I completely forgot our “Let’s Give Pharrell Williams Some Money” links in the last couple of posts. I’m going to link to a Colombian artist by the name of J Balvin this time. I’ve mentined the song Safari which was produced by (and features the singing voice of) Pharrell. I also like the song Ginza from that album and Sigo Extrañandote is a great song, but the video is really heartbreaking. So here’s the album: Energía.
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11:00 There’s something big there in the background. At first I thought it was a giant statue of maybe an owl? But maybe it’s just a tree. Pharrell lies down on the trunk of a car and I hope that we know whose car that is. People are gathering to watch the filming and he high-fives someone through a chain-link fence. Some guy is filming this on his phone. If he would upload it and it had a location tag that would make my life so much easier. There’s a fence with some plants behind it that for some reason reminds me of the museum at the La Brea Tar Pits.
11:04 Now we’re back out on the street where we started out. We make a left at a help wanted sign. We pass something that looks like a fabric store. We’ve passed one thing that might be a tailor shop and one thing that probably is a fabric store. Where is the fashion district for Los Angeles? There’s a Maple Street in the fashion district. “Maple” is short and starts with an “M.” I see the words “City Discount.” What do you want to bet that it’s a chain with stores on every corner in the city?
There’s just the one. And it’s a block off Maple. It’s not quite in the fashion district, though. We’re now at the corner of 6th and Los Angeles. Before that we came down Los Angeles and before that we were on 7th. So now I’ve tracked us back to the beginning and the street isn’t Maple; it’s Main. We start on Main and 7th, head down 7th to Los Angeles, and take Los Angeles to 6th.
11:12 We aren’t where we left off. I think we’re back, oh, at 7th and Los Angeles, maybe? Okay, so this is funny. I was going to check to make sure that I’m right about where we are and rather than opening a new window, I reused an already-open one. It just so happened that it’s the page where I searched for GEANCO based on the Facebook ad for a campaign where they’re sending someone to tea and a movie premiere with Benedict Cumberbatch. I sort of figured that the campaign was going to send someone to maybe London or something and so after I clicked on it, I thought that this was going to screw me up completely. Turns out that GEANCO (and the prize in the contest) are for Los Angeles, and that GEANCO’s headquarters is at 4th and Olive, which isn’t that far from where I actually wanted to be. Someday, after I’ve finished this project and can reboot my computer, I’ll plot a route and find out how far exactly. I’m betting it’s less than a mile. And I’m right. We are at 7th and Los Angeles (btw, according to the map I just pulled up, the video for U2’s Where the Streets Have No Name was shot at 7th and Main, a block northwest from where the dancer is at this point in the video).*
11:16. Great. The image is mirrored again for some reason. I’ve got “Vitamins.” I’ve got “Hotel” I’ve got “One Way.” I’ve got “ATM Perfume.” Ooh! I know where we are. When we were on Los Angeles before, there was a big white building with a red fire escape in the background. That’s the hotel. At least, I think it is. Never mind. It’s a different building. Dammit. I’ve got “Jewelry Watches Buckles.” I’ve got parts of phone numbers the words “oil burner.”
11:20 Kid with wild hair and it looks like we’re dancing back the way we came and things are no longer reversed. Yep “Oil Burner” is now on the other side of the street. And now we have “Ray Ban” and “le Center.” “Wholesale Center”?
11:24 Things are reversed again. I looked up “Wholesale Center” and the first result, which is listed under ‘”HK Wholesale Center” but the building says “Hong Kong Wholesale Center” looks like a distinct possibility.
So here goes. At 11:16, we’re at the corner of 5th and Los Angeles. We go northeast to the corner of Los Angeles and Winston. We cross Winston and head Southeast. At 11:20, we are just a smidge farther southeast on Winston and head northwest. We make a right onto Los Angeles. At Los Angeles and 4th, we head southeast on 4th. At the corner of 4th and Wall, we’re still flipped. We cross Wall and make a . . . left? No, a right. No, I was right the first time. It’s a left. So now we’re going northeast on Wall. We cross Boyd and make a right so that we’re going southeast on Boyd.
And then I lost the polygon. I got an error saying to reload the page and when I did, poof. So, I’ll see if I can possibly find a way to recreate it and save it. Maybe with directions? 7th and the LA River to the corner of San Fernando and Glendale almost up to the Colorado Street exit of the 5 or something like that? I’ll have to play around with it.
Anyway, we take Boyd to San Pedro (the street, not the suburb) and make a left then take San Pedro to 3rd and make another right. This dancer kind of reminds me of Michele Greene, who played Abby on LA Law.
11:36 We’re somewhere else now. Will Olivia be able to figure out where we are? Let’s watch.
11:40 No. No she cannot. We look to still be in the same place, so let’s give me another four minutes to figure this out.
11:44 Wow. This location is tough. I only have 12 more minutes to figure this out. There’s a big building that looks like a church or a museum in the background. That should help me figure it right out. Now we’ve gotten to a place where there are more people and another church or something w-a-a-y back there. I’ve seen the word “Hollywood” twice, so that’s a pretty good clue there. One of the “Hollywood”s is followed by the word “Refresh”? So let’s see what Google gives us. Wait. No, it’s “Hollywood Refreshed.” I just noticed the stars. So we’re back on Hollywood Boulevard, probably.
Okay, so let’s try this on for size. Starting on Hawthorne just behind Hollywood High School then down to Sycamore and Sycamore to Hollywood Boulevard and make a right. Looks good to me.
11:48 We start about a block away from where we left off, across the street from the Hard Rock Cafe, with Jimmy Kimmel. We go up the stairs and into the building where his show is filmed, apparently. And in an interesting choice, Kimmel decides not to sing along with Pharrell, but to sing along with the backing vocals. We follow Kimmel though the theater to his set and he really looks happy. So many celebrities aren’t, you know. I really believe the studies that happiness levels off at around $75,000 of income and that beyond that you keep trying to achieve more happiness with more money and it never works.
Kimmel comes out the back door of the studio and we start following a woman going the other way. She hugs the security guard and heads into a fenced-in area (this turns out to be the parking lot for the theater). Is this Mrs. Kimmel or something? I cheated and looked at a list of dancers that I found online and it doesn’t say. She’s probably underweight in real life. I was once standing by some people talking to an actress who’s rather well-known for being big and I totally didn’t recognize her because face-to-face she looks about as heavy as my mom did and my mom was only carrying about ten to fifteen extra pounds. Ever since then, I’ve realized that it really is true, the camera does add pounds. And as such, I think that this woman must be very, very thin in real life.
11:56 We’re watching a young woman working behind the scenes somewhere. A hotel, maybe? A restaurant? My money’s on hotel because we first watch her in a room full of folded-up white fabric. Maybe the restaurant has white tablecloths and napkins, but it’s more likely that these are sheets and towels. Or maybe it is a restaurant. Or a science-fiction movie. There’s an object hanging on the wall behind her at 11:58:22 that at first I took to be an immersion blender, but then it occurred to me that I may have seen whatever it is as the weapon in an old Doctor Who episode. The Keys of Marinus, maybe? Or maybe it is an immersion blender. There looks to be something like a slicing mandoline hanging nearby.
*You can tell that I wasn’t really paying attention. We start the hour at 7th and Main, which is where the video was filmed. There’ll be more on the video later.