With one home from college and another on the verge, my family planned an impromptu holiday vacation. Los Angeles was their idea; New Year’s Day was hers. I typed “Los Angeles” into My Guides and started dropping pins.
“January will be gorgeous,” a Tulsa friend living in Los Feliz said. It was our Christmas gift to ourselves. First stop: LAX.
“You can have any of the cars in the last row,” the Alamo attendant said. In a row of uninspiring silver and gray SUVs sat a black Ford Bronco Sport. I climbed behind the wheel and stayed there all week.
There is a method to the madness of Los Angeles traffic, a frenetic give-and-take that you must regard no more personally than a sperm cell heading north along a fallopian tube. Like driving in Dallas, with two-and-a-half times the population and none of the climate control.
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Our week in paradise began with a pair of shears and a blowtorch.
We only had time to land, locate and take Bundy Drive to Sunset Boulevard, the most ridiculous route to Koreatown imaginable, short of walking. That said, your first taste of LA is a doozy. We passed the iconic palms of the Beverly Hills Hotel but, when I labeled it the Hotel California, the backseat passengers went rubbernecking. The Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel is named for Will Rogers, somewhat, after the polo matches he organized in an adjacent field some century ago ended at the hotel bar.