The City of Angels

All my life, I've always lived just outside Los Angeles. I was always about a 20-minute drive to the downtown area (which is what's usually portrayed in media). As a child, I went reluctantly - my parents would buy fancy perfumes/colognes/jewelry and sell them in the small towns we lived by. As a kid, I wasn't so aware of what was around me. I was often bored since I couldn't go off and explore and such (such is life of a kid in the 90's). As an adult, I made a string of excuses as to why I didn't visit the city - "I don't know how to get there; It's too far; I don't have any time/money; I have no reason to go..." Well, you get the idea. 

In another class (different from the one with the pretty lady), I was tasked to visit the downtown area: to survey the land (and how the land is used) and to take note of some of the history of LA and some of the currently existing landmarks in the city (I learned that some were demolished for more modern buildings). So, I had to go (this assignment is worth about 10% of my total grade! It's one of the bigger ones). 

So let me give you the TL;DR version of my trip (Too Long; Didn't Read - you can thank Reddit for that):

1) Everything's pretty packed together - you can see just about everything that's in LA in about 3-4 hours. Now exploring Los Angeles...that's a lifetime.

2) John Parkinson - the influential architect that helped shaped Los Angeles to be the magnificent metropolis that it is today. 

3) It's pretty awesome and interesting how we can just walk inside some of the buildings (like the Bradbury Building and Biltmore Hotel), but others are closed off to the public.

 Finally, here are some photos that I took  throughout my walk in Los Angeles:

Trip to the Ghetty (Late Post #2)

The front entrance of the Getty.

On a beautiful Friday afternoon in July, one of my friends had to go to the Getty Center in Los Angeles. I say "had to" since he was required to make a trip to examine art from the Renaissance Era and write a concise, yet detailed, report on his observations of said art. He didn't want to go alone, so I asked if I could tag along. It's been years since my last visit and I also vowed to revisit this museum some time this year, and the timing was impeccable. 

Even though it's been years since my trip to the Getty, nothing much has changed. It all felt nostalgic and natural, which my friend felt relief for (since he never visited the Getty until that trip we made) so we had no trouble having to be where we needed to be, which was the west wing, where all European art could be found.

After a good hour and half (maybe two) of examining art, having an on-going conversation with my friend about the art and applying his knowledge to the works that were present, we spend our remaining time exploring the rest of the museum. We found some great architecture (like the photo to the right). While, in honesty, it was something that I couldn't comprehend entirely, it was something that I appreciated simply because it exists. Maybe that's the powerful effect of art: sometimes we don't understand what we see, hear, or feel, but all that matters most is that someone was creative or insightful, or even just lucky enough to create something into existence that didn't exist before.