Live from the Golden Coast, Part 3: Coffee Shops, Consignment Stores, and Career Considerations
I wake up two times in the night to pee, still feeling dehydrated and woozy. By the time I get up around 7, I still have a stomachache from eating that slice of gluten-free cake from Milk Bar the night before (I was right when I said I would regret it the next day). My hands are still dry and the glow of vacation is starting to wear off as I pack up my things in preparation to move from one friend’s abode to another. I analyze what I should wear, knowing that I will be shopping for clothes and training jiujitsu later today, and determine a clean clothing strategy that should hold me over until I have access to a washer/dryer.
Not feeling up to trying the boxing again, knowing I’m going to do jiujitsu tonight, I do a long walk to my friend’s favorite coffee place on Melrose Place, Alfred. I walk in the sunshine in the most LA outfit I packed for the trip (a black halter dress and ankle boots), listen to a podcast, and enjoy the absence of cars on the street thanks to the Veterans Day holiday.
It’s right around this time I get to thinking about being five years old and my mom talking about ‘Melrose Place’ and ‘Beverly Hills 90210’ coming on TV at night. I’d like to watch both now that I’ve actually been to both places — from everything Wikipedia suggests, it’s what ‘The O.C.’ was for the generation before mine, or perhaps the slightly-older millennials.
I make it to Alfred, where I’m overwhelmed with the dark, eccentric, verdant decor. I Was hoping I’d get served my drip coffee in the cure, New York-style Greek coffee cup, but instead it’s served in the plain white one. At the very least, I find the ‘sweetgreen’ paper sleeve on my coffee cute, wish that the Kate Somerville spa next door were open, and go off in search or food to go with the coffee. Because the coffee doesn’t hit the spot, I pop into a white-tiled cafe called Carrera for a matcha since the coffee didn’t hit the spot. The matcha is great, but what really catches my eyes are the crazy donuts in the case that I know I can’t eat because they’re vegan but not gluten-free. I do the insufferable thing and take a Snapchat video of them to send to friends, sharing the scene into the ephemeral chat universe.
I call my mom and then call my boyfriend, who gets interrupted by the fact I stumbled into a movie set. Los Angeles, of course. I finally find a place to eat something other than a pastry that will kill me. It’s a place called Fratelli’s that reminds me of a restaurant down by the Jersey Shore — or maybe it’s just the Bruce Springsteen record cover on the bathroom wall. One café au lait, another egg white scramble for breakfast, and some “DIY gluten-free avocado toast” later (basically me smearing avocado from the egg dish onto gluten-free bread), I consider how to make the rest of my soon-to-be-packed day work as seamlessly as possible.
The initial plan was to go consignment store shopping with the Birthday Girl in the Melrose/West Hollywood Area, but she has some work calls to handle and I offer to meet her on the West Side. Since I love a good walk by the beach and it’s nice to go to one familiar place this trip among all the new ones, I’m excited for the unexpected turn toward Venice and Santa Monica.
Knowing I won’t be back in West Hollywood for the rest of my trip, I make one last stop at Coffee for Sasquatch and try the strawberry buttermilk baked donut from fonuts, which I would have visited were it not 40 minutes out of the way and in a neighborhood that I wouldn’t be able to visit this trip. I didn’t think it would be possible to top the cake at Milk Bar but the donut today manages to top it. It’s soft and not too sweet and I’m grateful for the fact I’m walking off all the sweets today because I’ve eaten like trash in the last 12 hours.
I make my way back to my first host’s apartment and call a Lyft to East Hollywood/Little Armenia. I’m greeted by my host’s roommate, an Israeli cinematographer, who is very friendly and mellow. Astonished that this old apartment has a new, beautiful Samsung washer and dryer, I do my laundry, charge my phone, and call an Uber to Abbot Kinney, one of my favorite shopping streets on the West Side. There’s a matcha cafe where I grab some yuzu-matcha soft serve, because at this point I’m capitulating to the ‘only in LA’ foods. I’m already 15 minutes late, so I don’t stop anywhere else, but am happy to be around all the hippie, bungalow-style stores and the easygoing people visiting them. After a moderate walk, I meet the Birthday Girl at her apartment, which I have only seen in pictures. It’s smaller than I thought it was, but the light and high ceilings make it feel big and the location is unbeatable: steps from the Pacific Ocean and the Main Street drag of Santa Monica.
I lounge on the Birthday Girl’s couch as she wraps up some work calls. I’m enjoying the moment of rest, knowing that I’m going to be on my feet for the rest of the day with shopping, jiujitsu, and socializing with my host, whom I haven’t seen in at least two years.
Our friend, The Musician knocks the door and joins us at the Birthday Girl’s Apartment. We head outside to go shopping at The Birthday Girl’s favorite consignment store, where, after trying on all those jeans at the outlets to no avail, I finally find two winners that would have cost the price of one pair that was on sale at the outlets. My jean wardrobe just doubled in size, officially. The Musician leaves with a pair of leather boots for herself, and the birthday girl contemplates a pair of knee-high olive suede boots, which she eventually decides against buying (for today). Shopping trip executed successfully, we sit down for salads and tea at Urth Cafe and get to talking about our lives.
The Musician has been living the artist’s life, leaving her job at Interscope about six months ago to nurture her craft. She’s feeling bits of inspiration around her music come and go, now focusing on her branding. She stopped working full-time six months ago to follow her heart and chase her art. It’s clear that it’s still the thing she loves, but there’s some disillusionment she’s experiencing. She is living the creative dream by all counts, not working and focusing on her music, but feeling like a waste of space. Everything she shares gives me pause as I consider what it might be like for me to do the same and spend six months going all-in on writing a book or all-in on jiujitsu. The grass is always greener.
Meanwhile, the Birthday Girl is killing it at a startup as the head of Brand. It’s good, she says, but it isn’t perfect, because she isn’t particularly jazzed by the product she’s so diligently marketing. It’s the role she wants with the responsibilities she wants but she can’t get as excited about a hangover remedy beverage as she can about fashion or beauty. It’s obvious to both me and the Musician that she’s gifted in this line of work, and she’ll be just fine. In Palm Springs, we had talked about her desire to ask for more equity, and I selfishly hope the company gets bought out and the payout enables her to live happily ever after. A few months ago on a girls’ getaway weekend in Colorado, we talked about starting a retail beauty business together, and it’s something I hope we get to work on if (or when?) this startup skyrockets and I’m living in the same city as she is, or at least the same time zone.
Then there’s me. I’m crestfallen or angry whenever people get to talking about my job, so I try not to being it up. It only sours me or saddens me. Instead, I try to focus my conversation points on the things that are going well in my life: my relationship going really well and jiujitsu is going as well as it can for a sport that demands that you never quit and in which progress is made through tireless persistence and revealed slowly and over a long horizon. (In the grand scheme of things, practicing for over a year and a half is nothing in the 10-plus year effort to become a black belt.)
As the girl talk wraps up, the Birthday Girl and the Musician are convinced that I will be in LA within six months and that this goodbye is truly not a goodbye but a “see you later.”
I stand up to go to the bathroom and call for a ride to the much-anticipated night at the highly-recommended jiujitsu gym. Suddenly, I feel lonely. I almost wish my vacation were already over and that I were headed back to Boston tomorrow. The prospect of visiting San Francisco for a few more days makes me feel tired, not energized. Even though I’ve stacked the upcoming days with friends whom I love and miss and am excited to see, I want to be at home, cooking in my own kitchen, waking up in my own bed, and going to train among the people I know and love.
After feeling so convinced that this is the place I want to be just a few days ago, sitting in the car, I encounter my first moment of doubt. I don’t know if I belong here in Los Angeles. Perhaps it’s like what I wrote in business school — I could fit in here because nobody really fits in here. Or perhaps it’s that there is enough space for everyone to be themselves — all you need to do is enjoy warm weather and put up with lots of traffic.
It would be a huge deal, starting over with nothing and no one other than a job, a few close friends, and my boyfriend, who says he would come with me if I took the plunge and headed west. The thought of it all is tremendous and terrifying but the shock to the system would probably be good for me. I remind myself that Boston will always be Boston and I can always go back there if this Californian fantasy is really just a wildfire waiting to happen.
I get dropped off at an office building where I’m told is where this illustrious, well-reputed jiujitsu gym is. Navigating the labyrinth of white-walled hallways, I finally find door #105 and turn the handle to open it. This is the moment of the trip I’ve been waiting for, the answer to the question of whether I could move out to Los Angeles for a while: could I find a sense of home and family at another gym aside from Broadway?
