And so it’s all over, after 11 days of LA fun I’m back home in London now, I was originally going to write this yesterday but I couldn’t think straight or keep my eyes open so I’m sitting down today to write up my final day and to sum up the whole experience in one go. 

The final full day on Friday was great fun, spent the day with my friend James, who lives out there now, we headed out to The Last Bookstore in Downtown LA, which is a huge second hand store that’s housed in an old bank building, complete with vaults packed with amazing vintage books. The best part though is the huge $1 per book section, which stretched for what seemed liked miles and miles, we barely scratched the surface of the place. But what we did take out time to look through fully was the VHS section we found, not huge but a good dig revealed a few choice finds and all for only $1 each. We also stuck our heads into the Bradbury Building, which is probably most famous for being featured in Blade Runner, the lobby area is open to the public and you’re free to walk around, though you can’t go up to any of the floors, it’s well worth a visit to see this iconic location in person. 

Now I thought I had something very cool planned for the evening, but sadly it turned into an unexpected disaster, it’s far too long of a story to write here, but do feel free to ask if you see me in person. 

Then that was it, Saturday morning was here and it was time to pack and wrap everything up for my time in LA. I always get the blues at the end of any holiday, things always go too quickly and I never want to come home, but there’s always next time. The flight back was simple and I got home really quickly, it felt very strange being back home on the Sunday. 

To put it simply I had such an amazing time over in LA and at Everything Is Festival, it was worth all the planning and saving that had gone into getting there. Finally getting to step inside Cinefamily was such a treat, it’s got such a great atmosphere and all the staff and volunteers there were so great and helpful. Also all of the Everything Is Terrible guys that I met were so welcoming to me, Dimitri did everything possible to make me feel at home, Scott and Nick couldn’t have been nice as well, they all made me feel like I was a real part of the festival. Also a huge thanks to Nate (The Sadist) for being such a great friend out there and showing me around one night! 

One of the reasons I’d wanted to head over to the festival was just to see how something like this ran in comparison to what we do here as The Duke, it was fantastic to see the similarities and also to pick up on a few things that I thought worked really well there. It really made me feel like we’re doing the right thing with all our screenings and events, it also really inspired me to try and do more, to track down funnier footage and to hopefully make our audience enjoy out nights as much as I enjoyed Everything Is Festival!