Summer Dispatch #1
LA, for Sheryl Crow, Joan Didion, and everyone in between
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Thursday
After taking an afternoon flight out of JFK and touching down on the ocean-crusted LA soil, I had the opportunity to kill an hour in the LAX baggage claim while waiting for my friend to land. We planned to pick up the rental car, eat something, and hit the hotel. By the time we’d caught the shuttle bus to the car rental, endured at least 3 French families also taking the shuttle, and braved the depressing and hectic rental establishment, we were starving and running on fumes. Within our first five minutes of driving around LA, it was obvious we weren’t in NYC anymore. The very road itself seemed to move at a slower pace, the sky stretching and yawning as if it was too high to care, and we were giddy to temporarily wipe the New York grime off our shoulders. It was going to be a good weekend.
Friday
The next morning, waking up in a hotel room cramped with my four close friends, the feeling of the bright blue sky and bright sunrays coursed through my veins and left me feeling like an open road, ready for wherever I go.
Our first stop on the docket was an LA staple, the place with the most locations on our custom “LA by Out of Towners” Google Map, a place so renowned for its LA-ness that it was the only place all four of us independently demanded to visit when planning the trip: Erewhon. In a nutshell, Erewhon Market (/ˈɛrɛhwɒn/ ERR-ruh-whahn) is a health food and high-end grocery store known for being wildly overpriced, full of fringe-non-science-backed supplements, and celebrity sightings. We had a main goal, get $20 smoothies, and a side goal, treat that store like it was the world’s greatest Rich People Museum.
The thing is that I am very much in that portion of the population that is vulnerable to Erewhon Market. I’m an Equinox member (enough said, but I’ll continue), a pescatarian, a self-described runner and a yogi, a CSA member, a former Whole Foods team member and current shopper, increasingly scared of pesticides in my digestive system and actively switching to organic produce only, a daily consumer of overnight oats, and a lazy bitch who loves prepped food and fancy snacks. Erewhon was heaven, my senses were overloaded and overjoyed by the number of things I could and would eat. Spicy tofu kelp noodle bowls, beautiful pre-cut fruit, multi-layered salads that would cure any travel-induced indigestion, a wall of tinned fish, SOUPS in BIG JARS, like, yeah, i kinda love it there. It was expensive though. Like for sure it was overpriced at times. But not always? Some stuff felt normal if not $2-3 more than normal. Then again, I’m also saying this as a current resident of NYC where $10 for 3 bell peppers is deemed reasonable.
Our next stop, after some debate and questioning our timeline, was an actual museum, the Getty. We went in knowing we could realistically only do one section of the museum and, in all honesty, I’m not upset about it at all. I think a part of visiting the Getty is the exhibitions and art, and another part is simply being at the Getty. You start off by taking a small tram from the parking lot up to the museum, which really kicks off a unique experience on its own, and when you arrive at the museum you’re immediately struck by the architecture. The museum itself isn’t imposing in a brooding or aggressive way, but it’s striking. The white marble, concrete, and sharp edges seem designed to interact with the endless blue sky and fresh air. Its probably one of the best museum experiences I’ve had because of that alone (although I once had a magical experience at a reconstructed 5th-century chapel exhibit at the Prado). We saw some great paintings, sculptures, and vowed to return again someday.
After a quick outfit change for happy hour and dinner, we set off to Bar Flores for a small happy hour and chat to catch up with some LA friends. The bar was adorable and just the opposite of NYC, which is exactly what I wanted. There was a Mexican cafe influence, so many plants and trees and flowers, and a really powerful and magical margarita pitcher. Bliss.
Dinner was a reservation I made based on many foodie influencer lists, Reddit lists, and various food ranking websites, a place called Bestia. We split everything, loved everything, and while signing the check, I realized just how much I couldn’t do math. We finished off the night with tea, coffee, and drinks, wrapped in the cozy, dim lighting of a Soho House.
Saturday
The tricky thing about traveling to a new city on vacation is balancing the urge to get up early and explore as much as you can, to accomplish more than you do on an average day back home, but also understanding that you’re fucking tired and part of a vacation is giving yourself a break from stress and obligations, that sleeping in is also something you’d dreamed of doing on your days off. This morning was for sleeping in, sleeping in so much so that we actually had to scramble to be ready for our 12:30 lunch reservation in Malibu. Today’s lunch is another meal that was highly anticipated, infamous for celeb sightings and rich people's antics, and required a certain team member of ours to wait on hold for 2 hours and 30 minutes until finally securing the table: Nobu Malibu.
Our drive along the Pacific Coast Highway was almost just as we imagined it, the beachy vibe grew increasingly palpable, and my double dose of Bonine (anti-motion sickness pills) put in a lot of work. When we arrived at the valet station in our silver rental Nissan, the valet took one look at our car amidst the Porsches, BMWs, and Maseratis to know that we were not there often. To sum it up and keep this piece moving: The views were the highlight of the meal, the food was great but not earth-shattering (to me), and I felt the California magic the whole way through. The patio is stunning, we ate overlooking the ocean and the crash of the waves almost drowned out our conversation. Somewhere between the miso black cod and the mini wonton-wrapped tuna tacos, a pod of dolphins graced us by jumping out of the water, twirling and twisting. If you asked me at the age of 17, I’d have said that California was the place I wanted to be. Here, suddenly I found myself thinking that maybe I’d been right, if it’s possible for a 17-year-old to ever be right. At the same time, the dolphins leaped out of the water and traversed our glittering blue horizon, Scott texted me an update from life in Brooklyn: some kid had projectile vomited on the train he was on. I turned back to the rolling thunder of the ocean, took a deep breath of the salty ocean air, and poured my focus into the warm stripes of the sun on my skin, before remarking to my friends that you really can’t make this shit up.
Our next and last activity for the day was a dinner party at another dear friend of ours. Her wide rooftop patio has been outfitted with the most beautiful setup, and the chef was almost done with our incoming gluten-free feast. The food was great, the company even better, and best of all was the conversation. For the first time in a long time, we talked with nowhere to go after, no one waiting for us at home, our only goal was to spend time together and catch up. Discussions ranged from the glory of any music from 2007-2010, the mystique of the exclusive and alluring Magic Castle: The Academy of Magic Arts (based in LA), and the journey of friendships in your mid-to-late twenties. We stayed and talked until the sun sunk below the mountains in the distance and the air turned crisp and stiff, then we wrapped ourselves in blankets and talked some more. We talked about marriage and what it really means, fear of giving birth, fear of never being truly understood, dreams of finding our place in the world, and old memories that make us feel old and young again. We talked until our eyes were barely open and even the cat had gone inside. We vowed that one day we’d move close together so we could do this every weekend. When we left, my heart felt sore from the surge of emotions I’d not felt in months. Sleeping that night, knowing it was our last together for a while and we’d wake up to our last morning all together – It was the last night of summer camp before you go away and must wait another year to feel the excitement, adventure, and connection that you long for in daily life.
Sunday
For our last meal as a quad, we had to go out with an LA bang. Brunch at Great White. With natural sunlight shining down on the rattan chairs, stucco archways, and smiling, tanned staff, my pangs of hunger were not only for the incoming breakfast burrito but also for a life that doesn’t feel dungeonous. Images of New York in the winter, where the red brick walls feel like they are closing in on you and your layers and layers of dark clothes hide your true form, glitched and sat incongruously with the images of an open, breezy, soft hues of LA before me. I ate too much at brunch and assuaged my strict no-food-waste upbringing by taking my uneaten half of breakfast burrito with me. Our last hours before half our group left were spent shopping. A well-deserved and never-done-before splurge of a Vivian Westwood wallet for one of us, books and books for another, somehow we all got a vibrant patterned dress or skirt from a street vendor. As stereotypical LA as it gets.
Upon returning to our hotel to see off the two friends who were leaving, we adamantly decided to select the location for our next trip. Scrapping together a makeshift hat to draw from with a weird silver orb in the hotel room and ripping any spare paper into strips, we each wrote down one domestic location and one international (within North America) location. Mexico City, out. Yellowstone and Grand Teton, put in twice, out. Bar Harbor, Maine, out. Turks and Caicos, out. Punta Cana, in. How about January? We hugged fiercely and they wheeled their suitcases out.
One friend and I remained with an empty evening stretching before us. Overwhelmed with all the possibilities, we didn’t decide our plan until we were sitting in the car and turning onto the street. We’d hit this Mexican seafood place I wanted to try, go to the beach, and make another stop at Erewhon for some final treats and pre-flight morning munchies. First, Holbox, a Michelin-starred Mexican seafood place I’d heard so much about. As a Tex-Mexicana, I couldn’t leave LA without eating Mexican food, it would have felt immoral and unfair not to see how the Mexicanos do it on the West Coast. Let me tell you. Holbox was the best meal of the entire trip. Like easily. I will be thinking about the coctel mixto for years. I would return to LA just for that. My stomach growls just telling you about it now.
Our journey to the beach felt like an even more LA experience, in which we sat in traffic for 45 minutes only to reach the source of the traffic and realize it was the most dangerous left turn we’d ever experienced, and reminder, we’re from Texas. After parking drama and serious doubt we’d ever make it to the beach, we did. And it was worth it. Feeling the fine sand between our toes, watching the sun explode as it set over the mountains, it was here I really knew that my 17-year-old self was right for her time. Writing this now, I can’t say with certainty that out of everywhere in the world, I’m meant to be in California for the rest of my life, but whatever settles over my soul while I’m there, it’s special enough that at the moment you can’t imagine yourself anywhere else. My feet and my being felt raw from the sand, sun, and smiles of the weekend, and for the first time in a while, I glimpsed parts of myself that I hadn’t in years.
When I woke the next morning, I felt strong enough to push off the dread at the thought of returning to work and the city of steel and stink. When my Uber driver, airline agent, and TSA Pre-Check and Clear agent were kind to me, I nearly cried, knowing that the second I landed at JFK, that benevolence would vanish. Sure enough, waiting on the passenger pickup platform for Scott to pick me up, two men who otherwise appeared to be strangers nearly fist-fought over some minor issue with their luggage. I was back home.
Until the next dispatch from Cape Cod, ¡hasta luego!