A Friday Night in Downtown LA

When I was choosing between colleges, the surrounding city was definitely an important factor for me. I wanted someplace I could explore and learn about, just like I did at home in San Diego. My senior year of high school, my friends and I started driving, there was no stopping us. We would just drive everywhere (gas prices weren’t insane back then), even if it meant driving 45 minutes to get boba from an authentic tea place. But I didn’t bring a car to USC, so I couldn’t just drive anywhere randomly. I soon found out that this didn’t mean I couldn’t explore at all! In fact, it’s so easy to get to Downtown LA from campus, that I found myself doing it whenever I needed a break. Pedro wrote a great blog about using public transportation around USC, so check that out if you’re interested, Anyways, here’s a Friday night a few weeks ago when I did just that!

Sometimes when exploring, you find yourself in odd situations. For example, being hugged by a troop of clowns advertising their show! None of them spoke though, which was sorta awkward.

It all started with takeout Boiling Crab. I absolutely need to write a blog post dedicated to what Boiling Crab is, and how awesome it is, but this will have to suffice for now. Basically, you order giant bags of spicy seafood, all soaking in these crazy concentrated sauces. We usually order the crawfish, crab and shrimp, as well as some cajun fries and sweet potato fries. If you do takeout, they include a plastic table cloth as well as bibs and a huge stack of napkins. You can see why! This stuff gets messy, and it’s basically a savage free-for-all. This was such an awesome way to start the night, even though your hands basically get dyed red from all of the spices. And clean-up is so easy, since you just wrap everything up in the table cloth and throw it away. But even then, I had to change my shirt since I got red sauce all over it 🙁

In the middle of eating BC! Its a pretty savage process….

After that, my friends and I ventured to the LA Art Walk. Essentially, you can wander through the Art District and see all sorts of interesting art that is displayed by local artists. There are all of these little rooms packed with people, and the art is on the walls and ceilings and floors. I went with three of my fine art major friends, so I definitely had a lot of fun hearing them discuss how they interpreted art. I can’t say I know a lot about art, but I still enjoyed walking around and looking at all this raw creativity. I wish I had more pictures of the actual art, but I was too busy enjoying it to actually take any pictures. Plus we ran into this guy with a huge snake around his neck, and we just had to take pictures with him. Her name was Betty. Who would have thought?

A snake named Betty! Found in one of the Art Walk rooms in Downtown LA….

Even though we were stuffed from the Boiling Crab, we found a huge enclave of food trucks right near the Art Walk, where we spent even more money on food! I bought this huge tray of deep-fried mac-n-cheese (sounds kinda gross, but I can guarantee it was amazing). The LA food trucks are the best, and there are always some around USC, so you don’t have to go downtown to find them. Plus if you follow them on Twitter, you can figure out when they’ll be around! Basically, we stuffed ourselves even more on food truck food, and checked out some of the cool boutiques.

Delicious food trucks! We were already so full, but that’s okay…

At this point, it was getting late, so we decided to head back and sleep off our food comas. But nothing beats adventuring out in downtown and learning something new about art, food, or even snakes!