Day 14: Cars, Coffee and LA

The first weekend in LA was action packed, starting by waking up at 6 am in order to make the Cars and Coffee weekly show in Irvine. Cars and Coffee is a car show where car fanatics bring their cars to show others between 7-9am every Saturday. The catch is this: exotic and classic cars only. They are mostly personally owned (some dealers bring some) and many have been customized. I parked in the spectator parking lot along with a Dodge Viper and Ferrari F430. What did I see in the car show? There are about 400 cars, here are just a few: Porsche Carrera GT, Ferrari F430 Scuderia, Nissan GT-R, Lamborghini Murcielago, Ford GT and others that cost more than your house.



The show was very relaxed, just a bunch of people looking at cars, taking pictures and chatting. Most of cars, despite being Porsche and Ferrari's, had expensive modifications done. The pictures shown were a small portion of what was there. I'd love to post pictures or answer questions concerning what I saw.

The second portion of the day took my cousin, Mavis, and I to downtown LA. Our goal was to hit up several specialty stores. We managed to find everything just fine. We were able to visit KidRobot, Giant Robot, Beverly Hills H&M and several stores along the way.


Perhaps the strangest and now funniest part of the day was when we ate crepes at a small Japanese store. The store front was plastered with signs saying strange things, such as don't come in unless you know exactly what you want. It followed up by calling us kids or idiots if we didn't. It was ambiguous whether his signs were meant to be funny or if he was serious, but it made me wonder how he got business. We were confronted with more signs as we stepped into the store, which was the size of a closet because a counter blocked off the rest of the place. We saw a person, but only his hand and torso, cuz his face and everything else was blocked off by signs. When Mavis handed him money, he instructed her to put the money on the counter (as one of the signs instructed) as opposed to his hand. When I payed, he gave me 75 cents back, in the form of lots of dimes, nickels and pennies. The good news is the crepes were good.

Since we were downtown, we decided to visit UCLA as a part of my campus visits. UCLA surprised me. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but the campus was very beautiful. The buildings were mostly red bricks and the grass was actually green. Like most schools, the campus was large. It wasn't too difficult to navigate and it felt separate from the hectic LA culture surrounding it.


The final leg of the day led us to Mulholland Drive. Famous for its twist and turns and beautiful overlooks along the way. The drive was fun and we were able to see downtown and even Universal Studios. LA doesn't have a very appealing skyline, but the look is still very unique.


The evening ended with some good food and frozen yogurt. I was pretty exhausted by the end of the day. On a side note, I saw Hellboy II yesterday and it was great. Funny, visually stunning and the action was superb. Go see it!