Tag: Los Angeles

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California

I’m Moving to Los Angeles

So I left New York. Again. Except this time it will be a bit more permanent.

When I went back to the city in June I only intended on sticking around for a few weeks—long enough to earn enough cash to get me to LA. Thanks to a consistent flow of freelance work and some incredibly hospitable friends, I ended up staying until November and living out of a backpack while I figured things out.

Now, five months later, I’m excited to say that I’ve accepted a full time job offer in Los Angeles and I’m finally moving to California! I’m still amazed at how perfectly this all worked out, but I’m a firm believer that everything happens for a reason, and when you follow your gut and make decisions in line with your ultimate goal, you’ll get to where you’re supposed to be eventually.

Olivia LA

A brief backstory about my journey to LA:
During the summer of 2014 when I was trying to decide whether or not I should stay in advertising or take a break and travel South America, I actually interviewed for this same company. I knew they had an LA office so I pursued it in hopes that I could eventually transfer. But I didn’t get the job, so I took that as a sign to follow my gut and pursue my South American adventure. Best decision ever.

Fast forward to this past summer, a year later and post-trip. I was applying for countless jobs in LA when I started picking up shitty freelance gigs in New York. In August I signed on to a job that lasted two months, and I also immediately booked a random one-way ticket to Los Angeles on October 6th to avoid being sucked back into New York.

When I was about three weeks from my LA move date that job made me take a mandatory leave while they sorted freelance budgets. I called my recruiter and asked if there were any short-term projects she could move me onto that could guarantee some sort of income for the next couple of weeks. That evening she got me in at that same company I’d interviewed with a year prior.

I started the new gig the next morning and immediately loved it. The team was incredibly smart, super friendly, doing awesome stuff, and everyone there seemed to genuinely love what they do. It was supposed to last 1-2 weeks but it remained open-ended, and conversations started happening about whether or not I might be interested in full-time.

October 6th came and I made the decision to cancel my flight to LA. It was a tough call, but I felt I had to see this opportunity through and see where it leads. At the very least I would keep working through the end of the year, save as much money as possible, and get some great new work for my portfolio. Then I could spend the holidays with my family and move to California with a decent amount of money in my pocket at the start of the new year.

After nine weeks the company’s creative recruiter pulled me aside and asked if I was interested in full time. I told her I’m more interested in the Los Angeles office than New York and her face lit up. Apparently they had been searching for someone at my level for a while but hadn’t found the right fit, so she set up an interview. A few Google Hangout interviews later, I got an offer.

The verbal offer came through on 11/20, and on 11/25 I had signed the paperwork, packed up and bid farewell to my life in New York (again), and was sitting on a bus back to Ohio. It all happened so incredibly fast that I didn’t even get to squeeze in my goodbyes. But when you’re living out of a backpack and subletting a bedroom, it makes it easier to pack up and leave at a moment’s notice.

Venice Beach

I still cannot believe how perfectly this all worked out. Some people may think I’m crazy when I do things like sell all my belongings to travel an entire continent for five months, then spend six months looking for contract work in New York City just to get back on my feet. But I think I’m just extremely lucky to know what I want in life, and I’m not afraid to do what it takes to make those things happen. I knew over a year ago that I wanted to move to LA eventually. But I knew that I also wanted to travel South America in the immediate future, and that’s exactly what I did.

New York will always be home to me. It’s the place where I branched out on my own, spent my twenties learning and growing into someone I’m actually pretty proud of, and finally learned the value of having amazing people in my life. But I’m ready to gain a better work/life balance. I’m ready to spend more time being active outdoors, more time exploring and taking photographs, less time drinking, and overall just living a simpler, less chaotic life that’s more in touch with nature. I don’t know how long I’ll live in Los Angeles before I move on, but I think this will be a great transition to the West Coast. I’m excited to explore more of this country’s mountains and national parks. And with LA as a home base, hopefully I’ll be making more trips across the Pacific.

I’ve got about a week in Ohio to pack up my stuff before I fly to LA on 12/3. I’ll have a few weeks to start my job and look for an apartment before flying back for Christmas, then my parents and I are loading up the U-Haul to road trip west. It’s going to be a busy month!

Oh yeah, on top of this exciting life change, my trip to South America has also kickstarted my travel writing career. The day before I landed my LA interview I was commissioned to write a piece that I’m super excited about. It will be going live in late December, so stay tuned!

Cheers to kicking off my thirties in the only way that I know how: with an awesome life change.

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All You Can Jet

30 Things I Learned During 30 Days of Travel

Since my All You Can Jet journey has come to an end, I thought I’d share some of the things I learned during those 30 days of travel.

1. Tommy Lee doesn’t like having his picture taken. Unless he’s on a boat. Naked.

2. In the Pacific Northwest, it’s believed that Portland has the most strip clubs per capita over any US city. The city has just over a half million residents, and more than 50 strip clubs throughout the city. I’ve read online that Springfield, Oregon passed Portland as the most clubs per capita in 2009, but either way, Portland is still up there. More than Vegas. Apparently these strip clubs also serve up some excellent food.

3. I love eating Handi Snacks Breadsticks ‘n Cheez, but I hate eating them in public. See, I’m kind of a “no cheese left behind” kinda gal, and I fully support licking the plate (or plastic container) clean. It’s pretty embarrassing to do while sitting on an airplane or in an airport. But with a little creativity, it can be done discreetly.

4. The Travel Channel may have played a part in making Voodoo Doughnuts famous, but their end of day deal should be a must for any doughnut lover on a budget in Portland (if you’re willing to gain a few pounds). They sell 5 gallon buckets of day old doughnuts for $5. That’s fresher than packaged doughnuts from the grocery store; and more unique flavors too!

5. The iPhone 4 doesn’t just suck in New York. It sucks all over America. I don’t know if it’s AT&T or the iPhone itself, but mine didn’t work in about 60% of the places I visited- big and small cities alike. Mostly dropped calls, and no internet/data service (even though it had full bars and a 3G signal). Oh, and the “extremely tough gorilla glass” on the LCD screen is not so durable either. The prong side of my power cord hit the screen from 2ft in the air and shattered it. Of course, AppleCare doesn’t cover cosmetic damage. They actually told me to call my renters insurance and file a claim, or go in to Apple and pay $200 to have the screen fixed (on a phone I paid $300 for). I’ve had this phone just under 3 months and it has already cracked twice. Pretty bad considering I had my 3G for two years and it never saw a single scratch.

6. I will no longer take New York tap water for granted. Of the 12 cities I visited, none of their tap water comes close to New York’s. I think it tastes better than most bottled water. San Diego was probably the worst I tasted over the 37 days. I heard Chicago’s is great, but I didn’t try it.

7. Seattle’s Sound Transit Link Light Rail is only a little over 1 year old, and cleaner than my apartment.

8. Los Angeles has a subway system. Who knew? I’ve always heard about how bad their traffic is, but I’ve never once heard anything about a subway system. It doesn’t look like it connects much of LA, but when I took it four stops it was much quicker than driving or taking a bus. Their public buses are a joke. Yes they have televisions on board for maximum [looping] entertainment, but you’d better leave four hours early. Or plan on being late.

9. When they say don’t travel to the Caribbean during hurricane season, they mean it. Unless you plan on spending your entire Caribbean vacation indoors.

10. This one may seem like a no brainer, but if you plan on visiting another country, check out the conversion rate BEFORE you get there. I figured since Jamaica accepts US dollars and I was staying in a prepaid all-inclusive hotel, I’d be okay with a $20 bill and my ATM card. Well the cab to the hotel was $30, so I immediately had to stop at a Jamaican ATM. I didn’t have cell phone service to check the conversion rate, so I had to trust what the cab driver told me to withdrawal (which was a pretty scary feeling, especially since I didn’t have more than a few hundred dollars in the bank to begin with). The Jamaican conversion rate is 86.855 Jamaican dollars for every 1 USD. $30 USD ended up being something like 2600 Jamaican dollars. I’ve never in my life felt more uncomfortable than when I stepped into the private locked ATM machine, and typed in a $2600 withdrawal with a line of people standing behind me.

11. Never make a phone call from a foreign country without a calling card. And make sure you’re using a designated hotel phone that will not charge you a connection fee, or a per minute fee on top of the calling card fee. Even though the credit card rate advertised may only be 50 cents a minute, they have all kinds of hidden connection fees. You’re better off just not making any phone calls. This isn’t the first time I was wrongly informed of how much a phone call to the US would cost.

12. Cool Runnings fans (there’s still some out there, right?) should check out the Jamaican Bobsled Cafe on the Hip Strip in Montego Bay. I didn’t get to see it, thanks to Tropical Storm Nicole, but they have the original Jamaican bobsled from the 1988 Calgary Olympics.

13. Despite how clean the city looked, I’m pretty sure one of the most disease-infested alleys in America is in Seattle. The saliva-filled “bubblegum alley” in Seattle’s Pike Place Market is fairly similar to the Bubblegum Alley in San Luis Obispo, California. Is it weird that I had a strong urge to lick the walls?

14. Sunset is a great time to go up in the Seattle Space Needle. You can see the city in the daylight, sunset, and dark all within about an hour.

15. The 60th floor Sky Lobby at the JP Morgan Chase building in Houston provides a panoramic view of the city for free. It is the tallest building in Houston, and the 50th tallest in the world at 1002ft high. It is also the tallest 5-sided building in the entire world.

16. I-90 ends in Seattle. I’ve taken I-90 from my hometown in Toledo, West to Chicago and East to New York more times than I can count. I had no idea that had I missed the Chicago exit, I would have ended up in Seattle a few days later.

17. A man named Carl Fisher invented the car headlight, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and Miami Beach in the early 1900s. He also began developing Montauk in Long Island New York as a “Miami of the north” tourist attraction before being cut short by the Great Depression.

18. The San Diego Zoo is expensive, and definitely not on a budget traveler’s agenda. It’s supposed to be worth every penny, but at $37 for the cheapest 1 day pass, I couldn’t afford to see for myself.

19. If your car breaks down on the Pacific Coast Highway, don’t count on your cell phone to call someone. Well over half of the drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco I was without service.

20. If you’re riding shotgun and hoping to take pictures along the Pacific Coast Highway, drive south. It’s easier to be on the outside than trying to take pictures past the driver’s head. And if you can, make time for a few stops along the way. Just make sure you take better pictures than I do.

21. Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport is the 2nd busiest airport in the world.

22. The show Most Extreme Airports on the History Channel ranks San Diego’s airport as the 10th most dangerous airport in the world due to its proximity to the mountains and downtown. In order to keep the noise down in the surrounding area, planes are allowed to take off between 630a and 1130p, or else face a fine. Arrivals are allowed 24 hours a day.

23. Apparently it does get hot in San Francisco. And there’s no air conditioning so you just have to suffer.

24. I stayed on Grant street, which was the first constructed street in San Francisco. It was originally named Calle De La Fundacion.

25. Sprinkles Cupcakes in Beverly Hills trumps any cupcake I’ve ever had in NYC (yes, even the dry, overrated cupcakes at Magnolia). And they’re opening their first NYC store in Feb 2011, on Lexington between 60th & 61st.

26. Willamette Valley in Oregon produces some of the best and most inexpensive Pinot Noir in the world. I chose one based on the cool label, called The Four Graces, and it was by far the best low price wine I’ve ever had. Willamette Valley also appears as the end destination in The Oregon Trail.

27. Recycling bins on the streets of New York make me happy. But an abundance of compost bins out on the west coast? Incredible.

28. Nineteen of the world’s 25 largest hotels (by room count) are on the Las Vegas Strip.

29. Hostels are a perfectly cheap place to sleep in a new city. I stayed at my first hostel in Seattle, and although it was a huge difference from the hotel rooms I’m used to, a girl on a budget can’t complain. It was only $35, and since I only needed a place to rest from 9p-5a, I couldn’t justify spending much more for a hotel.

30. Traveling is a lot more fun when you don’t have to go back to work afterwards.

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All You Can Jet

Day 15: Leaving La-La Land

Tuesday was my last full day in Los Angeles. I was ready to leave the minute I woke up. LA is okay, and actually pretty awesome when you’re with the right people, but definitely not a place I want to spend too many days without a car. I left Ty’s by foot in order to meet up with Chris in Hollywood. It took me 45 minutes to walk to the bus, then another 25 waiting for the bus, and an hour and a half on the bus. When I finally got off, I met with Chris and we waited an hour for yet another bus. Forty minutes later we were starving as we got off the bus at the Cheese Store in Silverlake in search of some supposedly incredible panini. Of course, just as you’d expect to see after any four hour commute, they were sold out. At least we got a few free samples of cheese and crackers out of it.

I could’ve eaten everything in the entire Cheese Store, but instead I ended up eating Mexican food for the 80th time this trip. I ordered cheese enchiladas, chips, guacamole and orange Fanta, randomly. Chris had the fajitas, and we ate in this little canopied jungle in back of the place, where I’m pretty sure Chris spotted a Mexican lemur or something.

After stopping for some coffee and tea, we walked faster than any form of LA transportation could take us, over to Chris’s friend’s house in some random neighborhood. Rumor has it that the housing complex has been some sort of musician’s haven for years. Bands practice, hang out and record there to this day, all around a center courtyard that looked like it could be used for a tropical swimsuit shoot. Cue Chris’s fierce swimsuit pose:

We made it over to Second City on Hollywood Boulevard to see a hilarious improv comedy show for $5, then on to Dillion’s for my last night in LA. I got a nice little glimpse of Capitol Records on the way.

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All You Can Jet

Day 14: Playing Tourist in LA

Monday was a bit overcast in LA, and definitely much cooler than I’d expected. I went down to Santa Monica for the first time, and enjoyed the sites of vomiting dinosaurs in front of all of the shops.

Trivomitops
Barfasaurus

After a brief reminder of how much I hate shopping, we walked down to the Santa Monica Pier. To me, a pier is a pier. Once you’ve seen one, you’ve kind of seen them all. If you’re not fishing, they’re like a cheesy date idea, or a place you wander when you’ve got absolutely nothing else to do. But to me, the Santa Monica Pier felt more like a much cleaner Coney Island.

It was a little chilly on the beach that day, so we got back into the car and headed over to Beverly Hills for some Sprinkles Cupcakes. As you can tell by my body type, I’m no stranger to cupcakes. In New York, most everyone is obsessed with Magnolia. I think they’re the most overrated cupcake I’ve ever had. I think Crumbs beats Magnolia hands down, not only because the cupcakes are gigantic and they offer more varieties, but because they’re moist and fresh. Every time I’ve gotten a cupcake at Magnolia it’s been small, and extremely dry. Their icing is good, but not worth a special trip. But Sprinkles. Oh my. I ordered the Black and White cupcake- a dark chocolate cupcake with vanilla buttercream frosting. It was such an amazing combination, and such a moist, delicious, flavorful cupcake! I wanted to order another, but at $3.56 a piece, I held back. But definitely, Sprinkles trumps Magnolia any day. Crumbs is a completely different class of cupcakes (and oddly enough, there is a crumbs just down the road from Sprinkles) so I can’t really compare the two.

While digesting the deliciousness we just ate, we went for a drive through the hills, over to the valley. It was an entirely new part of LA that I never knew existed, geographically speaking. If I’ve learned one thing about LA this trip, it’s that it’s enormous. That and public transportation sucks. But we’ll get to that later.


After cruising past the million dollar houses up there, we came back into Hollywood so I could remember what a dump I thought it was the last time I was here. Luckily it was a pretty clear day, so I was able to see out to the Hollywood sign from the Kodak Theatre.

Then I got in touch with an old friend from Toledo that I haven’t seen since or spoken a word to since I moved to New York. I had no idea he was living in LA, but of course, the power of Facebook clued us both in. Turns out, he’s living just a couple of streets over from where I was on Hollywood Boulevard. We met up at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, and since Chris used to work there, we got to take a quick (free) sneak peak inside. Honestly I’m not really into all the Hollywood/celebrity stuff, but apparently it’s a pretty hot tourist destination since it’s the site of movie premieres and award ceremonies.

Then we went on to a place called Big Wang’s to watch some Monday night football and eat some tots and wings.

I needed the total combined score for the game to be 41 or over to win the $130 weekly pool that I participate in. After a strong island iced tea and a beer, the combined score was only 16 at half time so we left the bar. By the time we got back to Ty’s each team had scored and the combined scored was somewhere around 30. We watched the rest of the game, play by play via an iPhone app. It looked like the guy I was tied with (who chose 40 as his tie-breaker number) was going to win as the score neared 40 right on the nose. But then, as if they knew I needed the money, some major scoring started happening and I won the pool with a combined score of 47. I may or may not have screamed and jumped around a bit, followed by a celebratory shot and a few bragging phonecalls. That $130 definitely helped me out on this trip!

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All You Can Jet Food + Drinks

Day 13: Greyhound San Diego to LA

Not really an eventful day. I woke up and made my way to the bus since both Sam and JJ were still in jail. The Greyhound station in San Diego is so much nicer than the stations I’ve been to in Toledo and Las Vegas. Plus, with such a short trip, it was $15 for a 2 hour, non-stop ride from San Diego to LA.

Once I got to LA I didn’t do a whole lot. I am staying with an “acquaintance” from back when I was about 16 years old. We never really hung out, but I was friends with a lot of his friends, and we went to the same high school together. Luckily he was nice enough to not only let a stranger crash with him for a few nights, but to agree to drive me up to San Francisco as well!

After I got settled in, we went over to Don Antonio’s for some Mexican food (of course, what else). I ordered the cheese and onion enchilada plate, and the xango for dessert. I’d never heard of xango before, but apparently it was some sort of fried cheesecake, with cinnamon and sugar and vanilla ice cream. Whatever it was, it was delicious.

After dinner we went to a pretty cool place called Q’s Billiard Club on Wilshire Blvd and watched the battle of the Mannings (Giants v Colts football game). Not a very eventful day, but it was a nice welcome to Los Angeles.