Travels with Twyla

By Richie Duchon

Waiting for the Red Line and still out and about with a baby in L.A. | Photo via Richie Duchon for 10thStreetLA

If I had a dollar for every time someone told me in the year leading up to the birth of my daughter, “Congratulations! You’re life’s over,” or, “Get to the bar now, cause you won’t see the inside of one for a loooong time,” I’d have about $15.


That’s not a college fund, but it has happened and it highlights a dominant paradigm that I’d like to explode: That parenting somehow means you stop living your life and that it’s about sitting at home with your infant dangling garish toys for her to grab and waiting for her to roll over, sit up or crawl.

Don’t get me wrong I spend epochs of time doing that stuff. For the record: Twyla can hold toys on her own and roll over (when she’s in her birthday suit), and we’re practicing sitting up, too. My point is I’ve been to the bar (with her) and had more fun out of the house in the three months she’s been with us than in the year before.

Life isn’t over when you have a kid. It gets better. Here’s how it did for us:

It started with a mind for Twyla to grow up curious about her home, with an urge to explore her city and eventually the world. As with most habits, I know she’ll get that from us, or she won’t get it at all.

As I dreamed of a future taking my daughter around to museums, beaches, mountains, book stores and ice cream shops, I felt a little static in my brain, a kind of cognitive dissonance. How would she pick up those habits to travel wide when our experience of late has been to go to the same museums, beaches, mountains, book stores and ice cream shops again and again.

It occurred to me we’ve lived in Los Angeles for a few years now and there are scores and scores of neighborhoods, i.e. scores and scores of book stores, cafes, markets, shops, restaurants and bars we’ve never even laid eyes on.

Figuring that out led me to launch the splendidly informal, perfectly unstructured L.A. Neighborhood Tours and Snores initiative for our family - an effort to go places, see things and talk to people we’ve never met before, adventures so life-affirming that we’re all ready to sleep afterward. Snores is also a reference to the fact that Twyla sleeps through most of the tours.

I put my faith in that idea usually attributed to Woody Allen: 80 percent of success is just showing up.

Our first stop was Northeast L.A.’s Highland Park, the neighborhood that’s on the tip of many tongues and written about often of late. We walked York Boulevard. We popped into the Pop-Hop  bookstore/print-shop/community center/salon where I found the most amazing pop-up version of Moby Dick, among other things. Go there. It’s awesome and sandwiched by two nice cafes. The Pop-Hop was also advertising for infant sign language classes at the time, which is pretty cool. We dropped in Mi Vida Boutique, where I found a great selection of kids books, including Mo Willems’ “We Are In A Book,” which I had been hoping to find in person since long before Twyla was born. The store also had a great selection of books for teaching kids espanol. We bought “Mis Colores” and now walk around looking for la rana verde, el pez azul y el caracol morado. And, yes, we closed out our stroll of York Boulevard at the bar. OK fine, the proprietors want to be called a gastropub. Whatever. The York  has a fantastic selection of beers, great fries and other babies. We spotted at least three other sets of new parents there.

Another day, we spent some time in San Pedro, that inscrutable little town next to the nation’s busiest port. We went to check out Crafted at the Port of Los Angeles, which boasts that it’s the largest indoor year-round craft marketplace in the country. The inchoate market in two massive converted port warehouses was a little underwhelming, an amateurish version of its bigger seasonal brother Unique L.A., but with far more potential. I was a fan of David B. Cuzick’s designs under the moniker Circles and Squares, especially “Hot Lava.” We went south for crafts, and we stumbled upon Point Fermin Lighthouse and park. A lineup of classic rock bands playing the park’s bandstand drew a crowd of picture perfect bikers manning grills and coolers full of beer. The scene was more Sturgis Rally than Hollywood and so refreshing.

A third trip to Watts to see the Towers should be on everyone’s to-do list. Simon Rodia’s quixotic work of art is a reminder to engage in simple acts of creativity. If the towers is the beating heart of Watts, about two blocks away we found the food that feeds’ the city’s soul: the Watts Coffee House. Nestled inside a community building turned school is a restaurant with roots in the healing after the 1965 Watts Riots. Kurt Streeter’s story on it in the Times paints a good picture. It’s part hangout, part history of black music and Watts’ role in that scene, with a few proud nods to our black president. Be sure to chat it up with the gregarious owner-cum resident historian Desiree Edwards. She might just foist some red velvet ice cream on you to top off your fried chicken and waffles at lunch...or breakfast.

We met friends on a recent Thursday evening for beers at Golden Road Brewing Company, a beer oasis snuggled in an industrial cranny between the L.A. River and a set of train tracks where the 5 Freeway meets the 134. The beer was pretty good for craft beer in Los Angeles while the loud buzz of conversations around the warehouse space turned bar lulled Twyla to sleep. We talked with friends for a while and left pretty confident our social selves were alive and well. We left ready for a good time dangling Whoozit for Twyla to ogle and grab.

Getting out takes more preparation than before, and we don’t always make it. We’re missing a picnic at the newly opened Grand Park as I write and sometimes the rides home from our adventures with a screaming baby are hair-raising. To be sure, though, it’s so satisfying when we leave the pressure to parent at home and travel wide. My life doesn’t end where my daughter’s begins, and I’m confident it’s better for both of us that way.

I can hear the haters now: “Big talk. Just wait till she’s walking.”

Read more tales of daddyhood in Burp and find Richie on Twitter here.