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sarea
Here's the write-up for our LA trip! Written in August 2018 while in Anchorage, lol.
July 6 was the GOT7 concert, and I was planning to go down for about a week to see family and friends as well. I would stay withjade_okelani, and meet up with K. from Korean class for the concert itself. But a few days before I was scheduled to leave, adelagia decided that she would deeply regret not going to the concert, so she last-minute purchased a concert ticket and plane ticket for herself! Wheeee! You guys don't know how surprisingly spontaneous this is of her, lol. We are both really big on Planning. Anyway, she booked a room at a place near Jade's, which was convenient for carpooling purposes.
DAY ONE
We flew out on July 4, on different flights, because my flight was full. Adelagia arrived like 4 hours before me, so she killed time at the dinky Burbank airport until I arrived and could join her. Immediately after Jade picked us up, we headed to Kang Hodong Baekjeong, a highly rated KBBQ place. They were not AYCE, but all the reviews said it was THE place to go for KBBQ. (Side note: I had noted that the name of the restaurant bore the same name of the guy I knew from the Knowing Brothers variety show, but I dismissed the possibility that there was any connection. I didn't know Hodong's last name, and I figured I knew so little Korean that I was trying to make connections even where none existed. Only it turns out that it is almost certainly his restaurant, lol. There's caricature artwork of him all over the restaurant!) We got the smaller of the beef platters, and our server was a surly girl named Esther. The food was good, and it's the type of place where they come by and cook it for you, but I have to say that it wasn't as amazing as I expected. It was right up there with the other KBBQ that I've had with C. all over the country, where it's not AYCE but the meat is high quality and blah blah. It's just... because it's LA, I expect more. Their AYCE places are worlds above other places, so the non-AYCE places, as far as I'm concerned, need to be way better -- otherwise why even go there vs an AYCE place?! It was cool that they give you a little packet of seaweed to make wraps with -- but that disappeared quickly, and if you wanted more they charged for it!! Which was bullshit imho. They gave the same amount of seaweed, as far as I could tell, whether you had 2 people or 3 or 4. So that was already not equitable. And it's not like seaweed is that expensive, as far as I've experienced? And they didn't give that much? And it's not like what we ordered was cheap? VERY FEEBLE, I MUST SAY.
Still, all that said, it was good because it was KBBQ. I mean it would have had to have been TERRIBLE for me to not have enjoyed what I ate. Afterward, we wondered if there was anywhere nearby where we could get something sweet. Serendipitously, we saw that the strip mall across the street had a bunch of shops, and one of the signs proclaimed "ice cream." Direct and to the point. Not expecting a lot -- or anything, the three of us trudged across the street (it was LA, after all, and hot). It turned out that the ice cream place was Holy Roly, a rolled ice cream place! That was FAR more interesting than any of us had anticipated from the "ice cream" sign on the marquee of shops, lol. Because we were full from lunch and didn't have a lot of time (we were booked for an escape room), we decided to just get one and split it. (Also they were quite pricey, about $9-10 each.) We ordered the matcha one, though I was also interested in the Ferrero Rocher version. Anyway, Adelagia decided to go to the bathroom and missed them making our order! That will teach her to not risk a UTI by holding it. I recorded the whole thing on video, however, so at least she was able to watch that later. Basically, they pour the ice cream mixture on an ice-cold panel, and they keep spreading it out and manipulating it until it is one long, frozen sheet. Then they use a spatula to push strips into rolls, put all the rolls into a cup, and then top it however it's been ordered. It was super fun and delicious!! One of my regrets is that we did not go back to that place for the rest of the trip, even though we had intentions to (spoiler alert).
Afterward, we did one of the many escape rooms we would come to do on the trip. This one was Maze Rooms' "Magic Kingdom." It was fun, and had one of the scariest parts that we had ever encountered in an escape room -- we opened a door, and it was pitch black inside, with nowhere to go but down. There were a bunch of foam objects on the bottom, and I knew, logically, that they wouldn't have people do something where they could potentially be dropped down an actual elevator shaft or something, but even so, it was scary as shit. I had Jade hold my arms as I gingerly made my way down, and once I felt safe, I was able to crawl into the room we were supposed to be in and open the normal door for the other two.
As people who do escape rooms regularly, there are certain things that make us mad, and those come in two categories. Things that make us mad because THE PUZZLE IS AT FAULT (like when things don't work the way they're supposed to, and then we end up wasting a bunch of time), or things that make us mad because WE SHOULD KNOW BETTER. One of the things that happened in the latter category for this room was that there were a bunch of mushrooms that lit up, and we should have known it was a Simon Says-type game but didn't follow through. Grrrr. Adelagia tells me we ended up beating this room, anyway. I don't actually remember.
After that, we went to Olympic Spa, a jjimjilbang. If you don't know what a jjimjilbang is, it's a Korean bath house, segregated by sex (in this case, it was women only), where you can enjoy the facilities all day for a nominal fee ($20 at this one, but if you want to go to the one in Lynnwood, it's $40 now, I believe), and then get services of top of that (like a Korean scrub or massage) for an extra fee. Everyone is always butt naked, which takes a little getting used to, but then it's like, okay well whatever. Adelagia tried to take advantage of their heated jade floor to take a nap, but apparently it was too noisy to really do so, while Jade and I soaked in the various tubs and also had the first layer of our skin sloughed off by strong Korean ladies. There was a super hot salt bath, a cold bath, and a hot-but-not-as-hot bath, but I would constantly get overheated in the hot baths, while the cold bath was far too cold. >< I actually might have enjoyed the saunas more; they had a dry one and a wet one, and while I did prefer the wet one to the dry, they both got unbearable after awhile. I just need a medium temperature thing with minimal humidity... like my living room. LOL.
Jade and I both got the "Pure Bliss" package, which included a scrub and a massage, along with a hair wash. The scrub was nice, because it makes your skin feel baby soft. Also, the part where they toss hot water over your body as they finish scrubbing parts of you feels suuuuuuper good. Nothing compares to the first time I ever had it done, but the two times I've had it done since then were still satisfying. I found the massage I got much less satisfying; massages aren't supposed to be so wet, after all, and I don't like having to turn my head this way and that; I much prefer being able to put my head in a hole ("PUT YER HEAD IN THE HOLE, LASSIE!") and not have to crane my neck. What was cool was that after I was done, I had a brief conversation with the massage ahjumma in Korean. I don't recall exactly how it came about, but I think I probably said 감사합니다, which usually spurs the Korean person I'm talking to to ask if I am a 한국사감 (Korean person, literally). She then asked me if my mom was Korean, or my dad, and both times I explained that they were not. And then I said that I was learning Korean, and she gave me props for learning it even though I was not in any way Korean, lol.
By the time we were done, it was late-ish, but we still needed to grab dinner. Our plan was to go to In-N-Out to grab burgers, then go to Tommy's for fries, because Jade said their fries were amazing (and as much as I love In-N-Out, I admit freely that their fries are terrible), then take our food to the theater and eat dinner while watching Tag.
Adelagia had been up for hours longer than us by this point, and hadn't really been able to nap at the jjimjilbang, but she insisted on going with us to In-N-Out and doing the movie because she was convinced that GOT7 was going to go to In-N-Out. I can't tell you how much I tried to dissuade her of this notion; even if they DID go to In-N-Out, there was no guarantee they would go on the same night as us, and on top of that, choose to go to the In-N-Out *we* were going to, given that there are probably hundreds in the LA area to choose from, lol. I would have dissuaded her even further had I realized that the In-N-Out we were going to was drive-through only (they used to be only drive-through, but in recent years has started to build ones with indoor seating), because even if they WERE there, we'd have zero chance of seeing them or interacting with them in their car! Anyway, we got our burgers without incident (in this case, unfortunately), then went to Tommy's, where Jade and I got regular fries and chili cheese fries to split. It took FOREVER, not sure why, but it was annoying.
The theater where we went happily was one of those that had actual tray tables attached to the seats, because they also sold food or something. So convenient! So we ate and watched Tag, which was funny and enjoyable. The food was pretty cold by then, so not as good as it should have been -- maybe that's why I was unimpressed with Tommy's fries. But I think my fave fries are still the ones from 5 Guys. (For the record, the burger I always get from In-N-Out is a Double Double, animal style, with light spread. After every time, I always say, "That was too much, next time I'll just get a cheeseburger." Somehow this never happens.)
And then finally, FINALLY, our day was done. Looking back now, I'm like, super proud of us for packing so much into one day! Go girls!
(I should probably mention that since it was July 4, there were tons of fireworks going off everywhere, including those set off by idiots who were illegally doing it on their own streets. Needless to say, we heard and saw many ambulances/police cars that night as well.)
DAY TWO
We started this day by going to the wrong escape room location. D'oh! It was the 60Out room "The Orphanage," and the guy at the location we went to was very understanding and called the right location for us. They ended up being able to take us despite the fact that we were going to be super late, so that was another serendipitous moment.
Remember how I said the elevator shaft thing that I had to do at the escape room the day before was the scariest thing I've ever experienced in an escape room? Well it held that honor for one day, and then The Orphanage took its spot. We started out in PITCH BLACKNESS, where we had to feel around walls to try and figure shit out. Jade somehow managed to remove something that was blocking a single, dim light (to this day, I don't know if, had Jade not been there, Adelagia and I would have simply died of fright in that dark room and they would have found our bodies an hour later, because neither of us are as tall as Jade so I don't know if we ever would have found that light thing). We still at that point were trapped behind some iron bars, and we had to get through them to the primary rooms inside. We had to shine some sort of light on a creepy painting at the end of the hallway, and when we did that, something came CHARGING AT US IN THE DARK AND CLANGED AGAINST THE BARS. It was so fucking scary that we all screamed in genuine fright, and I'm glad that none of us suffer from incontinence because I guarantee you, that would have been an issue. It turned out to be a toy rocking horse that gets released once you do what we did. The rest of it was just as creepy, if not as scary as that moment, and even having to reach inside a dead child's mouth for a key was pretty much just par for the course. We beat this room, possibly because we were all working feverishly to NOT BE THERE ANYMORE.
Afterward, we were offered a discount if we wanted to do the other room they had, Nautilus. It was submarine-themed, and apparently cost $100K to build. Since we are shameless escape room whores, we couldn't say no. It was much more on the normal side, thematically, which was a relief. We beat this one, too!
Then it was time for Oo-Kook, which turned out to be one of our favorite meals. It was an AYCE KBBQ place, which was featured in a Worth It episode on KBBQ, as the lowest-cost option. It was indeed reasonably priced, and the selection of meats on offer was truly extraordinary. We could only order 3 things at a time (because there were 3 of us), so we'd each pick something for each round, and went from there. Toward the end, we ordered duck breast and pork jowl, but for some reason there was a huge portion of both. Jade enjoyed the duck breast, but neither Adelagia and I liked it much, while I also wasn't a huge fan of the pork jowl. We were convinced that by this time the restaurant was sick of us and had given us extra just to make us stop ordering. WELL I AM NOT ONE TO BE BEATEN DOWN BY THE ESTABLISHMENT, so after we somehow crammed all that meat down our gullets, we still ordered more. And it's a good thing, too, because the last cut I tried ended up being my and Jade's favorite: the outside skirt steak. Mmmm. And, listen, just because it was AYCE didn't mean that the meat quality was poor. It was all really good, and I count myself as fairly experienced and knowledgeable in this area! Also, because of the structure of their AYCE, you can end up trying a bunch of different things, whereas when you go to a non-AYCE place, you're limited to whatever platter you get, unless you are willing to spend a significant chunk of change. So here's my recommendation: If you're in LA, go to a reputable AYCE KBBQ place. You will get a lot more bang for your buck. If you're not in LA, go to a non-AYCE place. You won't get as much variety, but the quality will be much higher, the food will likely be cooked for you, and you'll get little niceties like lettuce wraps and things like that.
"You're supposed to feed that to me, though."
Next, we went to do the Evil Genius 2-hour escape room experience. Jade and I had been very much looking forward to this one, because it just sounded so cool, and it was neat that it was back to back. If you solved the first part in 40 minutes, or however long, you would get the remaining time to be put toward the second part. Unfortunately, it didn't quite meet my expectations. Maybe it was because it was too hot. Maybe 2 hours trying to escape a room is too long. Maybe it was that, rather than escaping the first part easily, we went overtime on it, so instead of getting more time for the second part, we got less. Whatever it was, it wasn't nearly as enjoyable as I had expected. Also, we really, REALLY hated the map game, which took so fucking long and was so fucking tedious. -.- That was another example of there being something about the escape room itself that made us mad; but another example of there being something about something we did or didn't do that made us mad was that we kept using certain surfaces to place our clues and such, then ended up needing that surface for a clue but couldn't see it due to all our stuff being on it. ARRRRGHHHH. Because we are idiots we ended up doing that multiple times in multiple escape rooms. 우리 바보야. :(
After that we went to Somi Somi, where I grumpily scarfed down a swirl of matcha/sesame soft serve in a fish-shape cone (that was a bread/waffle of sorts) that was also filled with custard. I had gotten a real strawberry with it, along with a sprinkle of Oreo dust, but the strawberry immediately fell off the cone and I had to throw it away. That's partly why I was grumpy. (In retrospect, it was a very Jackson moment for me.)
We wandered to Aladdin, a new/used bookstore, from where I had actually ordered a bunch of Harry Potter books in Korean not too long ago! LOL. There I began my Pentagon album collection. I got three albums, but none of them contained any Hongseok things. It annoys me greatly that I never get what I want by chance! I have since just purchased the Hongseok specific things that I want, with plans to sell the ones I actually got of the other members.
JB and Jinyoung got bored with sitting around, so they started reprising some of their old photo shoots and dance routines:
We were originally supposed to go to OB Bear, a Korean fried chicken place, but we were still super full from how we had stuffed ourselves at lunch, plus we had a different fried chicken place on the docket for the next day. So instead of going there, we decided to go to Kyodong Noodles just across the way. Jade and I both got the jjajangmyeon/jjampong combo, while Adelagia got jjajangmyeon. Of the two, I enjoyed the jjampong more; I felt that the jjajangmyeon I made myself tasted much better! LOL. However, Adelagia very much enjoyed it (it was her first time so she had nothing to compare it to), which I am really glad about, because I am slightly obsessed with jjajangmyeon and really want to have the proper version of it when we're in Seoul, and now she might be more into it! :D
Kyodong also had some interesting Korean drinks in their fridge, so I decided we should have a taste test! Originally I had gotten Sac Sac Orange, because I am a huuuuge fan of Sac Sac Grape, but the orange was pretty terrible. I don't know if you've ever had Tang, but it basically tasted like Tang. Anyway, I got all of the others for us to try: sikhye (a type of rice drink, which I know Jackson to be a fan of, though not necessarily the canned version), Milkis (cream soda-y), and Sujeonggwa (cinnamon punch). Sadly they were all waaaaaay too sweet, and not good enough in other ways to balance that out. Oh well. If I had to choose one though: sikhye, all day every day.
Despite being full of food, we went to another Maze Room escape room, this one called Demon Hunter, and were joined byropo. Good thing, too, because the rest of us were operating on tired brain cells that were misfiring/not working properly after a long day of 4 escape rooms and huge meals. We still managed to escape the room, which was fun-ish, but not compared to the ones we had done earlier that day. It was supposed to be creepy, what with the demon theme and a demon child whose eyes glowed red, but really, after The Orphanage it was going to take a lot more than that to damage my calm.
DAY THREE
GOT7 CONCERT DAY!!!!!! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!
We started this day with, what else, an escape room. This time it was at 60 Out's Marina Del Rey location, to do Titanic. I had been TOLD that the premise of this one was that if you didn't escape, Jack Dawson would die all over again. That tickled me! But there was actually no such thing, so I'm not really sure if that had been a joke or...?
Anyway, all the escape rooms that we had done up to this point, including the ones we'd done in Seattle and Vancouver and the last time we were in LA, all seemed to leave you to your own devices, and the game masters would only get involved if you contacted them for a hint. This time, maybe it's just the evolution of the escape room, but the game masters seemed a lot more involved, watching everything we were doing from cameras and sometimes even mics (?) placed in the rooms. That's why I got suspicious when there were certain things that seemed to happen even though there was no apparent mechanism to make it happen -- such as when we got a "gun" and were supposed to shoot the lock off a door. There was no sensor on the door that I could see, and when I "fired" the gun near it, nothing happened. But when the game master told us to stand away from the lock and point the gun at it in an obvious shooting motion, it somehow opened, despite, again, nothing having any sensors, that I could tell.
After that, we met up with K. (who Adelagia and I know from Korean class) for lunch at Fritto Misto. K. is one of those super talkative people who are easy to get to know/feel at ease with, but after you get to know her, this can be rather exhausting. It was good in this case, however, since she and Jade were meeting for the first time, and Jade has near-zero interest in K-pop stuff (K. is far more immersed in it than even Adelagia or me, but she can talk your ear off on just about anything). Fritto Misto was good, but I was extremely unimpressed with the fact that they had NO AIR CONDITIONING and it was supposed to be one of the hottest days in LA during its current heat wave. I got their special that day, which was a kind of ravioli, because it was such a good deal, also coming with a salad. But generally I prefer saucy pasta you have to twirl, over stuffed pastas. So I do kind of regret not just getting what I generally like. I did appreciate, however, that the server steered me away from the lasagne, which I had also been considering. He explained that since they cannot make the lasagne from scratch as people order it, it's always premade and microwaved to serve. Which makes perfect sense, and kind of makes me wary of ordering lasagne from anywhere ever again! Adelagia got the gnocchi, and you guys, normally she is a very, very slow eater. People accuse ME of eating slowly, and compared to those people, I do. But next to Adelagia, I'm like Speedy Gonzalez. Yet this time she finished faster than anyone else!! I was agog!! Who was this person?!?!
After we ate the server gave us a free piece of their lemon bar, which they apparently do whenever they have new customers. It was both delicious and way too sweet at the same time. I could only eat a few bites of it, which made me sad because lemon bars are high on my list of favorite desserts. If they had cut the sugar by half, I would have been able to eat so much more of it... so maybe that saved me from myself.
So naturally, after that, we had to get more dessert. I mean... we had always planned to do so, and we're not the types who go back on our word, okay? So off we went to Mateo's, which had a huge selection of gelato and popsicles in many varied flavors. It was delightful! I wanted to try so much! But I settled for a scoop each of passionfruit and coconut gelato.
Then it was time for another escape room -- K's first ever! -- The Mystery of Senator Payne. It had gotten some pretty good reviews, but I thought it was just okay. The saddest part was that there was a point where we had to solve a puzzle using the analog clocks, and the clue specified that 6:10 meant that the long hand would be pointing at the 2. OMG, when I first learned that children these days could not read analog clocks it was so shocking... only to find that apparently this extends all the way to adult millennials. It is the end of days, folks.
K had a good time, and we still had time to kill, and the escape room place had an opening, so we ended up doing Casino Heist as well. It was even more meh than Senator Payne... both of these rooms seemed kind of low budget, and the game master seemed to get a little too involved. Maybe that's a thing about 60 Out rooms, and possibly it's because they're paying more attention than other escape rooms, so they see you struggling and it's really hard not to say something/help you out a bit.
We went to have an early dinner at Honey's Kettle Fried Chicken, and ONCE AGAIN, there was no air conditioning. WTF. Do these people understand that it's *LA* and there's a freaking heat wave going on?! Before the trip, when I mentioned my concerns about the heat, Jade was extremely blase and assured me "it's LA, everywhere will have air conditioning." WELL THAT IS SIMPLY NOT TRUE. Either more places than we could possibly imagine in LA don't have air conditioning, or we have the worst luck in the entire world that we kept picking places that didn't have it. Anyhow, I was so hot that it made me pretty grumpy, but the yummy food helped. (Once upon a time, the heat might not have bothered me much, but nowadays I get overheated very quickly!!) I liked it a lot -- and I dare say I would have enjoyed it even more had it not been so freaking hot -- though I'm not sure I enjoyed the batter as much as I do regular fried chicken batter. It was kind of... almost... tempura like? Anyway it was good, but not something I would go out of my way to have. Jade felt the opposite -- she totally loved it. Which is good since she's the one who can have it more often than me.
After dinner Jade played "Mom" and dropped her girls off at The Forum for the GOT7 concert. :D We agreed on a place to meet afterward, so that she wouldn't have to brave the horrible concert traffic, and the only convenient place was, creepily enough, some sort of mortuary. Anyway, Jade went off to watch Three Identical Strangers, while me, Adelagia and K. went to enjoy ourselves at the concert.
It was good, and I had a good time, and it was really great to see our boys moving around live and in the flesh and all that, but... I have to say, my KCON NY experience (as yet unwritten) totally spoiled me, because even though K. had gotten us decent seats, they seemed SO FAR AWAY. All my KCON photos and videos look so awesome, because all the acts were RIGHT THERE. At the GOT7 concert, I had to look at the screens more often than not, and when taking pics I had to zoom in with my camera just to get them reasonably recognizable, but then of course it made them all grainy and blurry. Ugh. Adelagia was seated elsewhere, because she had gotten her ticket at the last minute, but get this: IT WAS AN EVEN BETTER SEAT. Just goes to show, if you're willing to possibly miss out, you can wait a concert out and get great seats for a good price. K., on the other hand, had gone insane when tickets went on sale, and when she couldn't get P2 seats, she BOUGHT RESALE TICKETS, and ended up paying like $500/ticket. I had not agreed to such a thing, of course, so she asked me to pay $250, which was the face value of the ticket, and still more than I had agreed to, but I did it anyway. AND OUR SEATS ENDED UP BEING WORSE THAN ADELAGIA'S. K. was a victim of fan desperation, and I got punished for it lol (because when she got them, I wasn't even into GOT7!).
The boys sounded generally great live, and unlike at most other concerts, I didn't end up wearing my ear plugs very much -- I wanted to hear the boys' voices clearly!
At some point they showed this animated "love story" on the huge screens, where this couple continually has problems because the girl keeps having attitude issues and the boy (rightfully) can't take it anymore. So then they break up, and eventually get back together. After each "scene" GOT7 would perform one of their songs to fit what was going on (sort of like Mamma Mia), which was cool. What was funny, though, was that whenever the couple would break up or have a sweet moment, the crowd (of mostly teenage girls) would be like, "Awwwww!" or whatever. And then at the end when they get back together, they were happy and cheered. Meanwhile, we found out later, both Adelagia and I were separately thinking, "They probably shouldn't be together. They don't sound right for each other at all, so they're just going to continue to be unhappy." LOLOL oh the wisdom/cynicism of age.
One of my favorite parts was related to that... the comedy routine BamBam officiated (a hypothetical scenario on what each guy would do if the girl they were seeing told them that it wasn't working out). Can I say that it is freaking amazing that BamBam can serve as an English-speaking emcee??? From what I understand, he learned all his English from Mark and Jackson!! BamBam is like a language genius. Anyway, BamBam's hypothetical scenario began with the member and the girl being at In-N-Out, and the second I heard this I thought to myself, "Oh no, Tiffany will never let me hear the end of this." And I was RIGHT, because it was one of the first things she mentioned when we left the concert. LOLOL sigh.
My favorite other part was the unit stage with Jinyoung and BamBam, where they performed "King." I wish there were a studio version of that. They say the word "motherfucker" in it! :O
There was kind of an odd moment when the boys were trying to be... encouraging? To their fans about being K-pop fans? And were saying something along the lines of "we're going to make it so that you don't have to be ashamed!" or something? It's really hard to describe, but basically they were trying to say that it was okay to like K-pop, and they were going to make it their business to make being a fan of K-pop perfectly legit. It was just a really weird message, imho, to send to a venue full of people who were THERE, so clearly not "ashamed" of being their fans or K-pop fans in general. I don't know, it was just kind of odd, and put a damper on festivities that were otherwise pretty happy. Like, I wasn't thinking I should be ashamed, but now you've put that in my mind, thanks?
The only thing that kind of "ruined" the concert for me was the fact that Jinyoung didn't really seem very into it. He was very Jinyoung, and that was delightful (including the part when the fans chanted his name -- they did this with every member -- and his response was "Yes, my name is Jinyoung. I know my name already, thank you." LOL). But his not really being into the concert was a bummer. I guess he was tired and all that, but it was sucky for someone like me, who really only cared about seeing him. He did his job, but it was obvious toward the end of the concert that he was Done. He kept inching to the back of the stage, particularly when it was supposed to be winding down, and then the other guys really wanted to do another song (LA got an extra song that the concerts before did not get), so he had to come back out. And Jinyoung never showed by his expression that he was tired or upset or bored or whatever, because he was a professional about it, but it was still obvious that he wanted it to be over. The other thing that was upsetting/annoying was that our seats were stage left, and Jinyoung HARDLY EVEN CAME OVER TO OUR SIDE!!! He kept going to the other side!!! So as a Jinyoung fan I felt kind of disappointed by that experience. (Meanwhile, Mark was doing something cool -- fans would give him baseball hats, and he'd wear it, pose for a picture with it, then give it back. Like what an amazing souvenir that would be!)
The plan after the concert was to go to Quarters for more KBBQ. It was the "middle-priced" KBBQ place from the Worth It episode, and Jade and I were attracted to it because you could get a side of melted cheese in which to dip your meat. K. was tired so we sent her back to her hotel; Adelagia insisted that she was good to go -- "I'll stay up for cheese!" -- which is why we are friends. At the front we were greeted by a guy who could be Henry's younger brother. So cute! I liked the vibe of the place, very modern and hip, but it was a little too much of both of those things for Adelagia's liking. We weren't really that hungry, so we just ordered a few items (Quarters is so named because every meat you order is a quarter of a pound's worth), and paid for the side of cheese rather than order enough for it to be free. Once again, the food was good, but that's because it's hard to go wrong with KBBQ. The cheese, however, was meh. It was basically the same thing they serve at Gyu-kaku, where the cheese is melted in a little dish thing, and it's just American cheese. Which I suppose makes sense, because American cheese is very meltable, and it's not like they're giving you a full-on fondue with fancy cheeses. Still, it wasn't as special as we had hoped. AGAIN NO AIR CONDITIONING, BTW. I was hoping to see young Henry again when we left, but we didn't, so I was once again disappointed. I guess that's what happens when you have so many expectations for a day; it's inevitable that it's not going to be as amazing as you hoped. Sigh.
And now I'm going to jump forward in time to the next day, in which Jade told us a story of something that had happened at Quarters, but she couldn't say anything at the time because of potentially being overheard. Apparently, she spotted a couple seated at a table somewhere behind me and Adelagia. The girl seemed to be complaining of something being stuck in her teeth, so the guy reached his fingers into her mouth and rooted around until he found something and pulled it out. Then he held it up to her like, 'Ah? Ah? Is this it?' And she was really happy and THEN THEY KISSED. Like... what. OMG. I was like, wow. That is true love, right there. Super disgusting, but true love.
Read part two.
July 6 was the GOT7 concert, and I was planning to go down for about a week to see family and friends as well. I would stay with
jade_okelani, and meet up with K. from Korean class for the concert itself. But a few days before I was scheduled to leave, adelagia decided that she would deeply regret not going to the concert, so she last-minute purchased a concert ticket and plane ticket for herself! Wheeee! You guys don't know how surprisingly spontaneous this is of her, lol. We are both really big on Planning. Anyway, she booked a room at a place near Jade's, which was convenient for carpooling purposes.DAY ONE
We flew out on July 4, on different flights, because my flight was full. Adelagia arrived like 4 hours before me, so she killed time at the dinky Burbank airport until I arrived and could join her. Immediately after Jade picked us up, we headed to Kang Hodong Baekjeong, a highly rated KBBQ place. They were not AYCE, but all the reviews said it was THE place to go for KBBQ. (Side note: I had noted that the name of the restaurant bore the same name of the guy I knew from the Knowing Brothers variety show, but I dismissed the possibility that there was any connection. I didn't know Hodong's last name, and I figured I knew so little Korean that I was trying to make connections even where none existed. Only it turns out that it is almost certainly his restaurant, lol. There's caricature artwork of him all over the restaurant!) We got the smaller of the beef platters, and our server was a surly girl named Esther. The food was good, and it's the type of place where they come by and cook it for you, but I have to say that it wasn't as amazing as I expected. It was right up there with the other KBBQ that I've had with C. all over the country, where it's not AYCE but the meat is high quality and blah blah. It's just... because it's LA, I expect more. Their AYCE places are worlds above other places, so the non-AYCE places, as far as I'm concerned, need to be way better -- otherwise why even go there vs an AYCE place?! It was cool that they give you a little packet of seaweed to make wraps with -- but that disappeared quickly, and if you wanted more they charged for it!! Which was bullshit imho. They gave the same amount of seaweed, as far as I could tell, whether you had 2 people or 3 or 4. So that was already not equitable. And it's not like seaweed is that expensive, as far as I've experienced? And they didn't give that much? And it's not like what we ordered was cheap? VERY FEEBLE, I MUST SAY.
Still, all that said, it was good because it was KBBQ. I mean it would have had to have been TERRIBLE for me to not have enjoyed what I ate. Afterward, we wondered if there was anywhere nearby where we could get something sweet. Serendipitously, we saw that the strip mall across the street had a bunch of shops, and one of the signs proclaimed "ice cream." Direct and to the point. Not expecting a lot -- or anything, the three of us trudged across the street (it was LA, after all, and hot). It turned out that the ice cream place was Holy Roly, a rolled ice cream place! That was FAR more interesting than any of us had anticipated from the "ice cream" sign on the marquee of shops, lol. Because we were full from lunch and didn't have a lot of time (we were booked for an escape room), we decided to just get one and split it. (Also they were quite pricey, about $9-10 each.) We ordered the matcha one, though I was also interested in the Ferrero Rocher version. Anyway, Adelagia decided to go to the bathroom and missed them making our order! That will teach her to not risk a UTI by holding it. I recorded the whole thing on video, however, so at least she was able to watch that later. Basically, they pour the ice cream mixture on an ice-cold panel, and they keep spreading it out and manipulating it until it is one long, frozen sheet. Then they use a spatula to push strips into rolls, put all the rolls into a cup, and then top it however it's been ordered. It was super fun and delicious!! One of my regrets is that we did not go back to that place for the rest of the trip, even though we had intentions to (spoiler alert).
Afterward, we did one of the many escape rooms we would come to do on the trip. This one was Maze Rooms' "Magic Kingdom." It was fun, and had one of the scariest parts that we had ever encountered in an escape room -- we opened a door, and it was pitch black inside, with nowhere to go but down. There were a bunch of foam objects on the bottom, and I knew, logically, that they wouldn't have people do something where they could potentially be dropped down an actual elevator shaft or something, but even so, it was scary as shit. I had Jade hold my arms as I gingerly made my way down, and once I felt safe, I was able to crawl into the room we were supposed to be in and open the normal door for the other two.
As people who do escape rooms regularly, there are certain things that make us mad, and those come in two categories. Things that make us mad because THE PUZZLE IS AT FAULT (like when things don't work the way they're supposed to, and then we end up wasting a bunch of time), or things that make us mad because WE SHOULD KNOW BETTER. One of the things that happened in the latter category for this room was that there were a bunch of mushrooms that lit up, and we should have known it was a Simon Says-type game but didn't follow through. Grrrr. Adelagia tells me we ended up beating this room, anyway. I don't actually remember.
After that, we went to Olympic Spa, a jjimjilbang. If you don't know what a jjimjilbang is, it's a Korean bath house, segregated by sex (in this case, it was women only), where you can enjoy the facilities all day for a nominal fee ($20 at this one, but if you want to go to the one in Lynnwood, it's $40 now, I believe), and then get services of top of that (like a Korean scrub or massage) for an extra fee. Everyone is always butt naked, which takes a little getting used to, but then it's like, okay well whatever. Adelagia tried to take advantage of their heated jade floor to take a nap, but apparently it was too noisy to really do so, while Jade and I soaked in the various tubs and also had the first layer of our skin sloughed off by strong Korean ladies. There was a super hot salt bath, a cold bath, and a hot-but-not-as-hot bath, but I would constantly get overheated in the hot baths, while the cold bath was far too cold. >< I actually might have enjoyed the saunas more; they had a dry one and a wet one, and while I did prefer the wet one to the dry, they both got unbearable after awhile. I just need a medium temperature thing with minimal humidity... like my living room. LOL.
Jade and I both got the "Pure Bliss" package, which included a scrub and a massage, along with a hair wash. The scrub was nice, because it makes your skin feel baby soft. Also, the part where they toss hot water over your body as they finish scrubbing parts of you feels suuuuuuper good. Nothing compares to the first time I ever had it done, but the two times I've had it done since then were still satisfying. I found the massage I got much less satisfying; massages aren't supposed to be so wet, after all, and I don't like having to turn my head this way and that; I much prefer being able to put my head in a hole ("PUT YER HEAD IN THE HOLE, LASSIE!") and not have to crane my neck. What was cool was that after I was done, I had a brief conversation with the massage ahjumma in Korean. I don't recall exactly how it came about, but I think I probably said 감사합니다, which usually spurs the Korean person I'm talking to to ask if I am a 한국사감 (Korean person, literally). She then asked me if my mom was Korean, or my dad, and both times I explained that they were not. And then I said that I was learning Korean, and she gave me props for learning it even though I was not in any way Korean, lol.
By the time we were done, it was late-ish, but we still needed to grab dinner. Our plan was to go to In-N-Out to grab burgers, then go to Tommy's for fries, because Jade said their fries were amazing (and as much as I love In-N-Out, I admit freely that their fries are terrible), then take our food to the theater and eat dinner while watching Tag.
Adelagia had been up for hours longer than us by this point, and hadn't really been able to nap at the jjimjilbang, but she insisted on going with us to In-N-Out and doing the movie because she was convinced that GOT7 was going to go to In-N-Out. I can't tell you how much I tried to dissuade her of this notion; even if they DID go to In-N-Out, there was no guarantee they would go on the same night as us, and on top of that, choose to go to the In-N-Out *we* were going to, given that there are probably hundreds in the LA area to choose from, lol. I would have dissuaded her even further had I realized that the In-N-Out we were going to was drive-through only (they used to be only drive-through, but in recent years has started to build ones with indoor seating), because even if they WERE there, we'd have zero chance of seeing them or interacting with them in their car! Anyway, we got our burgers without incident (in this case, unfortunately), then went to Tommy's, where Jade and I got regular fries and chili cheese fries to split. It took FOREVER, not sure why, but it was annoying.
The theater where we went happily was one of those that had actual tray tables attached to the seats, because they also sold food or something. So convenient! So we ate and watched Tag, which was funny and enjoyable. The food was pretty cold by then, so not as good as it should have been -- maybe that's why I was unimpressed with Tommy's fries. But I think my fave fries are still the ones from 5 Guys. (For the record, the burger I always get from In-N-Out is a Double Double, animal style, with light spread. After every time, I always say, "That was too much, next time I'll just get a cheeseburger." Somehow this never happens.)
And then finally, FINALLY, our day was done. Looking back now, I'm like, super proud of us for packing so much into one day! Go girls!
(I should probably mention that since it was July 4, there were tons of fireworks going off everywhere, including those set off by idiots who were illegally doing it on their own streets. Needless to say, we heard and saw many ambulances/police cars that night as well.)
DAY TWO
We started this day by going to the wrong escape room location. D'oh! It was the 60Out room "The Orphanage," and the guy at the location we went to was very understanding and called the right location for us. They ended up being able to take us despite the fact that we were going to be super late, so that was another serendipitous moment.
Remember how I said the elevator shaft thing that I had to do at the escape room the day before was the scariest thing I've ever experienced in an escape room? Well it held that honor for one day, and then The Orphanage took its spot. We started out in PITCH BLACKNESS, where we had to feel around walls to try and figure shit out. Jade somehow managed to remove something that was blocking a single, dim light (to this day, I don't know if, had Jade not been there, Adelagia and I would have simply died of fright in that dark room and they would have found our bodies an hour later, because neither of us are as tall as Jade so I don't know if we ever would have found that light thing). We still at that point were trapped behind some iron bars, and we had to get through them to the primary rooms inside. We had to shine some sort of light on a creepy painting at the end of the hallway, and when we did that, something came CHARGING AT US IN THE DARK AND CLANGED AGAINST THE BARS. It was so fucking scary that we all screamed in genuine fright, and I'm glad that none of us suffer from incontinence because I guarantee you, that would have been an issue. It turned out to be a toy rocking horse that gets released once you do what we did. The rest of it was just as creepy, if not as scary as that moment, and even having to reach inside a dead child's mouth for a key was pretty much just par for the course. We beat this room, possibly because we were all working feverishly to NOT BE THERE ANYMORE.
Afterward, we were offered a discount if we wanted to do the other room they had, Nautilus. It was submarine-themed, and apparently cost $100K to build. Since we are shameless escape room whores, we couldn't say no. It was much more on the normal side, thematically, which was a relief. We beat this one, too!
Then it was time for Oo-Kook, which turned out to be one of our favorite meals. It was an AYCE KBBQ place, which was featured in a Worth It episode on KBBQ, as the lowest-cost option. It was indeed reasonably priced, and the selection of meats on offer was truly extraordinary. We could only order 3 things at a time (because there were 3 of us), so we'd each pick something for each round, and went from there. Toward the end, we ordered duck breast and pork jowl, but for some reason there was a huge portion of both. Jade enjoyed the duck breast, but neither Adelagia and I liked it much, while I also wasn't a huge fan of the pork jowl. We were convinced that by this time the restaurant was sick of us and had given us extra just to make us stop ordering. WELL I AM NOT ONE TO BE BEATEN DOWN BY THE ESTABLISHMENT, so after we somehow crammed all that meat down our gullets, we still ordered more. And it's a good thing, too, because the last cut I tried ended up being my and Jade's favorite: the outside skirt steak. Mmmm. And, listen, just because it was AYCE didn't mean that the meat quality was poor. It was all really good, and I count myself as fairly experienced and knowledgeable in this area! Also, because of the structure of their AYCE, you can end up trying a bunch of different things, whereas when you go to a non-AYCE place, you're limited to whatever platter you get, unless you are willing to spend a significant chunk of change. So here's my recommendation: If you're in LA, go to a reputable AYCE KBBQ place. You will get a lot more bang for your buck. If you're not in LA, go to a non-AYCE place. You won't get as much variety, but the quality will be much higher, the food will likely be cooked for you, and you'll get little niceties like lettuce wraps and things like that.
"You're supposed to feed that to me, though."
Next, we went to do the Evil Genius 2-hour escape room experience. Jade and I had been very much looking forward to this one, because it just sounded so cool, and it was neat that it was back to back. If you solved the first part in 40 minutes, or however long, you would get the remaining time to be put toward the second part. Unfortunately, it didn't quite meet my expectations. Maybe it was because it was too hot. Maybe 2 hours trying to escape a room is too long. Maybe it was that, rather than escaping the first part easily, we went overtime on it, so instead of getting more time for the second part, we got less. Whatever it was, it wasn't nearly as enjoyable as I had expected. Also, we really, REALLY hated the map game, which took so fucking long and was so fucking tedious. -.- That was another example of there being something about the escape room itself that made us mad; but another example of there being something about something we did or didn't do that made us mad was that we kept using certain surfaces to place our clues and such, then ended up needing that surface for a clue but couldn't see it due to all our stuff being on it. ARRRRGHHHH. Because we are idiots we ended up doing that multiple times in multiple escape rooms. 우리 바보야. :(
After that we went to Somi Somi, where I grumpily scarfed down a swirl of matcha/sesame soft serve in a fish-shape cone (that was a bread/waffle of sorts) that was also filled with custard. I had gotten a real strawberry with it, along with a sprinkle of Oreo dust, but the strawberry immediately fell off the cone and I had to throw it away. That's partly why I was grumpy. (In retrospect, it was a very Jackson moment for me.)
We wandered to Aladdin, a new/used bookstore, from where I had actually ordered a bunch of Harry Potter books in Korean not too long ago! LOL. There I began my Pentagon album collection. I got three albums, but none of them contained any Hongseok things. It annoys me greatly that I never get what I want by chance! I have since just purchased the Hongseok specific things that I want, with plans to sell the ones I actually got of the other members.
JB and Jinyoung got bored with sitting around, so they started reprising some of their old photo shoots and dance routines:
We were originally supposed to go to OB Bear, a Korean fried chicken place, but we were still super full from how we had stuffed ourselves at lunch, plus we had a different fried chicken place on the docket for the next day. So instead of going there, we decided to go to Kyodong Noodles just across the way. Jade and I both got the jjajangmyeon/jjampong combo, while Adelagia got jjajangmyeon. Of the two, I enjoyed the jjampong more; I felt that the jjajangmyeon I made myself tasted much better! LOL. However, Adelagia very much enjoyed it (it was her first time so she had nothing to compare it to), which I am really glad about, because I am slightly obsessed with jjajangmyeon and really want to have the proper version of it when we're in Seoul, and now she might be more into it! :D
Kyodong also had some interesting Korean drinks in their fridge, so I decided we should have a taste test! Originally I had gotten Sac Sac Orange, because I am a huuuuge fan of Sac Sac Grape, but the orange was pretty terrible. I don't know if you've ever had Tang, but it basically tasted like Tang. Anyway, I got all of the others for us to try: sikhye (a type of rice drink, which I know Jackson to be a fan of, though not necessarily the canned version), Milkis (cream soda-y), and Sujeonggwa (cinnamon punch). Sadly they were all waaaaaay too sweet, and not good enough in other ways to balance that out. Oh well. If I had to choose one though: sikhye, all day every day.
Despite being full of food, we went to another Maze Room escape room, this one called Demon Hunter, and were joined by
ropo. Good thing, too, because the rest of us were operating on tired brain cells that were misfiring/not working properly after a long day of 4 escape rooms and huge meals. We still managed to escape the room, which was fun-ish, but not compared to the ones we had done earlier that day. It was supposed to be creepy, what with the demon theme and a demon child whose eyes glowed red, but really, after The Orphanage it was going to take a lot more than that to damage my calm.DAY THREE
GOT7 CONCERT DAY!!!!!! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!
We started this day with, what else, an escape room. This time it was at 60 Out's Marina Del Rey location, to do Titanic. I had been TOLD that the premise of this one was that if you didn't escape, Jack Dawson would die all over again. That tickled me! But there was actually no such thing, so I'm not really sure if that had been a joke or...?
Anyway, all the escape rooms that we had done up to this point, including the ones we'd done in Seattle and Vancouver and the last time we were in LA, all seemed to leave you to your own devices, and the game masters would only get involved if you contacted them for a hint. This time, maybe it's just the evolution of the escape room, but the game masters seemed a lot more involved, watching everything we were doing from cameras and sometimes even mics (?) placed in the rooms. That's why I got suspicious when there were certain things that seemed to happen even though there was no apparent mechanism to make it happen -- such as when we got a "gun" and were supposed to shoot the lock off a door. There was no sensor on the door that I could see, and when I "fired" the gun near it, nothing happened. But when the game master told us to stand away from the lock and point the gun at it in an obvious shooting motion, it somehow opened, despite, again, nothing having any sensors, that I could tell.
After that, we met up with K. (who Adelagia and I know from Korean class) for lunch at Fritto Misto. K. is one of those super talkative people who are easy to get to know/feel at ease with, but after you get to know her, this can be rather exhausting. It was good in this case, however, since she and Jade were meeting for the first time, and Jade has near-zero interest in K-pop stuff (K. is far more immersed in it than even Adelagia or me, but she can talk your ear off on just about anything). Fritto Misto was good, but I was extremely unimpressed with the fact that they had NO AIR CONDITIONING and it was supposed to be one of the hottest days in LA during its current heat wave. I got their special that day, which was a kind of ravioli, because it was such a good deal, also coming with a salad. But generally I prefer saucy pasta you have to twirl, over stuffed pastas. So I do kind of regret not just getting what I generally like. I did appreciate, however, that the server steered me away from the lasagne, which I had also been considering. He explained that since they cannot make the lasagne from scratch as people order it, it's always premade and microwaved to serve. Which makes perfect sense, and kind of makes me wary of ordering lasagne from anywhere ever again! Adelagia got the gnocchi, and you guys, normally she is a very, very slow eater. People accuse ME of eating slowly, and compared to those people, I do. But next to Adelagia, I'm like Speedy Gonzalez. Yet this time she finished faster than anyone else!! I was agog!! Who was this person?!?!
After we ate the server gave us a free piece of their lemon bar, which they apparently do whenever they have new customers. It was both delicious and way too sweet at the same time. I could only eat a few bites of it, which made me sad because lemon bars are high on my list of favorite desserts. If they had cut the sugar by half, I would have been able to eat so much more of it... so maybe that saved me from myself.
So naturally, after that, we had to get more dessert. I mean... we had always planned to do so, and we're not the types who go back on our word, okay? So off we went to Mateo's, which had a huge selection of gelato and popsicles in many varied flavors. It was delightful! I wanted to try so much! But I settled for a scoop each of passionfruit and coconut gelato.
Then it was time for another escape room -- K's first ever! -- The Mystery of Senator Payne. It had gotten some pretty good reviews, but I thought it was just okay. The saddest part was that there was a point where we had to solve a puzzle using the analog clocks, and the clue specified that 6:10 meant that the long hand would be pointing at the 2. OMG, when I first learned that children these days could not read analog clocks it was so shocking... only to find that apparently this extends all the way to adult millennials. It is the end of days, folks.
K had a good time, and we still had time to kill, and the escape room place had an opening, so we ended up doing Casino Heist as well. It was even more meh than Senator Payne... both of these rooms seemed kind of low budget, and the game master seemed to get a little too involved. Maybe that's a thing about 60 Out rooms, and possibly it's because they're paying more attention than other escape rooms, so they see you struggling and it's really hard not to say something/help you out a bit.
We went to have an early dinner at Honey's Kettle Fried Chicken, and ONCE AGAIN, there was no air conditioning. WTF. Do these people understand that it's *LA* and there's a freaking heat wave going on?! Before the trip, when I mentioned my concerns about the heat, Jade was extremely blase and assured me "it's LA, everywhere will have air conditioning." WELL THAT IS SIMPLY NOT TRUE. Either more places than we could possibly imagine in LA don't have air conditioning, or we have the worst luck in the entire world that we kept picking places that didn't have it. Anyhow, I was so hot that it made me pretty grumpy, but the yummy food helped. (Once upon a time, the heat might not have bothered me much, but nowadays I get overheated very quickly!!) I liked it a lot -- and I dare say I would have enjoyed it even more had it not been so freaking hot -- though I'm not sure I enjoyed the batter as much as I do regular fried chicken batter. It was kind of... almost... tempura like? Anyway it was good, but not something I would go out of my way to have. Jade felt the opposite -- she totally loved it. Which is good since she's the one who can have it more often than me.
After dinner Jade played "Mom" and dropped her girls off at The Forum for the GOT7 concert. :D We agreed on a place to meet afterward, so that she wouldn't have to brave the horrible concert traffic, and the only convenient place was, creepily enough, some sort of mortuary. Anyway, Jade went off to watch Three Identical Strangers, while me, Adelagia and K. went to enjoy ourselves at the concert.
It was good, and I had a good time, and it was really great to see our boys moving around live and in the flesh and all that, but... I have to say, my KCON NY experience (as yet unwritten) totally spoiled me, because even though K. had gotten us decent seats, they seemed SO FAR AWAY. All my KCON photos and videos look so awesome, because all the acts were RIGHT THERE. At the GOT7 concert, I had to look at the screens more often than not, and when taking pics I had to zoom in with my camera just to get them reasonably recognizable, but then of course it made them all grainy and blurry. Ugh. Adelagia was seated elsewhere, because she had gotten her ticket at the last minute, but get this: IT WAS AN EVEN BETTER SEAT. Just goes to show, if you're willing to possibly miss out, you can wait a concert out and get great seats for a good price. K., on the other hand, had gone insane when tickets went on sale, and when she couldn't get P2 seats, she BOUGHT RESALE TICKETS, and ended up paying like $500/ticket. I had not agreed to such a thing, of course, so she asked me to pay $250, which was the face value of the ticket, and still more than I had agreed to, but I did it anyway. AND OUR SEATS ENDED UP BEING WORSE THAN ADELAGIA'S. K. was a victim of fan desperation, and I got punished for it lol (because when she got them, I wasn't even into GOT7!).
The boys sounded generally great live, and unlike at most other concerts, I didn't end up wearing my ear plugs very much -- I wanted to hear the boys' voices clearly!
At some point they showed this animated "love story" on the huge screens, where this couple continually has problems because the girl keeps having attitude issues and the boy (rightfully) can't take it anymore. So then they break up, and eventually get back together. After each "scene" GOT7 would perform one of their songs to fit what was going on (sort of like Mamma Mia), which was cool. What was funny, though, was that whenever the couple would break up or have a sweet moment, the crowd (of mostly teenage girls) would be like, "Awwwww!" or whatever. And then at the end when they get back together, they were happy and cheered. Meanwhile, we found out later, both Adelagia and I were separately thinking, "They probably shouldn't be together. They don't sound right for each other at all, so they're just going to continue to be unhappy." LOLOL oh the wisdom/cynicism of age.
One of my favorite parts was related to that... the comedy routine BamBam officiated (a hypothetical scenario on what each guy would do if the girl they were seeing told them that it wasn't working out). Can I say that it is freaking amazing that BamBam can serve as an English-speaking emcee??? From what I understand, he learned all his English from Mark and Jackson!! BamBam is like a language genius. Anyway, BamBam's hypothetical scenario began with the member and the girl being at In-N-Out, and the second I heard this I thought to myself, "Oh no, Tiffany will never let me hear the end of this." And I was RIGHT, because it was one of the first things she mentioned when we left the concert. LOLOL sigh.
My favorite other part was the unit stage with Jinyoung and BamBam, where they performed "King." I wish there were a studio version of that. They say the word "motherfucker" in it! :O
There was kind of an odd moment when the boys were trying to be... encouraging? To their fans about being K-pop fans? And were saying something along the lines of "we're going to make it so that you don't have to be ashamed!" or something? It's really hard to describe, but basically they were trying to say that it was okay to like K-pop, and they were going to make it their business to make being a fan of K-pop perfectly legit. It was just a really weird message, imho, to send to a venue full of people who were THERE, so clearly not "ashamed" of being their fans or K-pop fans in general. I don't know, it was just kind of odd, and put a damper on festivities that were otherwise pretty happy. Like, I wasn't thinking I should be ashamed, but now you've put that in my mind, thanks?
The only thing that kind of "ruined" the concert for me was the fact that Jinyoung didn't really seem very into it. He was very Jinyoung, and that was delightful (including the part when the fans chanted his name -- they did this with every member -- and his response was "Yes, my name is Jinyoung. I know my name already, thank you." LOL). But his not really being into the concert was a bummer. I guess he was tired and all that, but it was sucky for someone like me, who really only cared about seeing him. He did his job, but it was obvious toward the end of the concert that he was Done. He kept inching to the back of the stage, particularly when it was supposed to be winding down, and then the other guys really wanted to do another song (LA got an extra song that the concerts before did not get), so he had to come back out. And Jinyoung never showed by his expression that he was tired or upset or bored or whatever, because he was a professional about it, but it was still obvious that he wanted it to be over. The other thing that was upsetting/annoying was that our seats were stage left, and Jinyoung HARDLY EVEN CAME OVER TO OUR SIDE!!! He kept going to the other side!!! So as a Jinyoung fan I felt kind of disappointed by that experience. (Meanwhile, Mark was doing something cool -- fans would give him baseball hats, and he'd wear it, pose for a picture with it, then give it back. Like what an amazing souvenir that would be!)
The plan after the concert was to go to Quarters for more KBBQ. It was the "middle-priced" KBBQ place from the Worth It episode, and Jade and I were attracted to it because you could get a side of melted cheese in which to dip your meat. K. was tired so we sent her back to her hotel; Adelagia insisted that she was good to go -- "I'll stay up for cheese!" -- which is why we are friends. At the front we were greeted by a guy who could be Henry's younger brother. So cute! I liked the vibe of the place, very modern and hip, but it was a little too much of both of those things for Adelagia's liking. We weren't really that hungry, so we just ordered a few items (Quarters is so named because every meat you order is a quarter of a pound's worth), and paid for the side of cheese rather than order enough for it to be free. Once again, the food was good, but that's because it's hard to go wrong with KBBQ. The cheese, however, was meh. It was basically the same thing they serve at Gyu-kaku, where the cheese is melted in a little dish thing, and it's just American cheese. Which I suppose makes sense, because American cheese is very meltable, and it's not like they're giving you a full-on fondue with fancy cheeses. Still, it wasn't as special as we had hoped. AGAIN NO AIR CONDITIONING, BTW. I was hoping to see young Henry again when we left, but we didn't, so I was once again disappointed. I guess that's what happens when you have so many expectations for a day; it's inevitable that it's not going to be as amazing as you hoped. Sigh.
And now I'm going to jump forward in time to the next day, in which Jade told us a story of something that had happened at Quarters, but she couldn't say anything at the time because of potentially being overheard. Apparently, she spotted a couple seated at a table somewhere behind me and Adelagia. The girl seemed to be complaining of something being stuck in her teeth, so the guy reached his fingers into her mouth and rooted around until he found something and pulled it out. Then he held it up to her like, 'Ah? Ah? Is this it?' And she was really happy and THEN THEY KISSED. Like... what. OMG. I was like, wow. That is true love, right there. Super disgusting, but true love.
Read part two.
