by Bryan

Hello friends. It’s been a while. Nice to see you again.

A few weeks ago, I was in Los Angeles shooting a few Target commercials. The week happened to coincide with my birthday, so Kari Ann came down to visit me on the tail end of the shoot and we stayed the weekend.

It was Kari Ann’s first trip to LA, so we wanted to see the city as well as visit our friend Brent Hill, who lives in Newport Beach.

I picked KA up at the Long Beach Airport, which is a fantastic trip back in time to the golden age of air travel. It’s a small and breezy airport, you feel as if you landed in the 1950s, before all the hassles of modern day air travel. I half expected to see Kari Ann climb down the stairs of the airplane, with oversized glasses, a scarf covering her hair, smoking a cigarette, but alas, no scarf or cigarette. Either way, she looked absolutely beautiful and at home in Southern California.

You see, Kari Ann is a warm-blooded woman, or rather a warmth-loving woman. Growing up in Florida and Texas conditioned her for a certain temperature and exposure to sun beams. Though New York is where our hearts are, and Portland is our current home — neither offers the temperatures that she prefers, so we try to work in several visits to warm places to thaw her out during the dark and damp Northwest winters.

We spent the first day in West Hollywood, where I was staying for work. I had an afternoon and night shoot, so we had the morning to drive up from Long Beach through Santa Monica, Brentwood, Westwood, Beverly Hills and West Hollywood. We stopped briefly in Brentwood to visit the Monocle store and for some breakfast, but otherwise it was a quick tour from the car. Par for the course in LA.

After I went to work, Kari Ann hung out at the hotel, recovering from a tough week at work. She was in Texas the weekend before, visiting her family and so she was glad to recharge her batteries in the low-key Sunset Marquis.

The next morning, we slept in a little and had a long brunch. We were faced with a dreary day (so much for thawing), so we spent much of the day window shopping and driving around. We did find a few hours to spend at the Getty, which was way too short for such a great museum. We really miss spending whole days at world-class museums, but the Getty was a nice quick fix.

That night, we met our friend Brent in Santa Monica for drinks and a fantastic dinner at Jiraffe. It was really great catching up with him, he’s a really good friend of both Kari Ann and I from college and New York, so having him on the West Coast now is a real bonus.

The next day, we spent in Newport Beach with Brent and his girlfriend (now fiancé!) Nichole. The morning was filled with breakfast at Rudys in Balboa Peninsula and fish tacos in Laguna for lunch.

We had a great time in Los Angeles. It holds a special place in my heart because my dad grew up there and I spent a summer there during college, so it was fun to visit and share with Kari Ann. The weather was nice for most of the time, so that added to the fun, but the traffic wore on our last nerves. That’s why LA is a wonderful place to visit, and we hope to often, but we doubt it’s a place that we could spend more than a week.

So, with that, our tour of the West Coast is complete. San Diego – check. Los Angeles – check. San Francisco – check. Portland – double check. Seattle – check.