We got tickets a while ago to go see Lewis Black's Running on Empty performance at the San Manuel Casino in Highland,CA. Last night was his performance. We have watched his irreverent style of humor for years on YouTube and when he appears on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Highland is about an hour from where we live and just north of Redlands where our friends live. There doesn't seem to be much up there, its right next to San Bernadino and backed into the mountains. Its seems like it's at the end of the civilization here. But maybe we just didn't go through the nice sections. We took the back way through Redlands and once we crossed the Santa Ana River the scenery seem to disintegrate.
The Santa Ana River, like all rivers out here, do not have any water in them! I think it's wishful thinking calling it a "river". They seem to do that a lot out here, such as Lakeside Avenue with no lake, Lake View Road with no lake to be found, and Beach Street in the middle of a desert! Go figure!
The Santa Ana "River"
The San Manuel Casino was nice, but like all casinos, the main area is a smoking area, and smoke is all you smell!. You come home with your clothes reeking with smoke. Talk about second hand smoke! We signed up for the casino club (it's free) and they put $20 on your club card to gamble with. Elly and I tried the slot machines and won $47, just enough for dinner and we cashed out. We had a nice dinner before the show, the food was great.
Stock photo for the San Manuel Casino
At 7:30 we moved to the Auditorium to wait for the show. John Bowman was the opening act, he was real funny, and he introduced Lewis Black. Here are a few videos of the "Running on Empty" routine. Someone else posted them from his Carbondale, IL performance. What we saw was basically this routine.
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
Part 4:
It was very funny, but we like his humor anyway. The performance lasted a little over an hour, then we gambled the reaming $6.20 left on Elly's card before we left for home. A very enjoyable day.
On Saturday we trekked up to Riverside to visit with Joyce and take her to the Festival of Trees and the Festival of Lights. Both were happening at the same time and only a block away from each other. But first Joyce wanted to take us to the Patio Store which always turns into a Christmas Store around the holidays.
The Patio Store had about 25 fully decorated Christmas trees, each with a different theme. The trees were packed with hundreds of ornaments and they were beautiful. Some of the undecorated trees sell for over $400!
The trees at the Patio Store
Elly & Joyce at the Patio Store
After viewing all the trees and shopping for ornaments we headed over to the Festival of Trees after stopping for lunch. The Festival of Trees was held in the Riverside Municipal Audition which look like a church at first glance. Here is a Google Street view of the auditorium.
Riverside Auditorium where the Festival of Trees was held
The streets around the auditorium & the Mission Inn were really
crowded. It was next to impossible to find a place to park! I let Elly & Joyce off in front and parked just around the corner, I got lucky!
There were about 10 trees set up in the auditorium with amateur singers performing on stage when we arrived. It was family day! The rest of the trees were downstairs, probably about 40 more. To say the least, I was less than impressed, I thought the trees at the the Patio Store were much better!
I liked this Wizard of Oz Tree
After we viewed all the tree, we walked next door to the Mission Inn. It was more crowded than the tree festival. The sidewalks were packed with people and there was a line to get into the Inn itself, but the lights were spectacular! The entire Inn was decked out in thousands of lights!
The Mission Inn lit up.
Small video of the festival of lights at the Inn.
The area just outside the Inn is a open air shopping plaza that was packed with people shopping and just enjoying the evening. It was difficult to get good pictures due to the crowds, the poor lighting and my cheap camera. We will be going back during the week when it is less crowded and we will be able to see more of the Inn. I will try to take better pictures then.
The crowds in the shopping plaza
One of the cutest sights were the "Cinderella Carriage" rides. They were horse drawn carriages decorated in Christmas lights. It looked like fun, maybe next time we will take one of these!
Cinderella Carriage Ride
Cinderella Carriage
Here is a small video I took of the carriages.
After a full night of revelry and merry making we left for home. Hope to come back soon when it's less crowded.
The weather doesn't change much out here. In our minds it feels like late September, cool nights, dry and in the 70's or 80's during the day. But is almost Thanksgiving!. Halloween was a big holiday in California, you can read my earlier blog entries. Thanksgiving doesn't appear too big, but Christmas looks like it will be huge!. The decorations in the stores started showing up in August, read my earlier post from August on this also. There are signs on all the lamp posts for companies that will string you Christmas lights. Up in Riverside, they are having two events this weekend that we are planning on attending with Elly's cousins: "The Festival of Trees" is held the weekend after Thanksgiving and the Mission Inn's "Festival of Lights." The dates overlap so we plan on hitting both this weekend!
Advertisement for the Festival of Trees
2011 Festival of Trees Gala
The Mission Inn sponsors the Festival of Lights every year. You can read more about it here at the Mission Inn website.
Mission Inn's advertisement photo for "Festival of Lights"
The Mission Inn decorated in lights
Another ad photo for the "Festival of Lights"
Also around Christmas, Newport Beach holds their Boat Parade where boats and yachts decked out in lights, tour the inner harbor for spectators. You can read more about it on their website here.
Last Years Boat Parade
Another from Last Year
We are trying to fit this into our schedule around Christmas time. I am not sure we will be longing for the Christmas snow & cold. Warm Christmas looks like fun!
Headed south yesterday for an estate sale in Pacific Beach, just north of San Diego. We got there about 15 minutes before the start and were #39 on the sign up sheet. It was a nice one story house house up a a hill with a very nice view.
Panorama view of Pacific Beach for the estate sale
We had to wait to get in, we were the 2nd wave of people let inside. There seems to be a lot of houses decorated in the Oriental motif here in California. Not really our cup of tea. There were a lot of hats or bonnets made by the lady who owned the house, there were nice but a little pricey. We bought a few purses, some jewelry and a few books. It wasn't that great of a sale but it was a nice trip.
After the sale, we decided to take the long way home through La Jolla, one of the home towns of Mitt Romney and very exclusive! But first we had to drive through Pacific Beach. It was a gorgeous day, high 70's low 80's even by the shore, but the beaches were empty.
Sail Bay in Pacific Beach
Lonely Catamarans in Sail Bay
The drive up through La Jolla was nice, we stopped at a few points to see the ocean views.
Homes in La Jolla overlooking the Ocean
Arrow points to where we took the picture from. Nice houses!
We stopped in downtown La Jolla to possibly get something to eat. After checking out a few menus at the restaurants we changed our minds. Even the lunch menus were expensive, people in this town have a lot of money!
After La Jolla, we drove through Rancho Santa Fe to stop at another estate sale hoping it would be in one of the exclusive estates located there. You can read more about this town here. The estate sale was in one of the smaller condos and had nothing for us to buy, but we just love driving through that town anyway.
Not a very profitable day for us, but it was fun anyway. Today, I think we are staying home and to begin packing up our belongings and planning for our trip back home.
Yesterday we drove up to the Rose Bowl for the Flea market that is held on the 2nd Sunday of each month. We went there last October, you can see our earlier post about the Rose Bowl here. This time we were smarter and parked right outside the main gate in the free parking area. This saved a lot of walking from where we parked last time. We were right next to the $20 parking area and it was free!
It was perfect a perfect fall day here in California, great for a visiting flea markets. It was in the 70's, a little cool, but the sun was shining bright. All the "natives" were in their fall attire with an abundance of Uggs boots. They wear boots for fashion, not function like we have to in New England.
It was really interesting as we saw a few of the guys that we have stood in line with at the estate sales managing their booth at this flea market. I think they also do Costa Mesa & Long Beach. Two more flea markets we need to visit before we have to leave. I didn't bring my camera, so I have no more picture of the flea market to share. After we couldn't walk any more, our legs were so tired, we continued our days adventure by driving over to Monrovia. It is only two towns away from Pasadena, and Elly had planned to check the town out and have dinner there.
On our way, we took the back roads, we came upon three different open houses. We stopped to tour the houses. All of these houses were in quaint neighborhoods. The pictures look much better than the houses did in person. We just saw the signs and decided to stop not knowing the real estate values in this area. The first house we saw was a nice wooden bungalow. We figure it would be about $600,00.
View from the Street. Your for $950,000
Backyard with pool.
We thought WOW! Prices are lot higher here than in Murrieta. For that kind of money, you can get a large estate in Murrieta! The next two were stucco houses. They were both very nice, but since there were built in the 20's, the bedrooms and bathrooms were small. Neither had an 'en-suite' master bath.
This one was really cute. It had three rooftop patios and was recently renovated. It also had what they called a "wine cellar". It just looked like a basement with a shelf with wine bottles to me. It is listed at $1,099,950.
Yours for only $1,099,950.
It had a very nice size backyard with a nice pool.
The last one we saw was also a stucco, built in the 20's and recently renovated by the owner. It has a nice garage and workshop in the back, but no backyard to speak of. It was well done and had jacuzzi & bar upstairs off the master bedroom. It also had a dining patio on the second floor. You can see it in the front of the houe in the picture below. But the rooms were small and has only 1 bath upstairs. It listed for $950,000.
The dining patio upstairs is in the front of the house
Dining room with very nice painted ceiling.
We overhead the agent talking to some prospective buyers saying that there only a few houses for sale "north of Foothills". After looking at the map, we realized the the area north of Foothills Blvd (one of the main street in Monrovia) which backs into the mountains, is the most desirable area in Monrovia. That is why the prices are so high, plus it's not too far from Pasadena and Los Angeles.
After we had seen enough overpriced houses, we headed to "Old Town Monrovia". Downtown Monrovia is very quaint. They still have a movie theater downtown. On late Sunday afternoon, there was hardly a place to park! People were walking up & down the street, patronizing the local pubs and eateries, and going to the movies. We walked around the town, even though we had walked enough already and took advantage of the benches placed all around the town. I even got to chat with Mark Twain in front of the Monrovia Library!
While we waited for the restaurant to open, I chatted with Mark Twain
The fountain on the City green in front of the library
We decided to eat at the Caffe Opera and waited for it to open at 5:30. We made reservations while we waited using www.opentable.com. using my Xoom table. This is a great way to make reservations at a lot of restaurants nationwide.
This is where we ate dinner
Once we were seated we order drinks and dinner. Elly had the blackened salmon, I had the Coffee bean encrusted Rib-Eye and we shared a salad.
I had the Coffee Bean Encrusted Rib-Eye
Dinner was outstanding, especially after a long day at the Rose Bowl Flea Market. After dinner, we headed home. It took us about an hour to get home. We were thoroughly exhausted after a long day of fun!
Each week we check www.estatesales.net for new estate sales in Riverside County. There appeared to be a great sale that would take place on Friday in Chino starting at 9:00AM. We like the 9:00 start time as it gives us plenty of time to get there and be one of the first 15 in line if we get there by 8:00. If the company running the sales limits the number of people allowed in at one time, getting there an hour early usually assures that we are in the first group let in. But this company said that a "sign-up" sheet would be posted at 7:00. Oh well, we figured getting there by 8:00 would assure that we would be in the first group anyway.
So, we headed out to Chino at 7:00 and there was virtually no traffic at the major highway "pinch" points. We got to the site at 7:45, an hour and 15 minute early. Parking spaces were virtually non-existent on the narrow street and people were walking over 1/4 mile to the entrance. I lucked out and found a space 200 feet from the entrance, the place was mobbed!
I dropped Elly off to go sign up while I parked the car. Elly informed me that we were #90 on the list. So much for getting there early. Everyone just milled around until the proprietors starting making everyone get in line based on their number on the list. They said they were going to let 30 people in at a time. When 1 came out 1 more could go in!
The Linein front of us! Red Arrow points to Elly.
This is the line in back of us!
We were a little disappointed because we expected that all the good stuff would be sold by the time we got to go in. At 9:00, the first 30 in line went in and then we waited, and waited and waited. While we waited we had great conversations with our "line mates." The people win front of us were friends we had meet at two previous sales and we enjoyed conversing with them again.
Then... people started coming out, empty-handed and shaking their heads in disgust. There were saying that the prices were extremely high, higher than retail, one guy paid $25 for a plain wooden box, another paid $100 for a rusted book press. We have a book press back home, in better condition, that we couldn't even sell for $25 on craigslist. Wow!
People in back of us started leaving after they heard the stories, but we figured we had invested so much time & energy so far, we might as well see it through. One of the guys we stood in line with with owns "Joe's Italian Ice" near Disneyland. His heart sank when he saw the book press go buy as he was there only to buy the book press as a Christmas present for his wife.. I told him he could have ours if we could get it out to California, but not before Christmas.
Finally, after about 1 1/2 hours it was our turn to enter the sale.
Elly entering the sales area with her bags.
When we got to the sales area we saw what the others were talking about. The merchandise was fantastic, but hardly anything had been sold because the prices were way too high. They were asking retail or above prices on everything.
Table of antique toys, notice there are no empty spaces. Nothing sold after 3 hours!
Steamer trunks, None sold by noon.
It turns out that the owner of the merchandise was following the workers around during the setup and pricing, and telling them what price to put on things. He loved his stuff way too much!. I felt bad for the estate sale company because they were losing sales and commissions because it seemed like the owner didn't really want to sell anything. Now all the dealers know where the stuff is, will probably contact the owner later to buy the stuff and the company will lose out on their commission.
We found $43 worth of stuff we think we can sell at a profit. If the prices were lower, we could have spent over a couple hundred dollars easily. So sad!
Expensive big stuff!
Elly checking out. Usually estate sales checkout line are long! Notice no line!
The gate as we were leaving. No more line.
In retrospect we could have showed up at 11:00, and all the stuff were waiting in line for would have still been there since nothing was selling. Who knew!
My sister Sue came out to LA for one of her medical conferences. Since LA is only about 1 hour from our condo, we planned to spend Saturday with her after she set up her booth at the conference. As we hadn't even been to LA since we got here in January, this was a good time to visit and explore some of the sights together with her. The ride in was shorter that we thought, no traffic on Saturday morning, and picked Sue up at the LA Convention Center around 11:30. Our immediate plans were to head to the famous Santa Monica Pier. We have seen this pier many times on TV shows like NCIS/LA and on TV newcasts, but never in person.
LA is not on the coast. It is about 10 miles inland from Santa Monica, my GPS took me on the highway and got us there quickly right to the Pier parking lot.
Santa Monica Pier & Parking Lot from afar. Red arrow (lower right) in my car.
The weather was absolutely gorgeous for a day in November, high 70's to low 80's without a chilly sea breeze. People were swimming in the ocean on November!
View from the pier. Beach and people swimming.
We have been on a few piers in California, but this is the first one with an amusement park on it. There was also a Classic Car Show going on at the same time.
Sue & Elly on the Santa Monica Pier
Ferris Wheel & Roller Coaster on the Pier
A old car leaving the Classic Car Show driving on the pier.
The first building on the pier is the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company. This restaurant chain was inspired by the 1994 movie "Forest Gump." I just had to take a tourist picture here!
Sue & Elly at the Bubba Gump Store & Restaurant
This must be Bubba Gump!
All along the pier there were many street performers working for tips & donations. Some of them were pretty good, some were just eccentric. There was a slight-of-hand magician working close-up magic that was excellent, I was standing three feet away and couldn't see how he did any of this tricks. There was also a man with his pet parrots that he would let fly to peoples shoulders and let people pet and hold them. There was also a guy painted in silver, WTF?
For the finale the magician would pull out the white tray and the eggs would fall into the glasses, blindfolded
The parrots perched on the owner's bicycle. They don't fly away and they talk!
Parrot on a little girl's Shoulder
Parrot on baby's lap
The silver guy, Mr Ink!
When we got to the end of the pier, it was time for lunch, so we got a table outside on the patio with an ocean view! We ate at the Mariasol Restaurant on the pier, and despite the not so great reviews that I read afterwards, we all though the food was pretty good!
Refreshments before lunch at Marisol
After the pier, we walked over (about 3 blocks) to the Third Street Promenade. This is a shopping district that is closed to vehicle traffic.
Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica (not my picture)
Both shoppers and street performers were out in force here also. Here is a video I uploaded on one of the street performers doing back flips on one leg.
Here is another of a man balancing & flipping plates.
View of the Promenade as we were leaving.
After we had seen enough and rested on the benches on the walkway, we headed to our car and our next adventure! On the way back to the car, we stopped to watch the merry-go-round in action on the pier.
Merry go round on the Santa Monica Pier
For the next adventure we decided to make a trip to the famous Venice Beach since it was only 5 minutes south of Santa Monica. The GPS got us there without problems and we parked right in the center of all the action on the strip.
If we thought that we saw strange sights and street performers in Santa Monica, the sights in Venice Beach were in another world altogether! There was a skate board park, a roller-blade dancing area ,an endless menagerie of street performers and just very strange people in all sorts of dress and barely-dressed!
Skate Board Park
My video of the skate board park.
Panorama of Venice Beach from the Skate Board Park
My video of roller blade dances performing for everyone's enjoyment.
We continued down the strip enjoying the sights until we came to Muscle Beach It has changed a lot from the pictures that I saw in the '70s. It has a lot of high-tech exercise equipment now.
Muscle Beach in the 1950s
Muscle Beach now
We were now tired from walking so much today and headed back to our car, but not without one more souvenir tourist photo from Venice Beach.
Really?
To get from Venice Beach to Sue's hotel, the GPS took us through some back roads of Beverly Hills and up Rodeo Drive where all the high-end stores are. It was a nice sightseeing tour before we ended up at the Four Season's Hotel where we went in for some drinks and appetizers in the lounge. The place was gorgeous!.
This is the lounge at the Four Seasons where we had drinks and appetizers
After a tour of the room and the hotel, we said our goodbyes and headed home. We had an absolute blast today!
