all fogged up -- eye on los angeles

What am I, sick? Everyone’s been asking – why am I going back to Los Angeles, and what’s all this talk about liking it? I don’t know – as my friend Greg said, it’s more of a perverse attraction. Be it that or be it one hundred percent pure, I don’t know. All the more reason to keep going. I’ll move there if I have to, but one day, I’ll know truly what makes LA tick. You can count on it. Here’s a few words – there was so much more than this, but it’s a start, and yes there was fog – six days of it. The sun came out, for about ten minutes, but hey – I decided I liked it. Calms the place down.

Psst – Julia Roberts….um….ahem, well, Julia Roberts has a….well, a, um…a clit ring.

There, I said it.

I know this, because I’m in a conversation with two overly chatty Paramount employees outside the commissary on this foggy May day, where Los Angeles the city is uncharacteristically socked in, fog covered at this late hour of noon.

We’re exchanging pleasantries and filthy gossip and I’ve just been handed a complimentary copy of “The Ladies Man”, that failed SNL Films effort (the latest in a long line, as we well know). Boy, do I feel lucky, I say to the man who has just handed me the video tape. He laughs – he gets the irony. Which is more than I can say for the rest of this city. But more about that later.

I’m here to listen, mostly, to the tour guide and learn about all that fascinating showbiz stuff. But try as might, I just can’t switch gears to this dream-factory bullshit from the pace of home, from the gritty reality of home to this dreamy palm-tree fantasy that I’ve not had adequate time to prepare for – the other gritty reality, that of Hollywood, with a capital H.

Blame it on the fact that I’ve become miserably jaded – anymore, I just don’t buy it. Los Angeles was always so much more than this baloney, and the more I know about Los Angeles, the less I give a shit about or ever want to get close to the ‘Industry’.

The day began in traffic, stuck on the 10 in mist and gridlock inching along for an hour of pavement from Ontario to Downtown LA. It’s a good day, I’m feeling fine so much that I forget that I haven’t smoked since the previous evening, and that the only coffee I’ve had was a week cup of complimentary dishwater at the mall-adjacent business traveler dumping ground placed at the foot of a charming freeway embankment, under the rush of the southbound 15.

Yes, today itself is enough, stimulants not required, which is the way it always begins in Los Angeles, never staying that way for long. Moby beats incessantly, alternating with Howard Stern, and I’m happy all the way.

Pulling on to Cesar Chavez which was once Brooklyn Avenue just after 0830, I find the city just as I left it, but with a year’s worth of perspective in my briefcase – suddenly, I see what I expected to see – there are so very many ways in which Los Angeles is a Latin American town – having recently been to Sao Paulo and Mexico City, all of a sudden, East Los Angeles is hauntingly familiar. The brightly colored, tiny houses and auto parts stores, lunch counters all lined up along the well-worn boulevards. In bursts of pink, bougainvillea along with green of the palms and shrubbery add calm to the chaos of traffic, graffiti and broken glass.

Welcome to Los Angeles – I plod up Sunset, stopping in on Silver Lake at my favorite branch of the Coffee Bean, which I find to be one of the least LA places in Los Angeles, with people who are actually honest and straight-forward, who talk to one another in line without any sort of reason to do so, they read the Los Angeles Times and even though they order their soy half-caf’s and vanilla mistos just as annoyingly as over on Beverly Drive, they are essentially good people, with minimalist approaches towards pretense and a generally sloppy manner of dress.

This is not to say that it’s all roses in Silver Lake, but I do enjoy it, because I’m well aware of the fact that such islands of sanity are hard to find in this insane city.

After dashing in to the cybercafe on Melrose that has served me so well on each visit, I drive down to the corner of Gower and turn, just beyond, into the Paramount lot where I’ve inquired simply where it is I need to park for a 10 o’clock appointment arranged by Tim, who sets these sort of appointments up.

I smile at the guard and ask the gate guard, tell me where to go – bad idea, he doesn’t like being told what to do, apparently, that’s part of his job, and he yells at me. Dear me, I’ve broken the rules.

Apparently, he now feels un-empowered, and bumbles around for a list which he can’t find. Without looking at me, he waves me in to park and tells me to head into the front office for directions from his ‘colleague’.

The esteemed colleague is David Miranda (I say this because if you ever see him at the Melrose gate, feel free to spit on his shoes – just don’t call me crying when you get put in Paramount jail – what’s that, being forced to watch back to back episodes of Cheers?), wearing his glasses like a good Sandinista should – he proceeds to bust my balls, giving me the old movie-business “what did you say your name was again?” no less than three times in two minutes, and I resist the urge to grab him by his thicker than tree trunk neck and scrawl it on his forehead with the pen sitting idly next to the phone.

A liaison sent out to deal with civilians like my self, a charming elderly lady, stands next to the desk -- apparently, she’s there to rescue me – my name is on the list after all, but under my publication, not my name, personally.

Well, there’s a fine how-de-do. Right away, I’m being the New York prick – and all I can say is, I’ve had my share of fights with security guards, and even though these two managed to be annoying, I did win this one as well, but here (and later on) I realized, one has to change the approach. Guess I have to learn to be more passive-aggressive, that fantastically Californian trait.

It’s a combo of good and bad for the rest of the day, with the tour guide constantly differentiating between “you guys” and “us”, as in, the American public and the industry, on which this tour guide is barely a part.

Gag me. But he’s good, even if he doesn’t know his history, and while the Frasier/Cheers stage is closed for the summer, we did drop in on the Entertainment Tonight set and visit the row of townhouses where George tries to replace the stolen loaf of Marble Rye at Grace Zabriskie’s house in Seinfeld.

We saw other things too, and we talked about what’s wrong with Hollywood and looked at old Historic Buildings and the parking lot that sometimes turns into an ocean for action films. He names a bunch, but I don’t care about any of them.

We saw cast members from the upcoming season of Star Trek smoking at the backdoor of the stage, props being built and the reader’s department building from Sunset Boulevard and most famously the gate where Erich Von Stroheim drove Gloria Swanson onto the lot for her meeting with Cecil B. De Mille.

It was all interesting, but I was shocked by how little it fascinated me. No sense of wonder whatsoever – in the time that I’ve been doing the work I do and in the personal decimation work I’ve done on the Los Angeles façade in my own mind, well, anymore I just don’t give a shit. I'm almost disappointed in myself.

I stop in at the company cafeteria for a good ham and swiss on white which I consume over a copy of the LA Weekly, which is a refreshing change, all about politics and things that matter. It helps me snap out of this disgusting little fantasy that is responsible for so much that’s good in the past, but mostly, lately, just plain awful. And to think of how many of these mini cities there are in town, churning out shit.

And I’m thinking of moving here? Shoot me.

I resist the urge to flip off Herr Kommandant on the way out and peel into traffic, headed for Downtown where embrace the city once more, stopping at the corner of 6th and San Pedro where a random homeless person stumbles across two lanes of traffic to ask me how long has it been since he last saw me. I laugh – do I know him? – he high fives me. There are friendly people in Los Angeles. I know, because I just met one.

The light turns green, I move on. I love this town.

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At the Nuestra Senora del Reina Mission, there’s singing on this sunny afternoon, the soft sounds of a congregation preparing to receive the Body of Christ. The melodious Spanish spills into the adobe courtyard where children laugh and play, adults crossing themselves as they move towards the altar to partake in communion.

But it’s not simply a wondrous spiritual encounter that at this moment leaves me breathless, it’s that fact that we’re just above the traffic clogged 101, looking out across the impressiveness of Downtown and it’s glass and concrete canyons. Finally, I have touched the heart of reality in this city, in this humble chapel off of Olvera Street, where the story of Los Angeles began, this place that actually resembles Mexico, when California was Alta California. In a city that’s nearly half Latino, well, it makes sense.

And what makes the moment even more wonderful is that I spent the entire day in a completely different universe which further proves the theory that Los Angeles is many parallel universes, orbs that rarely or never spin remotely close to one another.

There’s no way quite as happy as a stack of DuPar’s griddle cakes to start the day, especially if that DuPar’s is in the Farmer’s Market at Third and Fairfax with vinyl booths in red and counter seats in yellow. It’s dated, it’s grimy and the blue haired waitress are more and more people who can’t speak english so good, but the melted butter and the DuPar’s private label syrup send me to good places.

It might just be me, but the Los Angeles Times seems to have more of a pulse since the Tribune buyout – the coverage of the mayoral race is more than interesting. I’m thinking of how it makes sense that Villaraigosa win the election, finally, majority rule.

I’m not sure to be happy or sad, standing by the door of the mission chapel, knowing that so many Angelenos will never experience what it means to be an Angeleno, to live among the shadows, to dive in the myriad of cultures having nothing to do with them. And this isn’t just a diatribe against white people living behind gates in Brentwood or funky apartments in Santa Monica. Do yuppie Chinese in Monterey Park hang at El Mercado? Do Mexicans go for chicken and greens? Do hip Koreans line up at Sky Bar?

In Los Angeles, one catches a glimpse of the nation’s future – so polarized, you can barely stand to watch. It seems that in this town, crossing-cultures means eating thai food at Leela or going to Yuca’s Taco Hut.

No one had told me about Leimert Park. No one I spoke to even knew it existed. But everyone knew what Crenshaw was, and I wasn’t really encouraged to journey down the fabled boulevard to find the neighborhood, which is just past the mall that’s called the black mall, because it’s south of the 10, and that’s pretty much black country.

On a chilly Sunday afternoon, I convinced my pal Melissa who lives on the beach that we were going to head down to the corner of Degnan and Leimert to see what was happening in Leimert Park, the supposed cultural hub of the Black community in Los Angeles, which is surprisingly small (coming from Brooklyn), at less than ten percent of the county population.

It was festival day, a big African culture deal, everyone in their kente cloth and braided hair, reclaiming heritage they never knew, and hanging effigies of black men with a sign saying that basically, the cops and the Klan are about the same (from this week’s cover story in the New Yorker, that statement becomes a little less of a stretch, all though only one of the guilty cops discussed in the lengthy piece would have been eligible for Klan membership, as most of them were black or latino).

I felt no hostility, but I certainly didn’t feel welcome. It was just like home – the only white person in sight. It was comfortable enough, except that all the shops were closed, the activity was out on the street, drum circles and masks and beads on sale, whatnot. The sounds of musicians warming up at the performance space on Degnan, at the corner club and a bar tender cleaning glasses at Babe and Ricky’s were the only indoor activity we encountered.

It was fun, it was a million miles from everything else I’d seen in Los Angeles – almost real, reminding me more of good times in Chicago or Brooklyn. Along Crenshaw, thousands of young people are parked on the access roads that run along either side, leaning on their cars dressed to the nines and chatting each other up at the end of this dying day, light fast disappearing. We pass barbeque joint upon barbeque joint, but my friend would rather not park her car here in the dark.

We head instead for Aunt Kizzy’s in Marina del Rey, where the food is just as good, so is the atmosphere, never mind that next door is a Koo Koo Roo, which they don’t yet have on Crenshaw.

Who wants that fuckin’ healthy shit? Fuck that – pass the damn mac n’ cheese.

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The days are over, I’m all out of cash, the rental car is due back, I’ve got a night flight from Ontario. I’m stuck in Malibu at the Sav On, buying five dollar cigarettes that look like they’ve been sitting there for twelve years (apparently, people don’t smoke in Malibu). The fog is particularly heavy, the mood particularly low. I’ve got almost ninety miles to go, and I’m not looking forward to how much that’s going to cost me in gas, here where a deal is $1.95 a gallon.

Heading up into Malibu Canyon, the visuals stun, as the Calabasas-based sun sneaks up over the mountain, rays penetrating the grey, halos on everything and everywhere, clouds zooming faster than the SUVs barreling around the corner. Pity then, in the sun-drenched valley, that the scenery isn’t half as beautiful as that back over the canyon.

I head up to Griffith Park for a final hike of the trail I’ve come to love more than life itself over the past two years, the winding ascent to the peak of Mount Hollywood with it’s 360 degree view of the region. Here is the most fantastic gathering place of all, better than any bar or restaurant in town. Boyz from the Hood scrambling up the short cut trails laughing like children, asian senior citizens arms swinging furiously, middle aged latino couples curling weights along the way and needy young lovers hanging on to each other for dear life. Fashion plate white girls and black girls, dog walkers and people just looking for a little quiet.

What we have in common is our love for the mountains, for the wilderness, for the heady feeling of being able to climb out of the insane city, if only for a moment. I sit at the picnic table high atop the summit, Hollywood is socked in, but the San Gabriel Mountains are visible for the first time all week. A low cloud layer sails over, hiding my resting place in white cotton dampness, and I scramble down the face back toward the Observatory, where looking down, it seems as if the city is beginning to light up for night time.

Driving down the hill, I wish I were almost home. Who knows, maybe some day soon.