Los Angeles, San Francisco & Long Beach, California

The World Traveller Series ~ Episode 15

by Brett Hayhoe

Before California, there was Japan

Twice, as it happens — once as an exchange student, wide-eyed and absorbing everything, and once years later as President of the Young Queenslanders Tourism Association, returning with the weight of a title and the same sense of wonder. Japan deserves its own entries entirely, and will get them.

But California was the first taste of the United States. And as first tastes go, it was one that lingered.

It arrived, as the best things sometimes do, entirely by accident. A job with an IT organisation — secretary to the CEO, a role that proved fleeting in the overall scheme of things — involved, at some point, the filling in of a form. The details of this form, its purpose, its provenance, and the precise moment it was completed have been entirely lost to memory. What is not lost is the outcome: a five-star trip to Los Angeles and San Francisco, won without any conscious effort whatsoever.

The original plan had been to share the trip. The volatility that gay relationships are occasionally prone to ensured that the journey was made alone instead. In retrospect, perhaps that was the point. Some trips need to be taken by oneself.

This one fuelled something that had not previously had a name — an appetite for travel that, once awakened, has never entirely gone back to sleep.

Sydney — Bernard’s Lunch

The itinerary began in Cairns, which was home for the first thirty-four years of life. A flight to Sydney for the international connection, and in Sydney, a stop at the home of a dear friend.

Bernard King made lunch from what he described, with characteristic modesty, as leftovers from the fridge. What arrived at the table was something else entirely — the kind of meal that stays with you not just for what it was, but for the ease and warmth with which it was offered. Unhurried, generous, full of conversation. The kind of afternoon that doesn’t announce itself as memorable until you are already inside it.

Bernard passed away some time after that visit. The lunch cannot be relived. The memory of it — that particular couple of hours, that particular kitchen, that particular kindness — is held with the specific tenderness reserved for things that can no longer be repeated.

It remains, for that reason, one of the finest meals ever eaten.

Los Angeles — The Beverly Wilshire, Rodeo Drive, and a Night Out

The Beverly Wilshire Hotel needs little introduction. For anyone who has seen Pretty Woman — and the list of people who have not is short — the building carries a weight of cultural association that is difficult to separate from the reality of standing in front of it. The reality, for the record, holds up. It is an extraordinarily beautiful building, and the experience of staying within it on a prize itinerary, with very little of one’s own money to speak of, carries its own particular brand of surreal pleasure.

Rodeo Drive. Wilshire Boulevard. The names of streets and neighbourhoods encountered first in songs and films and television programmes, now navigable on foot — there is a specific strangeness to this experience that is neither disappointment nor complete satisfaction, but something in between. Recognition without full comprehension. The sensation of having been somewhere before without ever having been there at all.

With little money to spend, the days were largely conducted on foot. In retrospect this was not such a hardship. Walking a city is the only way to actually see it.

A friend in Melbourne had provided the contact details of a cousin living in LA — one of those social transactions that seems minor at the time and proves anything but. She made contact, picked up a solo traveller from the hotel, and what followed was a thoroughly enjoyable night in the gay district of Los Angeles. The city, encountered at ground level after dark with a local guide, was considerably more interesting than any itinerary could have arranged.

The Drive — Monterey Overnight

The rental car was collected, the map consulted, and the drive north began.

An overnight stop in Monterey broke the journey in the most agreeable fashion possible. The coastline along that stretch of California — the Pacific visible at intervals through the cypress trees, the air carrying the particular quality that ocean air has when it arrives cold off open water — is the kind of scenery that makes the act of driving a pleasure rather than a means to an end.

Monterey itself offered exactly what an overnight stop should: enough to be interesting, not so much as to delay departure.

San Francisco — Union Square, the Castro, and Old Man River

San Francisco’s accommodation was in Union Square, which proved to be both a base and an entertainment in itself. The square hosted what appeared to be daily festivals drawing participants and performers from across the globe — an ever-changing outdoor programme that required nothing more than the willingness to wander outside and pay attention.

From Union Square, the daily walk up Market Street to the Castro became its own ritual. The Castro needs no hyperbole. It is everything its reputation promises and then some — a neighbourhood that wears its history openly, that celebrates with purpose and mourns with dignity, and that manages to be simultaneously a landmark and a living community. It was explored thoroughly and appreciated completely.

One evening in a video bar produced what the two-for-one drinks menu had promised and rather more besides. The walk home was long. Three sheets to the wind and feeling no pain — which is, in its own way, a perfectly honourable condition in which to navigate the streets of San Francisco at night. The Castro has seen considerably worse.

The moment that has stayed longest, however, was simpler. A tram ride to the waterfront. A gentleman who boarded somewhere along the route and, without prelude or explanation, began to sing Old Man River. The voice filled the carriage. Nobody spoke. The city moved past the windows.

Seventh heaven is the only adequate description. It remains so.

Long Beach — InterPride, and the Friendship That Remains

California was not destined to become a favourite state — pleasant always, but not the place that claimed the heart the way other destinations would. There was, however, one visit that produced something of considerably more lasting value than any skyline or landmark.

The InterPride AGM and World Conference in Long Beach brought together the organisation’s membership in the way these gatherings do — purposeful days, long evenings, the particular energy that forms when people united by a common cause find themselves briefly in the same place. It was at some point during this conference that two women were met.

Deb and Tee.

To describe them adequately in a travel entry is to attempt something that resists the format. They are two of the sweetest, most caring and loving women ever encountered. The word friendship sometimes gets applied too casually — to acquaintances, to pleasant encounters, to people one sees occasionally and thinks of warmly but rarely. That is not what this is.

What Deb and Tee represent is friendship in its simplest and most absolute form. It simply is. It always will be.

Tee has since passed away. That loss sits where it sits, quietly and permanently.

Contact with Deb continues, semi-regularly, across the years and the distance. A check-in. A message. The kind of communication that requires no occasion because the connection requires no maintenance — it is simply there, as it has always been.

There is one visit that stands as its own small testament to what that friendship means. A stopover in Los Angeles — five hours between flights, en route somewhere else. Deb and Tee picked up the traveller from the airport, drove to a French pastry shop for breakfast, sat for as long as the schedule allowed, and drove back. No fuss. No occasion. Just two people who showed up, as they always have.

That breakfast has never been forgotten. It never will be.

A footnote on the logistics of multiple California visits: Tom Bradley International Airport at LAX was, on every single occasion without exception, under renovation. This became, across the years, a running joke of considerable reliability. Whatever else might change — and much did — the scaffolding at Tom Bradley could always be counted upon. Some constants are a comfort.

Conclusion

California was a beginning more than a destination. Ten days, give or take — the Beverly Wilshire and Rodeo Drive, a night out in LA with a stranger who became briefly a guide, the drive up the coast, the Castro at night, a tram singer performing to no one and everyone at once. Enough to fill a memory and leave it wanting more.

It was not the state that would come to feel like a second home. But it was the place where the appetite for travel announced itself properly — the moment the unknown quantity of the world declared itself not frightening but irresistible.

And it gave, in Long Beach, two friendships that have outlasted airlines and itineraries and the considerable distance between Melbourne and Los Angeles. That, by any reasonable measure, is more than enough.

The World Traveller Series is written and produced by Brett Hayhoe — publisher, editor and administrator of Q Magazine.

Read more at Q Magazine Blogs — Ask Brett Podcasts — Ask Brett and YouTube

Next: The USA entries continue.