Today’s Desto…Hollywood, California! (And, outlying communities.) Sorry, subscribers, this one is long, but, hey! It’s our home town edition!

A couple summers ago I had the good fortune to host five young rock stars from France at my house in the suburbs of Los Angeles. The day they were leaving to go back to France, I asked the members of BandapArt if there was anything last minute they wanted to see in LA before they left. Unanimously they voted to see the HOLLYWOOD sign and Rodeo Drive. So, off we went and of course, mostly what they got to see was the Hollywood/Ventura freeways and a long schlep up Wilshire Blvd. But, yeah, they saw “the sign” from the viewing deck off the back of the Dolby Theatre, (BFD), and then we rolled down Rodeo, too, but nary a movie star was out for our viewing pleasure, (which was the whole point of the excursion, I’m sure).

As a mecca for celebrities, Hollywood and B-Hills were a little disappointing that day.

As a tour guide, I was a little embarrassed about how seedy Hollywood was/is and really embarrassed when Minnie Mouse followed us up Hollywood Boulevard demanding a bigger tip. (Really, when did the Disney characters become aggressive extortionists? C’mon, Minnie, I gave your pal, Mickey a five. Go get your cut from him.) But, Minnie wasn’t having it. She chased us for blocks. Let me tell you, Minnie Mouse can be an intimidating b-word when she wants to be. Things almost got physical and truthfully the whole sordid affair with the dirty little rodent soured me on Hollywood. I swore I’d never go back, but, here’s the thing…two years later I wanted badly to see The Book of Mormon at the Pantages Theatre, so, this week, Desto3 went to… Hollywood, California!

When you live here, it’s easy to lose track of what an iconic city Los Angeles is. But, I tried my best to “do” LA like a tourist would do it. For instance, I took the Metro from North Hollywood in “the valley” (how locals refer to the San Fernando Valley – just one of many, many southern California valleys, but the SFV is “THE” valley, like, ya’ know?) And, oh, btw, the Metro is amazing! Who knew that? And, it was packed! On a Saturday afternoon. Free parking at the NOHO depot, although if you are not a regular with a paid parking sticker you pay for your irregularity with a very long walk. All the close in spots are “reserved” for the swell people who commute into the city and wisely fork out the $$$$ for a monthly parking pass. We parked close to the California/Arizona border.

If it were not for the enthusiastic courtesy, not to mention the impressive tech savvy, of a youngish (let’s be honest- homeless) woman standing by the ticket vending wall, the Desto3 team would still be trying to figure out how to purchase our fare. The instructions were in English, but somehow our comprehension of English that day was deficient. She gave us enough time to properly embarrass ourselves looking stupid, and then she stepped right in and took over. Bip. Bam. Boom. In thirty seconds under her kind tutelage we got our “tap cards” ($1 and they last forever) and loaded our round trip fares, (just three stops into Hollywood and an unbelievable $.25 each way for senior citizens), and she was bidding us adieu. (I gave her $3 for her kindness. Pablo noted that my gratitude nullified his senior citizen discount, but what are you gonna do?) The encounter left me sadly wondering how come such an obviously clever girl with stupendous PR skills is voluntarily manning the Metro vending machine instead of running a corporation on Wilshire Boulevard. It seemed reasonable to me that with her smarts she could be the mayor of the city if she only but wanted to. This is one thing that you will wonder too, when you visit LA. We have a LOT of homeless people here. It’s our weather – which is better than anyplace else, if you don’t count earthquakes as weather. But LA homeless people have a cachet that the down and out just don’t have in other major metropolitan areas. And, every interaction, (like ours was at the Metro station) is really rather pleasant, kind of fun, like you have been included in an impromptu and enjoyable, if not entertaining, bit of performance art. Street theatre. It’s kind of like our legions of homeless people all secretly work for central casting and maybe they get paid for adding a little local color to our street scene. I know this sounds ridiculous, but, it’s also kind of true. You’ll see. When you come.

Anyway, that twenty five cent train fare takes you right into Hollywood and the Hollywood station is right across, and I mean RIGHT ACROSS, the street from the Pantages Theatre, (next to the W Hotel). The Metro line continues all the way downtown to Union Station where you can transfer down to the OC or even, if you are so inclined, take the Flyaway to LAX. I never thought I’d say these words, but, it’s actually possible to “do” LA without a car. Briefly. You could, for instance, if you don’t drive, and you want to see The Book Of Mormon, (which I totally recommend), fly in, take the Flyaway to Union Station and then take the Metro to the W and the Pantages. Be sure to get there early enough to stroll, (as we did), down The Walk of Stars, so that you too can visit the real sidewalk handprints of the famous and the forgotten. (I wonder if Doris Day ever thinks about all the old geezers down there in Hollywood hovering over her star and fondly remembering the misspent hours of their youth in unmentionable solitary activities with their ribald fantasies of her?) The inlaid stars of Hollywood Boulevard are a veritable bone yard of such memories and the “girls” who conjured them. (Most of whom have matriculated, so to speak, to the major movie studio in the sky. Is Doris still with us?) It’s a little creepy to put your hands into Marilyn’s handprints, but…you have to do it.

There are plenty of great little eateries right there within walking distance of the Pantages (and the W has a great lobby bar for before/after theatre snackies and drinks). This car-less field trip is just a thought, for those of you who love musicals, don’t live in New York City, and just can’t wait for The BoM to get to your town. The point is, everybody says you MUST get a car in LA, and that’s just not absolutely true anymore, thanks to the Metro.

There are other dubious mythologies about El Ay. One is the smog. Okay, we have our share. On a really bad day…the LA smog sucks big time. But, seriously? Our smog is no worse than any other city in America that has both freeways and vehicles of the combustion engine variety. Hello? Every city in America. On a good day, (or evening) we can see, maybe not forever, but, as was true this week…at least clearly to La Luna. Up in the Malibu State Park, the Desto3 team had no trouble shooting the total lunar eclipse. Take that you smoggy, foggy, overcast cities of the heartland.

The other old saw that simply isn’t true about LA (and its provinces) is, that it is a cultural wasteland. Not no mo, certainly not in NOHO, my friend. (North Hollywood), once upon a time, was horrible, HORRIBLE. Now, it’s a really, really cool little ‘hood. Think Brooklyn now that Brooklyn is the new Portland. And, speaking of Portland, think of NOHO as just as hip and cool as the Hawthorne District, but with the class and great little food and theatre scene of The Pearl and downtown PDX. Without all the rain. And, now that the Metro offers reliable mass transit, and a bunch of condo developers have changed the architectural landscape forever, it’s a happening little town from whence young urban professionals can commute into downtown. The LA hipsters used to say that it’s all about Silver Lake, or Echo Park, but check out NOHO which, for my money, feels lively without all the effort of those other (undeniably hip) neighborhoods. It’s organically hip. You know, like Portland.

Lynne Helen, Desto3’s world renowned restaurant critic, recommended The Bow and Truss on Magnolia in NOHO for dinner, and since we hit up The BoM matinee we happily got back to NOHO and over to the B&T in time for “happy hour” (until 7 pm on Saturdays). The wines by the glass were carefully chosen, only one of each varietal, but if you go by me, they were well chosen, and at half price during happy hour…well, it made me happy. Pablo ordered a custom margarita and Brendan, the bartender, did not disappoint him. I have noticed that some bartenders are careless with margaritas. It’s just lime juice and tequila, right? A little rock salt on the rim and you’re good to go. But, that young man over there behind the bar at the Bow & Truss…he is clearly one of the mighty few who sees his job as a mixologist differently. Watching Brendan work the bar was like watching Walter in the first few episodes of Breaking Bad. (Before Walt turned into a dirt-bag meth kingpin, you know, when he was still just a homespun high school chemistry teacher.) Brendan cares about quality. He wants his customers to be happy. You know? And, while we’re on the subject of happy, our table service was provided by Collette. Another real pro. In a town that is widely known for a food service work force all “moonlighting” as servers while they wait for that call from Steven Speilberg’s people, it was just nice to enjoy a restaurant experience with real professionals whose primary occupation was – hard to believe – hospitality.

I’d go back to the B&T just for that pleasure, but the food was really good, too. The mushroom tacos and the steak tacos were killer. Sadly, I did not leave room for dessert and they looked unusually tempting. (The reason I need to return to North Hollywood, I guess.)

Another reason would be the well reviewed performing arts center, right down the street. The NOHO PAC is 5000 square feet of awesomeness. Designed to be multi-purpose with its 1000 square foot lobby, a 1000 square foot dance studio, and a 2000 square foot performance space, the facility was “constructed with the artist in mind”. We saw a beautiful woman walking down Magnolia toward the PAC carrying flowers, no doubt intended for the evening’s performing diva. Indeed, the lovely Grace, with her bouquet, was a sight worthy of 42nd Street and Broadway. It made me wish we had opening night tickets.

But, LA in its sprawling vigor, is home to hundreds, maybe thousands, of tiny little performance venues. Live music? Great acoustics? That new young band that everyone’s not talking about…yet? Hit up The Goodhurt on Venice Blvd. in Venice, or, a smaller, more intimate place with real story teller and singer song-writer history, The Whitzend on Lincoln Blvd. On Tuesday night I saw “Beneath My Father’s Sky”, a “one-woman show” by Zara Phillips (not the princess, the other Zara Phillips, out of Jersey, and she was superb). The opener was a young singer-song writer, Keaton Simons, and this will not be the last time you hear either of those names. I promise you. One of the finest things about LA is that the city and its outlying communities are dripping with stellar talent and any night of the week you might be fortunate enough to catch the up and comers. (Somebody saw Bruno Mars for a two drink minimum before his concert tickets cost $800, right?)

LA also boasts an endless variety of “foreign” food joints for your dining pleasure. From little hole in the wall places that get their spices shipped to them by relatives in the homeland, and the new Food Truck army, to YOU NAME IT hoity toity Peruvian Restaurants that charge for a dinner for four what it used to cost for a new car. It’s all available if you only look. Generally, LA is not known as one of the world’s greater “food capitals” but, if you steer clear of the tourist traps, you will be pleasantly surprised. Just know that LA closes up shop early compared to cities like Rome, or Madrid where the dinner hour doesn’t even begin until 10 p.m. Even New York has lots more to offer in terms of “late night” fare. Angelinos, after ten p.m., are ingesting all their calories from alcoholic beverages (as a rule).

Aside from show biz, the city’s most popular attraction is the beach, and Venice Beach is THE most popular. True: According to the tourist bureau, Venice Beach is the #2 tourist attraction in all of California, #1 being our venerable wine country. Considering that the Big Sur, Lake Tahoe and Yosemite National Park are all here, what does this say about the kind of tourists we attract? Shallow ones, that’s the kind. (Hey, Disneyland is in our backyard, right?) Or maybe, just maybe, Venice is popular for another reason. On Venice Beach Boardwalk you can (for around $50) obtain your “medical marijuana” license which enables you to legally purchase and carry very small “medically necessary” quantities of high grade hooch. Could there be a link? Let’s all just watch and see what happens to the Venice Beach Medical establishment now that our neighbors, Colorado and Washington State have legalized the devil weed completely requiring NO licensure whatsoever.

Whatever. If you aren’t in town for the acquisition of relatively legal marihoochie, perhaps you’ll be interested in this comprehensive list of museums:

As you can readily see, we’re not just about surf’s-up-dude and show biz glitz and glamour. We’ve got substance. And, Disney characters, who, (for a price) will pose for a selfie with you in front of the Hollywood sign.

Come visit. And, oh, have a nice day!

Greetings from Bettles, Alaska!

The news here is: there is dissension in the Desto3 ranks! Serious stuff. Without too much detail, my position is that the main purpose of a travel guide is to, you know, guide, (provide others with helpful travel tips, etc.), but Pablo thinks I want to take my mission too far with this issue. Okay.

Let’s talk about constipation. Constipation and Al Pacino. If you read that sentence fragment and said to yourself, “Wow, Doris, Desto3 must be in Alaska!” chances are very good, (I’d say between 98 and 100%) that you also have been north of the Arctic Circle for your share of days. In which case, I’m not talking to you because you already know that in the dead of winter, (late March it’s still minus 20 degrees) it is prohibitively costly to acquire any comestible product remotely resembling roughage. (I personally overheard two Bettles Lodge staff members discussing the consumption of an apple with the linguistic torque of two drug addicts talking about mainlining primo heroin. And, one night, at dinner, I casually mentioned that I’d consider homicide to obtain a piece of kale and NO ONE knew what kale was, let alone how to purchase it. Apparently, you don’t even want to know what happens to lettuce in five seconds at twenty below zero. It isn’t pretty.)

So, in the interests of advising you on absolute essentials to take along, should you venture up for the northern lights in mid March, DO NOT FORGET the laxatives. (And, I don’t mean a bag of prunes or that herbal tea hippie shit – you’ll pardon the expression and the expletive. If you’re smart, you’ll bring whatever medicinal equivalent to intestinal dynamite you can get your hands on.) Trust me. The discomfort of being break-your-nuts cold is one thing. Break-your-nuts cold and also impacted with four or five days of poo is quite another. I don’t recommend. (This advice comes from a traveler who usually has no problem with regularity…perhaps, when traveling, a trifle of the opposite disorder, just FYI – if that’s not altogether TMI for you. If it is, just leave a nasty comment, make Pablo’s day and get on with yours. Thank you.)

Are you now wondering about the Al Pacino reference? If you haven’t already seen it, go immediately to Netflix and order up “Insomnia”. This is a movie shot on location in a remote part of Alaska in which Mr. Pacino plays a big city detective assisting Hillary Swank in the manhunt of (Robin Williams) a really creepy dude. The scenery is to die for and, aptly titled, this movie is a very realistic depiction of how absolutely impossible it is to sleep in Alaska when the sun never sets. Note: in late March, the days and nights are almost equal with the days growing longer by approximately 7 minutes each day. So we didn’t have to contend with never ending daylight. We were up all hours of the night however to shoot the Aurora Borealis, so we got just a taste of the kind of sleep deprivation that the endless daylight of summer provides and that Mr. Pacino suffered. (See photos.)

Toward the goal of capturing the Aurora, there are two basic strategies. One is to just stay up all night and sleep during the day, and the other is to try to grab some intermittent sleep, by setting your alarm clock on the hour, to get up, dress in arctic gear, and run outside to see if the “lights” are active. (The weather service up there also phones the lobby of the lodge if “activity” is spotted, but you have to trust them and then trust that whoever answers the phone in the lobby will come and wake you up. (I don’t trust anyone that much.) I exercised strategy number one. Sleeping enough during the day to compensate is not an option because the lodge offers so many FUN activities to engage in. Snow shoeing, cross country skiing, dog sledding, (or “mushing” as the locals call it), snow mobile-ing, and a spectacular, (but pricey) “Sight See Flight” that takes you up even farther north over the Brooks Mountain range.

We did it all, which meant that by the end of day three, plus two nights to get to the lodge via Anchorage and Fairbanks, I was sleep deprived and constipated AND colder than I’ve ever been in my life. In short, miserable. And, yet, I LOVED this trip and you will too. I promise.

Other insights: Don’t fear the cold. The cold is actually your friend for viewing the lights. (There is some correlation between really cold, clear nights and visible lights.) You don’t have to buy all the cold weather gear to go up there because the industrial grade arctic wear provided by the lodge (from head to toe) has you covered, including the same boots that US military personnel are issued in Afghanistan. My problem was that I shelled out $150 bucks for Sorrell snow boots on sale at REI (rated to withstand temps of minus 32 degrees) and, damn it! I was going to wear those suckers come hell or high water, (or frost bite). Once I surrendered fashion and checked out the utilitarian boots and garments provided, I have to admit, I was warm as toast. (Almost.) (No charge for clothing and boots with the package.)

Regarding the photography, before you go up, read everything you can get your hands on about shooting in the arctic cold. It will help if you are prepared. Also, know in advance that just like any other natural “event”, sometimes you just don’t get lucky. Of the three nights our guys shot photos, only two were really good. The third night was cold and perfectly clear, but alas, no Aurora presented that night. The stars, on the other hand that Aurora-less night, were out of this world. (Sorry. Couldn’t resist. And, that was also true. Never saw a better night sky ever!)

You might be tempted to skip the dog sledding because it is not included in the package and it’s a little pricey. (It cost almost $500 for two people for two hours.) Don’t, though. Sell your old Van Gogh on EBay if you have to. It was a once in a lifetime highlight. And, when are you ever going to be inside the Arctic Circle again? YOLO, right? Fun fact: sled dogs poop WHILE they are running. And, they eat between 10,000 and 12,000 calories per day when running. And, they are NOT big dogs. (See photo.) Eleven of them pulled three of us for two hours with only a short rest. They are amazing to watch from up on the rails.

Alaskan human residents are just as interesting, even more than the sled dogs. In “Insomnia” one character tells Pacino, “There are two kinds of people in Alaska: those who were born here and those who come here to escape something.” We only met a handful of “native-born” Alaskans. One thing I can say is, they are all wildly proud of their state. The émigrés from southern climes who have found home up there do possess a certain demeanor, as if they are all in on a secret that outsiders will never know, or perhaps they are all members in a cult. Most of them came up “just to see it” and fell in love. This kind of love for a place that has two seasons – Mosquitos and Cold, (mosquitos as big as humming birds and freeze your nuts off cold) – is curious, but, the place is like no other and that might be the draw. A very common migratory pattern emerged. People lived someplace cold, then moved to a place that was colder, then moved to a place that was intolerably cold and then they moved to Alaska. During mosquito season when temps can reach the nineties and the sun never sets, the locals wear “bug jackets”, gloves, and netting to cover their heads. Does this sound like hell to you? People swarm up there for the fishing and hunting and climbing. (And, presumably scratching.)

Be sure to visit the park ranger station in Bettles, a surprisingly well appointed little affair complete with a video room and a NOVA documentary ready to go at your request with a truly fascinating history of the indigenous tribe that followed the caribou and primarily derived everything they needed to survive from that one source.

We flew back to Fairbanks for a second stay-over at Pike’s lodge. Except for some disorganization arising from being short staffed, I would heartily recommend Pike’s. (Warning: You will faint dead away at the front door if you’re a PETA person, but, hey, that’s Alaska. You will have to get over that quick. There are gigantic mounted moose heads and whole stuffed bears EVERYWHERE, even in the bathrooms in Alaska.)

In the early morning we hopped on the train that runs down to Anchorage, a twelve hour (almost) train ride that cuts through the heart of the Denali National Forest. Pray for a clear day and you will see the top of Denali itself, the largest peak in America, maybe all of North America. 12K to the top. It’s a long day so unless you love train car food, bring a picnic and lots of H2O and make friends with your fellow passengers. We had a great but long day.

What to say about Anchorage? Without a doubt it is a beautiful little gem of a small city. We were told that the museum is world class and it does look nice, but alas, closed every Monday. I was sad about that because I REALLY got curious about what kind of art was housed within. (Can someone please inform me?)

That’s all I can say about Alaska. If it isn’t on your bucket list, it should be. And, congratulations to Pablo who is now a member of the Fifty States Club.