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We arrived in Little Tokyo in the late afternoon. I think it’s called Little Tokyo because there are a couple of sushi joints and a Japanese mall where all the restaurants have plastic representations of their food in their windows and even they do not help you identify what it is. It certainly doesn’t look like Tokyo, and I saw exactly 0 Japanese people and 0 Little people.
The First Annual Los Angeles Arts Festival was tucked away on a couple of non-descript side streets off Alameda. Not the best location. A cross of artist’s booths with mostly horrendous art filled up the streets, but there was a strange silent calm about it. You could walk right past it without feeling any kind of excitement or energy – perhaps because all the stuff reeked and there were hardly any people.
We heard music coming from down the street and followed it to a big vacant lot. This was the “festival” part, characterized by large sculptures, two stages on opposite ends – one with a salsa band and one with the worst DJ in the history of the world (the one we heard anyway…), more artists booths, a taco stand, and a Budweiser truck. Ahhhhhh… Budweiser.
The festival area was so big it was difficult to tell how many people were there, but it was a fair number that seemed to keep growing. It had a strange (very) mini-Burning Man feel to it, what with all the sculptures, music, and freakish vibes -- and the realization that what was happening shouldn’t be happening here in downtown L.A.’s Little Tokyo district.
We liked the big metal sculptures that were musical instruments. People were banging o n them like crazed chimpanzees on Benzedrine. The huge dragon fly was a water mister which was perfect for sun soaked explorers like us. As for some of the other things we saw, I can only assume that drugs were involved. The most priceless work of art we saw an Asian woman (why are they always Asian?) in a see through pink dress. You can’t really see it in this photo, but when I say see through I mean sheer. Her parents should be tracked down and given a medal of some sort.
After stalking her and a few other hot art babes, we bailed because we knew the Budweiser and Bad Art do not mix as well as Budweiser and Basketball. Go Pistons!
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