The Hometown of Blink 182 (aka San Diego)

And I am back again! If you were curious the Paramore concert was amazing, and Brendn Urie ended up sitting right in front of me for the whole show, which was crazy to say the least! But this week I decided to head back home to San Diego, mainly because I missed my dog, but as because as much as I used to say I hated it, San Diego is a really cool city. Since I was born and raised here, I know a lot of the good spots to eat, the good beaches, how to avoid traffic and more, so I will share some of those tips with you today. First I do want to share a picture of my dog because even though I just saw her, I miss her and she is adorable and I love her more than almost anything.

 

Here she is!

 

Yes I put one of my Mom’s hats on her, and yes I was holding a treat behind the camera

 

For those of you that don’t come from the Southern California area, you may not know that the drive from Los Angeles down to San Diego can take anywhere from an hour and 45 minutes to five hours. If you are planning on making the drive and don’t want to deal with traffic, leaving earlier is always better! I have done the drive countless times and the only times I have been stuck in insane traffic have been when I didn’t leave early in the morning or late at night. Also if you take the 5 the entire way you get to drive right past disneyland! For this trip back home, I left after I got off of work so I didn’t hit any traffic at all which was nice, and I even got a picture of the sunset!

It looked much better in person but I tried to get a good picture.

Here is Camp Penalton, the biggest Marine Base in the US, sometimes when you drive by you can see them practicing military techniques!

 

 

Ok so if you didn’t know San Diego has amazing beaches! Much much better than the beaches that Los Angeles has. If you want a more secluded beach, with overall less people, I would recommend heading over to Windansea beach in La Jolla. I usually go right around sunset because that’s when you get these amazing views! But if you do want to have a day at the beach, be sure to check the tides first because the waves almost completely cover the beach at some times. Also if you are interested in surfing this is definitely the beach to go to! There are lots of rocks in the water, so it is not the best for swimming, but there are a few that are perfectly placed for jumping into the ocean during high tide.

Windansea is beautiful but just not the best for traditional beach going

Here is a view of La Jolla from above

Another attempted sunset picture from Windansea

 

If you prefer a more traditional beach and are ok with having a lot more people all around you, I would head to La Jolla Shores or to Del Mar Beach. As a kid, I would go to the Shores more often but that’s because I lived only a 5 minute drive away so it was much easier to get too. Just a warning, if you do plan to go to either of these beaches be aware that parking is an absolute nightmare, especially during the summer! A fun fact about Del Mar is that when I was younger I used to call it ‘sand crab’ because because there are hundreds, if not thousands, of sand crabs that you would uncover when digging through the sand. Both beaches are more traditional and are much better options for swimming and playing in the ocean. A bonus for the Shores is that there are tide pools that are easily accessible to everyone if that’s something you are interested in.

Much more free beach area and smaller waves make La Jolla better if you want to spend long days laying out on the sand

Moving onto food, San Diego is the place to go for Mexican food. I have been absolutely spoiled with how much amazing Mexican food I have been able to eat growing up, and I didn’t truly appreciate it until I was in Boston and away from all of it. You can’t really go wrong with the Mexican place you choose, as a note the more rundown the place looks usually (but not always) means more authentic food. Two of my favorite places are Sombreros Mexican and Rigobertos. If the name Sombreros seems familiar, it is referenced in a Blink 182 song (the song title is ‘Josie’ if you wanted to listen)! Both places are extremely popular, so there may be a line or a bit of a wait when you go. Rigoberto’s is actually open 24/7 so you can get a California burrito whenever you crave one. A quirky fact is that in La Jolla there are actually two Rigoberto’s and as crazy as it is – it only take about four minutes to walk from one to the other!

The menu board at Rigoberto’s…there is always something new to try!

In addition to food and beaches, San Diego is well known for its tourist attractions, especially that of the San Diego Zoo, Sea World, the Wild Animal Park, and Balboa Park. Since I was lucky enough to grow up in San Diego, I used to spend a lot of time at each of these places. So here are some insider tips about each…at the Zoo there are lesser known pathways that you can take as a shortcut to get to exhibits quicker, they are all labeled on the map and it’s a good way to get from one place to the other while avoiding the crowds, also if you want to take some nice aerial shots make time for a tram ride while visiting. For Seaworld, there are opportunities for you to feed both the dolphins and the sea lions, for about $5 you get some fish that you are allowed to feed the animals with, this is a cool experience for anyone, just watch out for the dolphins because they love to splash. If you want to see the cheetahs at the Wild Animal Park, you have to go really really early, I have only seen them twice, and both times were right after the park opened. For some reason they don’t like coming out during the day, so if you really want to see them be sure to get there early. Balboa Park is one of my favorite places to visit, there are lots of museums that on certain Tuesdays of the month are free to San Diego residents. But my favorite part is the international cottages, just past the Air and Space museum, there are about 15 small cottages that are modeled after different countries. They are only open on Sundays and they offer traditional food from each country for a small donation (Poland and Israel are my favorites to visit). In addition there are certain Sundays where a country might be featured and they will play traditional music and have more food options for you to chose from. This is something that not a lot of people know about but is a really cool experience!

This is the face the Sea Lion made after I threw him a fish…

 

 

That is all for this week, if you want to know more about San Diego or really anything, feel free to leave a comment below!

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Amoeba Records

Hello again! Another week has past, which means I am writing about what I have gotten up to recently. I did go to two more concerts (pvris and atlas genius) if you were wondering, but I feel that I have been talking too much about shows I go to, so this week I am changing it up and I am going to talk about my favorite record store in the entire world…Amoeba Records! Amoeba Records has a few locations, but I am going to focus on the Hollywood one for this post. If you have never been to Amoeba or any record store for that matter, I highly recommend a visit here if you are ever in town. The location in Hollywood is essentially an enormous two story building filled to the brim with records, CDs, DVDs, shirts, and anything else you could imagine. A really cool thing about Amoeba is that they put some of their inventory online, with free shipping to anywhere in the US, so if you can’t come into the store, you can still get the records for the same price! The store itself is an experience that you really can not miss, I could honestly spend hours upon hours just looking through all of the records that they have. And the fun part is that, it’s not always the same records that are out, the staff at Amoeba are really good at putting new records out and swapping up the content so there is always something new to discover! It is hard to describe just how big Amoeba is, but I did take a few pictures to try to show you guys (just a warning, the lighting inside isn’t great and I am a very amateur photographer so please be kind). Whenever I have friends that come into town to visit, no matter how short the visit, I always take time out to show them around Amoeba. It is one of those places that you just need to see in person, because words and pictures just can’t do it justice. I have visited Amoeba Records many times since relocating to Los Angeles, and I even made a few trips up here when I lived in San Diego as well! My most recent visit was this past Saturday, and I couldn’t stop myself from buying a few more records to add to my collection. Let me tell you, it is hard living so close to Amoeba, because everytime I get my paycheck I want to immediately go and spend it all on vinyl! Anyways that’s it for this week (I have a Paramore concert that I need to get too) enjoy some pictures below! Don’t forget to leave a like or a comment!


Here are the records I got: Tom Waits, Buddy Holly, and Elvis Costello

A look at the outside of the building!

I did mention that the lighting was bad..but all of these are records!




Its seriously amazing here




Even the hallway to get to the parking garage is decorated with posters and stickers from different bands!

 

Fall Out Boy, Fall Out Boy, and even more Fall Out Boy

If anyone was wondering just how ‘ride or die’ I am for Fall Out Boy, I flew to Chicago to see them, got in line at 4am for balcony seats, then saw them again at Jimmy Kimmel and got in line at 5am for a six song set after getting in from Chicago just the night before. Anyways, if you didn’t know Fall Out Boy was my favorite band, you definitely do now. But yes this weekend I got to explore a bit of Chicago and see my favorite band play a small hometown show. To make this easier I am going to split this up by days:

FRIDAY:

I took a 6am flight from LAX to O’Hare (if any of you get the reference please leave a comment because we need to be friends) and landed in Chicago around noon. This was the first time that I was traveling completely alone for a whole weekend in a city I had never been in, so I was extremely excited to get out of the airport and into the city. I started out by going straight to Wrigley Field, unknowingly just as a Cubs game was about to start. It was really cool to see all of the fans all around the stadium, but sadly I did not have time to stay and watch a whole game. From Wrigley I walked to Pick Me Up Cafe, which is the best restaurant I have ever been to in my life! For those who are not crazy Fall Out Boy fans, Pick Me Up Cafe has some importance to the band. It’s where they took the picture for the cover of their first album! Funny story is that the waiter asked why I was in Chicago and I told him I was in town for the Fall Out Boy show and he pointed out which booth it was where the picture was taken. He even took a picture of me sitting there! While I was eating I also got to meet up with some friends I have who were also going to the show. Since the staff knew we were all Fall Out Boy fans, they played their acoustic album from the house speakers just for us! After eating an enormous plate of eggs benedict (which they serve all day and all night) I headed out to go on a quick shopping trip. The best stop was Belmont Army which started as a military supply store and expanded into a 5 story store with different stores on each of the levels. The most interesting level was the vintage floor, which was basically a huge thrift store with extremely low prices! Luckily I was able to hold off on buying too many things. After this shopping trip I headed over to Millennium Park to do some sightseeing. I happened to end up there right before sunset so the lighting was amazing for a lot of the pictures I took! After this I had one last stop at Reckless Records, where it was sooooo hard not to spend all of the money I had on records! Here are some pictures below:

The famous Wrigley Field!

Of course I took a picture of the sign!

 

 

 

Here is a side by side comparison of what the booth looks like now vs the album cover (fun fact: the girl on the album cover is now the owner of the restaurant!)

 

I had to go to the bean…

and take one of those awkward selfies too!

Chicago is now one of my favorite cities in the world now

 

SATURDAY:

So this was the day of the show! The whole reason of why I went to Chicago! The way tickets were sold for the show, you had to sign up for ticketmaster verified fan and if you got a code, then you got a chance to get tickets. So I did not end up getting tickets but my friend was able to snag a pair of balcony tickets right before they sold out and offered me the second ticket! The show was at the Chicago House of Blues, and how the venue works is that in the balcony if you are more than 2 or 3 rows back, you can’t actually see anything. Because of this, my friends and I decided to get in line super early just to make sure we were in the front and had a good view, meaning we were in line, coffees in hand, at 4:30am. Waiting in line for 15 hours wasn’t actually as bad as it could have been. All of the people in line around me were extremely nice so we all got to know each other really well! And now I have some friends who offered to show me around Chicago the next time I am in town! Now onto the show…so magically somehow in the confusion of being the first few people being let into the venue, my friend Farah and I accidentally got lead up the stairs that lead to the pit and not the stairs that lead to the balcony. This means that Farah and I were able to both get really good spots at barricade as close to the stage as you can get! There was no opener for this show, as it was supposed to be a record release show, but the band decided to postpone the album until January so that they could get better quality songs written and recorded. After waiting inside for an hour and a half, it was time for Fall Out Boy! Their set was absolutely amazing and it was definitely the best show I have ever been to! They debuted a new song called ‘The LAst of the Real Ones’ (which I do recommend you listen to) and they also played a song called “Chicago is so Two Years Ago’ which they almost never play live unless they are in Chicago! That song also happens to be my favorite off of their second album so it was amazing to get the opportunity to hear it live! In addition to being able to sing along to a lot of my favorite Fall Out Boy songs, I also caught a guitar pick! The whole band seemed really excited and happy to be playing the show, and even though there were a few forgotten lyrics, they seemed to have a great time!

The venue had this sign up when we arrived…we ignored it

A shot of the outside of the venue (this was taken around 6am if you were curious)

This is Pete who is the bassist and frontman for Fall Out Boy

 

 

Here is Patrick the lead singer!

 

 

See if you can spot me! Hint: I am just to the left of Pete’s head, who is the band member furthest to the left

 

 

I’m going to skip Sunday because all that happened was I flew back to LA and then had to work at night.

 

MONDAY:

On Monday, Fall Out Boy played a short set for Jimmy Kimmel, including a TV debut of the song they had just played before in Chicago! Since Fall Out Boy is the best thing to ever happen to my life, I decided to get in line early again, just to be sure I was going to be as close to the stage as possible. After a 12 hour wait, the show finally started! Again, I was able to meet some really nice people in line, so the wait wasn’t that bad at all! For the first two songs the band played, we were not allowed to have our phones out, because they were filming the performance and did not want the cell phones to distract. But for the other 4 songs, we could record anything we wanted to, so I was able to snag a few really cool pictures (thank you for TV lighting) Luckily enough I was able to catch another guitar pick at this performance as well! After the mini concert was over, I was so tired from all of the weekend’s activities that I went straight to my apartment and slept for 12 hours straight (with a brief interruption from a 3.1 magnitude earthquake). That’s it for this post so until next week enjoy even more pictures of Fall Out Boy below!

 

TV performances lead to great lighting which leads to great pictures!

 

 

 

Here is Pete, giving one of his inspirational speeches

 

 

Patrick is doing his thing, while I finally got a good picture of Joe and even Andy behind the drums!

 

 

Week 2 – an intro and a comedy show

Hello again! I now realize that I got a little too excited to write about the concerts I went to that I completely forgot to talk about my co-op and how I got it. So this week I am going to give a bit of information on what a normal day is like for me at Brave New Films, but also still talk about a comedy show I went to! So at Brave New Films, I am a research and outreach intern, which means I work more on pushing the films out to people so that they can watch them. Brave New Films is a social justice documentary filmmaking non-profit, and all of our films are available for free to stream from our website (so feel free to check any of them out) In a normal day, I usually check to see if anyone has registered to screen one of our films, if they have I will enter them into the system and send them a dvd copy of the film with a discussion guide and other materials relating to the topic of the film. Brave New Films covers a range of social justice topics from bail reform to gun violence to Walmart, so there is a lot of variety in the films people register for. After that I might have different tasks assigned to work on. Right now I am helping to build the educator’s guide for a new series we have coming out about immigration. This means that I am helping to build a timeline, background information, discussion questions, and further reading that will go into the guide for the film’s release. Other weeks I have work to do based more on outreach, meaning I will look for new organizations or schools that may be interested in watching our films and reach out to them to let them know it is completely free to do so. I really enjoy my work so far, and the office environment is very relaxed and fun to be in. The office is a converted motel, so every department has its own separate motel room, and then there is a large courtyard area where lots of people eat their lunch when its not too hot out. Another cool fact is that the office is literally right across the street from the Sony Picture Studios, which hopefully I will have an opportunity to take a tour of soon!

Here is a view right outside of the office I work in

 

Lots of plants!

 

The chairs are more comfortable than they look I swear!

 

 

Ok one last picture of the courtyard

 

Now I couldn’t just talk about my co-op this week, so I have also decided to detail my experiences going to my first ever comedy show! Now I will preface this by saying I only went because I heard Pete Wentz was going to be there, but I had so much fun that I definitely want to go again! If you don’t know Pete is the bassist for Fall Out Boy, which is my favorite band and you will hear more about them in my post for next week. The show was a script reading of the 1989 film The ‘Burbs, which starred Tom Hanks and Carrie Fisher (if you haven’t ever seen it, I highly recommend watching!) The reading was held at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in Hollywood and had a celebrity cast, including Cory Danziger who reprised his role as Dave Peterson, the Peterson’s 11 year old child. Pete Wentz read the part of Ricky originally played by Corey Feldman and he did a really great job with it. The entire cast was hilarious and even though I wasn’t really sure I would enjoy a read through of a script like that, the people who were there made it more fun than just watching the movie! I will also attach some pictures below! Leave a like or a comment if you have any ideas of things I should see/do while I’m in Los Angeles! See you guys next week!

Pete Wentz is the third from the right

 

A picture of the rest of the cast

 

The theatre is in a really nice area in Hollywood, so if you are ever in town I definitely recommend checking it out! There is even a used record/book store right next door with really good prices!

 

My First Post – Oh Yeah! An Adventure with Sleeping with Sirens!

Oh yeah? Hi everyone! So for my first blog post I am going to take you on an adventure that I had this past weekend. One thing you need to know about me is that I love concerts…like seriously love concerts. Live music is something that gives me so much joy and I have made some of the best friends I have from going to shows. This past weekend I went to a total of three sleeping with sirens concerts! If you haven’t heard of the band I highly recommend them, and they have an album coming out September 22nd if you are interested.

To give a little background, I have seen Sleeping with Sirens three times before this weekend, and at the show in Boston last year I met Sofie, who flew all the way from Belgium to go to the show! We kept in close contact after that (she even sent me some Belgian chocolate!) and it ended up working out that she could fly to California for these shows. But ok enough of the background…onto the shows!

(here is a picture of Sofie and me at the Boston show last year!)

The first show was at the Troubadour in West Hollywood. I had never been to this venue before, but its very small, meaning that the show was very up close and personal with the band. The actual show was absolutely amazing and probably the best show I’ve ever been to, but the waiting outside all day was miserable. For shows I tend to get there early so that I am in the very front, Sofie is the same way so it works out really well. Its just that it was 106 degrees outside and there was no shade that wasn’t fun. To get onto the show, I am honestly still speechless about a lot that happened there, but all I do have to say is that I love this band and the people I was with and they made it one of the best nights of my life. That concert experience might even be the best I will ever have because of the atmosphere and the people I was around who were just as excited as I was, and were even willing to enthusiastically dance around!

(This is not zoomed in at all!! Its crazy how close I was!!)

Ok moving onto Saturday in beautiful San Diego (my hometown). Again it was over 100 degrees outside, but at least there was shade when I was there waiting. Then a crazy thing happened, myself, Sofie, and my friend Mel, decided to go buy onesies from Target and wear them to the show…now if you have never been to a GA show, this is a bad idea, like a really bad one. The pit is just people all packed together trying to get as close to the stage as possible. Long story short, this means it gets hot and since it was 100 degrees outside, it was even warmer inside. Basically the exact weather you do not wear onesies in… But we did it anyways! In the end, none of us passed out and it was totally worth it.

Here is my m&g picture with the band! I asked them if they could do a serious pose.

Still very close to the band!

Here I am after I survived the show with Gabe, the drummer from the band!

Onto the last show, an acoustic set and signing in Long Beach! The big group I was with for the Los Angeles show was reunited once again! We again got there early enough that we were at the front of the line and ended up being front and center for the acoustic show! But the best part of the day was after the show was over when we were sitting around waiting for the signing. The record store started to play the new singles from the speaker system and we all started to dance. This caught the attention of a little boy named Danny with down syndrome who was also at the San Diego show and was a huge fan. He joined in with us dancing around the store to the new songs. You could see the joy on his face and everyone was having so much fun it really shows how important music is to so many people and how it brings us together.

So that was a brief overview of the little adventure I went on this weekend! More pictures below! Let me know what you think and leave a comment or like the post below! See you guys next week!

 

Credit to SaraSaysPhotography for the high quality pictures from the show!

Another great group picture!

Got to include the sign we had!

This was the final ‘Oh Yeah’

I had one of the best days with the group of people and this band and I will forever be grateful