Santa Monica Promenade & Pier

After plans to visit the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades on my day off fell through due to its being closed on Tuesdays, I ventured to downtown Santa Monica – DTSM – and the beach. At first I thought I'd wait for my monthly rundown before blogging any of it, but I got more good pictures than a summary blog can accommodate and I needed to write about the Third Street Promenade.


Third Street Promenade

During my first year in LA, Third Street Promenade was one of my best and favorite places to have fun; it was well-landscaped for pedestrians-only shopping and dining, packed with national retailers and some local ones, and included many spots along the way to sit, lounge, or socialize. Its current City of Santa Monica website describes it as world-class, and back then it probably qualified—or close to it.

Third Street Promenade in Spring 2016
Since 2016, online shopping has taken more of a hold (understatement), as it probably would have even without help from the Covid pandemic, so that's an obvious factor in what I saw on Tuesday. Related more specifically to Santa Monica, after the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, riots and looting in contiguous Los Angeles spilled over into Santa Monica and a police department that may have been capable of controlling and dispersing more conventional crowds and uprisings, but… this was different.

"I'm so old" I used to love browsing, shopping, and hanging out at malls, but as I recently blogged, the decline and death of the North American mall has disenchanted me and I'd basically quit the habit, anyway.

Returning to "what I saw on Tuesday." A ghost town trying to act brave. A dead mall that hasn't been buried or converted to another use necessarily pretending it won't always be like this. I didn't even try to count the number or percentage of storefronts without tenants. Though I don't recall Third Street Promenade ever being packed with people any time I visited, "sparse" is too generous a word for the current decimation of everything.

I didn't recognize the names of most of the stores! The only brands represented that I'd ever buy from were Barnes & Noble, Anthropologie, and Urban Outfitters. There was a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf I determined to return to before I left, but instead I got a hazelnut frappe at CB&TL when I visited the pier after leaving the promenade.

In the category of "what can we make of this," although Tuesday was January 13th and Christmas is long over (even if you include January 6th, the day of Epiphany as part of the Nativity season), both brick and mortar and online retailers have taken down their Christmas trees, reindeers, and jingle bells because it's time to sell and shop for Valentine's Day, with maybe a thought for MLK Day and Black History Month along the way. But Third Street Promenade still was about trees and lights.

You don't need to search deeply to find articles that analyze all of this from almost any perspective. It doesn't make me feel nostalgic; it just makes me sad. It feels like an icon of so many pasts we knew yet don't truly want to return to, but we don't know what to do with the memories of those pasts or the realities of this present.

Santa Monica Pier

Because I was close to the beach, a visit to Santa Monica Pier was logical. I could pretend to be a tourist! Maybe you already knew that's where Route 66 ends?

I'll wrap this up with some pictures. I hope you enjoy them!

On the way back from the pier I met a flock of seagulls, but I was only quick enough to picture this one.

MOCA

Last Tuesday featured a trip to the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles because neither my friend nor I had been there. Our destination was the current exhibit, Diary of Flowers: Artists and their Worlds:

The exhibition features work in all media across different geographies, cultures, and periods, by artists including Belkis Ayón, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Mona Hatoum, Candice Lin, Annette Messeger, Wangechi Mutu, Lucas Samaras, Mohammed Sami, Tunga, and Haegue Yang, as well as a gallery dedicated to Nan Goldin.

Despite imagining I'd carefully taken a picture of each artwork description, because I didn't organize everything correctly, a few of these pictures present as "untitled." This learning experience taught me to write down titles and descriptions in the future.

But first! My first ever experience in a Waymo! Have you heard of these self-driving Jaguars? They're not everywhere yet, but I think LA is one of the biggest markets and I see more and more of them every day.

No title because I didn't write it down

Howl by Wangechi Mutu, 2006

Autorretrato Ciego by Abraham Cruzvillegas, 2007-2008

Sky Cathedral, Southern Mountain, by Louise Nevelson, 1959

Lunch Break!

Disney Hall because this area is art and music central

Special of the Day Chicken Teriyaki at Subway

Back to MOCA

Resurrección by Belkis Ayón, 1998

These extracts from the larger photograph also are "Untitled" because the description ran out even though I got the correct one. My capture of the entire artwork turned out completely turquoise.

A concluding stroll through the gift shop

Five Minute Friday :: Snow

My multimedia In Winters Past begins my snow blog
because it features piles of snow.

• Five Minute Friday :: Snow Linkup at Andrew's Place

I've been in southern California since early in this century; now that we've started Q2 of the twenty-first century, I think I'll stay in LA. An intro to admitting we don't get snow at this elevation, but I've experienced a lot of it at different times of my life.

You may have heard how people in regions that get a lot of snow have many many words to describe the different types of snow.

What does "snow" evoke in my imagination?

The hush during and immediately after a snowfall, before life has fully resumed and before the city has many of its snowplows out in motion.

It's a similar feeling when the snow stops falling and the sun decides to shine.

In a previous life I substitute taught for the Boston Public Schools for an academic year. Given that Boston is one of those cities with frequent weather, Boston schools sometimes call snow days when the driving is rough and dangerous and passenger cars, trucks, and buses would interfere with snow removal.

Though we got paid per diem, I still loved a snow day because (1) I could stay home and cozy in my small urban apartment and/or (2) when the snow stopped falling, I could go outside and play in the snow or maybe go to the mall if the roads were clear. Because New England snow tends to be the wet heavy kind that's back breaking and heart attack inducing to shovel, I'm grateful I never had to clear more than digging my vehicle out from any windrows the plows had created.

Later on when I lived in Utah with its many recreational ski resorts and The Greatest Snow on Earth, I managed the apartment building I lived in (and helped out with the owner's other properties). That meant if I woke up to snow I had to go out right away and shovel the sidewalk so it wouldn't ice over. The landlord bought me an ergonomic shovel and even though I'm not exactly big and heavy, clearing the sidewalk was easy because the snow was light and powdery.

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