Adventures of a Quantum Cowboy

More images from my second excursion on foot into Los Angeles.

Good food in a rough neighborhood. Note the bars on the outside? Still, I walked through the neighborhood (with a camera) no trouble, and people were friendly enough. Not ecstatic mind you, but the occasional “what’s up” head jerk seemed a little nicer than the one-fingered NYC salute… You can be sure I was on the alert for trouble though.

Jinu runs up the stairs at a metro station.

PIGEONS! I don’t know why, I just get excited when I see groups of pigeons. Odd thing to get excited about. I agree with Emily, it would seem so satisfying to just run up and grab one. They’re probably greasy though. Ugh. Neat picture anyway.

Grand Central Market at midmorning. Lots of good colors and smells here.

Darin and Andrew contemplate in the pews at St. Basil’s.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! (this is about what it looked like to me at the time).

Just northwest of union station is a block you might as well call North Mexico. The architecture is all old Spanish mission style, pleasing to the eye. Everything, from the bright colors to the churro dealers (peddling my favorite addiction) conveys a vibrant, richly cultural community.

Hats for sale on Olvera St.

Mmm…. spicy.

Too bad I had already eaten (steamed eel with kimchee and a.. vase (?) of sake in Little Tokyo), because the food on this street smelled good. Definitely going back!

Oh yeah, and I saw the bassist for Metallica there with his little daughter. I do have a picture, but he was on personal time, so I won’t post it.

LA is awesome!

In Sacramento this weekend, so there won’t be any updates at least until Monday. I don’t have all the photos from the second LA trip done yet, but I think all the Olvera St. pics are finished so I may post just those. Also awaiting processing are photos from San Buenaventura Beach, CA-128, and Bouquet Canyon Road. To add even further to my backlog, I’m planning on stopping in the mountains near Tehachapi for some shots on the way back down to SoCal. So there’s a preview of what’s coming up this week! Stay tuned…

Darin is an avid hang glider, and a couple weeks ago he invited me to come out and take a look at how they did things at the launch site. Naturally, I brought the camera along. There is a hang gliding site just a couple miles down on Avenue S, quite close to our house, which makes one more time I’ve been glad we moved so close to the mountains. Parking Darin’s ancient Accord on a field at the foot of the hills, we hitched a ride up to the launch site from Steve, a seasoned veteran hang glider with a Dodge Ram more capable of making the final stages of the steep, rocky, dirt road ascent.

With a brisk 20 mph wind at the top, gusting to 35, the group of about 7 pilots and 4 observers and ground crew got to work setting up for the day.

Darin glances up from his work after assembling his glider.

It was crazy watching these guys just step off of a mountain into the air.

Darin dons his helmet and prepares for a final check.

Darin prepares for takeoff… one or two people are necessary to hold the giant wing down while a third holds the control wires in the center so that the pilot can make a final check before takeoff.

And he’s off! Darin takes to the skies as Mike ducks under the wing after letting it go.

I nearly fell off the mountain backwards taking this shot of Darin flying over me across the sun. If you look close there is a rainbow above him.

Another glider pilot prepares to take the leap of faith.

Yet another glider pilot takes off into the sky…

…and grabs some air over Palmdale.

All in all I had a great time. I’ll be sure to go out next time Darin flies, hopefully to get some landing shots too. Hmm… with some work some of these might make good desktop wallpapers.

Sorry about the delay in posting new shots. I just got Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo XI, and have been playing with it. The first batch of photos to pass through it will be Darin’s hangliding trip (which was awesome), which I expect to post tomorrow evening. I will also be redoing some of Danielle’s shots. This weekend will see another trip to LA and also some more hangliding, though this time at a different location.

I went to high school with Danielle Louie back in Idaho; now she’s pretty much a supermodel… well, she’s working on it. Being both amateurs at our respective arts, last weekend I drove down to Costa Mesa to give each other some practice; me with people shots (which I really need to improve at) and her with photo shoots.

Constructive criticism welcome on these!

She wears aviators… how cool is that?

Trying some color isolation… green by the lake.

Reflections lakeside. I faded the color except for the reflected sunlight on these ones.

Tried a few poses with trees. This is one of the few that actually didn’t end up looking silly. I like the angles.

Downtown LA has a huge variety of things to do, and unfortunately, we only barely got to any significant portion of everything this amazing city has to offer. I will definitely be going back however, the roommates want to do a Saturday just for LA itself. While I did get a lot of shots of the usual buildings and scenes, I’ll to post something more unique here.

Passengers shuffle down from an upper level into the main part of Los Angeles Union Station, a massive hub of Metrolink, Amtrak, light rail, subway, and buses.

Skateboarders of the inner city.

A bum naps in MacArthur Park. Now I know why it’s frightening in the dark….

A portion of the LA skyline at dusk.

The Union Station tower.

I have to say, for all its hard reputation, Los Angeles had some very friendly people. Noting we looked a little lost downtown, a random guy crossed a busy street just to ask us if we were looking for the metro, and then pointing it out to us before crossing back. A grungy adolescent in a corner of the subway politely suggested an alternate route when he overheard us discussing the next stop at which we wanted to get out. On the bus, a Mexican man who didn’t speak a word of English struck up a lively conversation with us about LA after we helped him out with a quarter to top off his bus fare; fortunately we had Jesus (referring the roommate, not the savior) with us or it would have been awkward… I really need to learn some Spanish.

Completely by accident, we ended up in Chinatown during the Chinese New Year festivities. Were seeking only to peruse interesting shops and even more interesting meat markets, to grab a cup of tea and maybe some noodles; we were alarmed to step off of the metro into a huge throng of people dressed in bright colors setting off firecrackers and yelling “gung hei faat choi!” in our faces. Knowing now that it simply means “congratulations and be prosperous,” looking back on our startled confusion seems amusing.

It looked like our day of quiet puttering was out; but since we were there, we thought, what the hell? So we followed a bunch of revelers doing the locomotion under a paper-mache dragon to the main event: a parade down the main street of LA’s Chinatown, complete with fire, dragons, dancers, kung-fu artists, Miss Teen Asia, and mayor Antonio Villaraigosa himself (dressed in a traditional outfit and yelling blessings in Chinese… very funny).

A man ushers his grandson off of the road as confetti from a festive firecracker scatters around them.

Police horses are having fun too!

Dragon dancers of every color… red and yellow shown here.

Twin dragons jut out from the front of a car like ramming prongs on an ancient warship.

(Chinatown, get off Metro Gold Line at Chinatown station).

About a week ago I spent a Saturday with some friends down in LA, enjoying the sun, puttering through an extraordinary diversity of people, food, sights, smells (some more interesting than others), and cultures. It was also a test of the public transit in a city notorious for its cars; I have to say I was impressed in that particular regard. I have not been to a city of comparable size where public transit was so cheap, clean, and devoid of crazy people (the last an especially notable feat given the area).

The pictures have been slow to get to blog due to the volume… and since I took so many, they will be arriving on the site in stages. Stage 1: the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. An archdiocese of over 4 million Catholics is bound to have a notable epicenter of faith, and OLA is certainly a masterpiece of spiritual architecture, blending a contemporary style with a decidedly southwestern look to create a monument that strives to project the weight of spiritual tradition onto a modern west-coast megapolis. Sunday Mass is celebrated in 42 languages, a testament to the diverse cross-section of people it draws from the surrounding population.

The main courtyard is open and specious, sporting patio tables and skirted by palm trees and fountains. This entrance is adorned nicely with gold and black.

A cross is embedded in black marble, which provides an angular accent to the mainly sandstone-looking structure.

The main part of the cathedral is huge; the pews looks as if they could easily accommodate thousands. The enormity of the room, coupled with the emptiness of a Saturday late morning, made each footstep echo solemnly in the warm half-light.

An enormous pipe organ rests in an upper corner.

Looking up into a giant cross bathed in streaming light from the outside, it’s hard not to feel a bit of awe.

Underneath the main pews lies a mausoleum, decorated with stained glass on otherwise simple white marble… a walk through is a must if you visit.

(Downtown, get off Metro Red Line at Civic Center.)

The cat…

Figaro. Cute little kitty or spawn of Satan? Any given moment is a crapshoot.