Show Journal 1999-08-19
Day 13 – After our day of luxury and relaxation it was back to the road and we headed on to Long Beach. We left early so we could ride the Desperado – the 200 foot tall roller coaster on the CA/NV border. Unfortunately, it was closed and we ended up getting to Long Beach several hours ahead of time. We saw the world largest thermometer on the way. Speaking of which, it’s been over 100 degrees ever since Illinois. Portland summers are usually between 75-80 degrees, so this 100 degree thing has been quite a change for us. The rumor is true, traffic really does suck in LA. Long Beach scares me because of the gang stuff there. Nothing in particular happened, but I felt uneasy the whole day afraid I was going to get shot again. A local record store (45 Revolution) was putting on the show tonight so we went to hang out there for a while. From there we did some some more record shopping and then drove out to see the Queen Mary to kill some time. The show tonight was kind of sketchy. There were a lot of skinheads and crusty punks tonight. I thought for sure they would hate us, but they ended up liking us and everyone ended up being cool to hang out with. It always amazes me how three relatively lame looking people like us who claim to play “punk rock” can get a good reaction in these crowds. Back to the gang thing, while packing Jim saw some guys walking around yelling LBC and as we were leaving we actually saw a ghetto bird. Anyway, the show was cool and I’ve decided I’m too paranoid. We decided to get out of LA and stayed in a truck stop somewhere on I-5.