Petra – Page 30 – FrogBlog | Translating Los Angeles

Not A Good Move After All

A coffee in the middle of the afternoon over a game of chess in a café tucked away in a remote corner of Glendale. Real cups, comfortable chairs. Other people at other tables engaged in quiet conversation. No noise. No laptops.

Hold it there. No laptops.

A couple of years ago I was all for hot spots everywhere. Yes, Wi-Fi the city, all cities, make the internet accessible everywhere for everybody all the time. My outlook has changed. I do not want to have people hogging all the seats in all the coffee places with their laptops. I can understand taking the laptop to a library to do some work on some research. Business travelers at an airport – yes, by all means, use those empty hours while waiting for the flight to do some work. But a café is different, at least in my opinion. I go there to have some coffee and relax. Have a quiet chat. Read the papers. Play chess. Fill up on the latest delicious gossip from the latest party. Nowadays however it is hard to find a place which does not look like an office with people tapping away on their computers.

So my excitement from a few years ago has changed to the opinion that Wi-Fi everywhere is not a good move.

Incidentally, this opening wasn’t either. White lost. Ouch.

Heaven In Many Ways

We have always had a soft spot for the Vinoteca. And that has nothing to do with the fact that we were the very first two customers ever to step through the door after the place opened (which is a whole story all on its own anyway).

Vinoteca offers a wide selection of wine plus a few carefully selected beers on tap, an interesting menu of Italian and Brazilian food and most importantly – a wonderful atmosphere. The place is what we had been missing in our little quarter of L.A., a wine bar where one can wander in and feel at home. We celebrated birthdays there, met with friends, saw in the odd New Year or two, we basically went there for months on end every Friday evening after the place opened. We even watched the opening game of the last Soccer World Championship there, by courtesy of the manager, who invited us over to watch the game on the big screen over breakfast.

Then the inevitable happened – word got around, the place was written up by the local papers and Vinoteca took off in quite a big way. We were very happy for the owner that his bar had become a success. We, however, had to let go of our Friday evenings there, it became a bit too crowded and too loud for our taste on weekends.

But on any other day it is still delightful in the way we like it. Good wine, good food, interesting guests, very friendly staff. We just know that it will be a pleasant hour or two – just by wandering in, sitting down at the bar, chatting with our favorite bartenders, having something nice to drink and to eat.

That’s how it was even yesterday, when we had simply forgotten that it was Valentine’s Day. And yes, the place was crowded, and yes, we wanted to leave, and no, they would not let us go. They found a nice spot for us. After a long and gruesome day, filled with lots and lots of work, it was a perfect evening.

That is heaven indeed.

Weather Patterns

Weather patterns here in our region are very simple – the weather is good all year round with a few colder days in winter and some rain between October and March, with most of the precipitation falling from January on.

We also have something called ‘June Gloom.” Nasty minded people not from the region insist that this is just a nicer name for smog. Well, let them wag their tongues, but the June Gloom is a natural phenomenon easily explained:

Around the middle of May, when the inland temperatures are already quite high, the Ocean temperatures are slowly rising, too. Marine clouds form, which are then blown towards the coast, settling there in the morning. By noon all clouds have then burned away and it is sunny as always. This condition prevails until approximately end of June.

This morning, however, we had real fog. The palm trees looked quite pretty in this soft gray and cloudy light. But by 7:25 AM the fun had ended – it was a typical California morning again, with blue skies and sunshine.

In Praise Of Laziness

Sometimes one wakes up on a Sunday morning to decide: today I am going to be lazy. That does not necessarily mean that one stays in bed all day. It is just that one does nothing “productive.” The usual rules of everyday life do not apply. One gives oneself a present of timelessness, so to speak.

A day drifting by is delicious. Time not only slows down, it becomes unimportant, does not exist any longer.

Has a minute ticked by or an hour? It doesn’t matter – it is a lazy day. A favorite book becomes even more of a favorite because one does not have to put it down to attend to other, more pressing, matters. The sun shines even brighter, seems even warmer, because one does not have to move. Thoughts drift off into areas where one can pick up a subject matter and ponder long on it, without having to come to a conclusion. One does nothing that one does not want to do, or does nothing. Period.

Can anything so wonderful be a bad thing?

Certainly not.

It is a holiday for body and soul.

Pipesmoker's Paradise

Super Bowl Sunday. Wile the nation was getting ready for several hours on the sofa with beer/sodas, popcorn/chips and a lot to say about the action on the TV screen, we were getting ready for a foray into the wonderful world of good tobacco. Which in Los Angeles means – Kramer’s on 9531 Santa Monica Blvd, right there in Beverly Hills.

Kramer’s is known among pipe smokers as something akin to paradise. In 2008 the shop can look back proudly at 59 years of dealing in everything a smoker might want, but especially for a small but superb selection of finely blended tobaccos. The story of Kramer’s can be read here. For the full experience one should head here:

The signature pipe tobaccos at Kramer’s are all hand blended and quite unique in their way. From the straight English blend to the fabulous “New Mixture” with its delicious spiciness from a hint of added Perique (considered the truffle of pipe tobaccos) there is something to suit the taste of every pipe smoker worth his pipe.

Similar to the tobaccos the delightful atmosphere at Kramer’s is unique. Considering that the store is usually closed on Sunday it was no problem to drop in, as the owners – when we called them beforehand – said: “We are in today anyway for some stocktaking – yes, by all means, do come by.”

Thank you, Kramer’s, for being there and being what you are – a small shop with a long tradition of making many, many pipe smokers very, very happy.

Little Dom's – Strange Niche Marketing

Sometimes one goes away for a week or so and upon returning moderately exciting things have happened in the neighborhood. In this case it was the opening of “Little Dom’s”. Right, we thought, let’s stroll over and check the place out.

Unfortunately the review stops here.

Upon arrival at the place we got the full and extremely snotty “do you have a reservation” and “maybe, if you beg nicely enough, we will let you have a place at the bar to spend your money there, but only after a long wait”-treatment. Considering that the place was not exactly hopping and after a look at the clientele assembled we decided to take the not so subtle hint and left. To have a wonderful meal elsewhere where we also did not have a reservation.

So, what had happened? We let this sit for a while and then started to inquire about the place. What we heard was not so pleasant – it seems that some very strange niche marketing is at play here.

The preferred customers at “Little Dom’s” seem to be Twentysomethings with no real knowledge of good food, a penchant for being served mediocre fare and wines at overblown prices, all combined with wobbly service in return for the good feeling to be in a place with connections to Beverly Hills.

All this is not what Los Feliz has been waiting for. I foresee a bleak future for this latest addition to eateries in this corner of Los Angeles. People here do not go for this kind of attitude. Not from a place around the corner which aspires to teach the locals “how things are done in Beverly Hills.”

Three thumbs down for “Little Dom’s” without even having tasted the food.

Now that is a first time in my life.

Stranded Ducks

Rain. We are having rain. The much needed rain has finally arrived and we are loving it. The hills are slowly putting on their green winter coats, lawns sparkle emerald green, and it is time to check on the river and the waterfowl.

The river carries a lot of water. It has changed from a comparatively gentle waterway to a rushing torrent, complete with the appropriate noise. The Los Angeles River roars.

One should assume that the mallards and all the other birds are loving it. But actually – they don’t. They are hanging out up and down the banks of the river, looking slightly puzzled.

Their islands are flooded, the current is too swift to keep up with. Any bird brave enough to hop into the water gets carried away at an unprecedented pace.

The only ones to get their feet wet are the black-necked stilts.

I swear, they are looking quite smug. Right, they seem to be saying, you lot are always snickering at us because we prefer wading to swimming. With our long legs we can still wade. Can you swim?

LAX

Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate.

( Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.)

Dante / “Divine Comedy” 1308 – 1321

LAX has made it. It pushed Heathrow off the top position on my personal list of airports to be avoided at all times and under any circumstances.

Congratulations – not.

It's Hot…

…said the mockingbird and moved into the shade.

Huzita-Hatori Axioms

“The axioms assume that the operations are completed on a plane (i.e. a perfect piece of paper), and that all folds are linear.”

That is one way to describe origami. I like the hands on approach better:

This beautiful collection (only parts of it are shown) came from Boston via Burbank to L.A. Thank you, what a wonderful gift.

Lotus, fish, turtles, cranes… such delicate examples of an old art still very much alive today. So very much alive that even the mathematicians could not keep away from it. Although I must say – any origami master would probably tell me that the secret is indeed a linear fold without having to throw out some complicated formulas of the axioms.