Los Angeles

10,050 km

One if my last stops in California was Los Angeles where I stayed at the polo house, "No Manor", which was located quite near Eagle Rock(Pictured below). I stayed in LA for about a week before the Crank Gamble tournament in Vegas, and played polo almost every night while in the city and managed to get up to a lot while trying to keep costs low.

One of the first days in LA a friend, Krista, and I drove up to Van Nuys in the San Fernando Valley for a really awesome bike event. The event is called Choppercabra and takes place bi-annually and is filled with fun and crazy events like demolition derby and chariot death match(my pictures may describe it better than I can). Another fun event was the bike race where the object was to bike to a fake tree and rescue as many cardboard cats you can and return them to the little old lady(a man in a old lady costume) who was positioned on the opposite side of the course... This was of course full contact. The little old lady survived. Choppercabra was then rounded off with a great group ride around the area and a free lunch.

The next activity that I got up to was a trip on the metro with my bike out to Hollywood to do the tourist thing and take in the boulevard. I spent the day biking around the area, checking out a few thrift stores and then sitting in a busy park with a beer and my pipe to people watch. That evening after bike polo, my mate bobby drove me out to Hollywood again to grab a world famous sausage at 'Pink's' and then up to the Hollywood hills for a great view of Los Angeles by night. I only wish I brought my camera, sorry for the terrible iPhone photo...

The next day was Halloween and I decided it would be cool to people watch somewhere eclectic and different, so I took the Metro out to Venice Beach. There I rode up and down the beach and check out various shops, artists selling their work, chilled on the beach, and people watched for a while. I saw a lot of quirky and cool costumes.

Of course quite a bit of my photography during my time in Los Angeles was dominated by architecture. LA has a varied mix of Architectural styles like Pueblo, Spanish Colonial and a fair bit of Victorian style. I went to the city thinking that the architecture would be pretty tacky, but what I discovered were a lot of cool historical buildings, converted warehouses, and really cool uses of space.  

One major thing that I noticed while staying in North-East Los Angeles besides the Pueblo overload, were the number of these small business that were operating out of these "Tiendas". They were essentially small buildings built adjacent to main avenues and roads that have been built on residential properties. The properties typically back onto the main road. It was a really cool use of space to get the most out of the high traffic corridors where normally it would just be a fence and someones back yard. I couldn't but think how cool it would be to operate a brewing space in one of these tiendas.

The rest of my trip before, in between and after these various activities was filled with lots of biking and photography of LA and its surrounding areas... Enjoy these last photos.

W