The third day was the Fashion District...

First, an amendment to the Venice post:

We drove through Malibu to get there. Malibu is the home to Pepperdine University, The Getty Villa, and one of the most beautiful drives along LA's stretch of the PCH. It's also the home to Mel Gibson. As we passed by the expensive houses that overlook the Pacific (at which point I revealed to my companions, "the ocean scares the shit outta me"), we saw the restaurant where Mel got infamously trashed. I think it's right near where Lindsey Lohan got pulled over. That made Malibu way more awesome.

After we returned from Venice, we kicked it at the house for like ten minutes and decided to head over to the local farmer's market. I got a tamale. It was good.

Now, the Fashion District, followed by Atomic Bowling.

The Fashion District is in the heart of Downtown LA. It includes the famous Orpheum and United Artists Theaters, as well as buildings like the California Market Center, which is twelve floors of fashion designers' offices. Retail buyers, wholesale buyers, and stylists for studios and celebrities alike come to these offices to view samples of the designers' work and potentially walk away thousands of dollars short of what they came. Every last Friday of the month, the designers hold sample sales, where (mostly) girls sizes 5-9 can buy normally expensive, exclusive designs for really cheap. My kinda party.

It really wasn't a bad time, actually. Allison and I didn't really have much interest in going into the buildings with the sample sales, so we kicked it around the outside shopping areas which were full of really small shops selling things like tremendous fabric rolls for 99 cents. There was also a shop that specialized in Zoot suits owned by a man in a Hawaiian shirt who shouted "ZOOTS!" at anyone who walked by.

We walked around for a little while, stopping in a couple stores, but mostly navigating our way around downtown LA and checking out the weird buildings and people. There is a line of buses that run downtown called D.A.S.H. I got really excited and almost ran out in front of one, but then I didn't.

We finally met up with Anna and Alice and went to one of the office buildings to hang out in the air conditioning while the two of them went scrounging for samples. In the elevator I was cornered by a man trying to sell his printed tee shirts who told me that my Western shirt showed my excellent taste in clothing and that I should totally come and check out his prints cause like, his showroom was the first on the twelfth floor and there's not much guy stuff in the building. As soon as I walked in to his showroom, which was a table and a bunch of shirts laying about on the floor, I had several of his prints thrust in my face and rapid fire back stories of how he came up with such genius ideas spat at me. Some of the prints were actually cool, but the fact that he wouldn't get the hell outta my face to let me look at them was annoying. That and he kept telling me that the Bette Davis print was totally at Barney's and doing really well and I should like, get in on the ground floor of this amazing baggy v-neck print.

He told me he wouldn't judge me for whatever print I picked out, and then gave the exact same spiel to a girl in a baggy v-neck tee that unknowingly walked into his trap. Allison and I snuck out as his attention was diverted.

The sample stores close at 3 pm, so we all met back up and started what would become an almost two hour excursion back to Alice's house. LA is a mess of highways and traffic jams, and getting turned around is really easy.

We all kinda crashed once we arrived, but decided that our night should be occupied by something awesome.

Atomic Bowling.

Atomic Bowling is held at Harley's Simi Bowl, the bowling alley where The Big Lewbowski was filmed. A giant video screen hovers about the alleys, playing the worst iTunes playlist, ever. It ranges from videos by Bob Seger to the Black Eyed Peas (Will.I.Am. and Fergie seem to be the only key players in the musical aspect of BEP; what do those other two dudes do?) to Papa Roach to Devo at egregiously loud volumes.

There's also the black light aspect, which makes everything more atomic.

So Allison stayed home and read Harry Potter while Alice, Anna, and I played the worst games of bowling ever. Anna started bowling like an old man, Alice dropped the ball, and I was really consistent with my gutter ball game.

Tomorrow: Anna's birthday!