assignments done before going out to have a good time.

They even had a real good scam at Tom’s dorm to pay for the alcohol. There’s a common area for the dorm where there’s a bunch of old pinball and video game machines. The students would take in these old broken down games and then fix them (they are genuis' remember). The students would drop their quarters in over the week to play, then on the weekend they would take out the change and go buy a keg of beer, putting it in the common area for all.

Though I was tired and jet lagged the first time I went there, the other two times I had an absolute blast. It’s probably the last time in my life that I’ll really be able to get trashed and act like a college student, as I am getting a little too old for that. The second time I went there I had just gotten back from my night in San Diego / Tijuana where I bought some good Tequila at a really cheap price. This guy named Christian, who is from Mexico, came over to Tom’s dorm that night with this real expensive bottle of aged Tequila, and between myself, Tom, Christian and his girlfriend we finished off about a bottle and a half.

I also happened to be there one night when the whole school was having a casino & fight night. The premise was a full fledged (highly illegal, but no one seemed to care) casino operation where you bought in for $10, played poker and then cashed in your chips at the end. Actually I ended up well ahead, but ended up given all my chips away to this good looking girl at the end of the night for the hell of it. Before the casino opened though, they had a cage out front where they staged boxing matches among some students, which everyone bet on. This was supposedly some tradition, though I’m not sure where it came from.

This is not to say that everything I did while visiting Tom involved alcohol (just most). One day on my second visit, which was in winter, we went up to Mt. Baldy, a 7000 foot high ski resort only about a half hour drive from Tom’s school. It was the most fun I ever had skiing. From the top of the mountain you could see all the way into Arizona, and the runs lasted forever, not like the puny 3500’ mountains back east.

On my third visit where I went to Palm Springs I visited Tom to watch the Super Bowl. I was all ready to get good and sloshed watching the Super Bowl with everyone there (it comes on at 3:00 out west), but we had all gotten too drunk the night before and no one wanted to drink. Oh well…

Actually of the times I visited Tom at his school there was only one time when I actually felt intellectually challenged (PC for dumb). It was on the first trip when Tom, his girlfriend Maggie and her friend whose name I forgot and I went out to eat. They were all discussing what electives to take the next semester. Now when I think of electives in college I think of Volleyball or maybe Photography or something like that. They were trying to decide weather to take Molecular Biology or Astrophysics as electives. I’m not making this up. As I write this Tom decided not to intern with us this summer, instead he decided to stay out west and take a intern job working for a company trying to cure cancer. Me, I write these dumb stories while Tom cures cancer….

Overall Los Angeles is one of my favorite places. With in an hour drive you can go from laying on a beach to skiing down a mountain to shopping Rodeo Drive and hanging out in classy clubs. In life I really don’t care where I live as long as I can travel. I stay in Washington D.C. because I like my job and all of my friends are here, but if I had no ties and had to pick a place to live it would be L.A.