The rest of May was spent at home, but that does not mean it was uneventful. The first adventure of which I'll speak started very very early in the morning of May 24th when I had to pick my mom up from work. I left the house just as the sun began to peek over the hills:
After getting her from LAX, we drove by the currently-under-construction "Los Angeles Stadium at Hollywood Park" (which is located at Hollywood Park in Inglewood, nowhere near Hollywood city), which is a big new NFL stadium which will be shared by the L.A. Rams & Chargers when it opens next year:
Then we headed towards downtown:
On the way, we passed an old thing that I didn't know existed, but it looks kind of cool:
Then we entered the actual downtown area, & I took some cool shots:
We were downtown to buy me some new suits, & after those were acquired we headed north on the 101, passing some iconic views of the city. Iconic buildings:
& iconic...um...culture:
But anyway, eventually we came in sight of our destination: Hollywood, with its iconic sign & observatory, of which I've included two views: one with the sign very clear & the other with a neat tree & pretty flowers (You can click to enlarge & actually see the stuff):
Anyway, we walked around Tinsel Town for a bit & took in some of the sights, such as the Chinese Theater (left) & a random shot of a random street (right):
While we were there, we decided to take in a movie at the famous El Capitan Theatre. The box office area has a pretty ceiling:
It is a very old & storied theater. Before it was built in 1926, this part of Hollywood was just a bunch of fields, as shown in this picture from 1905:
Originally, the El Capitan was a playhouse, but in 1941 it hosted its first movie: the debut of a film titled, Citizen Kane. The advertising said it was pretty good:
Over the years it has hosted a number of premieres, including all the Avengers movies, many Disney princess films, & one of my favourite Hollywood movies (that is, movies that are set in Hollywood, not just made here), The Rocketeer:
As you can probably guess by that list, nowadays it is Disney that operates the theatre, so the movie on display that day was the new live-action Aladdin. It's always a big event at the El Capitan even if it's not a premire, so we still got to take promotional pictures:
And got to see the world-famous Mighty Wurlitzer organ dating back to 1929, although back then it sat in San Francisco's Fox Theatre. It is the 5th & final of the "Fox Specials", which at the time were considered the best theater organs on the market. Anyway, it left San Francisco in 1963 & eventually found its way to the El Capitan, where since 1999 Rob Richards has played Disney song medleys for every Disney showing in the place--whether in the presence of celebrities, or random folks like us:
It was a good movie & a great time, but afterwards it was time to head home:
As we passed downtown, I got to see the sunset reflect off the buildings as the day drew to a close:
Although that was the close of the day, it was by no means the close of my summer adventures. A couple of days later, one of my best friends got married. I didn't get any good pictures of the event, but I did get this picture:
Then on June 2nd we drove down to Yuma, Arizona, to celebrate my Grandpa's birthday. These are a couple of pictures from the drive:
Last chronologically but certainly not least, on June 14th I got to go with another one of my best friends to see a bunch of Christian hip-hop artists (1K Phew, Andy Mineo, GAWVI, KB, Lecrae, Tedashii, Trip Lee, & WHATUPRG) on the Unashamed Forever tour at the Hollywood Palladium, which is a neat & very storied art deco dance hall built in 1940. Kinda hard to tell from this picture though:
All in all, the first month & a half of summer was very fun & relaxing. I did many things, but (with the exception of the first two weeks talked about in the last post) they were spaced far enough apart that I had plenty of time to rest between them. This was good, because I was going to need all of my energy for what came next....
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