I recently took a short 3 day jaunt to the fine city of Los Angeles. It was the culmination of an idea hatched over 20 years ago. The idea was to act like a baller, and instead of sitting in a cold winter basement watching the Lakers on TV, fly your ass to LA and get courtside seats!

Having a few grand laying around and a cohort is a necessary part of this plan. Timing has to be perfect. I am living check to check most of my life. But thanks to my crazy little brother it finally came together spring 2026 and we had courtside seats to a Cavs game in LA.

It’s the 3rd or 4th time I’ve been there but my brother has never been. So I was able to play some tour guide, which I think I delivered on given I know what my brother really wanted to see. Los Angeles is the city of many dreams and those dreams always risk crashing back into reality if you oversell or miss your target.

My brother has his particular view of southern california so I planned a few stops that would be both amazing and affordable. By affordable I mean time and cash. I know most of the Hollywood/hype based mainstream entertainment stuff does not appeal much to him and we didn’t have much time.

Our tour was a mix of our musical landmarks like first gigs, plus the schools of our musical heroes, famous streets and areas, a few choice movie sets, and of course famous screens from San Andreas. My brother kept saying “check!” as he saw things he wanted to see, so I kept driving and hitting things from my list. We ate outdoors in March, impossible where I’m from. We dug in with a good, centrally located air b’nb and went out and enjoyed as much of the region as we could.

I really do appreciate LA as a place where people don’t like to be bored. People are living their lives and hustling, but hustling in that laid back californian style. You can fight for your dream creative project here, and that project probably has a better chance of getting out to the world than in most places. As we navigated around we constantly did our terrible version of SNL’s Californians. I wish we were there for a weekend so we could have seen more nightlife but it was still great.

I don’t have a big theme to this post other than the standard follow your dreams and have a good time. We saved money in a few different ways and the trip went off basically without a hitch. Times are crazy now and have been for a while but you can still act like a baller with just a little bravery and cash!