California Dreamin’ Tour – Day 4

The Getty Center, in the Brentwood neighborhood of LA (yes, OJ’s hood), was created by a $600 million dollar grant from J. Paul Getty, who was born Jean Paul Getty in 1892 and died in 1975. As you can see from these photos, this place is architecturally stunning. Although I was terribly underdressed, we had a lovely lunch at the restaurant, which also provided exceptional people watching. Then we perused the museum store, walking away with some cool books and tasteful memorabilia. As far as the art collection – we actually saw little of it, as there just wasn’t time to do more than scratch the surface. 

I did, however, find out some very interesting trivia about J. Paul (I figure we’re on a first name basis now). His dad, who made his money in Oklahoma oil, decided J. Paul was a bum when after finishing college and making his first million with his own oil company, J. Paul announced that he was going to retire and move to LA to become a playboy. In fact, this pissed dad off so much that he left J. Paul a piddly $500,000 in his will. Eventually J. Paul ran out of money (in the process of being married and divorced 5 times), or perhaps to “show” his dad, so he had to go back to work. In 1949 he bought the drilling and concession rights to a barren tract of land where no Americans had ever drilled, nor had oil ever been discovered. That land straddled Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and as the story goes, the rest is history. So I guess we can thank J. Paul not just for the Getty Center, but also Desert Storm and the Gulf War, but on to more pleasant thoughts.

Yesterday’s journey was also about driving Wilshire Boulevard and Hwy 101, or as it is locally known, the PCH (Pacific Coast Highway).

Oh, I almost forgot. We did surf for a couple of hours with Matthew McConaughey in Malibu, but then his wife and kids showed up and we all had to act like we didn’t really know each other. As you can clearly see from this photo, he was pretty disappointed when we left. Today is all about Santa Barbara, and that means shopping, which could be very interesting since neither Deb nor I have any money. Mas Mañana! SueAnn