Saturday Night in Hollywood, CA

Travis, Kinser and Ayden - You'll notice the look on Ayden of freight...he just saw a dingy Elmo a few minutes early.
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The Hawkins Family caravan headed to Hollywood for our first evening in California - the land of movie stars... Yeah, we saw plenty of movie stars, unfortunately they were all costumed imposters walking down Hollywood blvd. The traffic from Anaheim to Hollywood north of downtown was just as bad as advertised - it looked like 5pm traffic back in Dallas. But we were travelling at 8pm on a Saturday night.

By the time we made it to Hollywood Blvd. it was dark outside. The sidewalks were filled with people. The scene gave me a good reminder of truth to a popular 80s rap song: "The Freaks Come Out at Night." We had 5 kids all under 10 years-old with us and having them there after dark was not a good move. Our first "encounter" with a star was a dingy looking Elmo walking briskly by us. He stopped to wave hi to Ayden and scarred my little newphew to death. Aria didn't respond to favorably either. It went downhill from there as far as scared kids. There were multiple spidermen, a batman, charaters from Harry Potter and Pirates of Carribean - this in the midst of crowded sidewalks and other new and strange sights and sounds made for too much stimulation for the kids. The worst character sighting was a  winged death-angel-looking man painted red and blue standing in front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre who attacted a lot of attention due to he scary looks. Too scary for any of our kids. Aria and Kinser were in tears.

Yeah, we saw plenty of movie stars, unfortunately they were all costumed imposters walking down Hollywood blvd.

Shaunette and Garrett at the Chinese Theatre - the focus of Garret's attention is the angel-of-death-looking man scaring folks at the front.
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We didn't get to spend much time seeing the Chinese Theatre because we had to get the kids away from that winged "thing" - we still don't know what movie it came from. We rushed toward the Kodak Theater and still more scary imposters so we decided it was best to get out of dodge. Mom and Dad didn't get as far down the Boulevard as we did so they didn't get to join the "excitement".

After we got in the car Laneshia stated she wasn't too impressed with Hollywood Blvd. Perhaps if we got there during the daylight hours the scene would have been better. Myself - I enjoyed being in the mix there. It is obviously a great "hangout" if you don't have kids and I can say "Been There, Done That" now.