DAY 5 - Downtown LA in 1.5 hours - 5th Dec

Downtown LA is like every main tourist destination in big cities. Rundown, dirty and full of homeless and hawkers. I didn't expect it to be much but in reality there really is very little to see around.

We walked to the kodak theatre which looked kind of bland, went through it's shopping centre and found the deck viewing the Hollywood sign, it was so far in the distance it was quite hard to capture on camera. Overall the facade of the Kodak theatre is rather unmajestic. They must sprinkle some serious fairy dust before the awards ceremonies to make it all pretty and nice.



Grauman's Chinese theatre, although steeped in movie history still felt as tacky as the area and people surrounding it. Perhaps it was my mood on the day or the effect of earlier material I've read about downtown LA but even though I've wanted to see the walk of stars and the star prints for as long as I can remember, I felt like I wanted to leave the minute I got there.



In fact I was so disenfranchised I couldn't even be bothered finding the stars of celebs I liked nor did I take any photos of stars. The entire walk just seemed to tacky, fake and unnecessarily full of unworthy celebs like Phil Collins...ha. Perhaps I've become WAY too cynical, or rather I had most of my fun on the Hong Kong Version of the walk of fame in 2005 and thus my excitement was diluted, but it just seemed the more I looked at LA as the movie capital of my dreams the more I didn't want to be here or work here. It's funny how films create a dream reality but once you really look into the substance that's actually there, there isn't much. There is ample reason why LA and hollywood in particular is billed as shallow community. I'm not sure when my LA cynicism started but all those movies and TV shows which previously made everything look so appealing seem to have marginal affect on me now. Of course there are still appealing aspects of Hollywood, but perhaps I'm old and educated enough to realise that I need something more substantial than what this place offers.

It seemed that there were only limited prints outside the Chinese theatre, either very recent ones or very old ones. I think those in the middle get shafted somewhere else. John Woo was the most recent and I happily got a pic with his prints. And he also wrote his name in chinese...yay!!! And of course I got a pic with Spielberg's prints cause he will forever be my hero.



After Grauman's we went for a drive up Sunset Boulevard, through Beverly Hills (aka the suburb of great hedges) and Rodeo Drive. It was dark and I didn't see much other than that Rodeo Drive was insanely sparkly and top end. But rather i was too tired to care. I don't like traveling when I'm tired because I get grouchy and I don't care about the places I'm seeing. It's a pity since I hoped to see downtown and the rich parts of LA on a better note. Perhaps next time.



For Alan and Lam,