How else would you start the morning after a late night that ended with tacos at 3am?

I guess we weren’t really starting the “morning” since it was already past noon.

How about brunch at a Vietnamese Pho spot?  Yeah, that sounds good.

This place didn’t have a sign but my brother said it was called Pho Cafe.  Silverlake is an older section of LA that a lot of the hipsters like to hang out at.  LA/Silverlake hipsters aren’t like your Philly “I’m trying to look dirty-while riding my fixie” type hipsters.  The ones I saw liked to wear really expensive D-Squared leather blazers and high-water slacks and loafers.  But who knows, I’m sure someone in Silverlake is riding a fixie right now.  It’s essentially the west coast Brooklyn.

We came just in time too.

By the time my bowl of Pho look like this, all the empty tables in the picture above were full… mainly full of hipsters.

Pho by the way is a traditional Vietnamese beef-broth soup flavored by Chinese 5 spice, served with vermiclli noodles, a type of meat and people add in a variety of condiments for taste.  I prefer flank steak, fresh sprouts, basil leaves, cilantro, lime, fresh cut jalapenos, a little fish sauce, a little hosin sauce and a lot of Sriracha hot sauce.

If you want to try a bowl locally, ask where CripsyHundos goes.

All Asians enjoy a good fortune cookie.  It’s not racist because I’m Asian- I have a pass.

So to continue my Man vs. Food tour of Los Angeles I suggested we go to Philippe’s- right after we eating pho.

Philippe’s is the home of the original French dipped sandwich and an extremely spicy in-house made, served and sold mustard.

Just like Pat’s and Gino’s in Philly, there’s always a line to get food here.  But unlike the cheesesteak spots you can buy beer, pickled pigs feet, pickled eggs, homemade apple pie and peach cobbler.

So this is the famous French dipped sandwich.  Three of us split it being that we just ate huge bowls of pho not too long ago-I’m not that much of a glutton.

Strange looking but not bad.  The eggs are pickled in beet juice so the egg white pretty much tastes like a beet.  No big deal.

I’m not sure if the “ese” eating with his family approved of my artistic angle at shooting the homemade apple and ice cream but whatever.  Do something yo!  It’s easy being tough in a blog post.

After Philippe’s we wanted to walk through a small “historic” Mexican market on Alvarado St- mainly because I wanted more Mexican candy.  The spot was literally a block away from the restaurant but we had to leave their lot for fear of being towed.  So we had to search for parking.  Damn.

Parking is the worst in L.A.  You have to pay for it everywhere: parking garages, valet lots and street parking  is always metered: 15 minutes for every quarter.  And you need quarters, they don’t even have muni-meters like in New York.  Come on Los Angeles, get with the times.

The only positive of driving is finding spots along the way.  Like these brick tranny’s.  I remember seeing footage of Pat Duffy killing this spot.  I’d post a link to that footage but I’m too lazy to look for it right now.

Some transitions are smoother than others.

Ah… Alvarado Street reminds me of walking through Tijuana as a kid.  Some many random “authentic” Mexican wares.  I think I had 2 of those sombrero hat wearing puppets.

Never had a Lucha Libre mask of my own.

But I’ve defintely seen Nacho Libre. . . many times.  Many, many times.

I called these things drug rugs and no one knew what I was talking about.  Am I the only one who goes around calling these woven burlap sack hoodys drug rugs?  Why?  Because everyone you see weating them that’s not actually Mexican most likely smokes weed.

Imagine how many curbs you could wax.  I know, it’s insane.

I wish this guy was my father.  Sorry real Dad- your Mexican food kind of sucks.

I don’t feel like making captions for the next few pictures.  Just enjoy the colors of a world you want to know about.

It’s fun to eat and it’s fun to look at the expressions of people watching you eat it.

Berrics time.

I promised my friend’s friend who works at the Berrics I ould not post up any video footage so if you want to see what I filmed- stop by Homebase and I’ll show you.

The park is located near a very sketchy part of Los Angeles called Skid Row- yup, just like that tattoo your mom has on her lower back from her “wild days.”   There are just people lurking on the streets just trying to get by or just waiting for your car to break down so they can get over on you.  I won’t go into a rant about poverty in America but if you find yourself on skid row one day- get out of there.

That’s Rocket going into the park.  He’s friends with one of the site’s web devlopers and he’s the one who let us into the park.  Rocket got his nickname because he’s literaly a rocket scientist.  Probably the smartest guy I’ve met and he’s one of the most down to earth people too.

Defintely had that “kid-in-a-candy-store” feeling walking into the place.  Actually, I get that every time I walk in a candy store too.

A lot of the obsatcles are layered in cement so the place really does feel like the street.  California Skateparks build the place and we were hoping they’d win the bid for the Bethlehem Skateplaza but they were a little out of our budget.

I wish I could have skated the older set up but the new one is fun too- for those who like stairs, hubbas and rails.

I wrote my name into the Finals of The Battle of the Berrics 2- nah, just kidding.  Don’t kill me Steve.

We pretty much had the place all to ourselves.  Apparently Mikey taylor and some other skaters were there before us.  Eduardo Craig, am for City Skateboards and some homies showed up later on.  Eduardo was the first skater “Recurited” on the Berrics and it was his first time skating the new set up.  Him and his crew had just come from filming for a homies video they’re working on and he had just front blunt shuv’d the Hollywood High 12 stair rail.  Bangin!

Front crook.

I forget his homie’s name but he had one of those floaty, effortless, natural styles that makes skating look really easy and you want to run your board into their shin’s because it’s really not but he’s such a nice guy that you just sit and watch in awe.  That’s this dude.

Nollie flip.

Look forward to seeing a Berrics United Nations with the enitre Blueprint Skateboards team soon too.

The rest of trip didn;t really have anything to do with skating so I’ll just fast forward through the rest so you can get along with the rest of your day.

This is where my brother lives.  It looks like a rain forest outside.

But instead of having extoic animals they have extremely overweight squirrels.

There’s a very high end mall across the street called The Grove.  It’s the kind of place the Promenade shops wanted to be but instead of getting a Barney’s and a Rolex store they got Old Navy and a Barnes and Nobles.

Huge Christmas trees are key to any great mall apparently.

Across the street from the high end mall is a strip mall and next to the Kmart was this little hot dog/fresh fruit cart.

Bacon wrapped hot dogs with grilled onions and jalapenos?  Yeah, I’m deifntely eating that.

Seriously folks, we have a hot dog cart guy out in the Southside that still needs your support.  Edwin may not have dogs that look like this but his are good- and much cheaper than this one.

As the snow fell out in the east it poured rain on the west and all the people out there dressed as if they were in the the snow.  I wish only had to wear scarves and gloves as a fashion accessory.  As much as i enjoy visiting the west coast, especially in the Winter- the 610 is defintely my “Homebase.”  Get in?