Travel Encore
Taylor Swift’s Los Angeles Lover Secret Session
Our time back in Canada mostly involved organizing ourselves to move from Vancouver to Toronto. We went through the boxes we had in storage at our friend’s house in Vancouver and packed about half of them to ship to Toronto. After that, we spent a few weeks on the island visiting my dad. All too soon it was time to head to Toronto but an unexpected twist to our plans occurred when Yuki received a private message from Taylor Swift’s management via Tumblr.
Yuki has been curating content for a Taylor Swift fan account for the past year and has 15,000 followers on three platforms including Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram (@yukitheswiftie). Much to our delight, Yuki was invited to attend a Secret Session in Los Angeles. A few years ago, Taylor Swift started a tradition of inviting loyal Swifties to her houses in the US and the UK to play them new music before the public release of her albums — these events are now known as Secret Sessions.
We flew to Toronto, received the keys to our new place, and flew to LA a few days later. Although we backpacked around the world for two years, our time in LA was the first time we actually went out touring with our backpacks on. Usually when we arrive in a new city, we make our way to our accommodation and spend the day resting since transit can be tiring. If we do go out, stopping at the accommodation gives us the chance to drop off our stuff so that we’re not lugging it around everywhere. This time, however, we arrived at noon and had the afternoon free before check-in. Our trip was short; we wanted to make the most of our time so we went straight to Hollywood Boulevard and walked the Stars. We also stopped by the TCL Chinese Theatre to see celebrities’ handprints and footprints.
We also checked out some specific Taylor Swift-related locations, including the intersection of Sunset and Vine (featured in her song Gorgeous).
The next day we went out and did a Taylor Swift photoshoot. Yuki’s big project when we were traveling the world was recreating scenes from Taylor Swift’s delicate music video — and this time we made it to where it was actually filmed!
It was pretty cool to walk around the Millenium Hotel and see the building as it was in the music video. It was pretty much exactly the same. Other scenes from the music video were filmed nearby and we visited those too.
Later we walked to the Disney Concert Hall, which turned out to be a really interesting building. It was designed by Frank Gehry and is clad in stainless steel. I later found out that it is a precursor to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain, which is quite famous, so in many ways the Disney Concert Hall was the proving ground for that building.
We walked around the outside of the building, which has a great winding path that climbs up along the structure. It serves as an emergency exit but it has cool views of the structure and also connects to a small rooftop park, so it is multi-functional. Inside, only the lobby and giftshop were open.
August 6th was the big day for Yuki and she spent the morning getting her hair done before going to the meeting point for the Secret Session. There was a lot of waiting around, but at the same time she met a lot of online friends including two from Japan!
Having an invitation to Taylor Swift’s Secret Sessions is considered a very high honour for Swifties because it is an invitation by Taylor Swift herself to her own place, where she wants to share her new album with fans before release. This makes it special because unlike being noticed at a concert and invited to meet Taylor Swift afterwards, Secret Session fans are selected personally by Taylor Swift online — which means she’s been following each person and knows what they’ve done.
While Yuki was at the Secret Session, I went hiking in the Hollywood hills… which wasn’t nearly as exciting.
When Yuki announced online that she had met Taylor Swift several friends, some of which we’ve met in person, she received some art. One of them made a really nice colored drawing, which was really sweet. As well, there was a lot of photoshop to change the background which is pretty typical in the fandom.
The trip is now over and we’re starting to get more comfortable in Toronto. I’ve got a two-week architectural course at the university in preparation for the fall term. We’re spending most of our free time organizing our apartment. This includes buying half a ton (445kg) of IKEA furniture but then having to sleep on futons while we wait 2 weeks for delivery, as well as going out almost daily to nearby stores to buy appliances like a toaster, microwave, and other kitchen essentials.
Our apartment isn’t that great and it makes us really appreciate how amazing our place in Vancouver was. However, we’re trying hard to make it comfortable since we’ll be here for at least 4 years. Hopefully there are good things to come, since the past two years have been, without a doubt, the best time of our lives.
