July 2nd was coming to a close I paid my cab fair
and settled into my Downtown hotel room. My long day of reflecting on who I was
and my shortcomings had was coming to a close, I pulled a "Tilly” again, no one
really knew where I was and neither did I.
I went right to sleep.
The morning came faster than I think it ever had, I have had
many sleepless nights in my life but the previous night was not one of
them. It was 11 am and I had to be out
of my room now. I counted the dwindling cash
supply I had, took a shower and hit the streets, I had never been to L.A. and
had not a clue what the first thing to do would be. Today was a new day, the beginning of a new
stage in my life and I decided to just ride the wave and approach it with
optimism, an orange bus stopped in front of me and I saw that it was headed to
Santa Monica, so I hopped in. “I would
go to the beach” I thought to myself.
Things always happen at the beach.
I did not know when I caught the bus this sunny California day
that the Santa Monica bus gave quite the tour of Los Angeles. This bus runs from downtown, over to
Hollywood where it starts down Santa Monica Blvd and finally ends up at Santa Monica
Pier. All in all this ride is around a 2
hour drive which takes you through some slummy parts of Hollywood and then into
West Hollywood down through the beginning of Beverly Hills before heading into
Santa Monica. The sights are amazing and
very diverse, one minute you are driving through a congested area with
transvestite prostitutes on every corner and then next you are in a posh
neighborhood full of boutiques and shops.
It was a great way for me to kind of gather my bearings and later on,
Santa Monica Blvd. would be the artery that took me almost everywhere that I
would go. I made the right choice.
Approaching the City of Santa Monica, I knew inside my soul that
this is where I was going to get started. The bus slowed into through the
downtown area of little shops and condominiums and passed the famous Promenade,
before the road ended right at a landmark which I had seen so many times in
movies and on TV, Palisades Park and the Santa Monica Pier. I rang the bell on the bus and with my
laptop, a back pack and a suitcase on wheel’s, I began an adventure that would
show me magic, and loss, Satan and God.
The streets were bustling with tourists, workers and
vagrants. I knew from my research that
Famous Venice Beach was to the south and Malibu to the north. A sense of contentment came over me, I knew
inside my soul that I had reached my destination. It was strange and a bit eerie the calm that
came over me. I thought back at how many
people throughout history did the same thing that I was doing and ended up becoming stars and while the idea of me being in this
place with a little bit of cash and no plan was a bit scary, it was
exciting. I sat on a bench for a while
and then strolled into the park where there were people laying on blankets and
selling trinkets, and old man with a bright fluffy beard was sitting in a tie
dye shirt selling paintings, I approached him and asked him how the weather has
been, he told me it had been warm and sunny and would be that way for the rest
of the summer. I replied with “Good, I
intend on sleeping right out there on the beach for a while” and I began
plotting my plan.
There was little time left of the day so I gathered my
belongings and headed a couple of blocks up Santa Monica to “The Prominade Café”
a little internet café that is right at the corner of Santa Monica and 4th
st. This little café would later become
what I would refer to as my “office” I would spend hours in there with my
laptop and a coffee searching for small jobs and places to stay…I loved that
place. So I popped open the old DELL and
began to brainstorm. “I have a way too
much stuff to carry around if I am just going crash on the Beach” and I didn’t
want to spend all of the $200 or so I had left in my pocket, so crashing on the
beach was the most logical option for me.
I quickly Googled all of the storage units in the area and found one a
few blocks up from Venice beach, lucky for me the first month was only $1. I quickly decided that that was what I would
do, first thing in the morning I would walk the beach down to Venice and secure
my belongings in a storage locker.
With my decision made dusk was coming very quickly and I
had to start to think about sleeping arrangements. I had no sleeping bag or blankets and while
you can camp out on the beach in Northern California rather freely, this is Los
Angeles, people do it every day, but it is illegal and discretion is
necessary. I wandered up the boulevard
into a Goodwill store and purchased a sheet and a beach towel and a book called
Sidhartha. This would be the first day
in Santa Monica, as night approached I wandered down to the beach, still
carrying all of my things. I met a few
local kids and found out about Summer Music on The Pier which is a Los Angeles
tradition and of course tomorrow was Independence Day. They told me that this is the most exciting
time of the year on the beach and that if I was crashing on the beach, I wouldn’t
get much sleep. That evening I walked
quietly in my solitude towards Venice and somewhere around the halfway point, I
found picked out a lifeguard stand which would be my room for the night. As the waves crashed against the shore, I
looked up towards the Pier, the Red, White, and Blue lights spiraling in and
out of the Ferris Wheel, whatever the hell I was doing, it was exciting and I
was all-in.
This is a
continuation of my Los Angeles experiences which I blogged about as they were
happening earlier in this blog. It is my
intention to deliver this story and many others in more detail on a regular
basis with a hope that my experiences might inspire others to life free of
worry and never be afraid to take a chance.
I hope you
enjoy reading
`tilly
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