This Week in Reading Black Swans by Eve Babitz Daniel works for Disney Research, so he took Sam and I to Disneyland this yesterday. I hadn’t been in a decade, but it was the same as I remembered: spotless, perfectly art directed. In the afternoon we went to California Adventure, a park I appreciated much more as an adult than I did as a kid, and not just because you can drink sangria while waiting in line for the roller coaster. California Adventure condenses the 163,000 square miles of California into one tiny manageable park. Right across the plaza from front gate was a shop with a sign that read “Los Feliz Five and Dime”, which made us laugh. We drove all the way to Anaheim to see our street corner. There is a Hollywoodland there, where real buildings fade into fake buildings painted onto a flat backdrop 10 stories tall. This Hollywood didn’t smell like piss though; in this Hollywood, performers hang off of trolleys and burst into musical numbers in the middle of the street. There is a wharf that extends over a man-made expanse of water— San Francisco in miniature. The water ride is called Grizzly Mountain, which is of course, Yosemite, if Yosemite was made from poured concrete instead of granite, and was shaped like a bear. On the way to Pixar Pier (a replica of the Santa Monica Pier if the Santa Monica Pier was cleaner and more fun and sparkled at night), you walk down a path lined with real grapevines— because what is California without Napa Valley.
self-enchantment
self-enchantment
self-enchantment
This Week in Reading Black Swans by Eve Babitz Daniel works for Disney Research, so he took Sam and I to Disneyland this yesterday. I hadn’t been in a decade, but it was the same as I remembered: spotless, perfectly art directed. In the afternoon we went to California Adventure, a park I appreciated much more as an adult than I did as a kid, and not just because you can drink sangria while waiting in line for the roller coaster. California Adventure condenses the 163,000 square miles of California into one tiny manageable park. Right across the plaza from front gate was a shop with a sign that read “Los Feliz Five and Dime”, which made us laugh. We drove all the way to Anaheim to see our street corner. There is a Hollywoodland there, where real buildings fade into fake buildings painted onto a flat backdrop 10 stories tall. This Hollywood didn’t smell like piss though; in this Hollywood, performers hang off of trolleys and burst into musical numbers in the middle of the street. There is a wharf that extends over a man-made expanse of water— San Francisco in miniature. The water ride is called Grizzly Mountain, which is of course, Yosemite, if Yosemite was made from poured concrete instead of granite, and was shaped like a bear. On the way to Pixar Pier (a replica of the Santa Monica Pier if the Santa Monica Pier was cleaner and more fun and sparkled at night), you walk down a path lined with real grapevines— because what is California without Napa Valley.