After having a lengthy conversation of commiseration about our HOA with my next-door neighbor I found out that they had been the ones that turned off my cold water (by accident) the night before. I found the valve (no thanks to the HOA, which refuses to divulge this information to owners even though we’re expected to pay for the repairs), turned my water back on, took a shower and headed south to Bergamot Station. Bergamot was surprisingly empty. Usually when Copro has an opening many other galleries follow and stay open as well. On this Friday no other gallery was open. I started to think maybe I had come on the wrong date as the Copro is way at the back and there were no food trucks and few people around.
And then I heard a band setting up, so I knew the show must still be on.
Unfortunately the main show, a split show between two female artists was rather lackluster. The artists had plenty of technical skill, but not much imagination. Paintings alternated between things like a collage of My Little Pony dolls and a nude chubby woman on a throne with a snake bite on a boob and a coiled snake in her arms. The execution was there, but the subject matter was all “shocking” or “whimsical” stuff that I’ve seen a million times before. In case you think I’m joking about the content – here are the two pieces I referenced a few sentences ago:
However, the “Back Room” at the show had a group showing for more interesting artists called From Genesis to Revelation. Some pieces followed the biblical theme more than others. The best piece there (in either show) was definitely Crystal Chan‘s piece below.
Some other notable pieces were:
Chris Peters, who does nothing but skeletons in “normal” (usually religious) environments, had a mini-show there as well.
The next morning Sam and I set out for Carson to try and see the USS Abraham Lincoln. We’d gone to see the USS Iwo Jima in NYC in May and had a good time. That ship was less than half the size of the Lincoln, so we expected this one to blow our minds. When we got down to the area the 110 freeway was backed up. We checked the map and took a shortcut from Channel Street (I think) to Harbor Blvd. The map for the event online had shown the parking to be at the intersection of 1st street and Harbor Blvd. However, once we got to Harbor there was an overflow of traffic coming off the freeway going up and down both sides of the street. When we finally got to 1st street we discovered that the parking entrance was closed and they were routing all the cars south for many blocks and u-turning them around to come right back up and enter the parking lot a few blocks north of 1st. Of course there were little signs noting that this northern entrance we’d driven by before was the one for the Navy ships. Those signs were facing SOUTH (we were driving south). We cut out of the southward bound traffic, made some quick right turns and came across the street into the parking entrance, bypassing the freeway overflow.
The parking lot wasn’t full, so we thought we’d made it there in good time. By 10:30am we were at the end of a line that looked like it was maybe 100 yards long. A security guard zoomed by and said that this was the line to get in the “real” line. The expected wait once in the “real” line was three to four hours. As I said, the line we were in only looked like it was a hundred yards at the most as it curved between cars in the parking lot, so we decided to wait.
It turned out that the pre-line line actually wound back and forth between the rows of parked cars and every time we went around a bend we discovered the line was at least three times as long as we thought. Sometimes we could see a line of people in almost every direction, confusing us as to how long the line was and where it really ended. The line kept trudging along, though, and so in an hour we had finally snaked around to the front. Here is a photo taken from maybe 200 yards from the front of the line:
Grandma there with the blue umbrella would end up poking me in the head at least 20 times over the next three hours. I turned around and took a shot of the “real” line. The “real” line looped at least five times in the space in the photo below next to that big gray building. The beginning of the line is almost all the way to the left edge of the photo, and the back is further out to the right than I could get in one photo. Clearly the organizers thought every attendee would fit under those two tents, but, just in the “real” line there were easily 7 or 8 times that many people that showed up. By the end of the “Navy Days” on Sunday afternoon over 42,000 people showed up, most for the Lincoln, and most on Saturday.
But, like lemmings, we decided to keep waiting. We figured the tour of the ship must be glorious, and later a sailor would assure us as much. We imagined going up to the command deck and looking out upon rows of fighter jets. We imagined hopping up into the canopy of a Tomcat or F-16. With all the equipment they packed into the inside of the Iwo Jima for us to explore there must be tons of stuff in the Lincoln!
While we waited we could barely hear a Navy band doing covers of Led Zeppelin. The band was placed by the main Port building maybe 50 yards from the end of the front of the looping “real” line. From most points in the line they couldn’t be heard at all. It little mattered though, as the show was over at noon. A full 3.5 hours before we’d get to the front.
After a while we noticed that there were no more people waiting in the parking lot. A few hours more and we noticed the line in the tent area was getting shorter (at the back). We surmised that the event must have been closed to new entry shortly after we arrived.
Around 3:30 we finally boarded the charter bus to go to the southern tip of San Pedro where the Lincoln was docked. The Lincoln is an enormous boat. As we left later I tried to fit the entire thing in one photo. We had to keep on walking farther and farther away to fit it in one shot.
After going through another line for security checks (nobody ever asked to see any ID, by the way) we walked up into the interior of the ship. As we started to walk through we got worried. There was plenty of space in here, but nothing more to see than some odds and ends (life-vests) and Navy t-shirts for sale. After walking to the other end of the space, from the forward plane elevator to the back we got to ride the elevator up to the flight deck.
As we heard the big “aaioooogah!” we thought we were going to be in for a treat when we got up-top. However, up top there was simply a wide roped off path going from one elevator back to the other one. On the sides of the path were a few planes and helicopters. Some had pilots answering questions and some did not. Nowhere was there a tour guide of any kind. Frowns began forming on our faces. The equipment on display was nothing of the sort we’d seen in NYC. Of course, these actually may have been more expensive/deadly planes and helicopters, but in NYC we got to walk through them, touch them, interact and receive a rehearsed explanation from the pilots. There was nothing like that here. The first plane, on the left and to the back of the deck was clearly some sort of radar plane. Not exactly something Maverick (or even Bush) would be jumping out of on the flight deck…
They did have a tomcat, but upon closer (which I use ironically as the plane was a good thirty feet behind the ropes) inspection one could see this one had a broken canopy and wouldn’t be flying any time soon anyway.
There were no tours inside the tower. Another disappointment.
That above shot look familiar?
Mission Accomplished. Wait… what?! Are those… (no…it CAN’T BE)…. Teleprompters?!!!! I thought Obama was the first president ever to need teleprompters when giving a speech… Wait… if…the … Teapublican Party lied about that… then…
anyway…. We didn’t want our photo taken on such a spot of national disgrace, so we moved to the left.
We walked across the deck and were ready to go back down in ten minutes (or less).
Below is the spot on the boat where they throw the bombs overboard to sink submarines.
I made that up. Makes an interesting photo though, doesn’t it?
Down below there were sailors milling about, apparently waiting their turn to leave the boat.
But, thankfully, we beat them to it.
I know it LOOKS like we’re smiling here (that’s a plastic water bottle in my pocket, by the way), but inside we were both screaming “we got sunburns and waited SIX HOURS… for this?!”
As we were winding our way back to the tour buses two old fashioned fighter planes flew overhead.
We were too tired to go to the latest Shakespeare in the Park performance after standing in the sun all day, so we headed home and rented The Adjustment Bureau. Also disappointing.
