Today we went down to see the real Hollywood & Vine, an intersection of mythic entertainment significance. We also happened to go by train—a real train in daily use, not a park ride or special effect.

Dana’s house is right next door to a light rail service, and the nearest stop is a short walk away. In fact, during this entire day and for all our travels, we did not set foot within a car, something which is antithetical to modern California, or indeed the entire modern American West.

We took this train down to Union Station, where we changed to another train that took us down to Hollywood and Vine. Below, Union Station, in its high-ceilinged elegance:


As we traveled downtown, the train went underground, and we emerged from the Hollywood station right onto the sidewalk itself. A few steps across the street and we were walking on the famous Walk of Fame. I was in the zone and Lizbeth gave it two thumbs up:



We walked far, far away then (about a block), to the final frontier to the outside of Mann’s Chinese Theater, where, while standing right on a large cement memorial to Star Trek, we got our picture taken with Star Wars impostors. Sacrilege? Perhaps.

Clearly Yoda had been through the transporter one too many times, but at least Chewie’s smell seemed authentic. (It must be murder inside those costumes on a summer day.)

Leaving our cast members to swelter, we ducked into a wax museum, where my web search turned up a few hits:


…as well as some other figures that I can no longer remember for some reason:



My daughters saw the fabled Build-A-Bear shop on Hollywood, and were desperate to build a souvenir bear therein. Did you know about the fabled Build-A-Bear shop? I had some dim memory of their tales of it, but had forgotten it because I never seriously expected to make a special pilgrimage to Hollywood to build a hallowed Bear. But despite all probability, here we were, and there before us was the shop. It was fate. The others returned home and I stayed with my daughters to build a couple of bears. (I was indeed briefly tempted to build one of my own. When will I be back, after all?)

That evening, Dana’s friends Rozanna and Slava came to dinner, which we ate in her cool and shady backyard. Both were fascinating, international characters: Slava hails originally from the Ukraine, and Rozanna spent seven years in Japan as a documentary filmmaker, as well as time in the Ukraine, where she met Slava. Rozanna enjoyed Japan and was fluent in Japanese, but left because she eventually tired of the racism. This detail jumped out at me for two reasons: first, because she reminded me of the character John Connor in Crichton’s Rising Sun, and second, because my oldest daughter is, at present, bound and determined to work as an animator in Japan someday. I have tried to suggest to her that this might not work out as well as she hopes, because of this apparently heightened level of xenophobia, but she looks at me as if that’s just what she’d expect a gaijin to say.

Next: the astounding Getty Center!