First, let’s try to give Pharrell some money. I can’t remember if I’ve posted a link to his previous book, but here’s the sequel: Pharrell: A Fish Doesn’t Know It’s Wet.
Today in grousing about WordPress 5.0, when I copied-and-pasted this blog post from the original document, I lost random spaces somehow. I did not have this problem in WordPress-whatever-comes-before-5.0.
1:00 So are we going to start out in the same gym? Let’s find out.
Yes, we are. And Pharrell makes a bit of a show of flinching away from the boxers practicing around him. Our 12:56 dancer is exercising in the background for most of the four minutes that Pharrell is in the gym.
1:04 Looks like I’m going to be able to phone this one in. We start out on 4th Street and go right back into the gym.
1:16 Never mind. We’re outside now and it looks like we’ll stay that way for awhile. Will we explore the neighborhood? Stay tuned and we’ll find out. So far, so good. We go west-ish on 4th Street to Omar and then make a right. Google Street View has a tent village (like a tent city but smaller) there on the corner. It might not’ve been there in 2013 though. I wonder how many of these tents are the same people? They seem to move around. The tents that you can see from 4th in October of 2017 are different from those you can see from Omar in January of 2017.
Okay, so at Boyd and Omar we cross Omar and head up Boyd. Along the way, we pass some signs saying that this is a sightseeing bus zone. What sightseers would be in this area?*
We cross San Pedro at Boyd and we’ve been here before. I went back and checked. We were here at around 11:20 am.
We cross Wall Street and this, I think, is a new-to-us area.
1:28 We skip ahead almost a block to the corner of Boyd and Los Angeles and start to head southwest. Our dancer jumps up and touches a Minion pinata as he walks along, and on Google Street View, there’s still a Minion pinata hanging in that spot in January of 2017. I guess that this video has been good for business for that store. We cross 4thStreet and then Winston and make a left onto Winston. We also pass more of those Loading Only signs. I was beginning to wonder if they were put there by the crew for the video, but you can see at least one in the Google Street View in 2017.
At the corner of Winston and IDEK-At-This-Point**, we cross Winston and pass another Loading Only sign. I’m pretty sure we’re on Wall Street.What I can see of the background looks like the Anne Douglas Center for Women. How much does a pay phone call cost these days? It looks like it was still 25¢ in 2013.
At Probably-Wall and Most-Likely-4th we make a left. As Happy goes into its I-think-”breakdown”-is-the-correct-term, our dancer clutches at her chest like she’s suffering heartbreak or an asthma attack. I’m pretty sure that I’m in the right place. The doorway of (what is in 2017) L.T. Gifts is in the right place. I’m so glad I’m doing this project only five-ish years after the video was made. In a few more years, God only knows whether I’d be able to find enough landmarks to identify where we are.
We turn into another alley (how many alleys is this now?), only it turns out that this alley is a shopping area of some sort. We emerge from the alley onto Winston, I think. Then, just before we get to Los Angeles, we turn into another alley. If I’m right about where we are,we’re going to come out on 4th Street. Let’s watch.
Actually we don’t end up on 4th. There’s another alley within that alley and we make another right down there. As of 1:45, we’re inside a building. I’m so confused. I hope we come out onto Wall Street or I’m going to have to go back and figure this all out again. Please don’t make me have to go back and figure this all out again.
We make a left onto whatever street we’re on.
Yes! We’re on Wall Street. I can see Cap Star*** behind the dancer, and Cap Star is on Wall Street. We make a right onto 4thStreet.
1:48 These three young men are celebrities of some sort. Their names,Tyler the Creator, Earl Sweatshirt and Jasper Dolphin, mean nothing to me. They are, from what I can tell from Wikipedia, members of a group called Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All. I hope you can hear the dubious tone of my typing. And I also hope you kids get off of my lawn.
We seem to still be where we left off on what is likely to be 4th Street and I’ve been reading entirely too much Breaking Cat News, because for a brief moment, I think that the cat on the middle young man’s shirt is Sophie.
We are on 4th Street, but I was going the wrong direction. I thought we were going northwest, but we were going southeast. We should be passing the LA Sands gym soon, right? Or am I hopelessly lost?
We cross San Pedro and keep going down 4th Street.
1:52 More Pony.
1:53:37 We’re crossing Crocker Street, which does, in fact, put us a block northwest of the LA Sands gym. Will we make it all the way back in the next two and a half minutes?
1:55:30 If my calculations are correct, that should be the corner of 4thand Towne and the LA Sands gym should be right across the street. I’m doing that moving back and forth changes the scene thing again.Nothing as dramatic as the destruction of the 6th Street bridge, but boy, does this corner change between January and October of 2017.
Three of these four corner buildings must have been bought by the same people in those ten months, because they’re all the same shade of blue in October. Well, either that or a very persuasive blue paint salesman came through in that time, I guess.
And now, 1:56.
Oh, goody. We start out indoors. I hope we get some kind of hint where we are at some point in the 1:56 to 2:55:59 hour. Otherwise this will be another hour that I skip.
I stand corrected. We’re in a courtyard of some sort. The things that I assumed were pillars are about half pillars and about half palm tree trunks.
1:56:50 And now we’re indoors. Dammit. A sign says something about Metrolink trains as we go down an escalator, so maybe we’re going into the subway?
We are in the subway. I don’t know what station we’re at, but I can see that both the red and purple lines go there, so that looks like Union Station, the Civic Center, Pershing Square, 7thStreet/Metro Center, Westlake/MacArthur Park, or Wilshire/Vermont. I see people in USC shirts. We haven’t been to that part of the city yet. And the winner is Union Station. I can see the words “Union Station East Portal” above the entrance to the train platforms.
Some people step off to one side to stay out of the shot, but I guess they figure out that they’re in the shot because they keep walking after a moment.
*I did some digging later and this is just around the corner from the Little Tokyo Historic District. So those tourists, I would imagine.
**We’re way too close to the dancer. She’s very pretty and is wearing a very brief top, but some of us are here for the other scenery.
***A store that sells baseball caps. Not the flea medication.