I happened to be in Los Angeles for work and visited the Hollywood temple of the Vedanta Society that night. It's an odd place, and really looks like a combined church and mandir. The worship was fairly stiff (in some ways, it reminded me of the formal Protestantism of my grandparents), but it was offset by the gentle friendliness of the swamis and the energy of the bhajans. I wasn't able to stay through the night, but I found it a gracious concession to human weakness that prasadam was available immediately following the first watch. All in all, it was a nice sivaratri.
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