Continued: One more house and one more margarita.

We had one more house to see. Our Realtor took us up into the hills of La Cresenta. This town has a different flavor than Burbank. Although they were both called "surburbs", they seemed plenty urban to us, kind of like Bloomfield Ave in Montclair but going on for miles and miles, and with much smaller tract houses. The houses in Burbank are mostly circa 1940s due to the aircraft industry, and are mixed with Spanish, traditional, even some saltbox Colonials. In La Cresenta the homes are all small 1960s mid-century moderns, and this one was no exception:
The Incredibles Coulda Lived Here

The entrance was charming, and led into a pretty little living room with beautiful flooring. There were three small bedrooms, more blue and pink old carpet, and another grim beige kitchen. But the back porch!

The back porch ran the length of the house in a wide triangle. Just after the fence there was a dropoff of about 25 feet, but the view was amazing.

In the end, other than the Marble Manor, we could have been happy in any of those houses, as long as we could paint everything in sight and pay about 150k less than the asking price. It was a great learning experience after months of fruitlessly checking out these kind of homes online. Houses really are a LOT smaller out here, and there are no basements. But we'll spend a lot more time outside, and nobody puts their car in the garage, so that becomes your de facto basement! (And studio, and playroom, and workbench, and guest house...)

We drove off to Echo Park and realized why Burbank is considered a surburb! Now we were really in the city -- like the equivalent of the LES or Washington Heights, but with lower buildings. My best friend and her boyfriend just moved into a two-bedroom out here and we got the tour and looked in vain for her cat to torment. We took off to Hollywood (where, I might add, I was the only one excited to see the Hollywood sign) and saw the Green Hornet in 3D at the Arclight Cinerama Dome.

Hands down the best movie theater I've ever been in. Sorry, Ziegfeld, there's a new movie palace in my heart. The movie was fine, needed to be 5% goofier, but James Franco makes everything better!

We went out to dinner at a hipster Mexican place which was delicious but LOUD. We might be getting a little too old for hipster places. Said good-bye and came back and crashed.

Today we check out of our Burbank hotel and head out to Valencia and Santa Clarita. Wish us luck!