Boyz 'n' the Hood

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Up early this morning and met a Scottish girl at breakfast, it's still battering down today so we're at a loss, a guy from the hostel, Boogie, is organising a sight seeing trip so we put our names down.

The tour was great, a full day, 12 of us from the hostel in this mini-van with a mental German dude driving and talking us through it, what a day, you really need a car to see LA and this was defo the best way to do it.

First stop on the tour was Beverly Hills and Bell Air to see some of the stars homes. It's like another world. We saw Tom Hank's house, Arnie, Leo DiCaprio, a few more and of course Angela Lansbury of 'Murder She Wrote' fame!

Next stop was Beverly Hills and Rodeo Drive where the rich folk do thier shopping, no 'top shop' here, we went up to the 'Pretty Woman' hotel and used the bathrooms, it was real nice, a wee bit of luxury before hopping back on the bus for our next stop, Venice Beach.

Venice was real nice but we couldn't get out of the bus because of the rain, LA is deserted when it's like this, it's meant to rain 30 days a year but in the 4 days we've been here it's accounted for 450% of their expected YEARLY rain fall, I'm not joking it's about 4 feet deep in places and Venice was badly hit, a couple of houses have slipped into the ocean already and it's set to continue onto Thursday, we're on tornado watch too so hopefully our flight will be OK.

We went to a big Mall for lunch, I got a Kebob which is liek a kebab but has rice with it, nice, Fiona had some trendy pita thing, I can vouch that it was nice too. After a wee bit shopping we headed out to South Central and the hood, now this isn't in any guide book or on any regular tour but as I mentioned earlier our guide was mental so off we went though Compton, Watts, Slausen, Kris etc, the homies were out in force and this is where the Rodney King riots all kicked off, it was really dodgy and this driver is crawling through the ghetto in a blacked out MPV, all the brothers are looking real scared in case it's a drive-by and I'm getting slighlty concerned that they'll get their retaliation in first, I swear I've never seen anything like this, it's amazing looking back at it but at the time I just wanted the hell out of there, I tell the I'll never be scared to walk through Abeyview, Sighthill or Kirkton again after this.

The head case even faked a breakdown in the middle of Compton so we'd all sh!t ourselves, I can tell you it worked and off we went on our tour.

We went to the Staples Centre, home of the Lakers amongst other things, then downtown next, Downtown is crazy, it's real busy 9-5 but get's real dodge after about 7pm, a no go area and it's the City Centre, LA's mental like that though as there are 96 cities in LA, Bel-Air, Bev Hills, Hollywood, Compton etc and they all have there own city centre so the downtown city centre is a ghost town, apart from Skid Row, or crack ally as we called it, our next 'stop'.

This place was mental, where all the homeless live, not a place where you should be driving through, but guess what? We were. About 300 brothers running up and down the streets, tents on the sidewalk and genuine crack deals going down in front of our eyes, it was real dodge but after Compton it wasn't life threatening, the amazing thing is that Skid Row is the back of LAPD headquarters, they're to busy to deal with drugs with all the shootings here, nice to know.

On the way home we drove past the Hollywood hills and on the the Chinese and Kodak theaters, there was a premier on, "Racing Stripes" somethign about zebra racing, a big crowd braved the rain and so did I as I got out to take a few photo's of the stars in the pavement and that, it was cool so see but goes on for a mile, once you've seen one star you've seen them all huh, just change the name.

We got home about 6 pm and had some pizza with the other dudes from the tour, got chatting to a couple from Melbourne, Simon & Kirsten and went for a few drinks with them. Came back to the hostel with a carry-out and proceeded to 'party' till 6am the following morning, no point in doing things be half I guess, a good night though and a great day out.

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Photos

Sunset Boulevard
without the sun!!!

Comments

[tom]

tour
just interested in what tour you took