Goodbye LA, Hello Sacramento

Continuing on with the theme of seeking out celeb houses, we started our day with locating Trent Reznor’s in Beverly Hills. Both T and I were quite nervous to even be on the same street, knowing that he recorded With Teeth, Year Zero, Ghosts and The Slip in the studio at this house. As it turned out, we only lingered for a second, as a crowd of workmen had gathered on the driveway. 

Lunch was a return visit to Native Foods in Westwood, where we both re-enjoyed the amazing "chicken" burger. Tim also sampled the Philly "Steak" Sandwich, which was good, but can't hold a candle to the former. 

"Chicken" Burger

Philly "Steak" Sandwich: 

A leisurely drive around Silver Lake (we were told by lots of people to go out there as there are lots of vegan places there) followed. Silver Lake is also the home of Beck, Lou Barlow from Sebadoh and the Folk Implosion, Brett McKenzie from Flight of the Concords - Brettie! and previously Elliot Smith. It was a nice area, and definitely felt more relaxed than the more central parts of LA. 

It was then time to visit Downtown, starting with the Walt Disney Concert Hall:

Next up, the Bradbury Building (used as Deckard’s apartment in Bladerunner) and Union Station. We then took the metro back to the Concert Hall and headed for Santa Barbara. Dinner was at Sojourners, which we had both been told by a couple of vegans in LA was a vegan place, but unfortunately it turned out to be an organic place that had just a couple of vegan options. For some reason, the majority of these options finished at 10 pm (we arrived just after 10 pm), but we were still able to have the stuffed pasta shells and nutmeat burger.  No photos I’m afraid, as I was so hungry I completely forgot to even take my camera to the restaurant. 

The next day was time to head up to Sacramento. It was a little frustrating at first, as we had gone to Santa Barbara the night before to get a head start on the long drive north. It turned out we had to drive almost all the way back to LA before heading north to Sacramento. We arrived at our hotel, the Delta King, in the early evening. The Delta King is a retired paddle steamer that has been converted into a hotel. Here is the entrance: 

After an enormous dinner at the Amarin Thai Restaurant (Thai tofu salad, satay tofu skewers, garlic tofu and a very tasty yellow veg curry), it was time to see Lucinda Williams who was playing at the Crest Theatre, the reason for our trip to Sacramento. The ushers were very excited to see us – “so you’re the ones from Australia, you sure did come a long way for this!!” She had already started playing, but we saw the majority of the show. It was amazing to be so close to her. I think she got a bit of a fright when she was talking about how John Macain might have some ideas on housing, and the crowd cheered, clearly in his favour. She then had to say “y’all know I was being sarcastic right?” Well, T and I did.