Mission San Juan Capistrano
I am asked a lot if I'm I
glad to be back in London - well yes, but there are things I miss about Los Angeles – well California – and things I'm glad to see in London. It would be great to live in both places. There
would be nothing like it for expanding the mind.
Some of the things I miss
about Los Angeles are the things I never quite got to do whilst there.
For instance we never went to Mexico although we were very close to it. One day we drove
to the border, parked and watched people walking across. We didn't have our
passports or green cards with us so didn't chance it. It was at the Tijuana border so we wouldn't have seen much without the car
and we certainly weren't going to take
that across.
Places like Hawaii were relatively close but it wasn't really a place I
had hankered after.
I saw the great Hitchcock
movie recently Vertigo and once again loved every minute of it. Well not
every minute of it; I'm not much of a James Stewart fan, although I
thought he was more than adequate in this, but I hated his opening scene when
he is sitting down holding a walking stick and he is trying to balance the
stick on his hand – why couldn't he just sit there like people do in real life?
In the film someone throws
them self from the roof of one of the missionary buildings – like the one in
the photo above - and it got me thinking about those buildings. I used to live
a short drive from one or two of them and a few more were accessible to me if I
wanted to see them on a 'day trip.'
But I didn't actually go
into any of them.
There are 21 missionary
buildings in California up the coast from the north to the south of the
state. They were set up by the Spanish in the late 18th to 19th
centuries when Spain tried to colonize the west coast of America and convert the Indians in to Roman Catholics.
By the way – the few Indians
I have met, and they were mostly Navajos, preferred the title of Indian to
‘native American’ which came from the white man – white men professors. Some
people – naming no names, Jim – call the people of India, the real India where the word came from, as East Indians!!!! They
were only called Indians when America was discovered because the discoverers (Columbus)
thought they had reached India.
But I digress again:
Mission Santa Barbara.
Mission San Juan, Bautista
Used in the movie Vertigo.
Those missionary buildings
are still there even though they were officially closed down by the Mexican
Government in the 1830s. The Mexican Government? Yes
they sold California to the United States just before gold was discovered in 1849, I believe!!
Those buildings are some of
the oldest buildings in the state of California and they are the most frequently visited places in
the state. I stood outside the one in San Juan Capistrano (Misión San Juan
de Capistrano) one day, which is half way between Los Angeles and Mexico, and the most
famous of the Missionary Buildings because of the seagulls story, (http://www.sanjuancapistrano.net/swallows) but didn’t have the time to go in and another
time I had business near the one in San Fernando but that time I dropped my
wife off there and picked her up when I was ready; so she went in.
The
building of those buildings and the colonization by the Spanish are the reason
the Mexican and other Latinos of the state are Roman Catholic.
But
it isn't just the scenery I miss – as I have mentioned before there are
beautiful places in London and expansive scenery in
other parts of the British Isles.
I
have some wonderful friends in California and there is a certain
madness about Los Angeles. I used to see a man every
day running backwards. He would look over his shoulder as he jogged along and
one day it rained; so he turned around and ran home – backwards!
Some
terrible things happen there, of course, but it's the madness I used to like;
in rock'n'roll Ralphs I would think nothing of seeing someone with purple hair,
a woman with a breast implant which must have been 90 inches all around, in
fact I've written on here about the girl who came and asked me if I had ever farted
in a supermarket – that was almost two years ago and here it is if you want to
read it again http://storytelleronamazon.blogspot.co.uk/2009/10/have-you-ever-farted-in-supermarket.html
Recently
there was another bit of lore that will go down with the girl who jumped off
the Hollywood Sign, the Black Dahlia, OJ Simpson and River Phoenix. An up and
coming star battered his 81 year old landlady to death, climbed up on his roof
and fell to his death – that was last week.
When
I lived there I followed someone called WeHo Daily on Twitter. Now WeHo
is short for West Hollywood so West Hollywood Daily tells you on Twitter what
is happening at that precise moment. It can become addictive especially if I
was going out. I would look at WeHo Daily and they might say that the street is
blocked off somewhere with police activity or something. That could mean
anything from a hostage situation to a road accident to a street crime –
anything.
So
I looked at WeHo Daily for the day when the commotion took place last week and
the place hasn't changed. This made me laugh:
assault with deadly weapon reported on curson near
hollywood blvd. weapon: screwdriver, male white 60's wearing a red beret
he's runnin all over the area up there apparently, fuller,
back to hollywood blvd, etc -- many many LAPD units descending
suspect in custody up on hollywood blvd
maybe it was a raspberry beret
Then someone replies:
RT @DimePieceDiaz:
omg west hollywood i belong here
Then someone else
pipes in:
RT @IAMtheCOMMODORE:
@WehoDaily Homeless man and woman
"making love" in the bushes on the corner of Cahuenga & Selma. 5
bike cops on scene.
Next they take
another story, reported earlier when a crane fell over on a constriction site:
hopefully nobody is hurt and they are going to try to pull
the equipment out of the hole and fire dept and ambulance are there standing
by.
Yes nothing to do
with the homeless couple – at least I don’t think so!!!!
Now it gets interesting:
report of man with NO ARMS who has a handgun in his lap
near el pollo loco RT @lallietand:
@WehoDaily whats up with the
helicopter?
What????
Next tweet:
LAPD can't find the armless man with a gun
I don’t believe this!
Someone re-tweets next:
RT @karldotcom:
were they "stumped?" RT @WehoDaily:
LAPD can't find the armless man with a gun
And another retweet:
RT @linusdotson
He just wants to be able to say he’s armed for once. RT @WehoDaily: LAPD can’t find the
armless man with a gun
Back to the main page again:
man with a gun may have resurfaced behind parking
structure hollywood/highland - "no hands" I think they said this time
Changing the subject:
hearing that there is a tour bus that bottomed out in the
center and is stuck near house of blues
Hearing what?
both I think - 1st report said "no arms" 2nd
said "no hands" RT @raulroa:
@sm1rks @wehodaily one arm or two missing?
By the way ‘RT’ means re-tweet.
Now a sensible tweet to bring it up to
date:
suspect is in custody at hollywood
and highland -- better keep an eye on him as I assume the handcuffs won't work
I was wondering when that was coming!
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