“Those Hollywood hills”* July 5-7, 2021
We came at Los Angeles from the north and the coast,
specifically the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. It seems odd that such a vast park area is
smack up against one of the biggest metropolises in the country. In just a few minutes you go from wilderness
to Wilshire.
On July 6, Tuesday, we went to the Getty Center. Mind you, there are quite a few museums in Los Angeles, but I chose this one because I’d never heard of it or known anyone who’s been there. You reach the Getty Center, which comprises the art museum, research institute, and gardens, via a tram that goes up and up and UP a 900 ft hill. The Center is at the top.
Architecturally it’s very beautiful, mostly made of white Italian
marble, and of course the views are stunning, laying out the entire skyline,
all the way from the coast to the hills, of L.A. They charge for parking but the museum itself
is free (and since we’re from Chicago, the parking fees even on the West Coast
don’t seem overly high to us). Because
the museum is free, the crowd was large and eclectic, from artsy-dressed
hipsters to Midwest families on vaca, old and young, all ethnicities. The tram system does a remarkable job of
moving the crowds with minimal waiting times.
Of course we could not see it all, but we did see a lot, especially several galleries of European Renaissance and Baroque art. There were a few pieces that stood out. In a large still life by Monet, the flowers glow so that the painting seems to be a light source in itself. There were the usual allegorical works with mythological or Biblical themes. However, my favorite was a 1783 self-portrait by French painter Joseph Ducreux, in which the artist drew himself stretching and yawning. This made me smile and meant more to me than more traditional, posed portraits. I went back to it after I finished with that gallery. I learned later that some of Ducreux’ paintings have been made popular as memes on social media.
We also saw a featured exhibit of photography by young
photographers of color. The pictures
were stunning, but the gallery in which they were displayed was very small,
such that people kept bumping into one another to see the photos from different
distances. In this exhibit there was also
a slide show of photos by younger artists, high school students, from a
competition. These too were wonderful
but the slide show seemed to me to go too fast.
But these are mild quibbles, since the photography was warm and vibrant,
capturing the energy of young artists who are passionate about what they do. The subjects were mostly friends and family,
other young people in real-life situations.
There was an extensive exhibit by an Italian photographer
from the ‘50s and ‘60s, Mario Giacomelli, which I did not like as well – he did
landscapes and geometric forms, as well as photos of ordinary citizens going
about their daily lives. He used some
manipulation of the images, adding lines, scratches and spaces and taking out
backgrounds. (I don’t like those
techniques in general but have been told I am hopelessly old-fashioned.) The artist often seemed to be making a
statement about life, in that most of his subjects appeared sad and broken. An exception was a set of photos of young
priests in a seminary, in their long black robes and birettas, playing outside
like little kids. There’s a story behind
those photos. After the artist took
them, he passed out cigars to the seminarians, intending to photograph them for
a competition he was entering on the subject of smoking. The rector shut him down flat. Well, you can see both points of view – the
artist was interested in furthering his career, but the rector had to protect
his students from temptation.
We were at the Getty all afternoon, but that counts a stop
of maybe a generous 45 minutes to fortify ourselves at the café (since walking
around viewing art is so exhausting, we didn’t even mind the inflated prices
for sandwiches and artisan-type snacks).
I don’t suppose we saw half of what is there to be seen but we had a
good time. Naturally, we were completely
exhausted by the end of the day.
We used the campground in the Malibu hills as a base camp, going into the city without the trailer as we did in San Francisco. This is the strategy to use in cities where navigation with a trailer is difficult and parking completely impossible. It required quite a bit of driving but to us it was worth it. Not only did we get to see mountain sunsets every evening, but campgrounds closer to L.A. were asking $150-175 a night. I will not pay that even if I have it, on principle. (The average for this trip has been about $40.) As it was, the campground we were in was sufficiently crowded that we had to change sites on the 7th. Though the sites were all about the same, some had been reserved in advance for certain days.
On the 7th we went to La Brea Tar Pits and Museum. I had heard about this place all my life but frankly I did not really believe it was real – I thought it was exaggerated, sometimes for sitcom purposes. But there actually are tar pits right in the middle of L.A., on Wilshire Boulevard. You can walk right up to them and see and hear the tar bubbling methane gas up through the water that sits on top. Smells just like fresh asphalt. It is still working, breaking down the vegetation below, and from time to time really big bubbles pop, sounding like a large fish splashing, though of course nothing could live in that water. The fossils were discovered in the late 1800s when the pits were being excavated for the tar to make asphalt. Scientists have pulled thousands of fossils, representing hundreds of animal species, from the pits and are still finding and restoring them.
You can walk around the big pit, called the Lake Pit, and there are
smaller pits, some of which also still have live tar in them. The Lake Pit has life-size fiberglass
sculptures of a mammoth getting stuck, with her mate and youngster nearby. There are signs explaining what happened, how
the tar had some water on the top so the animals did not see it, and then just
a few inches were enough to get a huge mammoth stuck for good. Predators sometimes attacked the dying
animals and then got stuck themselves. Seeing
the various sites requires quite a bit of walking and we were pretty slow at
it, being still a bit stiff from the previous long day at the Getty the day
before. The pits and other outdoor
exhibits are all public; only the museum charges a fee.
The museum shows skeletons and some actual fossils of the
animals that were found and are still being found in the pits. These are prehistoric animals, but not
dinosaurs – mammoths, mastodons, sabre-toothed cats, giant sloths. I never knew the difference between mammoths
and mastodons before. Now I do, or a
short version: mammoths are from farther
back in history, were larger and ate grass; mastodons came a bit later (as in
10,000 years ago), were a bit smaller and ate brush and other vegetation. As with dinosaurs, I always wonder how there
could possibly have been enough vegetation to feed such huge animals. There is an interactive exhibit designed to
demonstrate how much force it would take to pull free of the tar. The answer is, a lot. I never knew there were lions in North
America – not mountain lions, larger animals, that are now extinct. There is a section where you can see the
actual restoration work going on. Behind
the glass, a young woman in a white lab coat was cleaning a bone with an
impossibly tiny tool, like a needle with a handle.
After leaving the museum, we decided we’d like a
Subway. The GPS took us to not one, but
two Subway restaurants that were not actually there. We could see the storefronts but they were
empty. We eventually did find one that
was open. Then LCR looked for a sporting
goods store for a specific weight of dumbbells, and we had to go to two stores
for that. Sounds like a ridiculous way
to spend an evening, but consider that we got to drive through a large part of
Los Angeles, from working class neighborhoods with neat stucco houses to
winding roads with artistically designed mansions hugging the hillside at
impossible angles. Like other American
cities, L.A. is a study in contrasts, with dirt and homelessness and shuttered
businesses in close proximity with the kind of beauty a lot of money can
buy.
On our way out of town, we thought we’d take a look at the
famous Venice Beach. When you see it in
the movies or on TV, it is always bright and sunny and full of perfect people
in bright, hip clothing, and everyone seems to be having a good time. We drove to Venice using the GPS, turning
down the street as instructed, and we came to the beach area. There was a sign “No Right Turn,” and concrete
posts preventing a right turn, but there was NO similar sign for turning
left. As soon as we did so we were
shouted down by pedestrians saying we could not drive on the boardwalk. It did not look like a boardwalk; it was
concrete and sand and looked like part of a road. Several young men with a rasta-type vibe who
were selling fruit ices told us it was forbidden – “Not here, mon” - because
there had been an incident where someone drove down the boardwalk and began
shooting. They recommended that we back
up but due to the concrete posts, there would not have been room to turn back
onto the street. They said there was an
alley parallel to the beach and that was where we were supposed to drive, but
we had not seen any alley going into the area.
Various people were shouting from different directions and for a few
minutes I was not sure how or if we could get out of there. The pedestrian area was pretty wide, though,
and up ahead a bit LCR managed to do an extremely tight U-turn, and we headed
back around to great approval and relief.
The young men who had been giving us advice said if the police gave us a
hard time, just tell them GPS sent us there.
We never did see the alley they were talking about.
So, on the basis of that very brief encounter – no, Venice
Beach does not look like it does in the movies – it was foggy and cool that day;
there are many types of people there, some hippie types but not all, cafes and
little stalls selling incense, cold drinks, and paintings with slogans like
“Eat more mushrooms;” we did not see an actual boardwalk but that may be
because we did not go far enough; the roadside and beach are full of tents of
both the homeless and daytime fun-seekers … the main similarity was that
everyone really did seem to be having a good time. At least until we got there!
Heading for Las Vegas next.
*Bit of a song by Bob Seger
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