Hi All,
I just spent 2 weeks in the USA on holidays. I visited last year and only went to Vegas, so this time I went around the west coast area a bit more. Started at El Paso, then onto San Franciso, then Vegas and finally Santa Monica.
Had a ball.
The following is the combined and slightly edited text of a couple of posts I put on an Australian bulletin board that i frequent, since it’s mundane and meaningless it seems perfect to share here 
I’ve been in the US for nearly a week so far. The first few days in El Paso, Texas. Interesting place. It’s a city of not quite a million people but it’s massively spread out. I stayed Downtown, next to the Arts district and not far from the shopping district. Yes, there are defined districts and the culture of the area changes when you move from one to another. In the Arts district a metric shitpile of money has been spent in building new stuff like a baseball stadium, museums, art galleries and a convention centre. The old buildings there are beautifully maintained.
Walk 3 blocks and buildings only 100 or so years old look like they’re ready to fall down. Walking around the place is a head spin.
Few notable things about El Paso.
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The people there are ultra friendly. Don’t start a conversation with a local unless you want to yak for the next 30 minutes at least and probably be invited to join them for lunch or drinks.
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No bugger walks anywhere. Cars are everywhere but pedestrian traffic is minimal.
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No where in around where I stayed had footpath dining or drinks. Any bar or restaurant or cantina you had to actually go in the front door to see what it was like, very hard to tell from outside. If you wanted to find a place you could sit down with a drink and have a smoke you are shit outa luck. Almost. I found one place on the last afternoon, a gay bar.
When you talk to anyone, after they ask you where you’re from, they ask why you’re there. When you say Holidays, they look at you quizzical and say, " Here? What made you come to El Paso?" Then they correct themself and say “There’s a lot of history here”. And there is. It’s an absolute melting pot of cultures including all the Spanish and European influences going back to the 1600’s.
Also just a short(ish) walk from Downtown to the border crossing into Mexico where you enter Juarez, until recently the murder capital of the world.
Walked over the border, down the main street and the difference from El Paso was striking. Just as old but everything is run down. Went into The Kentucky Bar, the birthplace of the Margarita, with a bar and mirror imported from France in the early 1900’s. (Mirror hasn’t been cleaned since at least 1950). Fascinating place, even the beggers are bilingual. They tap you for a smoke in Spanish, when I’d just hold up my hand and say, Sorry no Spanish, they’d switch to fluent English.
If you’re heading to the states and have 2-3 days to kill going somewhere off the beaten track, I’d highly recommend El Paso.
So after that I headed to San Francisco. Wow, instant culture shock. I’m staying basically on the corner of mason St and market st, two of the main key streets. Right behind me is basically their version of the slums, the “tenderloin”, chock full of homeless, mentally ill, drunk and drug affected. Took me a good half day plus to get my head around where to walk and how to deal with the beggers. Did my head in at first, and very confronting when there’s a pack of them together.
After that, I’ve done a lot of walking. San Francisco reminds me of Melbourne a little, but it’s also quite different. Very small really as far as breadth for such a large city but high density population. $4k per month for a 1 bedroom unit I was told. That probably doesn’t help with the homelessness.
Once you get your head around the place, getting around is a breeze. Walking is fine except in some parts where you would seriously need spelunking equipment the hills are that steep. Can catch the old fashioned cable car which has no motor, just connects to an underground cable that is in continuous motion powered by a central motor somewhere and you have two blokes managing these big manual levers to alternatively connect to the cable to move forward and disconnect and brake to slow. Amazing things. They also have a collection of trams from all over the world going down market St all the way to Fisherman’s Wharf.
Did the Alcatraz tour 2 days ago. Looking at the cells and the conditions people were locked up in was mind blowing.
I got used to San Fran by the time I left. Last morning there I went for breakfast and could only eat half so I got a takeaway container and gave it to some homeless people laying on the footpath down the street.
Went for a walk around to the Powell St cable car stop to say G’Day to the begger/busker who was usually there only to find his spot had been taken by a younger bigger man. I spotted the regular bloke about a block away, trudging along slowly with his guitar on his back so I went over to him and said hello. Said to him it looked like his spot had been taken, and he looked at me shattered and said he didn’t know what he was going to do.
So I handed him $10 and told him to go get something to eat and things will get better. Well bugger me, the reaction was brilliant. He looked at me, then shook my hand and then lunged at me and gave me a hug saying thank you. So I left San Fran with a small warm feeling where I’m told the heart is supposed to be.
Got into Vegas and felt like I’d just got home. Got a room upgrade at the Golden Nugget, sussed out the casino and then went out onto Fremont St. God I love Fremont St, it’s a trip. Far better entertainment than the strip.
While I was there this time I consciously did a few things I hadn’t done before, while also reprising some old favs. I explored Downtown far more and found a lot of interesting things including a small shopping mall made entirely of shipping containers. http://downtowncontainerpark.com/
I also walked down Las Vegas Boulevard from Fremont St to the Stratosphere tower. 2 mile walk in 43c was a good way to work up a thirst and it was a great walk. Walked past all the old wedding chapels and the stuff that made Las Vegas famous back in the day.
The Stratosphere is a trip. Observation deck is a fully circular room 108 stories up with 360 degree views of vegas.
Next floor up they have an open floor with an amusement park on it, including rides that hang you over the edge and back. Screw that. On the 108th floor they also have this thing where you can jump out with your ankles attached to a 1/2 inch steel cable on a windlass. A bloke jumped out while I was standing there watching and man did that reel make a noise as it let out the cable. It’s apparently in the guinness book of records as the highest freefall jump, about 242 metres. Again, screw that.
After Vegas got the bus to Santa Monica. Long day but worthwhile. I wouldn’t do it again but I’m glad I’ve done it once. The scenery was amazing. It’s all desert until you get near to LA and it’s not sandy desert, it’s rocks, tumbleweeds and cactus that look similar to cabbage trees.
Santa Monica. Wow. Very similar in a way to San Francisco, but more laid back. Wealth meets poverty in a more controlled environment than Frisco, but still obvious.
I was staying 100m from Santa Monica Pier which was great. Hired a bicycle and did the ride along the beach promenade to Venice Beach and back. Saw the outdoor gym, all the people playing volleyball on the beach with nets all set up, the basketball courts with people playing on one court 2 on 2 and on another full court 5 on 5 and really going at it.
The area along there is a mix of cheap souvenir shops, a few places to eat and a metric shitpile of homeless people. Went past one area where it was like a shanty town with all this stuff piled up on the grass under the palm trees where people would sleep at night then use as their base to beg during the day. massive eye opener.
Funniest thing i saw the whole trip was a bloke sleeping in the park while the maintenance guy just mowed around him with neither missing a beat.
Did the bus tour up from Santa Monica to Hollywood and took the walk down the walk of stars from Hollywood and vine down to the Chinese theatre and FMD wasn’t it manic down there.
There’s a scam for those going to the US where people will thrust a DVD or CD at you and try to engage you in conversation. If you take it, they ask for your name, then grab it back and personally sign it for you. Then they want money and you’re screwed. After passing on several, I ran into a stand up comedian who pinned me as an aussie and asked if I knew Hughesy, who had apparently been his patron when he visited Aus a year or so ago. (guys name is Kwame Siegal) So after yacking for a couple of minutes he asked for my name and started to do the sign the DVD for me. I pulled him and said, hang on mate, I know this stunt, how much are you going to sting me after you sign it? He looked sheepish and just said whatever I thought was fair. Then he asked how did I spell my name, STU or STEW and I said well done, good pickup. Then I got line of the holiday. He looked at me and said “man, just because I’m standing here surrounded by costumed pedophiles don’t mean I didn’t go to school”. That scored him a $20 for his DVD and a fist bump, which apparently is how you shake hands in the USA.
Last day in Santa Monica, I’m sitting at a bar before I get the shuttle to the airport and there’s a couple of half cut guys sitting near me drinking and yakking loudly. As I go to leave one of them pulls me up and says “Hi, my name is Tyson, Richard Tyson. Did you see Kindergarten Cop? I was the bad guy with the pony tail”. Fairy nuff I thinks, shook his hand, said something soothing and headed off. Apparently he is the real deal, why he felt the need to introduce himself to me, I have NFI.
I also met Jimmy Kimmel, but didn’t know who he was until I saw the posters advertising his show and the lines around the block queueing up to get in.
Coming home was a mess. I was on LA time until I got to Melbourne, so the flight left at around 11pm LA time. They gave us some food and booze around midnight and turned the lights off to get you to sleep around 1am. So I dozed for a few hours, didn’t really sleep, until 7am LA time. Checked my bearings and realised 7am LA was midnight Melbourne time. So dozed again until 9am by which time I was wide awake. So by the time I landed in Melbourne at 7am, I’d already been awake fully since 2am.
made Sunday interesting. I was manic all day, like I’d been on a red bull binge, until I finally crashed and burned about 10-10:30pm.
Anyway, that’s basically it. I had a blast. So glad I went to 4 different places, 4 different cultures in one country. Apart from the initial shock of the tenderloin in San Francisco, I never felt unsafe and walked around heaps, settled in and really enjoyed the time there.
So that’s it. The TLDR summary is, I had a great time and would be happy to reply to any questions.
) from age 15 to 26, and Mrs. L.A. lived there from when she was a child until she left for the Army. The scenery really is amazing. I’ve heard people complaining about the drive from L.A. to Las Vegas. I want to tell them to open their eyes. There’s yellow sand, red rocks, grey rocks, tumbleweeds (tan and rolling, and green and growing), orange California poppies in some places, white flowers, yellow flowers, purple flowers… And there are geological formations. There are dry washes where you can see where the water goes in the wet season, and monolithic ‘mountains’ poking up through the sand. Usually, this is all covered by a sky-blue sky and you can see forever. The desert truly is a beautiful place. Mrs. L.A. and I always notice the Joshua trees in movies and commercials and think of ‘home’.