Well, I’ve officially taken this blog on the road. I am currently on the eastbound Metro Rapid 733 bus. The cheese wagon! Oh, the memories of being made to ride the Big Yellow during high school, due to my parents’ insistence that teenage auto insurance rates were prohibitively expensive (then why was the student parking lot filled to the brim…?).
I’m meeting my boyfriend and our friends downtown. Even though my boyfriend works downtown, it’s a long way from our apartment. Something like 20 freeway miles! Many people come from further in their workaday commutes, of course, but I spent four years traversing the 4 miles a pied because I couldn’t countenance the thought of blowing the gas on a handful of miles daily. So I’m clearly not in that mindset.
I’d planned to take the rail to the restaurant. There’s a line they put in last year, the Expo Line, that conveniently runs from Culver City (much nearer to where we are) all the way to downtown. Besides the fact that the Expo’s newer, isn’t there just a romanticism to trains? I mean, Miss Frizz took her bus to some pretty cool places, but there’s no Cheese Wagon equivalent to the Orient Express. Yes, I’ve figured L.A.’s Expo Line, which takes a scenic tour through South Los Angeles (f.k.a. South Central), for an evocative and iconic historical landmark. These are the things you must do to block out the increasingly aggressive jeers of the Expo’s passengers, who in the apt words of Michael Jackson, wanna be startin’ somethin’. By “somethin’,” I mean a plaintiff/defendant relationship. Can you guess which role I would take?
Anyway, due to a misread Wikipedia article (You might ask: Why would one look to The Free Encyclopedia for critical triangulation info? Your question would be met with silence.) I completely missed the Expo vicinity altogether. As in, I didn’t end up anywhere near any of the stations in the line. This was most unfortunate, as the first portion of the journey involved a carefully calibrated trip on the rideshare app Sidecar. As you may know, Sidecar works on suggested donations (but not suggested donations like those ostentatious cash boxes in museums, where the employees stuff a bunch of Jacksons and Hamiltons into a plexiglass box in an attempt to peer pressure your average random to pull an Alex Hammy on a half-hearted afternoon trawling some exhibits). And as you may remember, I didn’t even shell out to drive four miles during my latest commuting days. So would you believe that I designated a pickup and dropoff location that maximized, to the penny, the $10 credit I had for the app? No more, no less.
To recap: 1 random ride on Sidecar to Wikipedia’s idea of the train station, which was actually a chocolate shop; countless miles sweatily trundled; a resigned ride on the bus; and finally, some 2.5 hours later, the destination achieved.
Romantic lighting! Except, too hot for my post-cross town trek.
Our many plates included a Large Loaf.
Goat cheese, too.
The food was so good that it turned my boyfriend white!
Melanin was regained eventually.
One of our dining companions had an extended eye malady. Namely: Camera Shyness.
I only had to take a series of buses and an ill-fated Sidecar to get this Rolex!
Look out, over there! It’s yet another creative way to hide his entire face.
Intimate!
