...which is exactly what new friend Brian (commercial director and student of architecture) and I did this past Saturday night. We met downtown in Little Tokyo, conveniently parking in the Office Depot lot (for free!...except Brian got hit up by a well-spoken vagrant and generously slipped him $5) across the street from one of my favorite sushi restaurants, Sushi Gen, in a mini-mall on 2nd Street between Alameda and Central. You must go, if you love fresh, well-prepared and quickly-served raw fish items. They cook things, too -- expatriate Linda M and I frequented the place on our Eat 'n' Shoot Thursday nights (tale to come) and tried 'most all their delights.
Brian and I nibbled (rare treat: Spanish mackerel!) and chatted for a good while before he whisked me off on an impromptu tour of some of the more fascinating Downtown LA architecture. I've spent plenty of time in the area, and have a pretty keen sense of design, but enjoyed seeing it afresh through the eyes of a director who is an architect at heart.
I hadn't seen the Walt Disney Concert Hall since it was completed. It is a magnificent Frank Gehry creation, an unexpectedly graceful sweep of stainless steel that looks to me like a ship mid-storm, a sea vessel bursting from its moorings, fluid and alive. And even though our up close inspection revealed sheets of metal not meeting at various corners (maybe, we mused, it's not quite finished?), and the guards wouldn't allow us to climb the steps to peek at the interior, it is quite breathtaking. I hope the acoustics are as stunning.
Just down from Disney on South Grand is the Water Court, nestled between the twin skyscrapers of California Plaza...it was after 11, so its dancing fountains had just retired for the night, but the stone pavement was still wet. I removed my Cinderella pumps so as not to slip down the granite steps and walked barefoot through the court, the sentinel eyeing me as I tiptoed into a smaller, ground-level fountain still flowing that was surely designed for such activity; if it wasn't, he didn't let on.
Behind the Omni hotel are a few little fountained parks I'd never visited, and we strolled through them, too, as Brian pointed out from the heights the various parking structures and scaffolding he fancies. I giggled at first, but the more he highlighted their particular points of visual interest (say, the perfect alignment of long flourescent lightbulbs, or the varied grids, grates, cement textures and shadings), the more I came to appreciate them as unplanned works of art. As we drove around, I heard myself exclaiming, "Hey, look at THAT parking structure!" (a phrase I assure you I'd never before uttered) and extolling its attributes. A fine-pointed reminder to make a habit of finding the beauty in the mundane...
We ended up past midnight in one of my favorite LA locations, Union Station. Two architectural styles, Spanish Revival and Art Deco, are put to grand use here, with soaring, carved woodbeam ceilings, Spanish tile inlays and stainless steel trim, still mostly lit by elegant chandeliers; it's a cathedral of the rails. The vast waiting area, with its generous leather and oak seats, had to have been a passenger's delight in the 1940's, the lamented LA heyday. We were warned by the guard stationed in the waiting area that one must have a train ticket in order to take a seat -- he wasn't inclined to let us non-travelers tarry. I sweetly asked for two minutes; he winked and gave us five, which was actually just enough time for us to be transported a bit, to a time when Union Station must have seemed like the entrance to Paradise.
LA isn't Paradise, of course...but, as long as we're here, it's good fun to pretend now and then.
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