I’m walking from Argentum to Amoeba, switching jobs mid-day (Eleanor Ave to Vine to Sunset to Ivar.) Since I’m rarely without my camera, and today is so beautiful, I decide to snap photos of whatever I deceree photo-worthy along the way.

There’s a gate on the West side of the street. It’s usually closed. Today it’s open, and though I’m running late, I can’t resist walking through it. A tunnel stretches from the street and opens into a really cool courtyard. I love this kind of stuff. So dreary on the outside, but a kind of Shangri-La on the inside. Like a geode, only not the kind with spiders inside like in that movie.

A little further up Vine, at La Mirada. It’s the day after posting that thing about Sony and its graffiti art and I run smack into some of it on Vine. And right there, at La Mirada, on the wall of a Pawn Shop, is this:

Yeah, because I believe that some enterprising street artist loves the PSP so much that he’s gonna declare his love for all Vine to see on the wall of this shop.

Creepy, no? Zombified urchins molest their gizmos. Makes me wanna rush out and buy one.

Then of course, on the corner of Sunset and Vine, the Earthquake building. It’s getting a major revamp after sitting dormant for years, collecting mendicants like dust bunnies and then occasionally letting off a belch of smoke or two. This is how L.A.’s largest billboard looks today:

Then, according to Curbed LA (who, by the way, have been kind enough to give me a kick-ass spot on their blogroll,) this is how it will look once the Mary Kay team finishes its work:

…still in keeping with the billboard theme. Only the tenants will have changed.

And then finally, I’m at work, which is getting into that non-stop edge-of-your sanity rush leading into the holidays. Today is different, I suppose, because a customer named Suzanne buys me a copy of The Thorn Birds on DVD because I tell her I’ve never seen it. So there’s that.

That’s it for today.

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Oh, wait. Here’s a picture of Sarah Cracknell: