Los Angeles: Part I

I can't remember who said "the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single sip" - it was either Confucious, Bill Bryson or George Best - but it's something I'm reflecting upon as I sit in a crowded but pleasant LA eatery, drinking a beer. It has been a most enjoyable day thus far. It's twenty-five degrees (or seventy-seven, as the Americans like to call it) and I haven't seen a cloud since I got here, which doesn't at all remind me of Dunedin. But now that I think of it, it must be pretty miserable down there at the moment eh? That's a shame.

Not that it really affects me all that much, since I'm 10,000 kilometres away. My journey has finally begun. And it's not a John Mitchell journey either: this journey is physical as it is spiritual. It's a journey that will take me across the vast continent of North America via car and plane to New York. And from there, on to the great unknown of London and Europe where we can only speculate at what awaits me. A couch? Rain? Fame and fortune? A desk alongside Stephen Jones at The Times? And some beers.

The prospect of the journey excites and scares me in equal measure. I have much to look forward to, and much to leave behind. Although it may not sound a lot to you, it seems like a lot to me: a good bunch of mates, an enjoyable part time job, a degree that was never difficult enough to cause me to lose sight of the real reasons why I moved to Dunedin, a young lady who is not only smart, attractive and extremely nice, but shares my enduring appreciation of minesweeper.

And, of course, I'm leaving behind a student lifestyle to which I had become very nicely accustomed. I know Henry IV said "if all the year were playing holidays, to sport would be as tedious as to work" but with all due respect to Shakespeare, I've been around long enough to know that that's bullshit. Dunners has been a blast from day one.

Recently though the feeling persisted that Dunedin had grown too small from me, that I'd taken all I could from it and that it was finally time to leave it behind. I should've seen the signs when I'd go into my favourite bakery, or sushi or curry houses and the owner would begin preparing my order before I'd reached the counter, or when the barman at the Cook began calling me by my first name. But it wasn't until just recently when I went to an Octagon bar to watch the rugby and found myself in close proximity to a work supervisor, a dubious ex-flame and the Student Health doctor who last year fondled my anatomy in a manner rather too prolonged and enthusiastic for my liking, that I realised definitively that Dunedin was no longer big enough to contain me.

Which brings us, after 23 largely uneventful years, back to the cafe in Venice, California. I have recovered from a sleepless flight over: no way in hell am I going to sit in a motorised aluminium cage 33,000 feet off the ground travelling at 600 miles an hour and be anything less than 100% alert to signs of my imminent death.

Notwithstanding that I enjoy air travel about as much as the average man enjoys jumping in a crocodile pit with a fillet of beef stuffed down his pants, sleep would not have been possible since I'd been assigned my usual seat: towards the back, hemmed in by a cacophany of screaming babies. Seated in front of me was a painfully cheery virgin from Palmerston North who yabbered away to the elderly American lady next to him as if she were his best friend. And let's face it, she probably was. The only small mercy for which to be thankful was that, possibly for the first time in the history of long-haul flying, I was not sitting in front of a six-year-old brat with ADD and a map-of-Noosa t-shirt, pounding furiously against the back of my seat like Jesse Ryder at a locked toilet door.

Upon landing, the pilot announced that we would be delayed another fifteen minutes because one of the largest airports in the world didn't have a spare gate for us to dock at. Instead we were directed to a distant corner of the tarmac and transferred on to buses for the rest of the journey. You could almost hear the air traffic controller saying "Noo ZEEE-land? There's a plane coming from Noo ZEEE-land?", as if wary of falling victim to some practical joke. "Well alright, but make 'em take the bus in. She'll be right, cobber!". And as one final indignity, the first thing you see upon entering the terminal - before clearing customs even - is a framed portrait each of Bush and Cheney, smiling moronically at you. Good old Dick Cheney eh, there's a blast from the past, anyone else remember that guy?

Which brings us again, with apologies, back to Venice, California. You'll notice I'm saying "Venice" rather than "Venice Beach" because the latter term does not exist and never did, according to local guru and virologist Gary, who is showing us around. It seems Venice Beach is just a term coined by "some real estate asshole" (assuming he meant "agent") that was taken on by amateurs who had never visited the area, such as yours truly up until fifteen minutes ago.

Venice used to be a city in its own right, but at some point in the twentieth century was captured in a bloodless coup by the inexorable sprawl of Los Angeles. Back at the turn of last century, before Sir Henry Air Conditioner invented the mass internal cooling system designed for private homes to which he lent his name, big wigs from LA built holiday homes in Venice to escape the stifling heat of downtown, some 20 miles inland. Not content with merely driving about, they built a system of canals, thus giving the city its name. But hard times hit Venice between the wars and the canals disappeared along with most of the rich folk, subsequently leaving the area to fill up with bums, dropkicks and other undesirables.

It wasn't until the last 20 or 30 years that nifty businessmen started buying up properties and Venice underwent the gentrification process that has turned it into a cosmopolitan area frequented by allsorts, from yuppies to hippies, and back to yuppies. A walk down fashionable Abbot Kinney Boulevard confirms this. Everywhere I look, people are strolling, shopping and conversing with each other in that loud American way that renders even the most private of conversations an unavoidably public affair. On a sidewalk table, a woman is saying, "It's like, Venice Beach! Like, chill out a little, y'know", to her coffee date, obviously recalling a recent interaction she had with an un-chilled-out person. Seems like good advice to me. Two shirtless teenagers zoom past on bikes, one calling "yeah duuuude!" to the other as they pass. Meanwhile in the giftshop nextdoor, a boy of about five is being introduced ostensibly to a family friend, but actually to the entire shop, owing to the volume of the conversation:

"This is Eric", says Eric's mother to the friend. "He's Norman's son. He loves gardening!". And the other patrons in the store nod in stoic approval of Eric's horticultural prowess.

I'm pleased to report that there's a good smattering of looneys too. Yesterday on Rodeo Drive, I twice walked past a man who I could only describe as an emasculated cross between Gary Glitter and David Hasselhoff, walking down the street in a green vest and drinking beer out of a plastic cup. Today at Venice, I've noticed a bizarre looking woman in her fifties, with grey hair, far too much lipstick, a loose blue top and no bra. Half a century of California sun has done some strange things to her head, the poor lady. Oh god, now she's looking at me intently. Why would she possibly be doing that?

"You didn't represent Governor Gray Davis, did you?", she asks, "And win some money?"
"No"
"Ok, thank you". And she's off again. I've been mistaken for a few things before, but never a lawyer. Must be my brand new Rodd & Gunn polo shirt. My father sees me looking mystified and says, "That woman was totally nuts. She thought I was a philanthropist". Maybe it wasn't the Rodd & Gunn shirt then.

After lunch we walk along the boardwalk to Santa Monica Pier, which is now a theme park flanked by tacky food and souvenir stalls. The alluring aromas of barbecued meats, popcorn and marijuana intermingle to create a convivial family atmosphere. Not much to recommend here, although my father invests a nickel in using the public toilet facilities and proclaims them to be "not quite the worst I've ever seen".

Walking down the beach in the other direction, we arrive at the manically busy Venice beach boardwalk. This part may best be described as a seething mass of humanity - a bit like the Manurewa KFC on payday, but not really. Certainly the boardwalk has attracted people from all walks of life this Sunday afternoon, but predominantly the fringes. I've seen more people in one day than I did in five-and-a-half years in Dunedin. All manner of stalls line the grass verge next to the boardwalk, peddling everything from anti-Bush paraphernalia to reggae music set to the tune of children's songs. There's even a man set up opposite the local Jewish centre collecting signatures for his "anti-circumcision" crusade. It's a bit late for me, I fear. Legend has it that I cried for two days after I was snipped; not without good cause too. A little piece of me died that day.

The stall that will still stick longest in the memory is owned by a rastafarian demanding action - although he doesn't specify what kind of action - against cruelty to animals. Every day in America, he claims, a million animals are run over, nine million are killed for eating purposes and 135,000 are killed in lab experiments. These figures seem a little high, but in the absence of any independent verification from Wikipedia, we'll have to take his word for it. On the front of the stall, a sign implores the reader to consider the "barbaric cruelty" involved in animal killing and subsequently consider a life of vegetarianism. It's actually quite moving.

Three hours later, I'm presiding over a barbecue that features a variety of delicious-looking-and-smel

ling meats, with a pair of tongs in the right and a beer in the left. We are back at Uncle Leonard and Francine's place in Bel Air. Lenny is easily the smartest man in our extended family, so why he decided to let us stay with him for three nights is a mystery. He and my father grew up together in New York City, after which Lenny embarked on a successful academic career that culminated in him serving as the Dean of Engineering at USC for seventeen years, while my father is the man responsible for bringing me into the world. How two men from the same background came to make such massively different-sized contributions to humanity is also a mystery.

The dinner is a great success. The barbecued Italian sausages and grilled hamburgers with melted American cheese are augmented by the leafy salad and roasted capsicums (or red peppers, as the Americans enigmatically call them) prepared by Leonard's lovely wife, Francine. All this is washed down by cold Sierra Nevada lagers. Much of the rest of the evening is spent reclining and nursing swelling stomachs as we all dwell on the wonders of air travel. Just half a day ago I was freezing my balls off in the Otago winter, and now I'm sweating them off in the last of the glorious California sunshine. No prizes for guessing which is preferable right now.