West Coast trip pt 2

Continued from West Coast trip pt 1...

After puttering around the Bay Area for a week, my older brother and I started our road trip from San Francisco to LA to Arizona. When we were kids, our parents drove us down the coast a number of times but it never gets old.  I mean, just look at these colors! JUST LOOK AT THEM!!! it’s so beautiful that it makes me feel insane.

We pulled over to pee in Campbell, the town where Lars Frederiksen of Rancid grew up. We didn’t pick that town on purpose but it reminded me of when, on purpose, we went to 560 State Street from that Jay-Z song and it was a real estate office or something. Woof. Don’t tell anyone that we did that.

Then we made a snack stop at a vegetable farm stand where I did this with a brussel sprout stock and no one was happy about it.

We briefly stopped by Mt. Herman, the Christian family camp we went to every year as kids. We arrived during the 11am prayer circles and it totally gave me the deja vu douchechills. My brother said all his memories of camp involved crushes on girls and all mine were about hiking in the creek, singing songs about Jesus and forming friendships that were going to last FOREVER. Or until the end of camp.

Back along highway 1, we snapped this photo and then got the creeps real bad about how related we look.

Next we hit up Big Sur and saw McWay Falls, the most poorly titled waterfall ever but goddamn if it wasn’t the prettiest.

I spotted this lil’ guy by the sea. He had a lot of feelings.

Josh said if he ever saw a guy making this face, he’d push him into the ocean.

We stopped at the Madonna Inn because we always used to stop there so the boys could pee into the waterfall in the bathroom. The Madonna Inn is by far the most splendidly tacky hotel I’ve ever had the misfortune of laying my eyeballs upon.

I never got to see the bathroom waterfall as a kid because of rules about not going in the men’s bathroom or whatever but now I’m a grown up so I can do whatever the hell I want!

Look at this idiot doin’ stuff on the beach

In San Luis Obispo we only had time to make one stop, so we made the grossest stop possible: Bubblegum Alley.

Barf a million, you guys.

As kids we never stayed in hotels because we had an amazing old motor home, but there was one exception, which was Apple Farm. I used to eat these candy sticks all the time but now they just tasted like a stomachache and dental work. Being a grown up is the worst.

Being that we were in a car this time, we stayed at a hotel where I terrified Josh by doing the puppet dance, a jig that Laura Park accuses me of plotting to do on her grave someday.

oh look, here’s some goddamn fucking sea lions

The next day we stopped at Venice Beach where the first thing we saw was a teenager hit a pigeon with a bat and then break its neck with his bare hands.  We were horrified but later agreed that it was kind of awesome in a depraved, Dickensian sort of way.

If I ever see a guy making this face, I’m going to punch it off

We spent too long at the skate park because watching skaters is actually pretty fascinating. The Venice skate park is famous for being the place where kids get scouted, go pro for awhile until they get old or blow out their knee and then they come back to Venice Beach to be a bum.

On the way out of Venice Beach, I saw this horrible, living nightmare and I haven’t been the same ever since.

We spent a few days in LA, which I thought I would hate, having disliked it as a kid, but turns out I really like it. The whole city looks like it hasn’t been touched since the 70’s, save a few Starbucks here and there. It’s really decrepit and bleak, two things I’m pretty fond of for short periods of time.

Here’s the Marilyn Monroe without her wig at the Chinese Theater, the only photo I allowed myself to take of costumed performers because I find them incredibly disconcerting.

We went to the movies and saw End of Watch, which was really good despite its highly improbable and loose plot lines. I’d highly recommend it, especially if you want some good, desolate LA neighborhoods/architecture porn.

At night we found a hole in the fence leading up into the Hollywood Hills so naturally we snuck through it and hiked on up a steep hill, where this view awaited us at the top.

There was a lot of rustling in the bushes behind us, which was making me way more nervous than when I do this kind of trespassing. Then we found this and almost lost our minds.

I’m pretty sure the fright of the night before is what led to this impressive bed head. I kept yelling from the bathroom for my brother to come look at my hair but he wouldn’t so I went into the room and he still wouldn’t look at it because he didn’t care at all, but a few weeks later he texted this: “remember when you had funny hair and I refused to look at it? I keep thinking about that and laughing.” What a dick.

On the way out of LA, we drove through Skid Row, which had recently been somewhat cleaned up but is still a solid few blocks of tent city. This is the shelter area from the documentary. The photo I took was really dark so I lightened it in instagram, prompting my brother to shame me by saying “I can’t believe your instagraming Skid Row. That’s actually a thing you’ re doing. That is what is happening right now.”

The rest of the drive was pretty grim as the highway between LA and Arizona is mostly desert and rest stops.

My brother wouldn’t stop “car dancing” and I was going to text a photo of him to a friend and then I made this joke while pretending to be my friend looking at the text message: “Oh, your brother can’t stop car dancing? Well I can’t stop not giving a shit.” And then I laughed at my own joke and repeated it here on the internet, much to my disgrace.

Our trip ended in Prescott, where my brother lives. Here’s Josh and Charlie outside the ice cream place, which a strategically and unfortunately placed hand. This place sells Thrifty’s ice cream, which I thought was extinct sometime in the 80′s when the Thrifty’s drug stores disappeared but turns out the ice cream is still around and jesus no one cares about this but me but I just care SO MUCH.

And to wrap it up, here’s a photo that looks like a shitty Bret Easton Ellis book jacket:

And here’s where I want to live when I grow up:

so that’s it! Next I’m going to post about the Greystone insane asylum and it’s going to blow your tiny minds.