June 2015
I was staying in Downtown LA for my yearly Southern California pilgrimage to ComicCon. On the second night around 9pm, I got ready for my ritualistic run to the Frank Gehry designed Walt Disney Concert Hall. I try to make this run whenever I’m in town and in the area. Tonight however, I ended up dubbing this the “sprint away from seedy characters” DTLA fun run and then decided never do to this alone at night again.
Just as I was caught my breath after the last couple sprints away from people who tried to stop me, I discovered a beautiful modern white building being built right next door to the concert hall. The exterior design appealed to me and I kept it in mind to look up later, and continued on my way to end up seeing a dance group performing in front of my intended destination.
December 2015
The Broad was still on my mind. I had since looked up the building and since we were in town for New Years I convinced Jen to see if we could go, not to mention that this museum is free. How I love a good “value”. Unfortunately when we got there at 1pm the line was around the block. Curses The Broad! Instead we went over to City Hall and pretended we were politicians at the live mic podium.
February 2016
I’m back in town for a business trip and we wrapped early for the day. Since we didn’t have to be at dinner till 7pm, I decided to try again for The Broad. Oh you illusive white museum, I will have you yet. Chasing this dream was like chasing the end of a rainbow, my Uber driver from the office to The Broad was driving so slow that by the time I got there they had just capped off the line. Foiled! I sulked and caught another Uber driver to our dinner location, while giving the previous driver 2 stars. The one positive out of that experience however was that I had the most profound conversation about relationships with the second Uber driver that made me happy to have missed the museum, but hey, that’s a story for another time. Ended up having dinner with the team at the cutest Italian place including many glasses of wine.
July 2016
Determined to check out The Broad once and for all on the yet again yearly trip to ComicCon. Instead of hanging with friends at Disneyland for an extra day, I planned a solo day in downtown when I’d arrive before their opening hours and wait in line. This was going to finally happen. Booked a hotel about 2 blocks away and set my alarm for 8am for an 11am opening time. Ok so, I ended up slapping my alarm several times and by the time I hauled myself into a the standby line it was nearly 9am. You can get tickets ahead of time, just they run out well in advance. Just as I got in line a lady gets in line behind me with a McDonalds orange juice and I’m wondering, “Hrm. Is there a McDonald’s nearby? I should have done breakfast or something.” She asks me to hold her spot as she tosses her cup into the trash, and that’s how I met and spent the day with Cam.
It was already scorching outside and I was so envious of her baseball cap. Cam was from the east coast and currently in Los Angeles to attend a conference that is part of her side job in fashion Lularoe.
Cam mentioned she loved my Wonder Woman necklace which I got on Amazon Prime day last year for half off, and immediately looked on Amazon on her phone and asked her brother to order it because he had Prime.
While waiting she mentioned the special exhibit, Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored Room, a mirror-lined chamber housing a magical and seemingly infinite LED light display. You only get roughly 30 seconds in the room but the wait in line is an additional wait after getting into the museum. We made our game plan that once we got in we’d immediately put our names on the secondary list then explore the museum.
We get in the museum at 1pm, rush to the line and the Mirrored Room availability won’t be until 5pm. Gah. So then we explore, Cam had been there before but this was my first time so we wandered. During which we got to talking about relationships, lost friendships, and the thing that brought us together The Broad.
The Broad is relatively small so we finished it quickly and then it was a 4 hour wait. Decided to grab lunch at this Thai place that I had found earlier on Yelp, but little did I know that Google Maps in DTLA is RIDICULOUS. The buildings block out the GPS signal so well that we basically took a walking tour of DTLA and nearly died of heat exhaustion. At least we got exercise? During our walk we wandered through hotels, tunnels and I finally learned how to use Snapchat. zOMG force touch does stuff in Snapchat! Who knew? For a week after that I would Snapchat religiously before going back to my normal boring old person lifestyle.
We ended up skipping lunch, and then snacking on vegan ice cream from a food truck parked outside the museum, and both getting red Gatorades at another truck before sitting in the shade and chatting some more.
Then finally after a fun day of chatting and starving, we get in. The timing of the photograph has me stressing. To get the perfect shot in under 30 seconds made me a little anxious. So much so that I forgot to use the focus point on the iPhone and got so much blur and light noise. But here’s the best photo I got.
Finally after three failed attempts to visit The Broad, the timing was perfect to meet a new friend and get to explore a museum together. Thanks Cam, it’s one of those days I remember very fondly from last year.
