Deborah Dickson-Smith time-travels back to the 1950s during a stopover in Los Angeles.
Talk about surreal. Just a few hours after climbing off my afternoon flight into LA, I’m slurping retro cocktails – complete with a jaunty mini-umbrella – in a cosy neighbourhood tiki bar.
The Purple Orchid is in El Segundo, a neighbourhood whose main attraction to international travellers is that it’s a very short shuttle ride south of LAX. My room for the night is at the Hacienda Hotel, also in El Segundo, so whether I like it or not I’m about to become a whole lot more familiar with this lesser known Los Angeles neighbourhood.
Surprisingly, I like it – a lot – especially if the Purple Orchid, which bills itself as an “exotic tiki lounge”, is anything to go by. The bar is resplendent with tikis: glowing neon tikis, towering tikis, Solomon Island and PNG tikis – even the drinks are served in tikis. To add to the feeling that we’ve stepped back in time to 1950s Hawaii, the walls are covered with split bamboo, the lights are made of bamboo and, if we were here on a Monday night, we could order a manicure with a martini on the side.
The next morning, at the suggestion of an LA-based friend, I decide to continue with this unexpected retro theme and head up to Venice Beach in search of vintage clothes and antiques on Abbott Kinney Boulevard.
Three buses later and $20 poorer (thanks to a bit of jetlag idiocy which prompted me to put a $20 note into the bus’s non-change-issuing machine), I arrive at an organic café and settle down with a watery latte and a free holistic new-age magazine while I wait for Venice Beach to wake up.
There are no signs of life here until at least 11am so I relax over an article written by someone called Heidi Harmony Cohen Wolf, who lists her profession as “sacred belly-fusion dancer and animal activist”. Feeling incredibly zen, I wander a few blocks east onto Abbott Kinney Boulevard, which is home to a colourful and eclectic collection of antique shops, second-hand clothes boutiques, art galleries, jewellery shops, cafes and bars. It feels like a cross between Paddington’s Oxford Street and Newtown’s King Street in Sydney. I could easily spend an entire weekend exploring this street and wear out my credit card completely.
Zingara boutique is a highlight, with its vintage clothes, fair-trade imports and, of all things, custom-made clogs. The antique shop, Surfing Cowboys, houses a great collection of retro antiques and funky T-shirts, and claims to “bring the soul of cool into your home”.
Lunch is at a funky little café on the corner of California Avenue called Abbot’s Habit, where I hoe into a pastrami sandwich the size of a small cow before heading back to LAX wishing I’d brought a bigger suitcase. Or two.
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