But First, Las Vegas
Neither of us were very keen to check out Las Vegas. Neither of us gamble, neither of us get enthralled by crowds or ritzy stuff. And people tend to fall into one of two camps: those who respond to other people yelling “Woo hoo!” by getting excited, and those who hear that sound and retract their heads into their necks and hide. Guess which camp we’re in? Guess which sound Las Vegas is built on? WOO HOO!!
There is one low-key fun thing there, if you happen to go despite your better instincts: the Pinball Hall of Fame, which is a big hall full of pinball machines going back all the way to the 1930s (and a few classic arcade games from the early ‘80s). It’s free to enter, and most games cost a quarter to play. All the workers are volunteers, and each machine has a handwritten card with information about where it was from, who designed it, how they found it, which parts they’ve replaced, etc. It was a nice hour, and enough shininess and flashing lights for the two of us. We blew $5. It was fun.
That is the story of Las Vegas.
Death Valley
We’ve both fallen in love with deserts on this trip, and so we topped off the tour with several days in the hottest place on Earth (not while we were there! It was pretty pleasant).
Nobody can film in a national park anymore, because films have too-large footprints not to damage the place. But once upon a time, having returned from Tunisia with some scenes incomplete, George Lucas filmed parts of the first Star Wars there. I was seven when Star Wars happened the first time, and so I was interested to check out the canyon where the Jawas caught R2D2 and the Sandpeople beat up Luke, the dunes where their droids pod landed, and the vista before which Ben Kenobi said, “Mos Eisley Spaceport. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.” But I was not prepared for how good it felt to walk those paths. A part of childhood resurrected itself in my grumpy ass and I walked around with a big dumb smile the whole time saying, “Cool. Cool. Cool. This is so cool.”
Joshua Tree
Marjan’s sister Mitra and her husband Arne joined us in Joshua Tree and Palm Springs, which was really nice. The Farahbakshes are a travelly clan, and we’ve travelled with Mitra and Arne all over the place: Rwanda and Uganda, Denmark, Italy, Croatia, DC. It’s a good match.
Joshua Tree is a desert again, but just as mountains are all different, so are deserts. I’ll let the pictures demonstrate this. It’s very beautiful, in a magical kind of way.
Of course, the phrase “Joshua Tree” to me means a certain massive U2 record from my last year of high school. The band was in their “we love America” phase then, and I imagined there was some significance to either the tree or the national park. It became clear to me on this trip that they chose it because it’s not too far from Los Angeles. “We need to do the cover somewhere cool, but we have to be back for the big party,” I imagine them saying. In any case, we did a pretty impromptu homage to the cover while we were there, which was fun.
Palm Springs
Palm Springs is posh and pretty. We spent a couple nights at the coolest little midcentury hotel – the Orbit In – with nine rooms around a pool, all lovingly preserved from the 50s. Frank Sinatra would’ve hung out there with Dean Martin, drinking highballs with some Playboy bunnies. The whole town is an ode to that time. Marjan and Mitra went and did an architecture tour (Marjan is mad for midcentury modern); Arne went golfing; I sat by the pool. It was luxurious. Mitra and Arne took us out to celebrate Marjan’s 50th in style at Melvyn’s, which actually was a Sinatra hangout. The population of Palm Springs skews old, the sun goes down early, and I was jealous to see that big dance parties at clubs began at about 6 pm. I wish that were true in Toronto, too – I might go out more often if I could be in bed by 11.
We drove the spectacular Palms to Pines Scenic Byway to Idyllwild one day; another day we took a hanging tram up a mountainside, hiked around the top, had lunch, and came back down. I was happy to see my name all over the place, too. Finally!
Marjan, Mitra, and Arne visited the Coachella Valley Preserve, a beautiful oasis of palm trees and wildlife in the Sonoran Desert on the San Andreas fault.
Ooh Los Angeles
The last stop on our crazy three-month tour of the West was pretty much the opposite of the rest: enormous and bustling Los Angeles. Parts of the place are gutted and very sad now – COVID and the housing crisis are harshing LA’s mellow really badly (an estimated 64,000 people are experiencing homelessness in LA County; a recent survey found almost 4 in 10 respondents said they either have experienced homelessness or housing insecurity in the past year or know someone who has). Sidewalks are tent cities in many areas. Shops are mostly shuttered along the Sunset Strip, as well as just outside the theatre where the Oscars happen. The “walk of fame” streets are littered with trash and smell of urine.
We did spend a really nice afternoon at the Griffith Observatory, which was a big part of Rebel Without a Cause (the first film Marjan and I ever watched together) – it’s a great temple to science with fantastic views of the city.
We stayed in Silver Lake for much of the week, which is a lovely neighbourhood of hills and winding streets. Vic Chesnutt recorded an album there, and Elliott Smith seems to have lived there – we got a blurry couple of photos with the Figure 8 mural, which we stumbled across one evening, and found another memorial mural to him a few blocks away.
And we ended with a couple days on the ocean in Santa Monica, with piers of roller coasters and boardwalks filled with everything you’ve seen in the movies: Muscle Beach, skateboard parks, buskers and hustlers. Just a couple blocks up from the water – along the “tsunami evacuation routes” that just point away from the ocean, lol – we walked around a neighbourhood of canals that explain the name of Venice Beach. It felt like a very expensive version of the Toronto’s Ward Island neighbourhoods. M. looked up real estate later: you can purchase yourself a lovely little home on one of the canals for somewhere between four and twelve million dollars [eye pop icon].
And then we were done the first leg of our adventure! I write this from Costa Rica, sitting on the porch, looking right into the jungle. For now, we are pretty still, which suits me fine. We’ll tell you all about it next episode (which should arrive soon, as this missive is sooo late). If this finds you bitter and cold and you don’t wanna know – apologies. Feel free to cuss us out in the comments. ;)
We hope you’re all safe and doing alright. Teacher friends, good luck with the new semester. I am writing a lot about teaching right now over at A Different Fish, and you are of course invited.
All the love,
jep and marjan
Such gorgeous photos! Such interesting stories ! Thanks for sharing it with us .
The pictures are stunning. The desert colours under blue skies are just stunning! Thank you.