shindotvwelcome to shindo's world

In the last podcast, my story mentions the Wild Oats in Santa Monica. On Wednesday, I was in Santa Monica for the afternoon, and I learned it was on Wilshire. 500 Wilshire Blvd, to be precise, not Santa Monica Blvd as I mentioned. I’m sure this may be obvious to anyone in Santa Monica, home of the Gold Lady, but I’m a San Diegan and don’t go to LA that often. I do make note of it in this week’s podcast.

This goes along with my recent trend of photoblogging, and here are some pictures:
Wild Oats is where my narrator sees the Gold Lady stroll by in her red dress and fabulous high heels. Here is evidence that it is on Wilshire if anyone not acquainted with this lovely town had any doubts.

Hear Music is the place where Benny gets to listen to Radiohead’s Kid A, and he starts to create a story about a Japanese rock star named Kid A. The brilliantly unstructured music fuels his imagination, and it’s all due to demo headphones. The headsets are still there, but they are hooked up to online listening stations throughout the store that show the artist/album/track information on monitors.

I looked for the bookstore Benny speaks of, but alas, it’s no longer there. Independent bookstores have long been an endangered species, now more than ever with the ubiquitous Barnes and Nobles and Borders (and Amazon.Com). Those two stores were definitely on the promenade. This is one where we’re all guilty. We all chose ease of purchasing over “doing the right thing.” At least for some things, independent bookstores are still good for some things, as I saw a couple of them in West Hollywood later in the aftenoon (one was all around good for buying GLBT books, and the other had a large gay porn section).

I love how the Promenade is closed off to street traffic on each block. It’s a nice, clean area with historic building and wonderful stores. Some are places I couldn’t find in San Diego, but then there are some, such as the Apple store, Aldo, The Gap, and Urban Outfitters. Strangely enough, I had to visit the Apple store and the Gap. The Apple Store was similar to the one in Fashion Valley, roughly the same layout, product placement, and “classroom” in the back. The Genius bar was somewhere else, the software was in the back, not middle, and the floor was laquered bare concrete. It was a convenient place for me to check my e-mail. The Gap sells the same product everywhere, but this one was two stories, with the menswear on the second floor. They seemed to have more of a selection, but it may be due to that they have more floorspace.

I didn’t get around to visiting the Pier. I was parked in a two hour space in the neighborhood near 5th and Wilshire, and my time was nearly up. I took this picture and walked on back to
my car.

I wish I had time because I wanted to see what performers were on the pier. The last time, there was a woman in a silver cat costume, but I doubt she still performs. Hopefully, she has moved on to bigger and better things.