The Other Hollywood….

Today we’re in Hollywood Florida.  It’s sandwiched neatly between Fort Lauderdale to the north and Miami to the south.  It strikes me as the forgotten step child and I know that feeling having lived near Philadelphia which is sandwiched between New York City and that other place where all the politicians are.  You know, the place that has the highest per capita income in the US.  The place where the terms “loophole”  and “special interest” were coined.  Forgive me.  I’m getting sidetracked.

Hollywood was recommended as another good place for biking.  It has about a 3 mile stretch of beach with a “boardwalk” which is actually asphalt/concrete pavers but serves the same purpose.  If you’ve ever been to Venice Beach in Los Angeles it’s the same idea only smaller.  I saw an Organic Beer house and persuaded JoJami to stop.  We were seated on the deck behind these guys:

They appeared to be a Russian motorcycle gang but they were speaking english.  I surmised that they were practicing so as to assimilate into the population without being noticed.  We Googled “Bratva” (iPhones are awesome) and learned that it’s possibly the most notorious criminal organization in Russia.  But these guys were friendly – even one of the guys wives was there holding a cute little toddler in a pink tutu.  Maybe they were really just pretending.  As JoJami pointed out, most of them didn’t even finish their 32 ounce beers.  How tough could they be?

As we left Hollywood, I pulled up next to this at a stoplight:

That’s all airbrushed paintwork to make it look rusty.  Here’s a closeup:

That’s an actual piece of rebar above the artist’s plate.  We continued on and shortly thereafter we saw this:

I started looking around for the Russian motorcycle gang……..

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