Crenshaw Blvd., it's where I'm at

A look at the Sigalert website before leaving work indicated that all freeways home were jammed. Accident here, slow there....so I decided I'd take Crenshaw Blvd. as far as it would take me. The commute home is an hour no matter how I drive so I was fairly certain this wouldn't lengthen the trip by too much.

South down Crenshaw it was. It's a rough commute approaching the 10 and past Rodeo, but once you clear Martin Luther King Blvd. it's smooth sailing. And it's pretty too. Trees line the street all the way through Leimart Park and when you drive through Inglewood, there's a pretty center divider with sculpted trees.

It was an especially clear afternoon and I wish I could remember which cross street had this beautiful view. Sadly, the landscape turns into a nightmare south of the 105. It's crazy what a difference there is north and south of the freeway. Ugly power lines as far as the eye could see once past the freeway at which point, I cut my cruise short and took the 105 to the 110 south. I made it home in an hour. So instead of the usual gridlock, I saw something different today.

On another note, I went karaoke-ing for the first time in ages last night. Chris and I had dinner with his friend Peter from college and some other people, including Shumway and Marc. They wanted to get drinks afterwards but it was heavy metal night at the password-protected M Bar (R Bar?) and we voted to change venues. I suggested the Brass Monkey because we had driven by it earlier that night and we had the best time!

We arrived between 8 and 9 and were one of the first groups there. This was cool because we were called up to sing quickly. Chris and I started with Weezer's "Buddy Holly." Chris played a mean air guitar during the song. Next came "Seven Nation Army," which was lots of fun. I'll totally do the White Stripes again. The drinks flowed and we got progressively worse. The low point was our rendition of "Sabatoge." Marc, Chris and I were screaming into the microphones and jumping all over the place. The ending "Whhhhyyyy??!!" cry was super fun to sing but I'm sure it was no fun to listen to. Good times. Our evening ended with a "Love Today" quartet. The crowd was not into that song. That reaction was disappointing but the evening was such an unexpected good time that I did not care.

Our bikes were stolen from Chris's garage sometime during the evening too. City living.