“… Take it easy, take it easy, don’t let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy”
In a twang of steel-string reverb, floats the effortless harmonies of The Eagles, ‘Take it Easy’. A song that could be nothing else but American. A tune drenched in American enthusiasm, open landscapes and care-free West Coast lifestyles. The core soundtrack for a classic American road trip.
It’s all too much.
It’s too cliched yet authentic, too commonplace yet a quintessential truism. Here I am on the outskirts of LA sitting in a bright red Mustang. It’s a sexy, unapologetically red muscle car, upsold to me by the attractive saleswoman at the Hertz desk. That’s right, I fell for the oldest trick in the book as she turned to me, smiled and said;
“Do you want the car you’ve booked, or do you want something a little more fun…”
Really?!? I’ve spent a good half hour in scattered, jet-lagged confusion and shock, just wondering how she could be so brazen! You see, we circled the shiny Mustang in the parking lot together as she inspected it for damage, glancing up from her clipboard to tell me that she’s not worried about any dents as long as it’s
‘…nothing bigger than a nipple’.
I couldn’t believe it!
But… in hindsight, I realised what she was actually saying is the classic American expression “nothing bigger than a nickel”. That’s right folks, she hacked my primitive brain, whispered to my Freudian subconscious, and caused me to interpret an old Freudian slip… I’m just glad I didn’t ask for a point of reference.
With all that behind me, I pull out onto the highway and it’s bloody scary. I’m jet-lagged and disorientated and driving on what’s the wrong side of the road for us Aussies.
You see, I’ve travelled through the day, night, and day again as our Qantas jet left the Australian coast and rumbled endlessly eastward. A 14-hour straight, disorientating line across the hazy blue Pacific Ocean. Time and space warped as we chased the sun through elongated sunrises, racing the spin of the earth across God knows how many time zones. I lived two Saturdays one after the other but, I’ll repay the debt on my return trip for a Sunday I’ll never see.
Coming from the land down under, nothing’s close. The Australian continent stretches and bloats across the Asia Pacific and most international flights take about 6 hours before you’re finally over international waters. Yet, some places feel really far.
Places like America.
So here I am. I coast through a carousel of iconic Californian scenes, pulling over on street corners to push my camera lens out the Mustang’s deep-tinted window to capture landscapes that are so foreign, yet familiar. It’s surreal. Characters move through cliched tableaus of classic LA scenes. Scenes I’ve viewed so often in movies and TV. Now here it is in real life. The whole city is just as I expected… as authentic as I could’ve hoped for.
I travel through gritty, graffitied blocks with faded signs and fossils of Art Deco architecture, then cruise along wide beach fronts with coarse white sand below long wooden jetties that stretch out into the deep Pacific. Massive piers hold giggling kids, strolling families, fairgrounds and buskers, all suspended above the rolling waves that slap and clack around the barnacle-encrusted boardwalk stilts.
After snapping a selfie at the classic American road trip ‘Route 66 End of the Trail’ sign, I head towards Beverly Hills. Suddenly, I’m pushing the Mustang down pristine streets, with manicured kerbsides outside high walls and perfect hedges hiding exuberant mansions. Slender palm trees on either side bend inward against the blue sky, creating a magical scene.
But now, it’s getting late and today there’s one more place I want to see…
Hollywood.
I park the car to explore on foot. I want to walk the same streets as iconic stars… I want to put my hands in the concrete moulds outside Chinaman’s Theatre and feel the asphalt on the corner of Hollywood and Vine.
Yet, I realise that Hollywood is very different from what I expected.
Different yet, even better.
I expected glossy, beaming streets, bustling with expensive restaurants that surge with celebrities… Yet Hollywood is actually gritty… even dirty and sometimes, downright seedy. It oozes a complexity of fame, fortune and tragedy. Golden stars line the pavement amongst the dark, dive bars where washed-up ‘have-beens’ drown their sorrows.
Museums and tour busses interweave the landscape with PAs blaring stories of scandals, suicide and overdoses to fascinated tour groups. The real-life narratives of this landscape are just as complex and dramatic as the movies made here. It’s an eclectic, fascinating blend of old and new… a melancholic atmosphere of a heyday that once was, still hanging in the air.
I end the day by doing what I always do… sitting in a bar, drinking an oversize American cocktail and eating a Nachos big enough to feed a family of 8. Unlike Australia, strangers talk to each other in the states and, well, my Australian accent probably doesn’t hurt to strike up a conversation (neither does the booze)! I chat and meet several other bar dwellers as we watch ‘the game’ on one of many big screens and I try my best to get through what I’ve ordered.
I’ll have a quiet one tonight. The real American road trip starts tomorrow and I can already feel the Sonoran desert calling me with its endless cacti-ridden plains, straight highways and dusty towns… For now, I’ll Take it Easy.