Hello, Bubble World Los Angeles in Montebello, California

On the same day that I went to Dinos Alive, I also went to Bubble World Los Angeles, which is in the same building—the Los Angeles Exhibition Hub in Montebello, California. Bubble World was actually the main reason we went to the Exhibition Hub at all, but I had such a positive experience here that I figured I would save the best for last on my blog so it would have the most prime real estate at the top before I go on my next chain of adventures.

Bubble World is an interesting place. It’s difficult to describe succinctly apart from just calling it an interactive art experience.

I’m not sure if you even noticed because I am so good at blending in with the arches, but believe it or not, I am actually in this next photograph:

Down the hall and to the right was the balloon room. This was a dimly lit room with extra large white balloons that looked like they were color-shifting because of the lighting. There were fans on one side keeping the balloons contained, and they would regularly pile as tall as the average person’s chest at the highest points. This was deceptively difficult to navigate through without popping the balloons (and we did come across a kid who was a bit too rough and caused one to burst).

After escaping the balloons, we were led to a mirror room with a light show.

The next major interactive area was a huge ball pit.

Partway through the experience was a wall with the “Bubble World” logo printed on it, and I figured it would make sense to take a photo in front of the sign that shows where I am.

On the way to the next area was a small bridge with a net full of balloons and a 360° screen on all four walls and the floor.

Next up were the sets. There were various little rooms set up and decorated in unique ways so people could take photos.

One of the final areas of Bubble World was a light show room. There were thousands upon thousands of light-up orbs hanging in columns from the ceil­ing, and a tiny path was left vacant so people could walk through and get a 360° light show experience.

The photo below was captured at the perfect moment when most of the bulbs were illuminated white, but these would all turn on and off in a pattern and change colors in a way that was not only mesmerizing but also created a kind of depth-warping optical illusion.

Right before the exit and gift shop, there was a station where you could stand on a platform and pull a string to raise what is the equivalent of just the circular part of a bubble wand a­round your body to encase yourself in a huge bubble. Unfortunately, it was a lot trickier than it seemed, and instead of wrapping myself in a huge bubble, I just got soap all over my hands and pants.

There isn’t actually anything to truly do while in Bubble World except for just look at things, but the things to look at are very unique, interesting, and visually appealing. If you consider this to be comparable to an art museum, Bubble World is actually great—instead of just staring at art pieces hung up on walls that are externally deemed to be expensive and arbitrarily assigned value, Bubble World lets you immerse yourself and be a part of the art.

I also enjoyed the fact that this functionally ended up like a selfie museum, but didn’t feel like it. Selfie museums tend to cater specifically towards people who want interesting photos to post on Instagram, and their sets are designed solely for photo op­por­tu­ni­ties. On the contrary, I liked that Bubble World focused more on creating in­ter­est­ing exhibits and con­forming to a theme, but still achieved that same objective—i.e., peo­ple take photos here be­cause they think “this is cool,” not necessarily be­cause “I am sup­posed to take a photo here.”

We paid $36.90 per person for general admission without any premium add-ons, and it took a little bit over an hour to get through everything. That is a little bit pricey compared to other places I’ve been, but probably not too bad considering that it’s in Los Angeles.

On that note, it might be useful to point out that it’s in Los Angeles County and not the City of Los Angeles. The Exhibition Hub is set up at the site of an old Costco, and it’s about ten miles east of downtown Los Angeles. In my opinion, that makes it better—there’s plenty of parking, there’s much less con­gestion getting there, and the ticket prices aren’t hyperinflated to account for downtown city expenses. With that being said, if you’re visiting LA and pri­ma­ri­ly staying downtown, you’ll need some form of vehicular transportation if you want to visit the Exhibition Hub.

Although I probably wouldn’t personally visit again, I did enjoy my experience and would recommend checking out if your circumstances align with what Bubble World offers. I also like the fact that I now have a lot of photos for the people who ask me why I only ever post pictures of stuff around me, and not of myself.

 

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Hello, The Last Bookstore in Downtown Los Angeles, California

I’m not exactly a fan of Los Angeles (or California in general), but I do have to admit that it has some interesting places to visit. One of those is The Last Book­store in downtown, a block and a half east of Pershing Square.

I’m not sure why they called it the Last Bookstore because it is definitely not the last bookstore in Los Angeles, but it was definitely the most interesting book­store I’ve been to. There were a lot of different sections, all of which were designed in accordance with a relevant theme. There were also some nice, vis­u­ally appealing exhibits spread throughout the store that made it seem like a tourist attraction as much as a bookstore.

I didn’t end up buying anything, but I enjoyed walking through the building and checking everything out on both floors. Below are some of my photos that came out the best.

 

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Hello, Dinos Alive Los Angeles in Montebello, California

I’m in Southern California again for another quick week-long trip to visit a friend from out-of-state while she’s in town. Earlier today, we went to the Los Angeles Exhibition Hub and explored some of the attractions, one of which was Dinos Alive.

The premise of the exhibit was to show animated models of various different dinosaurs, some of which were built life-sized. Each animatronic had a little placard in front of it explaining its specie and other background information about the dinosaur. This place is definitely geared towards children, but it was still neat to walk around and check it out. There was some wild lighting so a lot of my photos look a bit strange; below are some of the pictures that came out the best.

 

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Food of Seattle

When visiting Seattle this time for PAX West, I traveled with one of my friends who likes searching for and trying out good food. We went to a lot of different restaurants, and I captured enough food pictures that I decided to do a dedicated blog post solely spotlighting the food I ate during my trip.

On the first day of PAX, we left the convention center for a little bit to find some lunch. We decided on Ruth’s Chris Steak House, where I ordered a grilled chicken sandwich and some fries.

I’m not entirely sure if this actually counts as a food picture, but inside PAX, apparently Cheez-It decided to partner up with a gaming company to run their own exhibition booth. Funny enough, the booth was literally just entirely filled with Cheez-Its.

Although I had a four-day badge, my friend only purchased two one-day badges, so on one of the days where she couldn’t get into the convention center, we went to downtown Seattle and did a bit of exploring. For lunch on Saturday, we went to The Athenian Seafood Restaurant and Bar where we ordered some clams in garlic sauce.

Here is the aftermath.

Does water count as food?

My friend took a picture of me in front of Puget Sound because she specifically wanted me to have more photos of my face to post on my website. I guess you can technically argue that this could possibly be a food picture if you consider the fish in the water that you could hypothetically go out and eat…

🍆 … 💦?

The next day, we went to Noren Sushi, where we ordered agedashi tofu for our appetizer.

My lunch was a chirashi bowl.

That night, after the “Fight Mii” panel, we went to Hong Kong Bistro for some dim sum. The service was horrifically bad, but the food was decent. We accidentally ordered about 50% more food than our party of nine needed.

I overate, and we still had a ton of leftovers that we packed up in to-go containers; here is the aftermath after we were done:

For lunch the next day, my friend and I went to Musashi’s. We shared our entrées half-and-half, with the first one once again being a chirashi bowl.

The second entrée we got was grilled yellowtail collar.

For the final restaurant of the trip, we went to Meet Korean BBQ. Our cook was great, the meat was extremely high quality, and the restaurant quickly became one of my all-time favorite restaurants.

For our appetizer, we ordered steak tartare with American wagyu chuck, Asian pear, jalapeño, pine nuts, egg yolk, honey soy marinade, and toasted ba­guette.

As our main entrée, we each ordered the signature feast. This round came with American wagyu gold grade bavette, American wagyu gold grade chuck eye steak, and Kurobata pork belly. The feast also included kimchi fried rice, corn cheese, egg soufflé, and wagyu soybean stew.

Meet was very pricey, but if you’re flexible in budget or just want to treat yourself, it was an amazing experience and I highly recommend it.

That wraps up a brief overview of my food adventures in Seattle. I’m glad I traveled with a friend this time around, because it’s always nice to have some­one else scouting interesting places to visit and pulling me out of my hotel room where I otherwise would just be working until my scheduled e­vents at the convention.

 

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Hello again, Seattle Aquarium

Exactly three years and one day prior, on September 1, 2020, I visited the Seattle Aquarium with my friend Monica. This was during the pandemic, shortly after the government-mandated lockdowns were expiring. I was out actively stimulating the economy, but most other people were reasonably still concerned about the spread of COVID-19, so there weren’t many tourists there and we got to experience everything at a fairly leisurely pace.

A few days ago, on September 2, 2023, a different friend and I made another trip to the Seattle Aquarium while we were in town for PAX West. It was obviously a lot busier this time, but I also accrued three years’ worth of photography experience, so even though it was still dim indoors, I managed to get a lot more nice photographs.

Below are the best ones I captured.

 

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Photo dump from summer 2023

Today’s the last day of the last full month of summer, and I figured it would be a good time to share some of my miscellaneous photographs from the past three months that haven’t made it on my website yet. I always find it really funny when people post “photo dumps” on social media and it’s only two or three pictures, so this is going to be a real photo dump.

One of the things I like to do is to park on the top floor of a parking garage so I can go to the edge and take a nice picture of the view. Here’s Glendale, California.

Here’s an Italian restaurant I went to with my friend Eric Morino, better known online as Pointcrow. Apparently every waiter and waitress was also an opera singer, and they literally took turns singing to everyone during our meal. It was very … interesting.

I went to visit my friend Doug Wreden and he asked me what I wanted to watch on YouTube. I told him I was indifferent, so he made a decision instead.

As you can see, I am clearly an expert at arcades.

Hello, rabbit.

I recently had tableside guac for the first time. It never occurred to me what exactly the “tableside” was supposed to mean, but it soon became very clear that they literally bring the ingredients out and make the guacamole beside your table. Our waitress seemed to just indiscriminately randomly throw in ingredients without measuring anything or adjusting for taste. This was also very … interesting.

One of my friends came into town for a convention in Las Vegas, and while she was here, she wanted to try a popular breakfast spot called BabyStacks. I ordered velvet pancakes and they served me four meals’ worth of pancakes and sugar on one plate.

Hello, cat.

During a quick visit to downtown Los Angeles, I joined a friend and her cousin for all-you-can-eat sushi at Hello Fish. Apparently they’re a fairly popular restaurant in Koreatown—their slogan is “feed me sushi and tell me I’m pretty.” I would’ve normally done a dedicated blog post for a restaurant like this, but un­fortunately, they just had very dim and very pink lighting, so my photos did not come out very well. Here are three of the nicer ones.

Afterwards, we went to get shaved ice for dessert.

Here are some views from my hotel in downtown Los Angeles. It made me miss my days of luxury high-rise living on the Las Vegas Strip.

 

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