How Can I Ever Leave?

I had a burst of WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU DOING, YOU LOVE LIVING IN LA! anxiety today. Yesterday I mentioned I was going out shooting today around LA, which I did. And as I was once again blown away by Los Angeles and her culture, I was immediately very sad and anxious at the thought of leaving (even knowing I was leaving for another city didn't help). I LOVE this city; this conglomerate, spread out, proud, glamorous, gritty tinsel town. It's a crazy place, full of brilliant talent, and broken down yesterdays. I'm a sucker for this place, it's LA.

So we started out our urban photo adventure at a derelict totally sketchy section of the LA river.


Honestly it turned into more of a recon mission, as we were NOT prepared for where we were going. It was an underpass of the 5 and the 110 freeways, covered in all sorts of tagging and great old architecture.


It is no doubt trespassing (some of you may know, trespassing is my favorite crime), but more than that it was terrifying. I barely had enough time to snap a few shots (seen on this blog) before I was so scared of getting killed or raped by some gang of homeless people that we had to leave.


We didn't even make it down to the bottom, though honestly, we're not sure we even saw anyone...but still...too scary.


We vowed to go back with more protection (aka big guys and probably my pocket knife, not kidding). It was so amazing, a hidden gem of gritty LA. I must go back.


We stuck around this rundown section of town, full of good working people, criminals and meth addicts. All of which we I'm pretty sure we met up with somehow or another.


South of the overpass is an abandoned prison, shout out to the C block - large print on the cement building says C block. I would like to figure out how to get closer to that.


All the buildings were covered in steel bars, and half were abandoned.


The barbed wire was also abundant.

We then made our way into Silver Lake, center of Los Angeles's indie music scene (home of Elliott Smith, Rilo Kiley, Silversun Pickups, Karen O to name a few) and cool urban wall art, aka murals.



Of course, first up was Solutions Audio, with it's immortalized mural, featured on Elliott Smith's Figure 8 album cover.



Then we spent some time around Silver Lake and Echo Park on Sunset. No building in the area is plain.


Everything is so colorful, and people will put a mural anywhere.


The area's still seedy...strewn with the days after "better days"...and plenty of dark alleys to get into trouble in.



We then headed back toward home through some of the most azn places in LA. We wanted a good, disreputable, authentic asian meal. So we headed through downtown, and shot this building on the way. It's right near the music hall and library, but I don't remember seeing it before today. More interesting architecture.


So we ended up at a Vietnamese Restaurant. It was amazing, the only thing we could read on the menus were the prices. So I chose my meal by pointing at a picture...and yes it was so good. Then we topped it off with a crazy coconut milk drink, boba style, but not boba. I really enjoyed it. All in all a pretty great day.

Holy cow, my brother and I are watching The Decent right now, wow, what a scary movie.