Dispatch from L.A.

So it’s 9:30 when I get out of bed and it’s really sunny out, same as yesterday, and I decide that I’ll go to Urth Café over on Melrose. Everybody says there are always fabulous people there, so figure I’d test it out. I pick a carefully hip outfit, put the new !!! album on my iPod, hop in the shower. Out the house and it seems like every lawn on my block is getting watered. Walk to San Vicente, look up and admire the sky, which is like a scoop of blue ice cream and my whole body starts to smile.

But then I get pissed the hell off, like foaming at the mouth mad, because I can’t find this fucking bus stop a-n-y-w-h-e-r-e, even though my iPhone tells me it’s right here. I’m crossing the street, up and down, back and forth, trying to pin down the bus I need. Look down at my iPhone, back up at the street, down at my iPhone, back up at the street. 15 or 30 minutes of this goes by but I swear to God it feels like three hours. So then I’m like, Okay, that’s the last straw and I punch in the number to L.A. Transit. Some black dude answers (really friendly), and I tell him I’m so sorry, I’m confused/I just got here and I don’t know what’s going on. Calm down, I’m here to help, he promises. I trust him, I’m calm. He directs me to exactly where I need to be, finally, so I wait right there next to a cute guy.

I’m in the bus, and we fly up San Vicente, past the John Casablancas modeling agency, past Morton’s Steakhouse, past the Beverly Center. I’m getting off at the Pacific Design Center – which I am totally in love with – and walk a few blocks down. I almost make a pit stop at Balenciaga, but ultimately decide to pop in on the way back.  As soon as I get to Urth it’s already a scene and everybody’s in sunglasses, eating outside, talking on iPhones, sending text messages. Inside it’s not as packed, and the all-Latino staff takes everybody’s orders and I minorly start to feel weird about eating in a place where the whole serving staff is Latino. I put my stuff down, look up and – holy shit ! – it’s Kat Von D sitting right there with some equally tatted dude, who may or may not have been Jesse James. She’s sitting like right there, like totally in my line of sight, and I really wanted to take a picture of her with my phone. But even though I’m an expert of the secret iPhone photo snap, she was just too close. Later, some other dude, also black, comes up to her and goes, Can I take a picture with you? So she’s like, Thanks, man, but I’m just trying to eat some lunch, and that made me really want to respect her privacy.

After a couple hours of calculatedly reading Vogue Paris at Urth, I’m over it and decide to go back home for lunch. On the way to the bus stop, I pop inside this little boutique called Artisan de Luxe and have a lengthy conversation with the designer (big, hot, Italian, long hair, a million tattoos, half-straight) who’s all, I love your style, where are you from so I’m like, Thanks, New York City. We chat a lot and he tells me that nobody is fashionable in L.A., girls wear ballet shoes and big t shirts, that or moon boots, and dudes mostly just wear flip flops, which we know I do not like.

I tell the Italian dude that I need to get going and he wishes me well and I said I’ll see you again. I stop in Balenciaga, as promised. Nothing happened.

Okay, so now I’m really hungry and I want to be home yesterday so I can eat lunch. Only problem is, there is construction everywhere and I don’t see the bus stop I need to take me in the direction I need to go. So: a repeat of this morning’s performance. Back and forth, up and down, 15 or 30 minutes. Then I call the L.A. Transit again. This time I don’t get the really friendly black guy but somebody else whose ethnicity I can’t really spot. I tell her that I just need to find the bus stop, and she keeps telling me it’s right where I’m standing, and I re-tell her that No it’s not, and she’s like Yes it is, and while all this is happening a black stretch limo waits at the light, then drives past and they honk the horn at me and whoever’s in it rolls the window down and starts saying things to me I don’t really capture. Not even a full 26 seconds later this other black car full of girls goes by and they’re like You are so sexy, I love your style, Work! But I’m still on the phone with this L.A. Transit lady, who is starting to get bitchy with me, and I am the last person you ever want to get bitchy with, just FYI, so then I virtually shout: I’m sorry the L.A. transit system sucks I just need to get home to water my lawn and I am telling you there is no fucking bus stop here!!!