Tourist trail
A friend, an otherwise staunchly Lion Red-and-rugby type, advised me that any visitor to LA should sign up for one of those open-top bus trips which loop around Mulholland Drive, pointing out the locked gates and high fences of various celebrity abodes. Great fun, he assured me. Look, we really wanted to, but every time we tried they were always booked out. But there’s plenty of other classic tourist fare for anyone heading to LA who doesn’t mind not blending in with the locals.
We were so keen to see a game at Dodger Stadium, we booked in advance for the LA Dodgers-Boston Red Sox match-up. Dodger Stadium has a total of 11 tollbooths to deal with the long lines of cars crawling up Vin Scully Drive and into the giant parking lots that encircle the stadium itself. It’s near-capacity, and while the game itself is disappointing – a 5-0 reverse for the Dodgers – the crowd is everything you could hope for from an American sporting audience: they sing ‘‘Take me out to the Ballgame’’, they scoff giant hotdogs, drink insipid American light beer, holler at their buddies, sit still for less than five minutes at a stretch and generally determine to have a great time regardless of what’s going on on the field. It’s infectious.
We also made sure to see a gig at the Hollywood Bowl, the natural amphitheatre nestled into the Hollywood Hills where just about everyone has played and the Los Angeles Philharmonic calls home. Intrigued by our accents, the guy at the ticket desk slips us a couple of comps, and we wander in to see Philadelphia grunge rocker Kurt Vile and the absolutely bizarre Sufjan Stevens, who four songs in dons a tinfoil hat and angel wings and begins flying around the stage. Aside from the distinctive smell of weed drifting around, it’s quite the most refined rock venue I’ve ever seen.
You’re in Hollywood, so a studio tour seems compulsory. At Warner Brothers, they’ve got it absolutely nailed: you’re herded into a cheery welcome video from Ellen DeGeneres, then into a golf cart which laps their giant site in Studio City, showing you the backblocks and the city streetscapes where they’ve filmed everything from Ghostbusters to Gilmore Girls to Full House to that Budweiser advert with the talking frogs, with a photo opp on the Friends’ coffee-shop couch and exhibitions of Harry Potter costumes and Batmobiles. Our guide had a remarkable recall of everything ever filmed there and exactly how they had managed to do it.
What else? If there’s time, Santa Monica Beach, where the shopping is good but the sands wouldn’t rank anywhere compared to New Zealand’s top 200 or so beaches. The Grove shopping mall is a slice of mall shopping at its finest – manicured grass lawns, piped jazz music and a sprawling food court, alongside every fashion chain you’d need.