Thompson wrote, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” So, hello, sunny Southern California! Show me what you got.Sublime Merge vs SourceTree (Git client comparison) Table at the oldest restaurant in Manhattan beach or maybe some Brazilian churrasco in El Segundo? Invited to a late-night rager in Beverly Hills? Cutie chats you up on the boulevard and then accepts your dinner invitation? Weirdsville? Sounds like my kind of place. This is always a working gig for us journos when people find out I’m covering the Open and say to me, “Have fun,” I reply that I’ll have fun when the article is done, and my readers like it.īut sometimes, you get to have a little fun by accident. So, no matter who takes home the trophy, Los Angeles has been the big winner this week, and so is everyone enjoying the party. Perhaps no one personified that better than PGA superfan Billy Nathan, the real-life Sign Boy, with his effervescent sign-off to a phone call: It’s pretty damn cool when the National Championship is best exemplified by the fans’ love of golf. CHAMPAGNE QUALITY AT BEER PRICESĮveryone else, however is in full Rager Mode The energy and fervor of the fans is more than palpable, it’s heartwarming. They’re agonizing over how their beloved course is looking like host of the Quad Cities Open instead of the National Open. Records are falling the walls of Jericho, fan favorites are caring up the leaderboard like Beatles hits raced up the charts, and ovations are ringing out everywhere but in LACC member locker rooms. Still, the golf course is sublime and the golf even better. The USGA did a good job of having plenty of crossings, but the terrain of Los Angeles Country Club is severe – wonderful for golf, exhausting to walk around as a spectator. That – along with $17 beers, $7 ice creams, and $37 steak sandwiches at concessions - are tough on spectators, but someone has to pay for all these inflated purses now that the Saudis have overpaid to buy pro golf. 20 minutes to go a few hundred yards as the crow flies.Īnd once you get inside, it’s more of the same: miles and miles and miles of walking for those who have not plunked their fannies down on a grandstand somewhere or $1,700 tickets for air-conditioned hospitality tents. When you’re on the bus, you can see the fences hiding the course like medieval castle walls, and then you drive around them…over and over. And once you park, then there’s the shuttles. Almost 20 years of majors and I’ve never seen that. Ha! Just try! Directions sent you all the way around Robin Hood’s hideout, just to get to London. Getting to the golf course wasn’t as easy as hoped the first day. I couldn’t resist getting behind the wheel and shouting, “Hey Smells! My dinghy’s bigger than your whole boat! Save me a parking space, I’m coming in!” Open, with almost as many PGAs, and only two places beat it: 1) the ultra-industrial home with 14-foot ceilings in San Francisco and 2) the biggest boat in the Seattle marina, dwarfing everything around it. Five-star restaurants with – gasp! Are those reasonable prices?!! Did I just eat a five-star tasting menu from a Nobu spin off for just $50?!! Score!!! Runs along the ocean inn the morning! Writing outside watching the sunset! And getting chatted up by all the would-be actresses and ath-lebrities walking by on the street. Two blocks from the beach! Four blocks from downtown Manhattan Beach, a sizzling hotspot day or night. Pulling in to our condo in Manhattan Beach was a STOP THE PRESSES! Moment.įinally, here’s the payoff. I’m in traffic for the next hour.”īy contrast, this week I’m averaging a much speedier 17 mph driving back and forth between the course and my digs in Manhattan Beach.Īh, yes, my digs. I used to love calling attorneys in LA during working hours: “We try harder?” I think not…Īnd then, of course, there’s LA traffic, worst in America. When he got in the car and opened the glove box, he found a set of scales, plastic baggies, and a fistful of smoked roaches. I guess it’s better than the last time my ski buddy tried renting a car in Boston. I went from car to car in a fruitless search, every car had a warning: “Key missing” or “front end damage, do not rent” or “no gas,” so it took another 90 minutes for some to return a car, have it cleaned, and then processed for me to rent. “Go through that door and choose any car in section 303,” he said, but though there were six cars there, they all had chalk marks all over them., denoting why they weren’t in use. Meanwhile the bus we wanted saw the and ditched us, pulling past and motoring on to the next terminal. “GET OUTTA DA WAY YOU’RE BLOCKIN’ THE BUS!”įor a hot minute, it sounded an awful lot like New York.
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