Out on the sidewalk

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(2009)

Last nite we got invited to some Brazilian party at a hip club in Santa Monica.  Some kind of press event. We got there late but they’d pushed back the start time so the bouncer made us wait back outside on the sidewalk. OK. Later the publicist throwing the party told us and some others out on  the sidewalk to come on in. Within minutes the bouncer saw us and we were outside again. So we hung around on the sidewalk again.  About 15 minutes later the booker was back at the door and said you still out here? and ushered us in again. The bouncer kicked us out again. Enough. We split. Later that night got a bitchy note from the publicist’s assistant about not showing up.

The place never did made it into Brick’s Picks again. They asked, but somehow they always wound up outside on the sidewalk..

The sidewalk. The benches were nice.

The sidewalk. The benches were nice.

Rich people everywhere

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(2010)

Last nite we went to a show at the Bowl. Showed our press passes to the usher and went to turn right and head up the stairs as ujsual.  The usher said no and pointed us down the stairs. We kept going down and down, past all the places I thought we were gonna sit, through steadily rising income levels. Then through a special gate. I was about to head to a spot tucked in the corner when the usher led us down to the very front. Then across to the very center. There we were, front row center at the Hollywood Bowl, the stage maybe four feet away. Apparently some billionaire died or something and we got his seats.  Whatever, there we were with our picnic backpack full of home cooked fried chicken, some Lake-to-Lake cheese, Ritz crackers, tortillas, some fruit, whatever we found in the fridge. A ten dollar bottle of wine I got for half that. Rich people everywhere. There were menus on the table. The Beef was $41. Appetizers pushed $20, desserts a mere twelve or so. I didn’t even ask to see the wine list. I sat there kinda stunned. Fyl acted as if this were normal everyday stuff for her…she’s getting jaded. The server was oh so perky. I said we weren’t going to order off the menu and she looked a little disappointed—no big tips from table numero uno tonight. She did offer us place settings, glasses, to open your wine, anything, sir. I declined, but we did order Fyl a beer. Who knows how much that cost. Anyway, we have this really nifty picnic backpack I got once for test driving car far too small for me. I wanted that backpack. Like a sixty dollar deal, free.  Really nice plates (plastic), really nifty wine glasses (plastic), stainless steel silver ware (plastic handles), a cutting board (wood) and some cute little checkered napkins (cloth). We love this thing. We pack it full of food, put a wine bottle in the wine holder, I mean it’s perfect.  The envy of all picnickers. My god did it look cheap and plastic and tawdry amid that little sea of rich people. I opened the bottle and poured it into one of the little glasses. A server looked and I swear rolled her eyes. This unctuous little man, nattily dressed, went from table to table chatting with the rich people, anything I can do, etc. He studiously passed right by us, eyes averted. Suddenly the program director of KKJZ (the jazz station) pops up. His wife is holding a picnic bag. The look completely dazed that they’ve been plunked down front row center at the Bowl. They pull out their picnic dinner. Grapes, some sandwiches, a bottle of wine from Trader Joes. She was crazy about our plastic wine glasses. I had to show her the picnic pack. Tell the test-drive story. Then pops up a writer and a pal. Dazed, both. And so broke we all shared our wine and food with them. All around us tinked fancy silverware on fabulous china. Champagne bottles popped. It was surreal. The people stared at us, sitting at that table, knowing we had to be somebody, but if we  were somebody how could all of us be so cheap?

A wonderful evening. Two excellent Latin jazz bands and a hackneyed Sergio Mendes set, made up for by an army of near naked Brazilian dancers who strutted all around us. They were between us and the non-rich people and we got about five solid minutes of 99% bare Brazilian tushes shaking it for the people. The night before there’d been a symphony there…. It ended and we finally got out of the parking lot and I had to get home to write my column so of course I said hey, there’s a party, let’s go, and off we were to Highland Park and caught the last dregs of an obviously uproarious party. A couple dozen boho wackos old enough to know better. Lots of slurred sentences. People with the munchies bad. We stayed till 1:30. Home by 1:45. We had left the house at 6:45…..

Btw, we never did pay for that beer.

Nachos

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(2011)

I was sick all the night  before…was still shaky when I got to the hotel for the protest. Dropped by Trader Vic’s in the hotel lobby for a whiskey. I felt like such a cliché….a reporter dropping by a bar on the way to an assignment and it ain’t even noon yet. Whiskey helped, though, and the second helped even more, and things settled down enough for me to interview a bunch of angry musicians. Drove to the day gig right afterward, still feeling sick as a dog, and when I walked into the elevator on the way to my office there was this overwhelming odor of cheap Mexican food…they were giving away nachos for some reason. Servers glopping them on people’s plates. People ladleing on sour cream and green salsa and red salsa and oily grated cheese. Trapped in the back of the elevator by a dozen people trying not to drop their nachos. Oh god. The twenty floors was an eternity. On every floor people on and off. I hated them. People can talk endlessly about nachos. Finally my floor. Got to my desk, opened my email and I’m getting  yelled at by a couple people for not telling people how incredibly important some gigs were. Work was fucked. Got home at eight I think. Tried to eat. Tried to write. Tried to sleep. Damn. Why do I keep doing this? I hate being a jazz columnist. I was gonna quit a couple weeks ago and had guilt trips laid on me like you can’t believe.  And now I still have that thing to write and my regular copy to write and I am tired of this writer crap real bad. Either that or I need a vacation. Anyway, I got the piece written. Now all I have to do is not think about nachos and I’ll be fine.

Soft Rock

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Wow. I think I would rather die, personally. Note that it is one block away from the old Al’s Bar. We’d park on Hewitt and head to Al’s to have our ears blasted by the crazy punk rock, three or four bands a night. I remember seeing a dead guy on the 400 block of Hewitt once. Must have been two in the morning. Our ears were ringing. Is he drunk? A cop nudged him with his boot. He didn’t wake up. The night air reeked of urine and Thunderbird and bats darted in and out of abandoned factories. Lamp posts and telephone poles threw moonlit shadows. I wonder who he was someone asked. No one answered. We were drunk and laughing and he was dead and that is just how things were before the soft rock revival.

Soft rock

Crisco

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(2012)

Back when Silver Lake was leather heaven all the corner markets had lots and lots of Crisco on the shelves. I never thought about that until I saw a totally leathered out guy my size at the liquor store getting  ready for a party.  Snacks, beer, booze, cigars, breakfast cereal (coco puffs, I remember that 30 years later), milk, juice, donuts and every can of Crisco on the shelf. Like eight cans worth. The poor kid working the counter looked absolutely horrified. The leather dude was loving it.

There are none of those guys left in the neighborhood. I bet 90% of them died. They sang I Will Survive and then died. Their bars are straight, their houses full of hipsters and irony. Chaps aren’t just for gay boys anymore. The plague came through and destroyed that whole civilization. It laid waste the land, leaving Silver Lake barren with breeders. It’s raining babies now. But those were the days, the survivors sing. Those were the days. What a party. A man was a man and Crisco wasn’t just for frying chicken.

All out of vanilla Haagen-Dazs

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(2010)

Was out  late last nite. Saw some great bands in a little Mexican dive in Lincoln Heights. I love the East Side. Silver Lake used to be East Side. Maybe not the tops of the Swish Alps, but in the lowlands, along the boulevards, and almost everything south of Sunset. It was Latino and gay and leather and punk rock and bohemian with traces of hippies and hints of jazz even, left over from the Soap Plant daze. Alas, Silver Lake is so Westside now. I remember years ago watching a blonde–one of those ultra blondes–walking down a nearby street with tits like grapefruit. Perfect orbs. You could teach geometry with those things. I stared a minute and thought Good Lord, what has become of my neighborhood? It wasn’t much later at the Mayfair (now Gelson’s) that a gorgeous power blonde–she had to be an attorney, just had to be–stormed up to the manager on perfect legs and screamed You’re all out of vanilla Haagen-Dazs! She was livid. Gave him hell, the poor bastard. He apologized. She said something wealthy and angry. My wife, watching, burst out loud laughing.

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Cinco de Mayo

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Back in the eighties Cinco de Mayo wasn’t a big thing in Silverlake. September 16 was. People partied in the street, cerveza, tequila, mescal as it grew late. The sweet smell of leafy mota. All kinds of tamales. Vincente Fernandez blaring from huge boom boxes you could buy down on Broadway at wholesale. By 3 a.m. it was Viva Mexico and dancing on the sidewalk. ¡Vivan los héroes que nos dieron la patria y libertad!, slurred. Loud cackling. This was right in the middle of Silver Lake too. Then spelled Silverlake. Pricey apartments were often tenements then, paint peeling from the walls, noisy plumbing. It was a different universe, the old Silverlake. Those buildings are all painted now, the plumbing new. There used to be rats. Now there are screenwriters. The Mexicanos are gone. The Filipinos are gone. Varrio Aztlan is gone. The Armenians are off in Glendale now. The gays are gone to WeHo, where it still rains men on weekends. The punks are gone. Gone the way of the hippies and beats and Russian emigres before them. Gone like the nissei who once owned all the nurseries, also gone. Everything’s gone but us. We’re still here, three decades later, watching the drunk huero hipsters and deciding that vegan fusion tacos aren’t our idea of Cinco de Mayo.

Thirty years ago I remember talking to some geezer who was complaining about all the taquerias. They used to all be hot dog stands, he said. He didn’t even like tacos. He liked hot dogs. But even the hot dogs were new once, he said. The old timers, the farmers and small town people, they didn’t like hot dogs. Too European. Too hunky. Too kraut. You used to be able to get good fried chicken anywhere they said. But then the movie people moved in and everyone wanted hot dogs. The movies ruined Silver Lake, they said. Ruined the place. Tom Mix and the Keystone cops and D.W. Griffith and Mickey Mouse. Now look at it. I did. It looked fine. I liked tacos and cheap rent and weirdos. The geezer shook his head. You would.

Now I look around and miss the tacos and cheap rent and weirdos. The Cinco de Mayo no one cared about and the Dia de Independencia, which refuses to roll off an English speaking tongue without stumbling. Maybe not Vincinte Fernandez at ear splitting volume at three in the morning, but I miss the swigs off a bottle of mescal handed to me just because I was walking down the street on September 16, la dia de independencia. That’s a lot of syllables for a holiday, especially drunk and stoned. Maybe that’s why we celebrate Cinco de Mayo. It’s easier to say.

Whether you’re a vato ‘stache toting patriot or an alcoholic looking for any excuse to drink before noon, everyone loves Cinco de Mayo, (unless you are French, in which case, celebrate a day of sacrifice and lament). Getting drunk on Cinco de Mayo is as Angelenian as circumventing federal legal policy to purchase drugs from”licensed doctors”. Sure, you will likely go way over your party budget and end up hooking up with any number of muffin-topped minges, but it’s all in the honor of our hermanos who gave their lives for a country where the drugs come easy and the whores are cheap. Oh, we should also be celebrating Mexico, shouldn’t we? As if LA needs a reason to celebrate tacos and tequila more than we do on a daily basis, here are your top 5 fiestas around town. - See more at: http://www.ultravulgarsuperfiend.com/cinco-de-mayo-event-guide/#sthash.wwe2k6mg.dpuf

“Whether you’re a vato ‘stache toting patriot or an alcoholic looking for any excuse to drink before noon, everyone loves Cinco de Mayo. Getting drunk on Cinco de Mayo is as Angelenian as circumventing federal legal policy to purchase drugs from licensed doctors’. Sure, you will likely go way over your party budget and end up hooking up with any number of muffin-topped minges, but it’s all in the honor of our hermanos who gave their lives for a country where the drugs come easy and the whores are cheap. Oh, we should also be celebrating Mexico, shouldn’t we? As if LA needs a reason to celebrate tacos and tequila more than we do on a daily basis…”

There are bigots, and then there are hipster bigots.

Nightstalker

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Once, at a nice little cocktail party in town, I met one of the women who’d proposed to Richard Ramirez. The Night Stalker? Yes. Why? He was nice, she said. She’d written him lots of letters. He’d written some back. He was into pentagrams, she said. She was pretty, quite sweet, a little off, but not so off that you’d imagine her wanting to marry Richard Ramirez. I didn’t say anything. You’d be surprised how tongue tied you get when someone tells you they want to marry Richard Ramirez. Of course, he’s long gone now, and the woman who did marry him–breaking this lady’s heart, apparently–is a widow who for the rest of her life will have to explain why she married Richard Ramirez. I doubt anyone will understand.

Well, Charlie Manson’s wife would. He’s going on 80, she’s young enough to be his great grand daughter. She loves him. Manages all his social media sites, and even cut an x into her forehead to prove it, though it’s just a little scar now. She doesn’t believe a word about Helter Skelter. He had nothing to do with killing all those people, she said. He doesn’t manipulate anybody. The only thing that he’s trying to manipulate people into doing, she said, is planting trees and cleaning up the Earth. Charlie is nice to everyone.

Richard Ramirez’s wife said the same about her betrothed. We don’t know the real Richard, she said. He’s kind, he’s funny, he’s charming.

I didn’t ask the lady at the party anything about Richard. I got a bad vibe and snuck off to the other side of the room. Everyone was eyeing her. She was pretty, after all, with very nice legs. She was striking in her black dress and lace and raven hair. She was crazy. And she’d wanted to marry the Night Stalker.

Love is a beautiful thing.

Rock dove

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We no longer have pigeons in Silver Lake. We have rock doves. Indeed, there was one on the sun deck. Just one. Very selective, our rock doves. The elite. Not like the mobs of pigeons you’d see in the Ralphs parking lot, waiting for the crazy bird lady. But Ralphs is gone, the bird lady is gone, and the pigeons are gone, who knows where. There are other parking lots, other bird ladies. So there was just the one rock dove, gleaming after a winter’s rain. He landed on our sun deck with its million dollar view, and the mere mourning doves and finches and sparrows scurried out of its way. The rock dove carefully selected only the choicest seeds, looked about, and then, tired of slumming it, flew off to the rich people in the hills, where he can find a finer selection of avian cuisine and bird baths sculpted in Carrara marble. Meanwhile, back on our sundeck the mourning doves and finches and sparrows rushed back in, bickering, pecking, a disorder of tiny dinosaurs with no class at all. Gentrification has a long way to go among these birds.

A hoi polloi of pigeons, unwilling to discover their inner rock dove.

A hoi polloi of pigeons, unwilling to realize their inner rock dove.

Beautiful young things

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Beautiful young things still come to our door by mistake almost daily. Well, two or three times a week. Our street is a beautiful young thing magnet. They come up the steps looking at their iPhones, confused, peer in through the front window and see me. Now there’s a sight. Bravely they knock on the door. Sometimes they ask for so and so in a hip New Yawkese. Sometimes they have tiny little English accents. This one the latter, cute but très hip. As always I was very polite, if unshaven. I smile. Upstairs, I suggest. She thanked me and took delicate, teetering high heeled steps back down, and I watch and wonder how one gets so old. Twenty five years in one pad. How many cats back was that? How many jobs? Bands? We moved in scarcely older than she. I would jump the two flights of stairs two and three at a time. I moved the furniture in myself. The boxes of books and records. Now I hobble up and down, arthritic, from jumping all those stairs, perhaps, or maybe falling down them, and I watch too much TV. Grown men, Canadians mostly, are brawling, and young things come up the steps like poetry.