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The hotel breakfast restaurant wasn't open for breakfast, thus calling its basic utility into question. As you might expect in a city's financial district on a Sunday, I wasn't having much luck finding an open breakfast place amongst the skyscrapers. Even meandering around looking for places got complicated: twice, I was deflected from my path by film crews. Twice! After the second deflection, I found myself in front of the Biltmore, where I ate perhaps the most expensive pancakes of my life. They were okay.
On Dave's excellent advice, I was determined to see the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It wouldn't open until 11 in the morning; I was done with my breakfast far too early. I decided to walk part of the way there. The museum was on Wilshire, a street I'd heard of. So I caught a wrong train and then the right train and then I was walking West on Wilshire. Wilshire, as it turned out, was not wildly exciting.
I stopped in front of the Harbor Building so that I could look around for a harbor. I didn't see one. I walked past a Masonic Temple which appeared to be closed up, its mysteries guarded by a chain link fence. I walked past a lot of lawn, some of which was being sprinkled, no doubt with more water stolen from Northern California. Should I have brought my monkey wrench with me, stopped up some of these sprinkler pipes, perhaps slowed down the flow of water along the Peripheral Canal by a trickle? Maybe. Instead, I let my seething fumes power my legs.
At the Eastern edge of the La Brea tar pits, there were a few chain restaurants with outside seating. I couldn't imagine what tourists would want to eat next to a stinky tarpit. (Remember that last sentence; it's foreshadowing.)
The LACMA was pretty cool. Well, parts of it were pretty cool. There was one exhibit that was about museum donors. There were artworks, but the interpretive text by each artwork talked a lot about the work's donor, and not a lot about the art nor the artist. That wasn't so cool, although perhaps the donors liked it.
There was a nifty engraving by Alfred Rethel. There was a century of cups. Bernd and Hilla Becher's "Typology of Water Towers" photos, one of which showed a little bit of a covered conveyor belt. The title of the Diebenkorn painting "Freeway and Aqueduct" summed up half of what's wrong with L.A., but the painting itself showed some pretty green hills, so never mind. I saw a Magritte "This is not a pipe" painting (beloved by Douglas Hofstadter readers worldwide), just tucked away with no huge crowd around it. Thus I figured out that there might be a few of these floating around the world (which later research confirms there are). John Baldessari had some funny instructional photos. Ruben Ortiz Torres had a leafblower done up with lowrider stylings.
I avoided Richard Jackson's installation "Do it yourself painting (Still Life)" which featured a few paint cans on a table, with electric pumps to extract paint from said cans, and an electric fan to blow around said paint; also a table with some wooden bottles on it. There wasn't actually any paint flying around, but I nevertheless wanted to stay out of the line of fire.
I was scared to enter Michael C. McMillen's "Central Meridian The Garage" installation because I thought a bell might ring. It was a reconstruction of an old garage, with the idea that people's personalities are preserved in old garages. There was some comparison to ancient Egyptian burial customs. All that sounds pretty deep, but it's actually like walking through the world's coolest old garage, with the occasional surreal bit or Egyptian figure tossed in to justify its placement in a museum.
So you enter this old-looking garage through an old-looking door, and I was scared to enter, because that old-looking door had an old-looking device on it, which looked like an electric bell triggered by the door opening. That is, the door looked like it was alarmed. But I asked a guard if it was okay to go in, and he said it was, so I did, and the bell didn't ring. Inside, it was like being in a dusty basement garage with exposed studs and lots of clutter. Lots of clutter. There was a sphere of resistors, a cheap sparker-gun toy, a sign reading "The TEMPLE of COSMIC UNITED ATOMS REVEALED", a hollowed out TV with a skeleton model inside, and much much more. Wonderful, just wonderful.
I had lunch at the Plaza Cafe, the relatively-cheap restaurant on the museum grounds. (The expensive restaurant was no good for vegetarians who aren't into creamy sauces (e.g., me).) Since the museum's next to the La Brea tarpits, I ended up eating outside very close to them. Fortunately, there was a breeze going the right way. Thus fortified, I was ready for more art observation.
I'd looked at a lot of modern art, but hadn't noticed any Charles Sheeler photos. So I went to the Information booth outside to ask about that. The lady there didn't know about such things, but directed me to an information desk inside, which was labelled "Member Services". There was no-one behind the desk. So I sat around, wondering if I was going to have to sign up as a LACMA member just to find out if the place had any Sheeler photos. I sat and waited; waited and sat. I listened to some guy talk to a couple of his friends about his search for a men's room. I noticed that I'd been waiting for over 15 minutes, and decided to do some museum exploration.
In the stairwell on the top floor of the building, there was a door marked "DANGER Electrical Equipment Authorized Personnel Only". Looking at the angled sticking-out part of the wall next to the door, it was obvious that the door led to stairs going up. But the sign said electrical equipment. Maybe they were electrical stairs. I did not investigate.
I looked at a brightly painted wooden Jain shrine. I looked at a copper allow Indian temple doorway that had lots of lamps glommed onto it.
I went back to the Member Services desk, where a lady told me that the museum didn't have anything by Charles Sheeler. I was ready to punch her, but figured that she probably wasn't responsible for the museum's procurement decisions, so I just left.
I was ready for dinner, and wanted to get food heading back to the weekend wasteland of the financial district. Unfortunately, the only places around were those chain restaurants by the tarpits. I went to icky, icky Baja Fresh. I'd never been to a Baja Fresh before. There was one in Berkeley, but it was a couple of blocks away from Cancun, perhaps the best taqueria in the universe. I do not think I will go to a Baja Fresh again, since the burrito I had for dinner consisted mostly of sour cream.
I caught a bus back downtown. As we barreled along, I noticed a "24 Hour Tofu House" out the window, and knew I should have gone there for dinner instead of to icky, icky Baja Fresh. Sour cream was a rock in my stomach.
Monday morning, I flew back home to San Francisco. By then, sour cream was oozing from every pore. I hastened back to my apartment, dropped off my stuff, and then scurried over to Einstien Cafe, the local saladaria. I asked for a big salad, sans avocado and egg. I ate that, then scrubbed my skin raw in the shower. Eventually, I stopped smelling of dairy products.