dtownLA night.

chihuly scorpion tails @ phoenix botanical gardens.

post-work on friday, we drove over to the arts district in downtownLA to try out wurstkuche, a self-proclaimed exotic sausage grill. and man oh man do they deliver. they have the classics (bratwurst, hot italian, kielbasa), gourmet sausages (mango jalapeno chicken&turkey, sun dried tomato & mozzarella smoked chicken) and their "exotics" with ingredients like buffalo, duck, rabbit, alligator, snake and rabbit. all sausages are grilled to order, and they have a pretty sweet selection of belgian and german beers on tap, the the place itself is awesome - all exposed brick and wood accents. and the clientele is super mixed. dan had the chipotle buffalo, beef & pork, i had the jalapeno rattlesnake & rabbit. both were delicious. then we split the alligator & pork andouille, which was also quite good and very hearty, but not as good as the other two i think. it's definitely one of our new favorite places and we'll be going back again soon for sure.

for dessert, we walked over to little tokyo and went to mikawaya mochi, the original creators of mochi ice cream! best of all, they had red bean mochi ice cream - only $1 each. delicious and refreshing!

anyway, the reason we headed to downtown in the first place was because of an event happening later that night called battle royale LA, which is a dance competition between 3 dance groups at UCLA hosted by one of their fraternities. it was held in a wing of union station, so the venue set up was pretty awesome. but it was filled with a whole sh*tload of obnoxious drunk college-aged asians. but the dancing itself was pretty awesome, and katee shean from last season of so you think you can dance - who i absolutely adored and should have won - was one of the judges (as were a couple other people from the first few seasons of america's best dance crew).

EDIT: i say stuff 'was pretty awesome' way too much. *sigh*