I love Los Angeles: obstacle course: 7/2/25

I'm taking my A-List Stubs Card status to see the Olivia Wilde/Seth Rogen/Penelope Cruz/Edward Norton movie about heterosexual swingers. I'm going to the AMC Grove 14 because it's the one that's closest to my home.

I want to get into the left-turn lane on Fairfax but someone has cut me off. They have done this from behind me by leaving their lane and crossing into the oncoming one, driving head first into it, then zooming over the double yellow line to beat me into the left-turn lane. To avoid a collision I must swerve and let them finish their danger-making. Then I enter the left-turn lane. I am now behind them. When it's time to turn left, when they have a clear shot, with absolutely no oncoming cars impeding their way, they stay put. They finally turn as the yellow turns to red. I follow. I'm proud of my calm, but I'm more proud of how when I am the first person at a left-hand arrow light, I am exceptionally attentive. Not distracted. Ready. Better than this person in front of me who used to be behind me.

Once we've both entered the lanes to The Grove/Farmer's Market parking lots (there are two, both with their own separate entrance) and multi-level structure (there is one, with an entrance on either side), this same car stops dead in its tracks, but this time for good reason. There is a back up.

The back up is caused by:

• Two tourist buses disgorging dozens of people in football jerseys for a World Cup fan event that's taking place in The Grove's fountain area, located directly adjacent to the movie theater. The jerseys swarm about.
• A delivery truck, parked. Its driver is unloading boxes.
• A crush of people in the crosswalk that exists at the intersection of the lane I am in and one of the parking lots. The idea of rogue pedestrians may come as a surprise to anyone who has never visited this city and is under the mistaken belief that they don't exist, but they do. The decade-spanning popularity of that one Missing Persons song notwithstanding, everybody here walks somewhere, for some reason, like any other person in any other city. Today, all of them are walking right now, right here. There will be more of them in two hundred feet when a second crosswalk – separating the new Brandy Melville boutique from the rest of the Grove – becomes full of young women crossing leisurely, looking at their phones, talking to each other, oblivious, again, to the oncoming traffic.
• This one dude who has chosen to stop and make a U-turn by executing a multi-point backup and horizontal maneuver that puts him sideways into two lanes of cars that are not pointed in the direction he is. I have never seen anyone do this here before but it looks like he's about to drive his car directly into See's Candies. I can't actually blame this man because he's doing it to avoid...
• The big fire engine that's trying to execute another left turn onto a bit of road that leads to an unknown place but seems always to be occupied by restaurant delivery trucks. The big fire engine is having a tough time of it. There's an ambulance behind it, waiting. Dude trying to turn around is behind them. Then the Melvilles, who are happy. None of these young women will die today from being run over by a truck or fire engine or ambulance or bus or dude driving sideways, if for no other reason than they don't believe any of it is real or applies to them. There is a Laneige ahead, and nothing is in the way.
• Some workers picking up trash in the median. They leave the median and stand directly in front of my moving car. I stop. They keep standing. One of them picks up more trash.

I used to lay on my horn a lot. I do that very rarely now and only in circumstances where I am certain the person I'm honking at doesn't have a gun or is not in their own car to give chase, which has happened at least twice. I could have honked at these workers without reprisal but they were on the clock.

More World Cup enthusiasts in various jerseys spill out of the parking garage, going who knows where, but today is a day for just doing anything one chooses and not caring about the possible consequences. I laugh out loud to nobody, because now it's just not enough. There should be two guys carrying an enormous pane of glass. There should be a fruit cart. A giant wedding cake. A group of nuns. Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal riding a bicycle delivery cart. An old lady with a gun just firing bullets into the air. Matching suitcases of jewels and secret documents. Eunice Burns. "The" Eunice Burns.

Movie was good, by the way. I got a taco after. Photo credit: me, at Los Tacos, between the 7-11 and the laundromat.