Pennies in Los Angeles
Leaving 2025 behind with a May trip to Los Angeles
There’s a sense of relief that comes with the end of the holidays for me, since I don’t have to return to any corporate overlords tomorrow. Even though my life won’t change much in the morning, and as much as I like getting out of the normal day-to-day, I do like the quiet of January. It’s when I hunker down and focus. But before I do, I have one more 2025 trip to relive—my May jaunt to Los Angeles.
I didn’t have any reason to go, other than I wanted to be in L.A. Even though I’ve never lived there, it feels like a different kind of home. And I get homesick.
This trip, I didn’t branch out much: stayed in the guesthouse with the chandeliers and lilies, daily coffee with my favorite Los Angeleno, jambon beurre, Club Tee Gee, and Levain cookies. Blue skies and endless vibes.
I never take anyone to Los Angeles with me, but I’m hardly ever alone. I’m either with local friends, making new friends, or texting my best friend Suzie every mundane detail:
I love cars with talk-to-text. Everyone who’s in regular communication with me probably hates that feature because they get bullshit like this blowing up their phones. I like to share.
[“Moron” Street is actually Monan Street. It empties into the worst Trader Joe’s parking lot in the world—can you even imagine?—and is around the corner from my guesthouse. Every time I pass it, I alert Suzie. I can’t believe more people don’t block me.]
But this time, for a day, I had company from home—my dear friend K. We’ve been friends for a decade or so, having met through the St. Louis music community. He’s been in Denver for grad school for almost two years and is currently teaching in China for a spell.
We’ve even traveled together, starting with a 2016 trip to Chicago to see Iggy Pop with Queens of the Stone Age, and the WORST Airbnb in history. His room had an open bottle of cough syrup next to an unmade, slept-in bed. And my sheets had what I hope to god was crusty old spaghetti on them. That stay was made possible with beer, cannabis, and spending most of the night talking on the couch.
Our other trip was to Nashville in 2019 to see Mark Lanegan. I accidentally overdid it with K’s potent weed, and a few songs into the show, my legs below the knee disappeared.
We happened to have an overlap in LA trips, so I got to spend a day with K, showing off some of my favorite LA things.
K’s a musician, producer, and recording engineer, as is my favorite Los Angelino, Drew. The three of us met for coffee, and so I could have the pleasure of listening to exceptionally smart, kind, and attractive men discuss their shared passions. Since I refuse to believe music isn’t a magical language produced by secret members of the fae underground, I just sat there and looked cute while they discussed their work.
After we parted company with Drew, K and I did exactly what we were supposed to do together in Los Angeles: we went to Hollywood Forever to pay our respects to Mark Lanegan by way of Chris Cornell and half of The Ramones.
This was my second time at the cemetery, but the first time I didn’t realize Lanegan was buried there. I assumed he was interred in Ireland, since he was residing there at the time of his 2022 death. It took a little sleuthing, but we found him and spent some time at his resting place.
Per his gravestone, we cleared away the empty flower holders and tidied up his spot.
Because I’m pale and have migraine disease and am just delicate in general, I started feeling a little off under the blazing sun. I left K to pay his respects and returned to the car for some water and air conditioning.
And there was vomiting, luckily in the street and not in my Turo-rented car or Mark’s grave. Or anyone’s grave, for that matter. Such is life with vestibular migraines—push things a little too far, and chances are high that I’ll throw up. Notice how this was a theme in my spring travels in 2026? I’ve gotten better at pacing myself and listening to my body. Still, I’d like to not throw up out of nowhere for no real reason if I can help it.
When K returned to the car, he suggested we go around the corner to Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles.
Hmm. I could eat some chicken …
Because that’s how this condition operates: one minute I’m losing the $9 pink latte I drank while the menfolk talked, and the next I’m starving. I’ll gladly take that over staying sick.
Shortly after K and I met, when we were talking about going to Chicago to see Iggy Pop, he posted a meme on Facebook: Life is short. Buy the concert tickets. And that’s how we wound up in that terrible apartment in Wicker Park, getting to really know each other.
After briefly sleeping that night, we got up and got the hell out of the apartment the next morning, discovering that we were down the block from Dusty Groove. And it was snowing giant, puffy flakes. In April!
We walked quietly in the light snow accumulation, sleepy in the gray morning. I bought an Irma Thomas album before we went further down the block to warm up at a now-gone Intelligentsia Coffee, furnished with acrylic cubes for seats and tables. Lights dangled from stainless steel fixtures on the ceiling, shining through plate glass windows, illuminating the surprise winter day.
It didn’t matter that I was running on no sleep, possibly infested with scabies, and I had a cooking class to teach in St. Louis that evening. I’d just seen Iggy fucking Pop in his bare-chested, never-old glory at the Chicago Theater. Even though I was pretty sure K would distance himself after my disastrous lodging choice, and dealing with my penchant for visiting with strangers, and lingering wherever I go, I’d had a fun night with him, unaware that we’d cemented a ride-or-die friendship.
That’s what buying the concert ticket does. It opens the box for terrible, wonderful experiences that alter your timeline.
So, throwing up at Hollywood Forever fits right into our travel history. We go somewhere, something goes wrong, we roll with it, and are better for it.
That’s what a lucky penny buys these days.
Care to buy me a coffee—Intelligentsia, pink latte, or otherwise? I promise I won’t make you sleep in the Superflu bed.