The Morning After In That Other City
Note for those who are concerned with matters of time and location: I am currently in Toronto, but the following was partially written in LA. If this is problematic for you, well, sorry. Deal with it.
On this last morning in LA, I woke up fairly early (still haven't quite gotten off NYC time), kissed with the well-known symptoms of a hangover. Instead of sleeping longer, though, I figured that getting back on good ole EST would be a little easier with only five hours of sleep the night before (I was right), so I took a walk up to Sunset to spend a couple hours sitting outside at the Coffee Bean, taking in the scene as West Hollywood sprang to action for the day.
Sunset Strip is a spectacle, closer to a ride at Disneyland than an actual place where people work and live... at least to a New-York-dwelling ex-midwesterner. I don't really believe there's an hour of the day or a day of the week when it could be considered by a random sampling of Americans to be "normal," as was the case earlier. As I sat outside, sipping the brew, a steady stream of people came by for their morning fix, pulling up in cars, leaving with a cup of caffeination. No sooner than one perfectly coiffed, busted, and sunglassed woman would board her SUV and leave, another would show up. In a bigger SUV. Then came those clad in gym clothers emerging from a Mercedes. And so on.
But the best were those who still, for whatever reason, hadn't taken off the previous night's Halloween costume. No one batted an eye, and I had a feeling that it wasn't really all that out of the ordinary, even considering the proximity to 10/31. A guy wearing a funny hat and silly pants walked in with two 21-ish women both dressed like sluts. I couldn't really tell if they were going for anything further, maybe one was going for something of a devil look, who knows.
In fact, it seems that the vast majority of females I saw the previous night, walking down a Santa Monica Boulevard overflowing with 'ween revelers, were wearing costumes that could be described as such, save a couple of good Baptist virgins who actually wore pants. It wasn't a question of if, but to what degree and what variety.
"So what were you last night?"
"Oh, I was a Pirate-slut... Captain Hooker, in fact!"
Pirate-sluts... rather common this time around. Almost more popular than the perennial Cat-sluts and Devil-sluts.
"Wow, that's like totally rad! I was a Firewoman-slut. But I think I started more fires than I put out. Hehe!"
This should not be read as a complaint, but rather as simply an assessment of surroundings. While the costuming choices certainly made for pleasant scenery, they were also somewhat maddening and a bit saddening. The best costumes to address the issue were worn by a pair of girls I met at a Saturday night house party. One wore all blue, and carried a blue-tipped wand, and the other dressed provocatively with a red tutu and a red angel halo tilted 90 degrees from its usual horizontal orientation: the first being the Blue-Balls Fairy, and the second the Orgasm Fairy (the former being, naturally, the busier of the two). In tandem, their commentary of the condition was most poignant and chuckleworthy.
And now I must leave. 'Tis a silly place, and it managed to outfreak New York, but I will miss the weather.
On this last morning in LA, I woke up fairly early (still haven't quite gotten off NYC time), kissed with the well-known symptoms of a hangover. Instead of sleeping longer, though, I figured that getting back on good ole EST would be a little easier with only five hours of sleep the night before (I was right), so I took a walk up to Sunset to spend a couple hours sitting outside at the Coffee Bean, taking in the scene as West Hollywood sprang to action for the day.
Sunset Strip is a spectacle, closer to a ride at Disneyland than an actual place where people work and live... at least to a New-York-dwelling ex-midwesterner. I don't really believe there's an hour of the day or a day of the week when it could be considered by a random sampling of Americans to be "normal," as was the case earlier. As I sat outside, sipping the brew, a steady stream of people came by for their morning fix, pulling up in cars, leaving with a cup of caffeination. No sooner than one perfectly coiffed, busted, and sunglassed woman would board her SUV and leave, another would show up. In a bigger SUV. Then came those clad in gym clothers emerging from a Mercedes. And so on.
But the best were those who still, for whatever reason, hadn't taken off the previous night's Halloween costume. No one batted an eye, and I had a feeling that it wasn't really all that out of the ordinary, even considering the proximity to 10/31. A guy wearing a funny hat and silly pants walked in with two 21-ish women both dressed like sluts. I couldn't really tell if they were going for anything further, maybe one was going for something of a devil look, who knows.
In fact, it seems that the vast majority of females I saw the previous night, walking down a Santa Monica Boulevard overflowing with 'ween revelers, were wearing costumes that could be described as such, save a couple of good Baptist virgins who actually wore pants. It wasn't a question of if, but to what degree and what variety.
"So what were you last night?"
"Oh, I was a Pirate-slut... Captain Hooker, in fact!"
Pirate-sluts... rather common this time around. Almost more popular than the perennial Cat-sluts and Devil-sluts.
"Wow, that's like totally rad! I was a Firewoman-slut. But I think I started more fires than I put out. Hehe!"
This should not be read as a complaint, but rather as simply an assessment of surroundings. While the costuming choices certainly made for pleasant scenery, they were also somewhat maddening and a bit saddening. The best costumes to address the issue were worn by a pair of girls I met at a Saturday night house party. One wore all blue, and carried a blue-tipped wand, and the other dressed provocatively with a red tutu and a red angel halo tilted 90 degrees from its usual horizontal orientation: the first being the Blue-Balls Fairy, and the second the Orgasm Fairy (the former being, naturally, the busier of the two). In tandem, their commentary of the condition was most poignant and chuckleworthy.
And now I must leave. 'Tis a silly place, and it managed to outfreak New York, but I will miss the weather.
posted by David at 1:31 PM
1 Comments:
I feel that young ladeez' costume choices nationwide largely mirror those viewed in your experience. Does it act as a balancing factor for you at all that I dressed as a dude in a polyester suit? I HOPE SO.
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