Los Angeles - Compton and Hollywood

Today was a long and busy day. I started off early about 7am, had a quick coffee in the hostel, I couldn't find sugar so I've asked a cleaner Sonya who happened to be there, she gave me a container which I used but while drinking it turned out she gave me salt :) I had a black, unsweetened coffee instead.

I set my GPS to take me into Hollywood Forever Funeral Home, Cemetery and Crematorium, to find a grave of Mel Blanc and tick seeing it of my nucke list. The road lead me through some of the poshest and expensive neighbourhood I've seen in LA so far, and so the city revealed to me it's yet another face.

After about an hour of walking I've finally reached the destination and I've managed to find Mel's grave along with.. Burt Reynolds one ( there's way more oldschool celebrities buried here but I didn't bother looking for them, maybe next time).


Then since I had couple of hours to burn as I decided to get on the 'LA Hood Life Tour" to Compton and Westwood, I started walking towards Hollywood sign, as it turned out there wasn't really a good spot to take a picture of it, it kept on disappearing behind hills and houses, until I finally started to run out of time and patience, but here's few snaps of it I took:

After that I started to make my way towards Hollywood Boulevard where the Hood Tour was starting at 1pm, as I walked I encounters many homeless people and 'crazies' as they seem to call people running around shouting and doing weird things thanks to American health system being disfunctional and only concerned with money. Division between rich and poor runs deep in this country.

Many Hollywood stars accompanied me while I was walking towards my destination:

So I decided to take LA Hood Tour over countless "Celebrity Houses Tours" as I don't care all that much where and how celebrities live, they all got 'dough' so it's probably some impressive households. I would never have chance to visit Compton's Hood though, for once it wouldn't be very safe for a white guy like myself aimlessly wandering the streets of Compton, and secondly some of those locations are not easy to find and reach.

In comes our LA Hood Tour guide Big Mike, he used to live in projects for 11 years, where he experienced a person being shot and killed when he was 7, he moved to Compton as a child and was living next door to Dr Dre and Easy E, he was a friend's and briefly a bouncer of Tupac Shakur. He knows the Hood like his own pocket, so we went crossing around in a white inconspicuous van around it for over 3 hours. Mike showed us all the gangster spots and explained colour codes (red for Bloods, blue for Crips) and their territories how the two divide and overlap, we visited two of the Projects (there's five in LA), also places where Michael Jackson, Jay Z, Kendrick Lamar lived and went to church and school, he showed us the hubs of black community art and entertainment, we also went to the shooting locations of movies like "Training Ground", "White Man Can't Jump" or "Boys in the Hood". Last stop being the Watts Towers, a construction build by a single Italian guy over 32 years which now became a cultural symbol of the neighborhood. Absolutely amazing and eye opening tour, I recommend it to anyone willing to familiarise yourself with black culture of LA.

Mike and myself with Watts Towers in the background:
Man and the van:
Boyz in the Hood shooting location:
Watts Towers:
the Projects:

Overall a great day, but I'm starting to worry slightly about my budget. America with its tax on top of payments, tipping culture and not so cheap to start with services and items seems to be way more expensive than UK. So I will have to monitor my spendings closely from now on.

Tomorrow will be my last day in LA, I don't know yet what I will be doing, but perhaps a museum of some sorts would be good.

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