Hello, Saint & Second in Long Beach, CA

June 7, 2021, 11:18 PM PDT by Parkzer • Food, Tempo

This post is over 5 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.

Things have been a bit busy since I arrived at Long Beach a few days ago, but earlier today, we finally had an opportunity to get most of our staff together and enjoy a team dinner. Unfortunately, California is lagging noticeably behind nationwide CDC guidance on COVID-19 response, so we still had to split our group up into two smaller parties in order to comply with state and local ordinances, but it was still a good meal.

We went to Saint & Second, an American restaurant on 2nd Street in Long Beach.

To start, we got a dozen West Coast oysters with a side of white balsamic mignonette, cocktail sauce, and lime. My table had four people including myself, so we each got three oysters.

For our main courses, our Producer opted for Skuna Bay salmon with basil brown butter, hazelnuts, green beans, and crème fraîche mash.

Our Director of Post-Production went with natural filet mignon with fennel purée, kamut, and rainbow carrots, accompanied with some port wine sauce.

Our Creative Director ordered oxtail gnocchi with prosciutto and brown butter, roasted mushrooms, arugula, and burrata.

And finally, for my dish, I got bison short rib with carrot mash, spring onion, peas, and bison jus.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t a fan of my selection. I’m not sure if this is because I just had some of the best melt-in-your-mouth barbecue ribs in Oklahoma not even a month ago and now everything else tastes lacking, but the bison ribs seemed fairly underwhelming. The outside of the cut was overcharred, and the bitterness of the burnt meat overwhelmed the flavor of the actual bison.

For my beverage, I had a glass of house blueberry lemonade. It was a lot more sour than I expected, but I guess that’s technically a good thing, because that means there was less sugar and more fruit. That also ended up being helpful later on, because the sourness of my drink pierced through some of the bitterness of the burnt bison. The lemonade came with free refills, but I only managed to down two glasses because of its tartness.

I also ordered a side of truffled thin fries with blue cheese sauce and truffle oil. The fries were sauced unevenly, but apart from that, they were fairly straightforward and satisfying.

My co-workers at my table ordered alcohol, and there was also an entire second table, so I’m not going to do a full cost breakdown like usual, but here are the pricepoints of the aforementioned items:

West Coast oysters ×12	$ 39.00
Skuna Bay salmon	$ 28.00
Natural filet mignon	$ 42.00
Oxtail gnocchi	$ 23.00
Bison short rib	$ 33.00
Truffled thin fries	$ 9.00
House blueberry lemonade	$ 5.00

Our Director of Post-Production seemed to be of the opinion that this restaurant had high-end food, and online reviews for Saint & Second are generally positive, so I think I might have just gotten a little bit unlucky with my choice of dish (or rather, just the way it was prepared).

I selected bison because it seemed like a good balance between “interesting” and “something I’ll probably like,” but I suspect I probably would have enjoyed my meal better if I had just gotten a regular signature burger. Also potentially relevant is the fact that I didn’t get much sleep last night and had been micro-napping throughout the day, so my senses might have been a bit dull.

Overall, this isn’t a place where I would be dying to come back to for a second meal, but the experience wasn’t bad either. If you’re in Long Beach and want to check out some different restaurants, I’d say this place is definitely worth adding to your list of considerations.

Hello, Marriott’s Grand Chateau

June 3, 2021, 1:55 PM PDT by Parkzer • Las Vegas, Travel

Last week, I wrote a blog post about how I’m going to be homeless for half a year. Besides the fact that people are accusing me of clickbait because, even though I’m literally going to be homeless, I will still always have a safe place to stay every day and night… my “homelessness” officially started on June 1.

My plan was to drive from Las Vegas to SoCal on June 1, but I ended up getting too busy with highly time-sensitive work and couldn’t spend the five or so hours needed for the trip that evening. Unfortunately, my bed and mattress were already tarped and deposited into storage, and my rental lease replacement was already moved into my old condo, so this meant I had to find some alternative lodging. I browsed through Marriott’s website for a nice place to stay for a one-day staycation and found Marriott’s Grand Chateau.

That was a huge mistake.

The room was fine; it wasn’t the nicest, but it was still fully functional. The problem, and why I consider this to be a huge mistake… is because Marriott’s Grand Chateau has mandatory valet parking.

So here I am, someone who hates other people touching my belongings in general, with a pickup truck loaded with all my stuff, driving up to the hotel entrance and seeing that there is no self-parking garage. I thought it would be a bit ridiculous to actually carry all my stuff into the hotel, so I open my back seat doors and truck bed in the valet lane and start shuffling things around. I pull out only one night’s worth of my essential belongings out of all my boxes so I only need to bring one luggage bag’s worth of stuff into the hotel.

Later that evening, I decided to get some food. I went downstairs to summon my vehicle, but I didn’t realize that there was an automatic kiosk system that scans the barcode on your ticket, so I was instead waiting for a good six or so minutes at the valet desk to wait for someone to actually tell me that I just need to go to the kiosk. After scanning at the kiosk, it took another 15 minutes for my vehicle to arrive. The following morning when I was ready to leave after checking out, I scanned my ticket at the kiosk and had to wait 17 minutes for my vehicle to arrive.

I’d say that the only thing I truly liked about this hotel was the view of CityCenter (which I was lucky enough to get, because I had a west-facing room).

To be clear, I don’t think this hotel itself is actually really that terrible. But, if you just need a clean and safe place to spend the night in Las Vegas, there are tons of other options that don’t come with these inconveniences.

Just to add, mandatory valet parking wasn’t the only thing that was inconvenient—Grand Chateau doesn’t conform with the standard Marriott Bonvoy program, so they don’t honor the 2 PM late checkout for gold elite members, and actually have a relatively early 10 AM standard checkout time. That, mixed with the traffic on the Las Vegas Strip and the inflated prices of all food within walking distance, and after my tenth minute of waiting for my truck the first time I summoned it, I very much regretted not just staying at a Courtyard or Residence Inn.

That short leg of my journey is now over, and I made it to Long Beach in California. I’ll be spending the next few weeks in Southern California, and then my real journey begins.

The final batch of cat photos (for now)

June 1, 2021, 11:53 PM PDT by Parkzer • Cats

Last week, I wrote a blog post about how I plan on becoming a nomad for half a year to travel the country. This does indeed mean that my roommate and I will be splitting (i.e., she, and the cats, will not be coming along with me for my journey).

I generally keep my private life fiercely private, so I never actually mentioned who my roommate was in any of my blog posts. Even in scenarios where I do reveal snippets of my private life, it is usually only after the fact becomes no longer relevant, or if it becomes public knowledge at no fault of my own. My roommate situation for the past half year now qualifies under both those scenarios—I’m moving out, and my roommate has publicly “leaked” our roommateship herself on a handful of occasions (which I didn’t really mind).

My roommate for the past half year is a friend of mine named Winnie. Social media links can change, so I can’t guarantee that these will still be accurate if you’re reading this blog post years from now, but she’s @SmexyRosies on Instagram and @SmexyRosies on Twitter. She also set up Instagram accounts for the cats, @Mochi.and.Pudding and @Pumpkin_owo_.

She’s a freelance social media influencer and content creator currently exploring and working on a handful of her own personal creative projects. She’s the favorite roommate I’ve ever had so far, and still remains one of my favorite people in general.

After my nomadic journey concludes, I will likely be a designated catsitter for Pudding, Mochi, and Pumpkin, but until then, this is the final batch of cat photos that I took from my final month being their adoptive cat dad.

The cats spend a lot of time together, but rarely are they this photogenic and all facing the same direction.

While preparing for my move-out, I cleared out a lot of stuff from my side desk and bookshelf and put them into storage containers. Mochi appreciated that there was now an empty spot on top of my bookshelf and promptly climbed up to observe me working.

When I wake up in the morning, I head out to the living room to check on the cats. When Mochi and Pudding see me, they promptly walk towards me—they both like getting pets, and Pudding likes to headbutt my leg. Pumpkin, though… he clearly has his priorities straight. Instead of coming to me for affection, he goes straight for the smallest box in the household so he can squish himself inside and go to sleep.

I recently went to a chiropractor and he told me I need to stretch out my hip flexors so they loosen up and stop crushing my lower back. It looks like Mochi wanted to join in on the stretches.

I usually don’t have high-quality photos of the cats because, whenever they’re doing something photo-worthy, I don’t have my camera with me and I end up just snapping a picture with my phone. For this instance, though, Pumpkin held his pose long enough for me to go grab my camera. Here he is laying inside a little cloth cubby box in my roommate’s closet.

Pumpkin likes climbing into things in general. Here he is knocking over my roommate’s laundry hamper so he can lay inside (and Mochi looking at me, seemingly upset at missing out on the glory of being inside a laundry hamper).

And for the final photo, I leave you with something special. Meet Tyson, Mochi and Pumpkin’s son.

I have decided to become homeless for half a year

May 24, 2021, 1:01 PM PDT by Parkzer • General

No, I’m not having a quarter-life crisis.

I have no regrets with any of the major choices I’ve made in my life. I am eternally grateful for my current job and would never quit unless the company goes bankrupt or gets sold to a different company that chooses to change its identity at its core. I have almost no insecurities and am often praised for my explosive (and sometimes excessive) confidence. I am completely financially stable and am satisfied with the volume of my various income sources.

With all that being said, I do think that my youth is running out. Due to the work-from-anywhere nature of my current job and the freedom I have from not having a wife, children, or pets, I am able to do quite literally whatever I want. But, once I start settling down in a few years, I’ll have new responsibilities that limit my range of activities.

I think it’s reasonable to want to capitalize on this youth without it being considered a quarter-life crisis. There was a good transitional phase in my housing situation that just came up, so I decided to pass on extending or signing a new lease. I am going to put all my belongings in a storage facility in Las Vegas and spend at least the next half year being a nomad.

I’ll be splitting my time primarily among three places:

In a spare bedroom at Tempo’s company headquarters in Long Beach, California;
At my parents’ house in the Chicagoland suburbs, where I grew up; and
At various Marriott-branded hotels across the country with extended-stay discounts, such as Residence Inn and Courtyard.

My current plan is to head over to Southern California for a few weeks, then set off on a 1½-month-long road trip to Illinois, stopping by various major cities in all the states along the way. I would spend about a week or so in each city and drive no more than about 3-4 hours on each weekend day to make it to the next city. This will ensure I don’t get driving fatigue while traveling alone, allow me sufficient time to work my normal working hours, and give me an opportunity to explore the best parts of each city during my free time.

Once I make it to Illinois, I’ll spend about a month and a half living with my parents, whom I have not seen in-person since December 2019 prior to the pandemic.

By this point, it will be the beginning of September, upon which I will make a determination depending on how my road tripping has been so far—either continue East to extend my journey, or make the 1½-month-long trip back to Southern California, this time taking a more southern route as to avoid potential inclement weather in the Rocky Mountains.

And from there, I’m unsure what will be next. I may continue spending more time with friends and family and traveling around, or I may want to return home to Las Vegas and sign a new lease to settle back down and return to normal life. The entire point of this experiment is to be flexible with whatever might come up, so I’m leaving the possibilities open.

So… I guess I’m a travel blogger now.

Goodbye Oklahoma City

May 19, 2021, 11:45 PM PDT by Parkzer • Travel

After a week in Oklahoma City, I’m back home in Las Vegas. I posted a few blog posts already about some interesting things I’ve done in Oklahoma City, but like usual, I decided to do a recap covering all the miscellaneous things that I haven’t already discussed.

My airline of choice is Delta Airlines, but I opted not to take Delta for this flight because it didn’t have any non-stops from Las Vegas to Oklahoma City, while Southwest Airlines did. The shortest Delta flight had a layover in Salt Lake City that added about three hours to the total travel time, so I figured I would take Southwest.

This was a less-than-ideal experience, as I somehow ended up fairly far back in the queue for boarding. The flight was completely full in both directions, so we ended up cramming into every single available seat (and then had some people involuntarily delayed due to seats being oversold). Also, I had to sit towards the back of the plane (which is not something I’m used to doing anymore in Delta), otherwise I would’ve had to take a middle seat.

I love getting nice aerial shots of cities, but unfortunately, that didn’t work for my flight into Oklahoma City because it had rained that day and there were a lot of low clouds.

I’ve historically been loyal to Enterprise Rent-a-Car, but for the first time, I decided to go with Avis Car Rental due to a chain of disappointing experiences at the Enterprise Rent-a-Car at Los Angeles International Airport. I’m a big fan of pickup trucks, but the trucks offered at Enterprise at LAX were basically work trucks—they were lowest-trim Ram Classics or Chevy Silverados for the past handful of rentals. Avis advertised their pickup truck class as “Ram Rebel or similar,” so I figured I’d give it a shot.

Ram Rebels are my favorite truck, and I was a bit disappointed that Avis didn’t give me a Rebel, but they actually really did honor the “or similar” portion of the listing. I ended up in a 2021 Ford F-150 XLT with the new 12″ screen, which was great.

I wasn’t really a fan of Ford F-150s during and prior to the 2020 model year, but they made some pretty nice upgrades for 2021. The 12″ screen doesn’t look as overwhelmingly large as Ram’s because the Fords have horizontal screens, but once you actually go to use it, it’s clearly very large. The touchscreen is responsive, the menus are intuitive, and the camera is clear. I’d still say that Rams are my favorite trucks, followed by GMC, but Ford has improved their trucks enough that I’d actually consider them in the running for my next pickup truck purchase (as opposed to before, where I wouldn’t even consider them at all and thought they were lagging noticeably behind other truck brands).

The only thing that stuck out as annoying this time around was the auto-start/stop (but that’s not unique to Ford anymore). If you put the vehicle in sport mode, it will disable auto-start/stop, but then I noticed that the transmission is a bit rougher when shifting. Also, the truck doesn’t remember what mode you last used, so it will always go back to normal mode when you restart the vehicle.

Apart from that, I had a great time driving the new 2021 Ford F-150. I clocked in right around 8 engine hours for the week.

The people in Oklahoma City are a lot nicer than I expected. In Los Angeles and even mostly in Las Vegas, people generally ignore each other and don’t really interact much if they don’t know each other. While in Oklahoma, I acted the same way I do in the West coast, and I imagine people in Oklahoma thought it was weird, because they would go out of their way to start a conversation.

A few excerpts of the more interesting ones:

A man asked me about my pickup truck because he hadn’t seen that design of grille before on an F-150. I told him that it’s the new 2021 model year. He asked if he could check it out, to which I said “sure.” He peeked inside, saw the 12″ screen, and said “wow, it’s like a Tesler!”
I went to 7-Eleven to buy some beverages and noticed that the cashier was very friendly and seemed to know everyone’s names. When it was my turn to make my purchase, she pointed out that I was a new face and asked what my name was. I told her, then clarified that I’m only here visiting. She said that she’ll still remember my name, in case I ever come back in the coming years.
A guy was walking his dog around the hotel I was staying at. He greeted me, said that he was visiting from Tulsa, and asked where I’m from. I told him I’m visiting from Las Vegas and he seemed shocked, because he was under the impression that people weren’t actually allowed to live in Las Vegas, and that they would just go there for the hotels and casinos, then go back home after gambling.
While refueling my rental truck, there was a guy on the other side of the fuel pump also refueling his work truck. He insisted on having a conversation with me, and we were yelling back and forth over the sound of two running fuel pumps. We somehow pieced together a discussion… but I still don’t know whether we were talking about fuel prices, the speed at which the pump was dispensing fuel, or the size of his fuel tank.

Visiting Oklahoma City was a pleasant experience. Considering that most of my recent travel has been to Southern California, as well as some other cramped cities (and even a few cities that were harshly anti-police and made me feel uncomfortable with their vandalism), it was refreshing to go to a city that had a lot of wide open space with respectful people who seemed to live normal, law-abiding lives.

I’m unsure if I’ll ever have a reason to return to Oklahoma City again, but if the opportunity ever arises, I’d definitely be open to taking the trip again. If anything else, this has opened me up to wanting to visit a lot of other “random,” “middle of nowhere” cities in the Midwest. They may seem “insignificant” to someone who has spent a majority of their professional life in and around Los Angeles, but they definitely have their unique reasons for being special in their own ways.

Hello, Vast at the Devon Energy Center in Oklahoma City

May 17, 2021, 11:50 PM PDT by Parkzer • Food

For my final adventure before flying out of Oklahoma City, I ate at Vast, a restaurant on the 49th and 50th floors of the Devon Energy Center in downtown Oklahoma City. The premise of this restaurant is similar to the Top of the World at the Stratosphere in Las Vegas where you sit atop the city with a vast view while you eat your food (though the main difference is that Vast does not rotate).

With construction starting in 2009 and completing in 2012, the Devon Energy Center stands 844 feet (257 meters) as the tallest building in Oklahoma. It towers over the second-tallest building in Oklahoma City, which is the BancFirst Tower at 500 feet (152 meters). Vast is on the highest two floors of the Devon Energy Center, rising to 726 feet (221 meters) in elevation.

We intentionally went on a weekday so we could avoid all the people going on dates over the weekend. Downtown was fairly peaceful around dinnertime, and parking was easy—there was a structure next door to the tower with spaces large enough to easily fit my full-size pickup truck, and the fee was only $5.

After a quick walk into the building (which had very modern aesthetics with lots of glass and marble), we took a dedicated elevator straight up to the 49th floor. We went at 7:30 PM as to time it such that we would get about an hour of daytime view, then the sun would set and we would have a nighttime view for the second half of our meal. We didn’t see much of the inside of the restaurant because we were seated somewhat close to the entrance, but the bar area nearby looked nice without going too overboard.

The first dish was on the chef, and was something with crab inside. We also got some rolls with butter to munch on while we were deciding on what to order for our main courses. The fried crab dish was great; it was greasy enough that it oiled my fingers when I picked it up, but it didn’t leave any unpleasant or greasy aftertastes.

For her main course, my dinner companion got some herb marinated chicken with root vegetable hash, roasted mushroom puree, fennel, pistachios, and bacon lardons. I tried a portion of her chicken and it was actually impressively tasty with great texture—the outside skin was very crispy, while the meat was juicy and moist.

Her drink (which I did not get a photograph of) was the 726 Cosmo, an alcoholic drink off the Vast Classics beverage menu containing Charbay blood orange vodka, triple sec, Greenbar hibiscus liqueur, cranberry, and lime.

For my main course, I decided to go with a feature dish (which wasn’t on the main menu, so I can’t reference back to the online menu to see precisely what was in it). It was called the Surf and Turf, and was basically a medley of small servings of various different dishes they offer. It included 6 ounces of Creekstone filet, shrimp, scallop, asparagus, potato, and something a bit stringy and slightly crunchy that I couldn’t identify.

For dessert, we had a warm chocolate lava cake with peanut butter caramel, candied peanuts, and mascarpone ice cream. At first it was a little bit overwhelmingly sweet, but once my mouth adjusted to all the sugar, it was actually really good. I’m also a big fan of caramel and nuts, so the sauce that came with the cake was extra tasty.

I was slightly concerned about this restaurant because, for some reason, people kept leaving reviews saying that this restaurant wasn’t worth the money, and that you were basically just paying for the view. But, after I finished my meal, I thought all the food was great, and I thought the price was also very reasonable, considering we were eating at a restaurant over 700 feet in the air in the tallest building in the entire state.

Herb Marinated Chicken	$ 32.00
Surf and Turf	$ 70.00
726 Cosmo	$ 13.00
Chocolate Lava Cake	$ 9.00
Taxes	$ 12.46
Tip	$ 40.00
Self Parking	$ 5.00
Total	$ 181.46

The tip that I left was a bit aggressive, but the main reason I tipped over 30% was because I left a note in our reservation stating that I would “pay/tip more for a window seat.”

In case you’re not familiar with how these kinds of restaurants work, there are a lot of tables set up across the entire restaurant floor, but only a few of them are window-side. I don’t know what the rest of the restaurant was like, but the table we got seemed to be the only one left in that area of the restaurant, so I gave them the benefit of the doubt, assumed that they had actually saved the window-side table for us as per our request in the reservation, and gave them a generous tip.

This is a restaurant that I think is absolutely worth it for the money… but not necessarily for dinner. Vast has a lunch option that, today, is a flat fee of $22.50 per person for what appears to be a buffet-style meal that also includes unlimited dessert. Considering the quality of food for dinner, if lunch is anything close to that, I think $22.50 is absolutely worth it. That might be a bit pricey for Oklahoman standards, but if such a place existed in Las Vegas where I would have a nearly never-ending view while having an all-you-can-eat meal, I would be going there very frequently.