I love LA

For years my mom had a bridal shop in Thousand Oaks and most of her business was custom so that meant frequent trips to the Garment District in downtown Los Angeles. Since she didn't drive I would take her down during the week to buy fabric, sewing supplies, and whatever else she needed to send those brides, smiling, down the aisle. My daughter and sister were frequent flyers on these journeys and the prize for everyone one was a trip to Olivera Street for lunch.

Saturday the three of us, daughter lil bird, sister Doodles and I made the journey one more time. Lil bird heads down to that area quite often to either visit the flower market on Wall Street or Michael Levine's, a great fabric store. Walking in brought back so many memories it was hard not to see a portion of my life whiz by.

We also visited some bead stores so lil bird could find the goodies to build her aunt a necklace. She's gotten quite talented in making jewelry. The other mission was to find supplies for a crafty little project these two had been working on.

ML's is on Maple, as is a variey of small "jobbers" selling end lots of fabric, shoes, clothes, and just about anything else you'd want. By 10:oo am the street was packed with weekend shoppers with children in tow. Street vendors were cooking up their fare on makeshift stoves and though it smelled delicious we were saving our appetites for Phillipe's. Though that bowl of posole that passed us made us stop and inquire where it could be purchased.

The whole mood of the area was festive with music blaring from some stores and people chatting, in a variety of languages, and brightly colored merchandise pushed almost to the edge of the sidewalk. It was a feast for your senses.

We all decided we need some sitdown food so got the car and headed towards Chinatown. I do know this area and headed for Main St forgetting there was a planned march swirling around the protest of Prop 8 passing making it illegal for same sex to marry in California. Try as we did we could not get close to Phillipe's and after an hour of gridlocked traffic we headed home.

Why do we have a law to keep California taxpayers from getting married in this state? Why are we letting a church, any church, tell us what laws to have? Our founding fathers made sure there was a separation of church and state, what happened to that?