Yesterday I called a friend of mine hoping he could help me bottle some beer that we brewed back in January. He said he was headed to the First Annual L.A. Street Food Fest downtown for some food and beer. One of the fun things about L.A. is the food trucks, ranging from roach coaches to gourmet fusion taco trucks. So someone had the bright idea to round up those trucks, have them prepare sample sized food, and sell it at a festival. I thought it over, and due to my goal of getting out and enjoying L.A. (and also for the sake of not being lame and staying in my house all day) I decided to go down and join them. I drove over, found my way to the general vicinity of the event, and fought my way through the insanity of cars and people. I parked my car and walked for a few blocks - and then I glimpsed the line, which wrapped around a couple of blocks. I had been thinking I would be a good person and stand at the end of the line, even though my friends were somewhere further up, but when I saw the line I changed my mind. It worked out because a couple of minutes before I showed up, two people from our group gave up and left anyway. In the end it didn't matter, because after waiting an hour and a half, we were turned away because the event was filled beyond capacity. All the vendors were running low on supplies, and lines to buy food were reaching ninety minutes long. They had planned for 3,000 people, and 10,000 showed up. Whoa.

Instead of letting this turn of events spoil our day, we just decided to come up with a new plan, still involving food and beer. We walked over to Figueroa/Flower area, where there a bunch of good places I went to during my summer of working at the firm. Unfortunately, none of them are open on the weekends. So, we decided to walk back to the car and take off in the direction of my neighborhood (we were growing hungrier by the minute). We ate at Tender Greens, went to Father's Office for beers, then headed to Sweet Lady Jane's (where i had never been) for dessert (it was to die for).

So, moral of the story - even if L.A. events can be rough due to the hoards of people who will invariably show up, there are still delicious things to be had.

Farmer's Market

One of my favorite things about L.A. is the abundance of farmer's markets. Any day of the week you can go just a little way and run into one. When I first moved here, I was excited to be only two miles from the oldest market in L.A. - the one at Third and Fairfax, which is open every day of the week. I went once, and it was fun, but I was disappointed in the fresh produce that was available. Only two booths were selling vegetables, some people were selling fish, meat, cheese and baked goods, but the focus seemed to be on the tourism aspect. A lot of booths were devoted to arts, crafts, and touristy L.A. things and also to prepared food you could grab for lunch. Don't get me wrong - the produce I bought was about the same price as what you would find at the grocery store but much, much better. I would definitely drop by to pick up a few things instead of stopping at the grocery store. But! When I moved here I did NOT expect to find the little market that happens every Thursday evening at La Cienega and 18th, which is about half a mile from my house. They have a good variety of everything I could want - produce as well as a guy selling fresh cheeses and... a local coffee roaster! He wakes up at 3:00 a.m. to roast beans to bring to the market, and if you can't make it to the market, he does deliveries on Saturdays. So early this evening I walked through my neighborhood to buy some coffee and anything else that caught my fancy. I ended up with half a pound of Sumatra and half a pound of Bolivian coffee, which came out delicious in my french press. I also got a basket of strawberries and a bunch of asparagus.

I do have one observation about the market - though Rob and I are pretty much the only white people in the neighborhood, and I saw our usual Indian, Hispanic and African American neighbors while walking to the market, the market itself was full of white people. I wondered what is it about farmer's markets that makes them continue to be a white yuppie thing to do? Surely it isn't that my neighbors don't like delicious, fresh, cheap things. I decided to consult Stuff White People Like and found this entry. Not terribly illuminating but, as always, true and funny.

Convenient Travels

One of the things that makes living in any given place unique are the other places you can reach from it. For example, when I lived in Ann Arbor I went to Traverse City a couple of times - once just to hang out, once for a snowshoe race. Rob and I decided that we would take advantage of out location and our time off to drink all the beer we could handle in Northern California and Oregon. We took a cheap commuter flight to Oakland, rented a car, and took off. We hit tons of breweries including: Russian River, Third Street Aleworks, Lagunitas, Mendocino, Bear Republic, Anderson Valley, Mt. Shasta Brewing, Sierra Nevada, Deschutes, Bend Brewing, Full Sail, Lucky Lab, Roots, Pelican Brewing, Rogue, and North Coast (over the course of seven days - don't worry). We took several tours and learned a lot about brewing. At the end of the trip, we took the Coast Starlight train back down the coast to L.A. The train was an entertaining way to travel - we had lunch in the dining car, played cards in the observation car, went to a wine tasting in the fancy schmancy parlor car. All in all, it was a relaxing day.


The day after we returned from our trip, I flew to St. Louis to judge a debate tournament at my alma mater. A lot of people who were on the team with me were there, and it was amazing to see them and catch up. Last night I returned to L.A. - via Orange County. That's right. My old debate coach, when filling out the form to request that the university make my travel arrangements didn't notice that the box that says "include surrounding airports" was checked. So, I ended up flying into Orange County at 10:00 at night. I was pretty bummed, since traveling between John Wayne Airport and Los Angeles at that time of night ranges from impossible to really expensive, but it worked out all right. A friend who was supposed to pick me up asked his girlfriend to do it instead - and she works in Orange County and lives in L.A. My observations on the John Wayne Airport: rich folk in Orange County clearly got tired of dealing with LAX and decided to build a fancy airport to welcome them home to their Escalades and McMansions. The people watching while I waited for my ride was fantastic. The people on the Real Housewives of Orange County are not making that stuff up.

Today I am recovering - tomorrow I will go running. When I get a little more endurance, I am hoping to plan a run from Santa Monica to Venice and back on the trail by the beach. That sounds like the exact kind of thing I should take advantage of and enjoy here in L.A.

Running in the Sun

Today I went out for a three mile run. Note that it is mid January, and it was sixty-eight degrees and sunny when I went outside to run. Now, to native Los Angelinos, that is nothing out of the ordinary, but for someone who spent the past three years slogging through, scraping off, and generally fighting with the snow in southern Michigan, it is quite an adjustment. In December, I was feeling kind of nostalgic about the snow – in spite of the above sentence of complaining, I was always excited when the first snow of the year came down, and my last law school roommate got me hooked on snow shoeing. However, my trip home to Missouri and to Ohio to visit Rob’s family reminded me what it is really like to be cold. It was around ten degrees, which would be nothing in Michigan, but is actually pretty unusual for St. Louis and Cincinnati. The weather almost called for a down coat, long underwear, and snow boots. And it reminded me of a resolution I made last winter when I was running on a treadmill in my apartment complex gym: when I live in southern California, I’m going to take advantage of the beautiful weather year round. Have I been doing so? Absolutely not! So, a couple of times last week, and again today, I went and ran outside and it was beautiful. I’m hoping to get back into running regularly. A friend of mine is running a half-marathon in September (she apparently got conned into this because her best friend’s husband told this friend she could never run a half-marathon, a statement that clearly won’t fly and is good cause to register for said half-marathon post haste) and I’m actually considering it, though I’ve never actually run a race longer than a 5k. September is eight months away… plenty of time to train to run 13-something miles, right? Right.

In any case, though it might be a little late for New Year's Resolutions, I'm going to make one/renew one now - I will make a point to enjoy the outdoors in sunny Los Angeles as though I had just flown out from snow-covered Michigan, whether by taking nice run, firing up the grill, or sipping a glass of wine on the back porch. I'll let you know how it goes.

A Return to Choral Music

When I arrived in Los Angeles in September and realized that six months of free time lay between me and my job at the law firm, it seemed I would never make it unless I found some kind of organization or activity in which I could participate. Music used to be an enormous part of my life - I sang in choirs all through high school and college, and did a short stint with a women’s choir in St. Louis while I was working as a legal assistant. During law school, I really had very little time to do anything but study, prepare for class, study, and go to class, with the occasional break for a beer or two, so I never got around to joining a choir. And I really, really missed it. So, I typed “Los Angeles Choirs” into Google, hoping to find a choir nearby that had not yet finished auditioning for the season. I came across the Angeles Chorale, a 100 something auditioned group of singers that performs several times a year, and found that auditions were, in fact, happening in three days. I called to set up an audition time, pulled out my copy of Twenty-Four Italian Songs and Arias, and started trying to remember how to sing. The audition information stated that candidates must submit a “choral resume,” something I have never even contemplated needing before. When I attempted to write down choral works I had performed with my previous choirs, I found that I could only remember a handful. My audition took place in the music building at UCLA and consisted of one prepared piece, some sight reading, and some vocal exercises for the sake of determining my vocal range. When my turn came, I was trembling like a leaf and just hoping that my voice was not. I botched the sight reading exercise (three years away from choral music had left me kind of rusty), but the director stopped me in the middle of my aria and welcomed me to the chorale.

So far I’ve performed with the Angeles Chorale twice – the main performance to which we devoted fall rehearsals was The Messiah. Several friends came to hear the performance, and it went fantastically. The Messiah is an intricate and interesting work – I never fully appreciated it until I learned it for this performance, and I feel it is often underappreciated, perhaps because the most popular bits are so overused and do not necessarily reflect how stunning the rest of the work is.

The other performance with the Chorale is one of my favorite L.A. memories so far - performing in the Holiday Sing Along at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. About forty singers from my choir performed with a few jazz musicians. The concert is a yearly tradition specifically designed to bring in entire families for about an hour and a half of singing favorite holiday songs. I have to admit I was a little skeptical at first, thinking the idea bordered on cheesy, but the audience loved it and the opportunity to sing on the stage at Disney concert hall was worth any residual feelings of ridiculousness that might have stemmed from the Santa Claus hat I was wearing. Before the performance, someone described the venue as the inside of a large ship, and he was absolutely right. The curves and tiers on the inside are as interesting as those on the outside, and result in an acoustically pleasing and oddly seaworthy experience. The best moment of the performance was probably when we did The Twelve Days of Christmas, for which the director, from the stage, split the hall into eleven different sections and assigned them each a different part to sing (everyone sang "five golden rings" together). Seeing everyone in a sold out Disney Concert Hall popping up out of their seats to sing their assigned phrase was quite the spectacle. I was definitely in the Christmas spirit after that.

A New Blog for a New Era

I haven't been doing much blogging lately - in fact, I have not updated my previous blog, http://amedley.livejournal.com/ in nearly a year. Now that I am returning to a normal human being, or something approximating (but still different from) my pre-law school self, I thought I might try a new take on the blog.

Upon hearing that I recently moved to Los Angeles, people often ask, “Oh, how do you like it?” I never really know how to answer – like many people, I feel kind of a love-hate relationship with L.A. The city does have its drawbacks – it is big, sprawling, dirty, smoggy and full of traffic, not to mention half a continent away from my entire family. On the other hand, anything you could ever want to do is here – any cuisine, any kind of art, music, movies, things to do. My philosophy in life has always been that if you put in the effort, you can be happy pretty much anywhere. It can take some work though, and motivation, to get out of the house, get involved in the community, and to find places and things to do that fit you and make you feel at home. To honor that philosophy, I decided to start this blog in order to record some of my efforts to enjoy L.A. and take advantage of what it has to offer (aside from Pinkberry, the Hollywood sign, and sunshine). I’m an official Los Angeles resident now – mailing address, license plates, driver’s license, and voter registration. L.A. is the first city I’ve ever moved to for an indefinite amount of time. I always knew I was likely to leave St. Louis after college or after a couple years of working after college. When I moved to Ann Arbor to attend law school, I knew it was only a three-year arrangement. So, since I have no plans to leave L.A. any time soon, I figure now is as good a time as any to try and embrace it.