Los Angeles at Night

One of the two nights here in Los Angeles, I had to go out for a walk and shoot some photographs. This walk started off from my hotel on a quiet night in downtown Los Angeles. The city was actually much quieter than I anticipated, and perhaps if I had walked up to Sunset or over to Hollywood, things might have been a bit different.


The introductory image and this one were taken relatively close to the hotel where there is a considerable amount of construction going on with these two workers on the job site very late into the evening. While they did have security, the two security guards in the introductory image were busy walking the job site and apparently were completely unaware of me walking up behind them. When they slowed, I said “pardon me” in an effort to get past and completely freaked out one of the security guards while the other spun with his hand to his hip, readying to draw his weapon. “Easy….” says I to which the one guard who gasped asked “Where did you come from?” I replied that I had been following them for about 20 minutes around the job site taking photographs while we walked and they had to have known I was back here. They apologized for the reaction, I apologized for scaring them and went on my way clicking more photos including this one of the construction site.


I do have to say that there was an amazingly good outdoor concert going on with Miles From India playing inspired Miles Davis tributes in Indo-Jazz fusion. It really was a good concert and I hung around for a couple of hours just taking it in before leaving just before the breakup to continue walking around downtown Los Angeles.


L.A. is optimized around the automobile and it truly does seem like people will jump in their car for a one block trip. Perhaps that is partially behind their gas prices which do seem a bit more than what the rest of the nation is paying.


It is refreshing to see some folks on bicycles in L.A., though it was also apparent that many of the cars do not give bicyclists much room from the limited observations I was able to make this night. I rather like the bicycle subculture and see some good in the price of gas if it gets more people out of their cars and onto bicycles.


The city is full of paradoxes all layered on top of one another. Modern buildings built right on top of tiny little shops specializing in used books, the homeless and indigent placed into close apposition with people driving high end automobiles and bronze statues of winged creatures in masks outside the entrances of food pantries. Its not quite as dramatic as other places in the world like Buenos Aires, but the contrasts are striking.


This mural was pained on the side of the Figueroa Hotel. In retrospect, I wish that I had time to go over to the hotel and photograph aspects of it, but the only exposure I had was their Internet access that seemed to be super powerful and available over a three block radius…. at a price. In fact, I could pick up the fee for service Internet signal from the Figueroa Hotel from my room in the Holiday Inn City Center Hotel and not the free Internet access from the Holiday Inn. The saving grace of course was that I could use the wired Internet access from my room. The interesting thing over the past few years has been watching the video game industry slowly and inexorably increase their revenues to the point where they rival and are now exceeding those of traditional Hollywood and Grand Theft Auto IV, despite its less than pleasant subject matter has been a huge contributor to video game industry revenues.


The final photograph was taken on my way back to the hotel where I met this wonderful gentleman on the street. He told me all about the city, about the library and the beautiful art within while we walked down the street together.


2 Replies to “Los Angeles at Night”

Leave a Reply to Spener T Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *