2002-09-12 - 6:17 p.m.

I work in South Central. I shouldn't stay so late after work, i don't like driving through this part of town late in the day. Mostly i'm afraid of hitting someone with my car -- the pedestrians cross the road here whenever and wherever they want, and sometimes they purposefully stop in the road and look at you and laugh, challenge you or something. It's weird. I don't smoke all day at work, but I have my first cigarette on the drive home.

The traffic isn't as bad as they say. It takes a long time to get places, but it's just because there are so many intersections with lights, and there aren't any real "back ways" - like in Atlanta, people only travelled on certain streets, and you could always cut around traffic by driving the twisty secret streets like Lenox. But in LA, the city is pretty well designed and laid out in a nice grid, so traffic flows evenly everywhere.

Anyway, with traffic, I don't get home till 7 or so.

Speaking of streets, My favorite street to drive is Wilton. It twists a little, and there are no businesses on Wilton, so it feels like a real neighborhood street. I always try to drive on it, if I can.

For fast driving, mindless driving, the kind of driving you do when you're joy riding with a friend, or when you've got something to think about -- there are only 2 places to go. One is Mullholland Drive - It's long and twisty and the view of the city is incredible. You don't go fast on Mullholland, but you get to drive the curves of the mountain and there are no stops, so it's a good drive, and a great view.

The other, slightly closer, driving course for me (and La) are the roads behind Griffith Observatory. Again, you don't get going fast, but there is nothing to stop you -- so you drive and curve and look out over the view of the city from the mountain and it feels good. It only takes you 10 minutes to wind up the mountain and come down the other side, so whenever I go I end up making a u turn and driving back the same road - I do this a couple of times, until I've got the driving out of my system.

Everybody here drives. The busses are crammed, and they're very slow, they're often late, they don't go everywhere, and everytime I've sat at a bus stop some rich man drives past in a mercedes or something like that and tries to "pick me up." I haven't ridden the train here yet ( does that make me a bad citizen?)

Weeknights after I come home, i either eat alone and write/read, or I get together with La for coffee. We have several coffee joints for different moods.

My favorite is a little hole in the wall on Vine. Every night of the week is some kind of open mike night, and tuesdays are open poetry nights. I like tuesdays the best, because the crowd is more mixed. Some old, some young, some black, some white. The rest of the week it's a more white hippie type crowd. I say crowd, but this is the least crowded, there are only 15-20 people there at the most. La and I usually sit outside and smoke and share our table with other people. Sometimes my first friend in LA, Tucker shows up, and we catch up with him. I always wish when I go there that I'll I run into him, because of how friendly he is towards me, on account of us being each other's oldest friends in LA and all. But we don't call each other to hang out otherwise anymore, we're really not into the same things. But I love the Tuck.

Sometimes we go to a coffee shop on Melrose, again one where you can smoke. We go there when we're going to be out late, cuz it's open until 2. They also give free refills. This is where I come alone most often, because you see alot of people there reading and computing and I feel very connected to the other people in this place, even if I don't talk to them.

The last place we go is one in Los Feliz -- well, "Beachwood Canyon". They have no real joe there, only espresso, which i find just too expensive and shi-shi. I just want some friggin coffee, dude. So we don't go there too much -- but sometimes, we go there anyway, just because we love the neighborhood, and it's open late.

They have one room in the coffeeshop that's decorated all Morroccan, with pillows on the floor and fabric on the cieling. I can't get over this. I love it. I like to sit in this room and drink their Morroccan Mint Tea out of their Silver Tea Service whenever I get the restless gotta travel bug.

More to come . . .