We started out by visiting Detox Market, which happened to be across the street on Abbot Kinney, where the car was parked. They sold mostly tea, expensive natural skin care products, and chocolate. The woman who ran it was snooty to us, a rather toxic presence for a place called Detox Market. We found that in general when we went into upscale stores, they acted suspicious of us, like we were going to rob them. It was disconcerting, as both of us usually can pass as bourgeois enough to be carrying credit cards just begging to be filled. But, apparently not on Abbot Kinney.
We then meandered through the residential area to the beach. The beach at sunset was more intense than we'd imagined, filled with street people, skateboarders, and many intoxicated men. There was a gathering of people on a rising of ground, and we kept wondering why they were there, if it were some sort of meeting, an Occupy Venice movement, a party. After we walked in one direction for ages, we turned around and headed back. The people were still there, so we went over to them to see what was happening. Just as we approached, a yellow school bus arrived, and we realized the people were in line, and it seemed they were being bussed to a shelter. This was just a few blocks away from Abbot Kinney, where we were unfit to look at $30 pieces of jewelry. The disparity was shocking. On the boardwalk, Bett and I stopped in at a shop that sold "Native American" stuff. There I took this sweet picture of Love and Hope.
We were hungry and opted for Mao's Kitchen, a popular Chinese restaurant a couple of blocks from the beach, but far enough away from Abbot Kinney to feel human. It was delicious and comfy. Then we wandered back to Abbot Kinney in search of tea and dessert.
Animal kitsch was popular in many window displays. I love this rather scary deer. It looks like it stumbled out of nature into the wrong world, similar to how Bett and I, emerging from the homeless world of the beach, felt upon reentering the stuffy privilege of Abbot Kinney. Here's another set of window deer:
Would this display make you want these magenta clothes? I can't imagine anybody but a cold-hearted person would buy them after seeing them worn by these cold-hearted deer.
This multi-stoned brigade of Buddhas, I took in a mystical bookstore, which was the friendliest store on Abbot Kinney, besides the place that sold marijuana brownies. I'd never seen marijuana brownies sold in a store. You need a medical marijuana card to purchase them. Bett said she knew a woman who purchased a marijuana brownie and it had worms in it. In the back of the mystical bookstore was a very thin woman giving a talk to a small group of people gathered round her in easy chairs. They were listening intently. She apparently was the author of the stack of books beside her, with "Soul" in the title. She was wearing black skinny pants, and a rather complicated, expensive-looking white top. She looked like an aging trophy wife. When I heard her mention William Burroughs and yage, I started listening. Bett and I stood there transfixed, as she launched into a series of stories about taking ayahuasca. During one "trip," she had a vision of this huge challis above her head, and in the chalice were all these people she knew, and the chalice poured them into her crown chakra, and the chalice said to her, "We all are one."
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