Daiko, Downtown and Norton Simon

When The Great PunkyDunky and The Great FiveHead started taking Plot and Duck to Daikokuya, in the Little Tokyo section of Stiletto City, it was much, much larger. That is, there was always room at most of the eight four-person booths and at the counter, so you could walk in, grab a table and sit down. Now it's a tiny place, due to the crowds of hipsters, Asian and Otherwise, who swarm in to get a seat and if you only wait an hour you're lucky. Might have something to do with the phenomenally good and beautifully inexpensive ramen, with the tastiest broth Plotnik has ever consumed, served in a bowl the size of Luxembourg. Baby I likes the plastic spoons.



Flying into Stiletto City last weekend, the weather was clear over downtown. After flying back to town for forty years, Plotnik is still astonished at the size of the place.



When Plot was a child, none of these large downtown buildings existed, only the City Hall, which is a block or two to the right off the page, and, of course, Grampy Plotnik's office, the bus station and Clifton's Cafeteria.



See the building in the center of the picture below, turned 45 degrees to the left? That's where The Great Ducknik toiled all the years the Plotniks lived in Stiletto City. The family lived then, and the PunkyDunkies live now, just off the picture to the upper left.



Visitors to S.C. should make it a point to head out to Pasadena to see the Norton Simon Museum. Mush, it's too bad you moved long before they finished it -- it's on the corner of Orange Grove and Colorado, where the old Contemporary Art Museum used to be. What a collection. What a sculpture garden. Henry Moore's King and Queen, made out of cast bronze, stopped Plottie in his tracks and made him look at it over and over and over. Mummy P. enjoyed the two totems on the other side of the lake.




They won't let you take photos inside, though the guards LOVE IT when you draw within six inches of a sculpture or a painting, so they can say EXCUSE ME! EXCUSE ME! Still, even these officious boobs cannot diminish the beauty of this place.