Art of the Odd

I started at the Santa Monica branch of the LA Law Library, in the Santa Monica County Building:

(If you’re sitting there saying to yourself, “But that’s not the County Building, that’s City Hall!”, you’d be right. Due to a lack of Creative Commons licensed photos of the County Building on Flickr (something I’ll try to remedy next time I’m down there), I settled for Omar Omar‘s very lovely portrait of City Hall. The County Building’s across the street, way over frame right.)

When the Library closed, I walked over to Joe’s Pizza, for a slice of white and a garlic knot. (Okay, three garlic knots, but I swear I only asked for one!) I had to smile along the way, when I passed a construction worker singing opera to himself. “Sometimes,” I thought, “I love the city.”

I was listening to one of Joe’s employees teasing a teenager who’d come in for some pepperoni when a Tweet arrived from NovySan:

“You’re going to the Cat & Fiddle without me?” I whined. “Fine, I’ll go to the King’s Head without you.” And I did.

I treated myself to a pint of Guinness at the bar (sandwiched between a British regular and an American hipster who seemed afraid to sit too close), followed by a 99 Flake at the gift shop:

(The ice cream, by the way, was lovely, but the chocolate is nasty, waxy stuff. Not to say I didn’t eat it, of course – it was stuck in my ice cream, after all.)

On the way back to my car, a blond skateboarder crash-landed on the astroturf between me and the curb and laid there grinning at me. “I assume you’re okay,” I said, and he laughed. “I’m fine.” “Not what we would have hoped,” his friends said, and he picked himself and his board up and prepared to tackle the next strip of green plastic.

And all of that adds up to one of my favorite days in LA.