Vacation: SF to LA to LB to PS to LA

[rootbeer1]

qbear and I arrived home Monday from a week-long vacation to Los Angeles, Long Beach, Palm Springs … and Disneyland, where I broke my leg a year ago.


Vacationing in Palm Springs last week, and evidently posing for some sort of album cover, are, seated, rootbeer1 (bass guitar) and redbeardedblond (drums); standing, bigsabu (lead singer, rhythm guitar), animbear (lead guitar) and qbear (keyboards, synthesizers, manual typewriter and Margarita blender).



Jack’s covered most of the high points in his own journal already, so here’s my impressions of the first part of the vacation, in a nutshell:

We departed Friday night for Glendale, about 400 miles south, a straight shot down the highway. After a few hours of driving and listening to Mongo Santamaria, Pet Sounds and Bob Dylan, we arrived at profkampf’s place, whereupon we headed out again for dinner at Philippe’s, the dive-y Los Angeles restaurant that originated the French Dip sandwich. Jack was all excited because he’d just seen the restaurant featured on some program on the Food network. After French Dips and pickled beets, Ray showed us around downtown LA, and we wound up at the House of Pies, where we thrilled to the idea that Kirstie Alley used to order whole pies there and eat them in her car in the parking lot. We just had a slice each. Back at Ray’s apartment, we relaxed and enjoyed the shenanigans of Meerkat Manor, Jack’s favorite new TV show.

The next morning we headed out to Jinkie’s on the Sunset Strip for a farewell brunch with a bunch of Live Journalers. Jack’s covered a lot of this already, so check out his journal. After that, we headed down to Long Beach to see our friend Sam, who that evening took us to a Greek restaurant for the best Greek food we’d ever had. After that, we were walking around the small gay district when we came across a gayish clothing store, with an employee out front handing out “50% off all clothing” coupons. Pay attention now, because this next part’s fucked up. We look in the store and I find a pair of green leather underwear with holes down the front, much like the bridal gown worn by Mary Tyler Moore on that episode of her show that I keep referring to in my Friday Coloring Book posts. What a great find, I think. It’s hilarious. I can wear underwear similar to that green dress, and at 50% off, it’s affordable. And sexy as hell. I’ll take pictures of me wearing it for Live Journal. We’ll all have a good chuckle.

So, I take the underwear to the front counter, where I am told that:

-- The 50% off all clothing coupon doesn’t apply to that article, because
-- Underwear is not clothing. And neither are socks.

Okay, this really pisses me off. Since when is underwear not “clothing”? The cashier wouldn’t be dissuaded, though, so we left without buying anything. On the way out, I told the employee out front how bummed we were. He apologized, and said that their stupid coupon rules came down from the fucktards at their stupid corporate office.

So, what do YOU think?

[Poll #842454]

The next day, we headed to Palm Springs and got there in time to look at some open houses in the neighborhood. One moustached realtor we came across must have liked us because he spilled all sorts of insider information about Palm Springs – the ins and outs of leasing Indian-owned land, how many gays were in that particular neighborhood, whether real estate prices would continue to fall, where he lived and what time he got off. In the evening we trekked over to Rancho Mirage to have dinner with an older couple we’d met on a previous trip. We wound up eating at Devane’s, an Italian restaurant owned by William Devane, the bushy-eyebrowed actor, and then went back to their place for dessert and The Amazing Race.

Monday morning I joined the World Gym for the week. I’ve been trying to regain my strength and muscle tone after the broken leg of last year, and I didn’t want a week of backsliding to halt my progress. World Gym turned out to be large and extremely gay, with White Party CDs on sale at the front and cruisers stalking unwary sauna-goers in the rear. I did meet one nice fellow at the gym who we met for lunch later in the week. He had worked for Adobe and cashed out right before the tech crash, so he was very proud of his house and showed it to us. His little retirement home had:

-- A 2100-sguare-foot garage, with room for six cars, extra fridges and freezers, a full bathroom, tool benches, and storage galore
-- A 3000-square-foot living room, with a formal seating area, a media center, a dining area, an informal dining area, a bar area, and seating and shelving galore

For the same price here in San Francisco, of course, you can get a nice two-bedroom, two-bath condo.

Monday to Wednesday was a whirl of dining out, swimming, soaking in the sun, etc. Late in the afternoon on Wednesday, our friends from Salt Lake City arrived – Reid (animbear), Robert (bigsabu) and Richard (redbeardedblond) – all of whom had never been in Palm Springs before. After a brief tour of town, we met up with Paulie (redbackfur) for dinner at the Red Tomato, where the owner was glad to see us, because, he mentioned, the summer season was so hot and miserable that they had had hardly any customers. This made me feel sad, because I’d worn my tank top and was all prepared to flirt with him for free strawberry shortcake. Hey, it’s worked before!


Satiated after their Italian and Albanian dinners are, from left: rootbeer1 (me), qbear (Jack), bigsabu (Robert), animbear (Reid), redbackfur (Paulie) and redbeardedblond (Richard).

After dinner, we went back to the 550, where Paulie was staying, to watch Project Runway and show Reid, Richard and Robert around a typical Palm Springs gay resort. Unfortunately my photos of Robert and Paulie doubleteaming Richard in the sling came out a little dark, so here’s one of the crew later soaking their feet in the pool back at the house.


Richard, Reid and Robert

The next day we toured around Palm Springs some more, and did the bear coffee gathering in the evening, along with the weekly Thursday night street fair. Earlier in the day, however, we’d stopped for brunch at this deli called Manhattan in the Desert. For desert, Jack and I decided to split a cream puff, which appeared somewhat large in the dessert case, and thus eminently suitable for splitting. When it arrived however, and it was placed down in front of me like the head of John the Baptist, I started laughing and laughing …



And then everyone started laughing – our group, people seated near us, the waitstaff. It was just fucking hilarious how big this pumpkin-sized cream puff was. I laughed the hardest I’ve laughed in years – somehow this enormous pastry had smothered my depression and worries of the past year with rich, sweet creamy catharsis.

The next morning we headed out to West Hollywood for brunch with e_ticket and a bunch of cool LJers at Irv’s:


Enjoying their burgers and fries are poohbearjim, djmrswhite, the Salt Lake trio, moroccomole, non-LJer Kirk

After pie back at Dave and Alonso’s place, Jack and I headed off to Disneyland, where, a year ago, I had broken my leg on Gay Day by tripping on a sidewalk, after being distracted by a passing Cinderella. Yes, same old story, it happens every day. More on the rest of our vacation tomorrow.

Comments

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you got back on the horse (or should I say, back on Mickey?) and visited the scene of your trauma. As for the album cover, it's almost otherworldly, with redbeardedblond's shoe hovering flourescently under the table.

[squalidbear.livejournal.com]

I hope redbeardedblond isn't going to choke on vomit... someone else's vomit... you can't dust for vomit, you know.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

animbear has a halo! Does that make him the angelic twin dying of AIDS?

[furmuslbulk.livejournal.com]

That first pic:

What's with the 'tude, beatches!?!

[rootbeer1.livejournal.com]

We were trying to look all cool and shit.

[redbackfur.livejournal.com]

The Glare off my shiny head was distracting them when I took the picture!

[malcarne.livejournal.com]

Swiss electroacoustic improv jazz soopergroop?

[fingertrouble.livejournal.com]

no more Genesis* in their Nursery Crymes days LOL

heavy on the blur there, dave*



* I hate Genesis though, but it's the stripes and the hat - either that or the Raconteurs

** no idea if anyone is called Dave, just sounded like someone should be called Dave...

Re: Fresh from Itunes.....

[malcarne.livejournal.com]

okay...you just nonplussed the s/o(who I draggd into the office) and made my day...awesome!

when does the 3" cd-r come out?

[kingfuraday.livejournal.com]

the first pic looks like an all-male Fleetwood Mac cover-band.

[erik415.livejournal.com]

Great pictures! It was nice meeting you and Jack for a quick second at the fireworks show last saturday. *hugz*

[progbear.livejournal.com]

keyboards, synthesizers, manual typewriter and Margarita blender

What, no Mellotron?

Of course, your mention of cockrings just reminds me of this.

[grandiva1968.livejournal.com]

Umm, woof.

[djmrswhite.livejournal.com]

wow i look good in that savage pencil t-shirt

RBB

[poodler.livejournal.com]

For some reason Richard reminds me of Truman Capote in that yellow hat.

[excessor.livejournal.com]

What a fabulous post! I'm so jealous of your trip.

Mark-the-Ex belongs to that World Gym. It's so gay (how…gay…is it?) that it has a DJ. This is what happens when gay people take over.

I'm glad you had such a good time.