Instead of steeping yourself deep into your ordinary, air-conditioned dwellings, why not step into a new dimension of Los Angeles reality—pointing your feet into tourist territory?
Poking your head down Ocean Boulevard or Second Street will give you a hint: Tourists are already here and will take over.
“It’s a party. Let’s join them!” shouts your traveling heart.
Strap on your walking shoes, smooth a creamy one of those SPF 30 potions and equip your abdomen (fanny pack, anyone?) with a comfy kind of collection of cameras, notebooks and maps.
Transforming yourself into a tourist to your own city may be just the right kind of adventure amid the bitterness of a headline-popular, ruffled economy, anyway.
High ticket prices in consequence to higher fuel prices? Charging an additional $25 or $50 for an extra checked bag? Having to pass through suspicious eyes at the metal detectors, and barefooted? Coping with daylong delays? And then encountering a rotten news that there will be no more complimentary meals on board?
Skip it!
Apparently, airlines are facing financial hardships like many others, but they still expect us to sign up for a reward-racking credit card issued on their credit? No logic there. What’s a more sound logic: avoid the airports and stay local.
Ouf.
IT'S NOT UP THERE. There's more summer magic when you stay grounded at home. Photo by Barbara Navarro.
How to be a tourist in your own city…
1. Get Lost
Without losing sense of where you are, you may never truly achieve the complete tourist experience. Get in your car and make turns onto streets you’ve never used before. Explore a new path. Keep going until you find some place completely unfamiliar, but appealing, like an indie theatre or breathtaking coastline, and take pictures of the new things you observe.
When stopping for a rest, be sure to ask somebody for details of where you are. (You can start a conversation with a mysterious stranger at a coffee shop to serve this purpose, even.) For fun, change your name, for example, from Jack to Giacomo.
2. Timing is Everything
Slip into a new time zone (think seeing the sights of Long Beach’s famous art deco buildings), or halt time altogether (think spending a day in a coffeehouse reading your favorite books).
Whatever you do, don’t let too much time go to waste, but instead opt to take public transportation that’ll allow for a tourist favorite downtime activity: people-watching.
3. Go Out and Play
By 7 p.m., you’ve watched the sunset from a spot on Mulholland Drive. By 8 p.m., you’ve had dinner at one of Lindsay Lohan’s ex-boyfriend’s restaurants (Pink Taco) in Century City. By 9 p.m., you’ve caught Will Farrell exiting from his Hollywood premiere somewhere in Westwood. What else can you do? Become your own star. Dress to the nines and join tanned Euro swanksters in line at ‘it’ clubs dotting Hyperion Boulevard in Silverlake.
It’s summer. It’s hot. It’s time to sleep, eat, dream and disappear. Become your own person, or become someone new. You’re in Los Angeles, so there is a lot of legroom to leap out into “the unknown.”
Poking your head down Ocean Boulevard or Second Street will give you a hint: Tourists are already here and will take over.
“It’s a party. Let’s join them!” shouts your traveling heart.
Strap on your walking shoes, smooth a creamy one of those SPF 30 potions and equip your abdomen (fanny pack, anyone?) with a comfy kind of collection of cameras, notebooks and maps.
Transforming yourself into a tourist to your own city may be just the right kind of adventure amid the bitterness of a headline-popular, ruffled economy, anyway.
High ticket prices in consequence to higher fuel prices? Charging an additional $25 or $50 for an extra checked bag? Having to pass through suspicious eyes at the metal detectors, and barefooted? Coping with daylong delays? And then encountering a rotten news that there will be no more complimentary meals on board?
Skip it!
Apparently, airlines are facing financial hardships like many others, but they still expect us to sign up for a reward-racking credit card issued on their credit? No logic there. What’s a more sound logic: avoid the airports and stay local.
Ouf.
IT'S NOT UP THERE. There's more summer magic when you stay grounded at home. Photo by Barbara Navarro.
How to be a tourist in your own city…
1. Get Lost
Without losing sense of where you are, you may never truly achieve the complete tourist experience. Get in your car and make turns onto streets you’ve never used before. Explore a new path. Keep going until you find some place completely unfamiliar, but appealing, like an indie theatre or breathtaking coastline, and take pictures of the new things you observe.
When stopping for a rest, be sure to ask somebody for details of where you are. (You can start a conversation with a mysterious stranger at a coffee shop to serve this purpose, even.) For fun, change your name, for example, from Jack to Giacomo.
2. Timing is Everything
Slip into a new time zone (think seeing the sights of Long Beach’s famous art deco buildings), or halt time altogether (think spending a day in a coffeehouse reading your favorite books).
Whatever you do, don’t let too much time go to waste, but instead opt to take public transportation that’ll allow for a tourist favorite downtime activity: people-watching.
3. Go Out and Play
By 7 p.m., you’ve watched the sunset from a spot on Mulholland Drive. By 8 p.m., you’ve had dinner at one of Lindsay Lohan’s ex-boyfriend’s restaurants (Pink Taco) in Century City. By 9 p.m., you’ve caught Will Farrell exiting from his Hollywood premiere somewhere in Westwood. What else can you do? Become your own star. Dress to the nines and join tanned Euro swanksters in line at ‘it’ clubs dotting Hyperion Boulevard in Silverlake.
It’s summer. It’s hot. It’s time to sleep, eat, dream and disappear. Become your own person, or become someone new. You’re in Los Angeles, so there is a lot of legroom to leap out into “the unknown.”
