In the last post I talked about arriving in Boston. I’ve deliberately skipped the reason we were in Boston - and in San Francisco afterwards, too - as I’ll cover those in an upcoming post.
I do want to spend some time talking about what we did between Boston and SF, though. When I originally looked at the options for this trip, I first thought about spending the weekend in Baltimore with my son: it turns out he’s in full-on exam period, though, so it wouldn’t have been the best time to visit, to say the least. Besides that he’ll be back in Switzerland in roughly 3 weeks, so it didn’t make much sense to make the detour.
I also wanted to get onto Pacific time as quickly as possible, as that would help with the jetlag ahead of Tuesday's SF event. One option was heading directly to SF, but when we looked into hotels there was a) poor availability in the city itself and b) what there was was *really* expensive. (I’ve since found out the reason was an RSA conference at the Moscone Center. Thanks, Hilmar!)
As Autodesk is the official provider of the Design & Make platform for the LA28 Olympic Games - and a sponsor of Team USA - we decided it would be a good use of time to visit Los Angeles and tour several of the games’ venues.
My colleague Dagmara and I therefore booked a stop in LAX between BOS and SFO. On Saturday morning, after Boston’s event, we got up in the rain to take the 8:30am flight out of Logan Airport.
Arriving in LAX we were picked up by our guide, Yuri, who we’d booked for a 5-hour tour of LA28 venues.
The main purpose of the Saturday afternoon tour was to get an overall view of as many venues as possible, but not necessarily to spend much time at any particular one.
We started in Inglewood, where we drove past the Intuit Dome. This will house LA28’s basketball.
We then stopped by the SoFi Stadium, which is currently closed to tours because of Beyoncé’s concert tour. This will - somewhat interestingly! - host the swimming for LA28.
As we drove onwards we saw an area where people were living in tents beneath an intersection of raised highways.
Our next stop was at the University of Southern California (USC).
The two main USC venues being used for LA28 are The Galen Center and the LA Memorial Coliseum (which is owned by the LA County but operated by USC).
The Galen Center will host badminton and rhythmic gymnastics.
After this we stopped for Mexican food at Trejo’s Cantina.
After a solid lunch we headed up towards the UCLA campus. On the way I saw an interesting billboard from Netflix referring to a show called “You”, the final season of which I happened to be watching.
The LA28 Athelete’s Village will be located on the UCLA campus, presumably in student dormitories.
At this point we were 4 hours into our tour. Yuri took us to Santa Monica for a view over the Pacific Ocean before dropping us at our hotel near Venice Beach.
After having spent 6+ hours in a plane followed by basically 5 hours in a car, Dagmara and I enjoyed a lovely walk through the historic canal district of Venice, California. Yes, they’re the reason it’s called Venice - the original developer was inspired by the Italian original and wanted to recreate something like it in LA.
I’d forgotten that my favorite snowboard manufacturer is headquartered in Venice Beach.
I really like Arbor Snowboards, so was very happy to go in and visit.
Venice Pier is a great place to see the sunset over the ocean.
So that was last Saturday, our first day in LA.
After a good night’s sleep we were up bright an early to meet an old friend and former Autodesk Research colleague, Merten Stroetzel, for breakfast at The Cow’s End Cafe.
I first worked with Merten over a decade ago, when he was in our Automotive Consulting team. We worked together on the project where we took a VRED-based configurator for Morgan 3 Wheelers to the Geneva Motorshow. That project was a lot of fun!
It was really good to see Merten again. Since leaving Autodesk he’s been working on electric hydrofoils, among other things. This has been a tough year for him, as he lost his home in the Pacific Palisades to the recent wildfire.
Merten offered to take us up to see where he used to live in his Sprinter van.
We’re smiling in these photos - as it was genuinely so great to see Merten after several years - but as you might expect the scenes we were about to see were really sobering.
Access to the Palisades is controlled: you need to have a resident’s permit to go up there. Merten still has his, although he’s now living in Santa Monica.
Every time Merten goes up there more has been cleared from the devastated lots up there, but it’s still a shocking sight.
You’ll occasionally see a building that - at least visibly - seems not to have been touched, but they are few and far between.
This is where Merten’s apartment stood.
He lost two vehicles in the fire: one was a van he’d fitted out for his partner’s business.
Merten lost so much in the fire, I can only imagine what he’s been through over the last few months.
Being a proper Maker, Merten had a whole garage full of tools and projects that were lost.
The heat was so intense, it even melted aluminium and shards of solar panels from his partner's van.
I can’t fully describe the feeling of being up there. On the one hand there was this deep sense of loss - a fraction of what the homeowners and residents must have felt, of course - but also some optimism for the future: so much is being done to move past this horrific disaster, and there are “Pali Strong” flags everywhere declaring the locals’ love for their home. I got the real sense that - however long it takes - the Pacific Palisades will bounce back from this.
After heading back down towards the ocean, Dagmara and I headed back to Marina Del Rey, where we met with David and Burçin Gerber for a walk along the water.
I have known David for many years - primarily through SimAUD, the Symposium for Simulation in Architecture and Urban Design - but it was my first time meeting Burçin.
Along the walk we saw an Ocean Cleanup vessel.
We had time for a quick (but really good!) Italian lunch before heading onwards to our 4pm tour of the Crypto.com Arena (formerly called the Staples Center). This venue will host boxing and artistic-/trampoline-gymnastics.
This was a fun tour. Dagmara and I were expecting to be part of a larger group, but it ended up being just the two of us. With three tour guides!
We have very different interests from your typical group touring the venue. We were more interested in the sensory pods - to provide relief for neuro-diverse visitors when overwhelmed by the crowds - and the lactation pods than we were by the sports.To demonstrate just how extreme this was, Dagmara and I were asked to name people on the below mural. Dagmara managed to name Taylor Swift and I nearly said Adele (but I wasn’t 100% sure on that, so didn’t). The guides probably realised this was going to be quite a different tour, at this point.
The tour was fantastic. We got to see many different types of seating and hospitality - of which there are a really wide variety.
The Arena is used for ice hockey, basketball but also concerts, etc. When there's a hockey-basketball double-header they can turn it around in just 90 minutes!
I really enjoyed this tour, I have to say. The staff seem highly competent and will have no problem dealing with the games.
We got to sit in the seats used by the players, although we stopped short of jumping over the boards onto the ice.
One of the coolest locations was a tunnel suite, which can be accessed by the ramp used by the players and other VIPs.
Here’s the suite itself.
From here you have direct access to seats with a great view over the ice, as you might expect.
When we were finished with the tour we decided to check a few of the nearby venues. Across the street was an unfinished development called Oceanwide Plaza that was covered in graffiti. I hope they manage to do something with this before the games!
We visited the LA Convention Center, which will host fencing, judo, table tennis, taekwondo and wrestling.
There was a conference wrapping up, as far as I could tell, so we just wandered in and took a few snaps.
The space is just one of those configurable exhibition spaces of the sort we use for Autodesk University, every year.
We couldn’t get into the Peacock Theater - where some early boxing rounds and weightlifting will be held - but we peered through the glass doors.
And that was it for the Sunday. Another intense day.
On the Monday - our last day in LA - we have a breakfast meeting in mid-city before heading across to the LA Memorial Coliseum, which will host track and field and participate in the opening and/or closing ceremonies.
There were more people on this tour.
Once again we visited many hospitality options, the most impressive being the USC President’s Suite.
The venue is operated on a long-term lease by USC.
We also got to experience the locker rooms, for whatever that’s worth. It’s interesting that there’s a stark disparity between the locker rooms for the home and away teams: the mind-games aren’t just for the pitch, it seems.
Here we are at the ground level, although to host athletics the level will be raised considerably to give more surface area.
From this tour we headed to the Metro Rail. Public transport is going to be such a huge component of the car-free LA28 games that it would have seemed wrong to have driven everywhere.
On the way to the station we saw the new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Which really looks like it landed from one of George’s movies.
I look forward to visiting it once it opens in 2026!
Here we are taking the train to Culver City.
It was straightforward enough, although you did see people sleeping on benches here and there. Something the city will probably “clean up” for the games.
From Culver City we took a Lyft to UCLA once again - via Venice Beach to pick up our luggage - where we visited the cityLAB.
The cityLAB team was in a basement (but with a nice green view!) office of Perloff Hall.
From here we got one last ride down to LAX, from where we hopped northwards to SFO.It was a jam-packed few days in LA but I feel we got to experience a lot. Many thanks to my partner-in-crime, Dagmara Szkurlat, for doing most of the legwork on setting up meetings and arranging visits for this trip. It was intense but really valuable!
