Downtown L.A.

Last week-end we decided to visit Downtown L.A. We took the Surfliner again and went southward this time to Union Station in Los Angeles. Strange trip were we realised you can only take the train with your passport in this country... But relatively nice; we went through Burbank, Glendale.
Then we arrived in Union Station. It has a definite 1930's feel about it and nicer than I thought, grandiose architechture, with 1930's lines and a huge mural of nice healthy people of all ages and ethnic background to symbolise the Mellting Pot, almost socialist... Well, from what I have been told the area around Union Station is to be avoided at night. In the daytime it is ok, lots more beggars than in provincial Thousand Oaks as I expected. It was used in the film The way we were (1973). I remember the scene when Barbara Steisand has to leave Los Angeles and go to New-York to demonstrate against Macarthy and the Witchhunt, hounded by the press and photographers. Well, nowadays, part of the station has a very nice restaurant and walking passed it feels like we should be embarking on the Orient Express, or the local equivalent. Some of it is closed down today and there is going to be a wedding party. A bit surreal.
This is a totally different part of LA for Stephen and I. The previous times we have been to Santa Monica, UCLA, Beverly Hills, West Holywood. This is something else. It is scorching hot and we make our way to the City Hall, again 1930' s architecture, grandiose and old-fashioned, small gardens with tramps and druggies. We try not to show that we have a guidebook and try to look like we know where we are going. Opposite the City Hall is a disused building locked and abandonned hiding its former grandeur behind bars and outgrowing vegetation. We walk past the LA Times building, arrive at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. It is a fabulous building by Gehry, crazy, like a funky mushroom/flying saucer organically growing in all directions, with metallic scales shining in the sun. Fabulous and ... it has air-conditioning! We have a fresh lunch inside and then cross the road and visit MOCA, Museum of Contempory Art. It doesn't have what it says in the guide book, but instead a massive Richard Tuttle exhibition. Playful, wonderfully childish collages with cardboards, wires, MDF, neons, and painted over. They also organise concerts/ music events outside, and we would have stayed, had we had the time. We have to work out our route carefully in those areas because on the guide book it says near the Library, a few block away from here, is a open drug market where the police doesnt really go anymore! Great! The Business District is just behind MOCA, with Wells Fargo Buildings.
After visiting a very modern cathedral by the Freeway 101, we decide to go to Pueblo, the oldest neighbourhood in LA. We discover a bit of the history, how the Native Americans disappeared, the missions, the Spanish invasions, the American conquest, how the European settlers planted the first vineyards. The name Los Angeles was the name of the parish El Pueblo de La Reina De Los Angeles. Olvera Street is a colourful market for tourists with everything from leather sandals, Frida Khalo, Marilyn, Our Lady of Fatima posters to $6.99 pink plastic guitars with your name on it. It also has the oldest house in LA the Avila Adobe, built in 1818. There is a Mexican dance festival on the Plaza and it feels a bit like the Feria in Nîmes, Spanish music, the smell of fried treats, little girls dancing sevillane-type dances in a sunny afternoon, happy colourful crowds clapping and dancing.
Then it is time to take our train. Last futuristic vision of Union Station, a police man standing on a tiny motorised scooter; glimpses of "Blade Runner" come to mind.

As we returned to Thousand Oaks I saw this article on the L.A. Times website on John Fante's Downtown LA walk. The unforgettable novel "Ask the Dust" was written here but the LA it describes has completely disappeared, even Bunker Hill is not a hill anymore! A strange town really, growing too fast, and erasing its past as it goes along.


Je promets de traduire mes billets en français très bientôt. Désolée.