Los Angeles ranked #7 on a list of global cities that was just released. Curiously behind New York City (#1) and Chicago (#6, who organized the study… biased??). I have no idea how they ranked them, but Art and Music probably didn’t factor in as much as other things like financial markets. If ranked on GDP alone, in this study, Los Angeles has the third largest GDP of any city on the Earth, and the second in the US.
In any case, Los Angeles was out to prove the pull it has with Art and Music this weekend. On Friday Sam and I went to a free concert in Pasadena featuring Budos Band. The show was great – but I think the ambiance at the Echo, where I saw them in April 2009, was much better. Can’t complain about a free concert though.
There was an official city worker blowing bubbles…
The next day we’d intended to go to Pismo Beach with a bunch of friends to ride ATVs on the beach. Slowly over the last few weeks every last one of our friends cancelled. We decided to stop for lunch in Santa Barbara and then just turn around and go back. We stopped at the Pepperdine main campus for a little while before heading to Fern Dell trail in Griffith Park.
Fern Dell was actually very small (only a 1/4 mile trail) and completely man-made, which was odd for Griffith Park. However, it worked perfectly because we had to go over to the Burbank side to watch a free performance of Othello by the old Zoo rock cages (if you’ve been there you know what I mean). They told us not to take any pictures (although when you’re performing in a public park I’m not sure what, if any, authority you have to say that) so I snapped some on my cellphone during intermission and during the “curtain call.”
Because we arrived right as everything was starting the only space left for us on the grass was behind the light stands. It blocked our view, but not terribly:
Here is a photo from the side as the cast is bowing to the audience:
