On Saturday night, I went with some old college friends to go clubbing at Belasco in Downtown LA for a friend’s birthday. I had a great time, but I’m not too sure about everyone else that I was with. Let me start from the beginning…
The plan was that we would eat dinner, go to the hotel and pre-party, walk over to the club, and then walk back to the hotel after the club event was over. Simple. But now let me tell you how things went oh so wrong.
On the way to dinner, we missed the freeway we were supposed to go on, and ended up going a slightly longer route. When we finally arrived in Little Tokyo, we parked at the parking complex that I usually park in, but the price was $5 instead of $3. No biggie though, this is all normal stuff that happens every now and then. We were supposed to have dinner at Daikokuya, but we all know how the line for ramen gets too crazy over there. So we decided to eat somewhere else. While outside one of the shops, my guy friend (aka the driver that night) commented on my boyfriend’s shoes. My boyfriend was wearing dress shoes and he was not. Usually at club events, they want you to dress up, but they don’t always enforce the dress code, so we figured he would be okay *foreshadowing*.
Since we didn’t eat ramen, we had some time to kill, so we decided to take a short walk around Little Tokyo and get some mochi for dessert. We were so good on time that we actually thought we would arrive at the hotel 30 minutes early! Great, so now we are on our way over to the hotel. Sh*t, but where is it?? We are at the cross streets, aren’t we? Where is it?? We end up driving around the block a few times, but run into a lot of one way streets and we also keep missing the turns. Omg, now we’ve been driving around for about 30 minutes at least.. Eventually we find the hotel and we park in a parking structure nearby.
We go into the structure to park since we see a $5 parking sign. As we drive up and up the levels of the parking structure, we realize we can’t find any decent sized parking spaces! But after a long while, we find the perfect spot that has plenty of room. It’s funny though, because as we all got out of the car, we noticed that there was another parking structure located just across the way from us, even closer to the hotel. I don’t know what we were thinking (partially my fault and influence), but we decide to leave our parking structure to park at the other one (so stupid >.<*).
The current parking complex that we were in had two exits. One for monthly (the more convenient exit) and another one for visitors like us (but this one leads us off on the wrong side of the block where we would have to drive in a crazy circle to get back to the hotel). So we decide to ask the guy if he can let us out of the monthly pass exit. Its funny because he looked at our parking ticket and said that we were in the parking structure for a long time. Haha, it’s true we were. But at least he didn’t charge us for our stupidity? Anyways, so now we have left our parking spot to park at another structure. When we got to the structure however, we discover that it is not open to the public!! FAIL! What a waste of time, ahahaha we got too greedy and should have stayed at our original spot that we were already parked in!
Embarrassingly, we drove back into the same parking structure that we just left, and went all the way back up to park in the same spot we were originally parked in. By now, we are all frustrated and are already late to the hotel pre-party. So we hurry up, grab our things, and go! Yay, we have finally arrived at the Watermarke Tower Hotel! It was a very nice hotel I must admit. Too bad our bad luck didn’t end here though. When we got to the elevator, we found out that you need the room key to access the floor. Perfect, we didn’t have a key and no one was answering their cells (obviously they are all too busy drinking). We end up following another hotel guest to the top floor of the hotel, and walking down about 10 floors to get to the party room. Haha, how much more difficult did it need to be to get to this hotel pre-party?
It’s funny that right when we got to the hotel, of course it was time to leave for the clubbing event at Belasco. And, it turns out that everyone at the hotel already called taxi cabs to pick them up. No one was planning on walking!! This made me a little angry because I brought my jacket because I thought we were going to have to walk in the cold. So now I had to do a coat check-in at the club. Oh well, at least my feet were happy that we didn’t have to walk to the club (turns out the club was 0.5 miles away).
When we got to the club, we ended up not having to wait in line. Instead, we were lead around the building to a back alley where we entered through the back entrance. What sucks for the guys is that, instead of having to pay $30, they paid $50. On top of that, my friend who drove wasn’t wearing dress shoes, so he was charged an extra $20 to get in. Of course for girls, it was free (thank God I’m a girl). The table that we got was one of the two sky lofts that are besides the stage. There was some trouble in getting wristbands and the bouncer letting people up into the sky loft, so me and my boyfriend decided to just stay out of it and enjoy ourselves elsewhere.
Of course as the night went on, I saw lots of old faces. I guess thats the one thing nice about going to Belasco, I always see people from college that I least expect to see. Here are some photos from the night, taken at the club.
After the club event was over, we took the taxi cab back to the hotel. We all hung out in the lobby area downstairs (which in my opinion really looks like a lounge). I still can’t believe that the hotel did not say anything about 20+ drunk asians hanging around in the lobby area with only one hotel room checked out for the group. When we finally all went upstairs for the “after party,” haha no one was drinking. But I was fine with that. Everyone was mostly happily eating their food that they bought, while I was bothering the drunk birthday boy who was lying face planted on the bed.
Anyways, finally it was time to leave. We headed out to the parking garage. When we arrived at the exit, the worker in the kiosk told us that our parking cost $25! wtf! No way, this was all total bs. What a way to ruin our night. We argued a bit, but he wouldn’t give in, so we ended up just paying the money.
Oh well, what can you do right? At least now it is time to go home. But first, we had to drop off another friend that tagged along with us for a ride home. Too bad he was in the complete opposite direction from where we were heading. No biggie though, thats what friends are for? We decided to grab some food on the way. I guess we had the wrong address because when we got there, there was no food. The driver got angry at this point (i guess from driving around all day earlier and running into so much bad luck) that he punched his windshield. I don’t think he intended for this to happen, but he kinda make a huge circular crack in the window. Wow, shocking. Thats a horrible thing to happen that will actually stay with you until you fix your car. Thats just too bad..
I had a fun, memorable night despite all the things that happened. Haha. I doubt anyone read this long post, hope you enjoyed my rant/diary entry.
xoxo
Sarah