VENICE, THE CONEY ISLAND OF THE WEST

Today, Saturday, January 18, we decided to go to Venice beach.  I've lived in California most of my life and ever been there.  It was originally challenging to get John to agree to go, because it's so far away.  I've discovered that people in SoCal have unpleasant thoughts about ging some places because traffic is always so awful, but sometimes these places turn out not to be all that far away.  For instance, I think Venice beach was lesser than 30 miles,and today being Saturday, it didn't take long to get there at all. In some ways it was different from what I've seen on tv and movies, and in some ways the same.  The big muscle guys showing off at muscle beach weren't all that muscl-y but the weirdos didn't disappoint.  

I

would say the Venice beach walk was about 8 blocks long and there must have been 5 marijuana doctors.  

Maybe more. 

We had the requisite gelato, and decided that at lunch time we would have fish and chips.  Then we walked toward the Santa Monica pier, though we quit before we got there.  Then we walked down to the water and walked back in the water.  We also went to a wedding on the beach.

When we finally had our fish and chips, it was so bad (undercooked) that we didn't even eat the fish. The chips were good, though.

There's a heat wave here, and this is just very unusual weather.  

It was about 85 degrees here today.  The water wasn't even all that cold, either.  I think it was warmer on Thursday and Friday, but we spent those days inside in over air-conditioned spaces, so we didn't enjoy the weather that much.  

I'm going to try to upload the last two days using my phone and see if it works.  

PASADENA

I will be posting several blogs at one time whenever I get somewhere with a wifi connection, but I need to start writing now.  Today, Friday, we went to Pasadena to the Pasadena bead show.  This is a show I've always seen advertised but not willing to drive to SoCal to go to it.  This time since we were already here, I persuaded john too with me.   The first good thing that happenedw as before we left home and I found free tickets on the Internet.  The second good thing that happened was that after we arrived in Pasadena I found a free parking place less than a block from the site at the Hilton, where they charged $6 for valet parking.  The first bad thing that happened was that the tickets in printed out from the Internet turned out to be from last year.  But the people at the desk were nice and let me pay and John got in free.  Do they know their market or what?  Worked out for the because eventually he had to go move the car so I could stay a half hour longer.   And of course spent more money.  

Not really that much different from other bead shows, perhaps a bit bigger and I'd say about 50 percent of the same vendors who come to Sacramento.  I was able to find some seed beads that I had  not been able to find at home after I got a project half done.    Plus I got two really cool focal beads.  This show also had a lot of clothing and other made up stuff, but I didn't really look at it since I was trying to get through the whole show before my 2 hour parking expired.  

After we left the bead show we went looking for a furniture store we used to like, but it seems to be gone.  But on the way, we discovered a Lee's Sandwich shop.  This is our favorite place to get Vietnamese bahn mi sandwiches.  They used to have a place in sacramento, but it closed.  So now I'm a double happy camper.  

We visited the dealer we bought our dining room rug from, with the idea we might find a rug for our new upstairs room, but didn't see much.  

So we went down to Fair Oaks Ave. And visited four antique shops.  

Came back to Bill and Vera's tonight.  

LOS ANGELES ART SHOW

John and I have wanted to go to the LA Art Show and this year we finally made it.  I don't know exactly what I thought it would be, but it was sort of different.  Basically, the LA Art Show is a place where a lot of galleries come to show their wares and sell them to the collecting public.  

So, there are famous masterpieces, quite a few Impressionists and a few California Impressionists. Lots of more modern stuff, and a big collection of Asian art.  Pictures don't exactly do it justice, but here are a few.  

This is sort of a quilt/sampler.

This is made of broken soda bottles epoxied together.  

Also, there was, for the first time this year, some glass.  Only one exhibitor.  They had glass from three generations of the same family.  I think the name is Dotter, but I left the information out in the car.  

Anyway, I am lusting for this piece of glass.  It's by the middle generation guy.  

Then we discovered that there is also a jewelry show running with this show.  It was mostly excruciatingly expensive diamonds and gold stuff, though one vendor had some really nice Art Nouveau pieces, but too expensive for me.  

Atone point we thought we'd have something to eat during the show because they had wonderful looking food.  It was a buffet and you could have whatever you wanted from some wonderful things that were available, but it was $26 for a plate of food!  

So we skipped it.  Our hotel is in Chinatown.  John warned me that the food here would spoil me for Chinese food in sacramento.  He was right, and we just ate at a kind of a run of the mill not really fancy restaurant.  But everything was perfectly cooked and seasoned.