I'm here at last!

That's right! A couple days ago, I officially moved into my new apartment in LA. It's a bit smaller than I remembered, but the closet is a bit bigger than I remembered, so I guess it evens out?

The upsides are that I LOVE the weather, I like the neighborhood, I got a full-sized mattress for relatively cheap, and it looks like I'll survive.

One of the downsides is how EXPENSIVE it is to buy everything! It's not just that LA is an expensive city, but also that California has 9.75% sales tax. Now, I thought NYS had high tax, with it going up to about 8.5% in some places, but that's ridiculous. Someone tell me HOW this state is still so broke?!?! Also, getting new furniture-like things, cleaning supplies, food, and random household items that I couldn't pack (or didn't own) can add up pretty fast. The related problem I'm having is that I need a job.

But the craziest part? Beverly Hills. Where do I start on this topic?

I guess I should start with the fact that it's not too hard to get a bus out there (really, for everyone who whines about LA's public transportation system, it's not as bad as they make it out to be. Unless by "bad" they really meant "the buses are full of people with different skin colors than I have!") and someone mentioned to me that there was a farmer's market. Now, when I think "farmers market", I think of a bunch of farmers driving cargo vans or small trucks into a parking lot, setting up a canopy thing, and selling out of the back of the truck. That is possibly the furthest possible thing from what I found.

What I found was something that can only be compared to the interior food buildings at the NY State Fair, only it was all open-air with cloth over the walkways, and the little shops were permanent. Also, there were actual names on the shops (not like "Rolling Hills Farm, Nowhere, NY") and bars and souvenir stores and even a Starbucks. This is next to an outdoor mall, which seems to consist exclusively of designer clothing stores, fancy restaurants, and a movie theater.

This brings me to another point - well, actually another mall, which at first I got mixed up with CBS studios (another amusing story for another time). This mall was ridiculously large, where you had to go up something like five escalators just to get to the stores. Unfortunately, this mall also seemed to consist of nothing but designer clothing/jewelry/fragance/etc stores, with the exception of a food court, a Ferrari store (no kidding), and a completely incongrous Claire's.

The last, but perhaps the most fun thing, in Beverly Hills is the secondhand stores. Want a full-length leather trenchcoat? Five identical TV's? A set of brand-new glass tumblers from Ikea? Stuff with the labels still on it? It's a gold-mine of cheaply priced awesome stuff in excellent condition. I got a fully functional 20" CRT TV from there for $25 with the remote, and that's awesome because you can't even buy cheap CRT TV's from Walmart any more.

Oh, Walmart: That is my last topic for this post. Since Walmarts are as common (and sometimes as unwanted) as weeds in upstate NY, and also really cheap, I figured that would be the place to go. So, I found a super-Walmart, and went to it at 7 AM. Only, what did I find out? That this location opened at 8 AM. SERIOUSLY? I haven't seen nor heard of a Walmart that closed on a regular basis, ie, not only before Black Friday, since I was approximately 10 years old. For almost all of my life, you could just go to a Walmart at any hour of day or night, and the only thing that might be closed would be the 1-hour photo department. And, not only did this Walmart CLOSE, but it didn't open at 6 AM or any other time that would enable people to stop in before work or something like that. Ridiculous.