LA Day 3

After breakfast in the hotel, we took our instruments and walked over to a plaza in the middle of Little Tokyo and set up for practice. We played out there for about two hours, to the joy of a small audience of mendicants and passersby. It was a long practice, but pretty fun.

After practice, a few of us hopped on the subway and headed for Beverly Hills. We walked around Beverly and Rodeo Drive, Santa Monica Boulevard, etc. Everything was incredibly expensive, obviously, but it's a beautiful area.

Rodeo Drive

The Versace store on the "Via Rodeo" section of the street

After lunch in the Hills area, we took a bus back over to Hollywood to take pictures of the things we saw the night before. As soon as we got out of the station, though, we were accosted by an interesting sight. There was an anti-war march going on all along Hollywood Boulevard. I was quite irked by the whole ordeal; at one point, as shown below, the protesters blared bomb sirens and simulated bomb noises and "hit the deck" to show the injustices of Iraq. My favorite part of it, though, is that the woman on the loudspeaker that prefaced it told her comrades not to "freak out" about the noises because "obviously, no one is going to bomb Los Angeles." I think that we should all take a minute to contemplate why we can assume that our cities are safe from attack. I did my part to cause trouble: as soon as the began to chant "stop the war" after the faux-raid, I belted out "God Bless America" as loud as my smog-filled lungs would allow. I salute the other frustrated Americans that joined in.

Although they blocked a few of the stars on the Walk (Julie Andrews included!), we were able to capture a lot of what we wanted to see. Here are some examples:

In the evening, we headed over to USC's Galen Center for the Basketball game. We had a really rough first half, and I wasn't sure that we'd be able to pull it off. The ladies pulled it off in the second half, though, prolonging our stay for another two days! I hope they come to play from the get-go on Monday, or Cal will rip us to shreds.

That's all for now. I will post later tonight on today's happenings!