Coming from Texas you hear all sorts of shit about LA and California in general. I tend to be more left leaning so took it with a grain of salt but ya never know.

Well finally got a chance to go out there and must say, it was very nice! Either I just had a very good experience or people are straight talking out their ass. But granted I was only there Friday through Monday so not a huge time frame.

1) The homeless problem doesn't seem quite that bad? No worse than Dallas in the downtown area. Granted I did briefly drive through Skid Row and that place did look like a hellscape, but the rest of the city seemed no worse than Denver, Dallas, Houston, Chicago, or any other large city I've been to. They all have their own set of problems (especially Denver).

2) The Griffith Observatory and the view was immaculate. Holy crap, that place was awesome. I'd love to catch a sunset up there some day.

3) The Huntington! What can I say but holy shit! What an awesome place. Didn't get to see the whole thing (damn invasive snails!) but got to see the corpse flower which should be blooming any day now I reckon. The Asian gardens were chef's kiss

4) Downtown: not bad! Was told to avoid it completely and had considered doing so but went on the suggestion of some people here and was glad I did.

• Got to see and ride the Angel's Flight which I honestly didn't know was real, had only seen it in the new Perry Mason show. Then caught a random concert at the top there where there's an amphitheater.
• Went to the Broad. Did not have time to go to the Contemporary Art Musteum across the way unfortunately but next time.
  
• Checked out The Last Bookstore which was neat.
  
• Went to the Grand Central Market which was hella awesome. Wish we had somewhere like that here. Then across the street the Bradbury is simply stunning.
  
• Didn't really feel unsafe just walking around and going about the place.
  

5) The Queen Mary was awesome. We'll probably stay there next time. Did the tour but no ghosts were seen. Who knew.

6) Natural History Museum was so great, especially the Pavilion area. The Science Museum next door was ehhh. Bit of a let down, really. Seemed more geared towards kids but did get to see Endeavor and am very interested to see the finished display when they right it with the SRBs and fuel tank. The aviation museum they have in the works seems really cool too AND the Blackbird just casually sitting there right in front was dope!

7) Phillipe the Original was cool from a historical standpoint. The actual product was kinda mid though. But plenty of free parking so that was nice.

Think that's about it as to what I got to do. Not much really, just didn't have a whole lot of time. Missed out on a handful of stops like Little Tokyo, Koreatown, driving Sunset Blvd. to the ocean like recommended. Didn't see any of Hollywood (was just going to drive through it anyhow). Didn't get to see The Getty nor the Villa, just didn't have time. No whale watching.

Cons:

1) Did not see near as many 'this product is known to the state of California' warnings as I was promised.

2) Y'alls traffic is truly insane. The drivers are pretty good on an individual level but seriously why does it take 2 hours to drive from downtown to Anaheim in the evening? Stop and go traffic the entire way and then when it finally clears up, there's nothing there to have caused the problem! I guess it got cleared up hours ago. Dallas drivers are much more aggressive but at least our traffic jams tend to only delay for 30 minutes or so.

• Speaking of traffic: do people truly never hop those double white and black lines into the HOV lane? I didn't once see it done, even in heavy traffic. Here in Dallas people literally just run over barricades to get into the HOV lane at the slightest slow downs.

3) Got hurridrizzled out of Disneyland so we'll be going back in December sometime for that so I'll have to hit up the rest of the list then and add to it in the mean time.

And man that weather, beyond the one day of hurricane/tropical storm fallout, was immaculate. Such a reprieve from the 110 degree heat.