Woke up refreshed and renewed and ready to see what Hollywood had to offer. And what it had to offer was a sick and fluey ticket seller and a tour organiser who couldn’t count. We bought our citypass tickets to go on the 10.15 Starline tour of moviestar homes, and arrived at the designated time of 10.10 but were passed over twice for bigger groups. Freezing our butts off in the cold shadows of Grauman’s chinese theatre, we took turns to go and have a look at the hand prints while waiting for our tour. Finally Pauline chucked a minor tantrum and we were on our tour at 10.45! 🙂
Our group of 13 took to the bus and first stop was a japanese restaurant called Yamashiro which gave us an excellent view of the Hollywood sign. We then drove past where Janis Joplin died, James Dean, Courtney Cox, Leo Di Caprio, Keanu Reeves, Halle Berry, Nicholas Cage and Aaron Spellings homes (garage doors). The tour went through Beverly Hills and Bel Air and past the store that Winona Ryder was busted for shop lifting. The tour guide though there was someone famous in Barneys when we drove past due to all the people staring outside, but we didn’t get to stop. Went along Sunset Strip and saw a nice billboard of Freddie Ljundberg in his underpants for Calvin Klein. The tour dropped us back where we started about an hour and a half later. Traffic was good – probably because it was a sunday.
We then headed to the Hollywood Entertainment Museum where we checked out the set from the Cheers bar and Mulder’s office from the X-Files. Pauline’s favourite bit though had to be the set from Star Trek. She got to sit in the captains chair and also pretend to be Scotty and control the teleporter. There’s klingons on the starboard bow!!! We were also shown how they dub in the sound effects of the movie using bits and pieces from everywhere. The irony of it was that we were shown the sound effects by a guy who was hearing impaired. I of course knew all of that already due to my extensive experience of sound stages from my 5 minutes of fame on the Movieworld sound stage. 😉
We then began the long trek down Hollywood Blvde taking in all the souvenir shops, homeless people and Fredricks of Hollywood. Saw Madonna’s underwear from the who’s that girl era, Marilyn and Tony Curtis’ bras and Phyliss Dillers which had “this way up” embrodered on the front. You can dance, for inspiration. Come on! All these undies were housed in glass at the back of the store. Had to wade past all the black and red lacy bras to get there.
Trekked a bit further, took a picture of the Capitol Records building that they say is in the shape of a stack of records then turned down Vine St. Yes, we stood at the corner of hollywood and vine. Walked down vine till we hit sunset blvde and had lunch at a dodgy fast food joint called “Jack in the box”. I had two tacos for 99 cents and an egg nog shake that was more like ice cream than a drink. We then crossed the road and headed to the best record store I have ever been to in my life, Ameoba Records. I went wild and managed to get 2 of the dvds I’ve been searching for for ages and 3 cds you can’t get in Australia. Pauline went wild at all the tv show dvd sets but didn’t buy any. It was more than a record store, it was an experience!! Didn’t take any pictures of the inside though, that would be too uncool. 🙂 It was filled with punks, alternatives, tourists and probably movers and groovers of the industry. That was probably the best thing we saw on that stretch of Sunset, and we were completely buggered from walking 2 miles so we headed back to the room.
Passed out for a while and had a bath, became refreshed enough to go out and have dinner at the hamburger hamlet. Excellent coffee milkshake, and I really enjoyed my Marilyn burger. We were planning on going to the movies tonight at Graumans but nothing I really wanted to see was on there, they were mostly back at the cinerama dome on Sunset. So now I’m here blogging and listening to my new Bullit cd swinging to the jazz of Lalo Schifrin. Tomorrow we head to Universal Studios and we might even go by train. Train in LA?? unheard of.