Silver Lake Stormwatch: October 11

Every bit of measurable rain counts, and so we begin another season of Silver Lake Stormwatch, though this time around with a bit of a whimper: 3/16ths or 0.1875 inches (or 0.4 centimeters for you metric types) captured by the backyard precipitometer, most of which landed during a particularly saturated and electrically charged cell that parked itself over the neighborhood for about a half an hour in the early afternoon (click it for the bigger picture):

October 11: 0.1875″
Year to date: 0.1875″

Blink & You’ll Miss It

Last year the Amgen Tour of California ignored Los Angeles, and the year before I had to go downtown to watch a bit of the time trial stage, but this year the Amgen tour’s course designers did me a nice favor in sending the final stage cyclists along Sunset Boulevard — literally a half-block from my Silver Lake front door. So at 10:20a.m., about ten minutes before they were scheduled to roll through on their way downtown, I set up my cam on a tripod with a backdrop of some appropriately complementary street art, and they literally WHOOSHED by only a few feet from my lens.

That Local Place

I can imagine something akin to Abbott & Costello’s “Who’s On First” sketch when telling someone where we went for breakfast this morning.

“What’s it’s name?”

“It’s Local.”

“Right. But what’s it called?”

“The Local place?”

“Yes!”

“It’s Local.”

“Gah!”

Previously the Eastside Mercantile shop, Susan and I have been anticipating Local’s opening for weeks, and while I can definitely say we’re happy to have a new eatery in our immediate vicinity, I can’t say we’ll happily return for anything more than just coffees and a shared somethin’.

The meals we had were great, the staff very friendly, the decor nice and ambiance wonderful (except for the place feeling the need to sounddrown a subtle Sunday morning with unnecessary and too loud music), but the place is pricey. I had the braised pork belly, two eggs and home fries ($13), Susan had some fancy-named sausage, two eggs, and home fries ($13). Beverages brought the total up over the $40 mark.

For breakfast? Yeesh! And the rest of the offerings aren’t much cheaper. A bareback Belgian waffle is $7. French toast is $9 — $11 if you want yours with fruit and yogurt.

Fortunate the bonus floorshow — in the form of the bicycling portion of the L.A. Triathalon was free, and as Susan and I enjoyed our first and what may be our last meal at Local, we also had fun watching cyclists of all shapes, sizes and rides zip along a traffic-free, bikes only Sunset Boulevard.