Guess We Aren’t Big City Folk
Woman in the Middle | March 5, 2012On Saturday Hubby and I headed into Los Angeles for what I thought would be a nice road trip with a purpose. I am just about finished with a new local history book for my city (It will be called “Wicked Jurupa Valley”) but I do have to provide 40 photos to the publisher. One of the stories involves a couple that, shall we say, didn’t end well. He owned pretty high-end apartment houses in Los Angeles. She was hired to manage one, and 13 or so years he ended up dead and she ended up in prison, convicted of manslaughter. He had a ranch in Jurupa Valley and that is where the unfortunate shooting took place.
I wanted to get photos of the two apartment houses she had managed for him. Great excuse to get out of Dodge for a few hours…..I thought! I live in an area with quite a few people. My city has over 95,000. The big city next door has over 300,000. There are many more cities around as well. We have things like electricity and phone service and movies theaters. But…wow! Los Angeles is just so big city and so crazy!
The traffic…oh the traffic! People were driving like maniacs! I can’t count how many times Hubby and I said “Did you just see that?????” Besides, where are all those people going on a Saturday afternoon? Shouldn’t they have been home enjoying the lovely weather? When we finally got close to the first apartment building, which was in the Wilshire area, we noted a second sign up over the street sign. It said “Koreatown.” OK, that explained all those shop signs I couldn’t read! Then we turned the corner, just turned a corner, and there is another sign that said “Bangladeshtown.” Just that fast, I went from Korea to Bangladesh! What was happening??? We saw and took pictures of the apartment building, and even snuck in the lobby and took a photo. Then we set off for the next stop, only 12 minutes away said that liar, Map Quest. Once again we were in Koreatown, said the street sings and the shop signs, and we were also in surface street traffic. Sigh!
We just so happened to drive past the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, future home of the 340 ton rock. I thought that was a funny coincidence. We even saw a crew doing a little filming, because what is a day in LA without seeing a film crew? We seemed to finally leave Koreatown and ended up in that famously posh place, Beverly Hills. OK, I know I an a native Southern Californian, but I have never driven around Beverly Hills much. Lets just say, it ain’t all 90210. The neighborhood my second apartment house was located in looked OK, perhaps a place where actors live in genteel poverty. But I will take my little piece of heaven out in Jurupa Valley any day!
On the way home we were going right past Hubby’s office so he asked to stop in for a few minutes to fix a little problem and I agreed. He pointed out one of his favorite names on a business in the area – “New York Style Mongolian Barbecue.” Explain that one! After he was done I forced him to take me to the local Hometown Buffet. I almost hate to admit that as you now know I have absolutely no taste in food and am terribly middle class. Well, that would be the truth, so I guess it is time to just get that out there. We do not have a Hometown Buffet in my area (electricity, but no buffet.) so it is an experience every time we go. This time I got to see a kid drop a fork on the floor, pick it up, and put it back with the clean forks. I promptly removed it, just so you know, but it did cause me to regard all of my silverware with suspicion for the rest of the meal. It will also cause me to not need to go to Hometown Buffet again for a while.
Needless to say, Sunday was a day of rest for us after all that excitement! We decided to stay in our own backyard, dodge the golf balls, and enjoy the fine weather. The gale force winds finally died down so we didn’t have to be worried about being blown away, so it was all good. Sigh. Guess I am just not a big city girl!
Did you ever find the second apartment?
We did find the second apartment building with no problem. It was the traffic that was the problem!!!