The B-Side: Notes from a 2006 L.A. Trip

An Ocean's Garbled Vomit by the Shore; Los Angeles I'm Yours

Nineteen years ago, I visited Los Angeles for the second time. My first was quite a story, and if I can find that journal entry I’ll post it here. In the meantime, enjoy this lightly-edited missive from a Young Liam about his trip to the City of Angels.

I was in LA for all of fifteen minutes when I had my first celebrity sighting.

Los Angeles is a driving city, and I am still a month away from taking my road test. Therefore, I can tell you from hard experience that a good time to reevaluate your life choices and your comedy career is on the train in from the airport.

Basically, I know the neighborhoods in LA to completely avoid based on whether or not I’ve heard them mentioned in a rap song: Long Beach, South Central, Crenshaw Boulevard. And the train in from the airport goes through all of them. You transfer from the Green Line to the Blue Line to the Red Line, and each stop keeps you feeling more and more borderline homeless.

So I was sitting on the train, and I was literally thinking, …