25/02/12
Arrived in LA at 3pm yesterday I’m here for work (at TED). It’s pretty boring so far. All I’ve seen is hotels and carparks with american food places everywhere. Went to “Hooters” last night and what surprised me was that (a) there were a lot of female customers, and (b) the waitresses looked so young. It was much less seedy than I thought it would be – almost Disnefied.

26/02/12
yesterday we went out to get lunch in Long Beach, looking for something healthy, found a mexican place that touted salad. It was full of cheese and sauce, and came with nachos. I felt sick. You can get these huge sheets of beef jerky for $2 from 7/11 so I’m happy.

On the walk back from the mexican restaurant, I saw these 3 things within about 5 minutes of eachother.

(1) a black boy on a bicycle who cycled on the pavement and every time he got to the next crossing he dropped his bike and started doing a crazy dance while he waited for the lights to change, complete with personal soundtrack.

(2) A really fat old woman, leaning over a dustbin eating chicken wings out of it. With sauce all over her face. It made me want to cry both kinds of cry.

(3) A really tall pro-african preacher guy shouting n**ger every other word at the top of his voice.

There were a lot of hobos out at lunchtime.

LA is so clunky. Maybe that’s just a generalization. It could be just Long Beach. People are friendly to eachother as if they’re reinforcing eachothers’ self confidence, as if they require it desperately. The food is clunky, the cars a re clunky, the money is also clunky. Everything is priced in dollars, rounded to the nearest. Clunk.