Every now and then, when your life gets complicated and
the weasels start closing in, the only real cure is to load up on heinous
chemicals and drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas. – DR. HST
Or, in my case, keep going, past Las Vegas, hell get out of
the desert altogether. Go to the mountains, to the heart of the universe, the
beating cardiac muscle nestled in those dramatic rock spires that lord over the
plains of the frontier lands. So myself, my wife, our 3 dogs, and the cat Mr.
Henry Miller, officially left Los Angeles on January 3, 2013 with two
overloaded vehicles for Jackson, Wyoming.
By the way, now would be the time for me to insert the note
explaining how this move, and the ensuing weeks of chaos (lack of heat or
running water or internet, filth and buildup everywhere, mountains) has left me
silent here for a few weeks. Well, now things should be back to normal again.
No doubt I’ll be reflecting on this move more in-depth in
future posts. Maybe I’ll talk about the fact that we finished our 1000 mile
drive at a small cabin where all the pipes were too frozen to take a goddamned
shower. Or the many hours I’ve spent cutting wood for our wood-burning stove,
chopping wood for warmth as it were.
But for now I’m gonna say
goodbye to L.A. the only way a respectable blogger can – by creating a list of
the top 10 things I will and will NOT miss about that wonderful, hideous,
gleaming, filthy, sprawling, dynamic, rotten city of devils. And for all you
Angelenos reading this, make sure to read the list of things I’ll miss (which
will be 2nd) before you start ejaculating rage-filled repartees
against your humble narrator. But regardless, here it goes, my top 10 list of
what I will and will not miss about L.A.
1.) Driving. I had to leave Los Angeles before I
lost it and just started ramming the surrounding cars on the road from
Hollywood to Beverly Hills. Or got in a full-blown fistfight with a fellow
angry driver. Driving in Los Angeles is a disgusting game of stop and go,
peopled by old white folks driving awkwardly and slow in quarter million dollar
sports cars, run of the mill rats looking confused as they illegally talk on
their cell phones or absently putter their Mercedes down the street trying to
remember where to turn. And then there are all the freaks unable to turn left
at an intersection, the ones you get stuck behind and honk as they wait for the
car that’s a half mile away to pass because they don’t want to get hit. All
different ethnicities and lifestyles, creed and beliefs, drive horribly in
their own individual way. I caught a cab to work one day. It was one of the
only days I got to work and didn’t want to put a hole in a wall.
2.) Parking. It’s interesting, if I took the whole
car situation out of Los Angeles, I would have enjoyed that damn city so much
more. Up here in Jackson, you wanna go somewhere, you just go. Park on the
street in front. Or in the parking lot. All free. Hell, you can park for free
all day at the airport. No more driving 2 miles at a speed of 4 miles an hour to
either fight with 6 cars for 4 parking spots or pay 15 bucks to go to the
hospital where you’ll be paying some doctor more concerned with seeing the most
patients in a day than your health care a couple hundred to fix your broken
collar bone.
3.) The cost. 10 dollar drinks? Why not. 40 bucks
for a trip to the movies? Sure. 15 bucks to park at the beach all day? 20 dollars for a standard beef burger? 4 bucks a gallon for gas (even though the
city was built on and still home to many of the great American oil barons)?
Without a doubt. L.A. is the third most expensive American city behind only San
Francisco and NYC. But when you factor in the sprawl of Los Angeles versus the
limited space of the other two, it’s absurd that life should be so damn
expensive there.
4.) The sprawl. I’m a surfer and most of the time I
lived in SoCal it was within 5 minutes of (or right on) the beach. So living in
Los Angeles, in Hollywood in fact, was a foul awakening. In Hollywood I could
take a quick trail walk up Nichols Canyon and see the ocean but thanks to the
endless metropolitan machine it took me 45 minutes to an hour to get there. For
that matter, I had a bunch of friends who lived in Venice but thanks to the
great distance between the two areas, our friendships fell to the wayside.
Leaving your neighborhood was trouble enough but going all the way to Venice
or, hell, the airport? Forget about it.
5.) The air. If we left our windows open, within a
week whatever was closest to them would have grown a thin black film. I ran on my lunch break in spite of the
fact that Kyle’s exercise sciences teacher told him that running at mid-day on
a hot day in L.A. is equivalent to smoking a pack of cigs. And upon our arrival
in Jackson, black crust was crumbling out of our breathing holes. Why they
would ban smoking down there when the air is just as dangerous is beyond me.
6.) The crime. There’s the kid who ran down our
street just bashing in sideview mirrors for fun. The multiple random shootings
that have occurred within a few blocks of our old place in Hollywood. Getting
sideswiped pretty regularly. Yuppies walking into our yard to take our lemons
(which wouldn’t have been half as annoying if they’d just close the fucking
gate to keep our dogs in). Then there’s the assholes who rip you off by
dropping promises they made, offers and deals they assured you of, money you’re
owed. The ones who rip you off legally abound and thrive in L.A. The worst.
7.) The feeling of being trapped. I guess this goes back to the traffic point but
on top of the frustration with getting across town sits the just as big
frustration with the fact that it takes forever to get OUT of town. All the
freeways – 5, 405, 101, 10 - are almost always clogged. I remember one night
driving back to Orange County from L.A. at 3 in the morning and finding myself
in bumper to bumper traffic on the 101 just before the 5. That’s absurd. It’s
such that when you go get out you feel like a lucky bastard escaping.
8.) The heat. Cold is rough, and having spent more
days and nights subzero than not since we’ve been in Jackson (and already
getting a little frostbite on my nose) has made me appreciate that. But you can
layer, put on the correct gear, adapt to it. When it’s in the 90’s and above
for September, October, November you can’t disrobe, especially if you work at
a, like, real job. So you just end up drenched in sweat. All the time. Cold air
forces you to do something. That blistering, punishing desert heat makes you
want to just curl up inside a dark hole and pray for it to pass. And I can only
take so much conditioned air before I can taste the Freon floating through the
room and feel a little sick. The sun can make for some pretty scenery but human beings weren't meant to live in the desert.
9.) The people. First I have to qualify this by
saying I met many people I respect, like, some I even love. I will always hold
dear the many friends, colleagues, and near-family Becca and I got to know over
the 4 and a half years we lived there. But there’s a seam of ego and
entitlement, selfishness and coldness that runs through the city. Multitudes
flock to L.A. with a dream of becoming great. And as time passes and that
possibility fades it’s easy to become bitter, especially when you so
prominently see the lucky few who actually attain it. And there are so many
people running around there putting on airs of being entitled to something – a
hard-to-get reservation, entrée to an event or club – who don’t deserve it.
Same with the ego. I agree with the idea that after you’ve achieved something
great you deserve to have an ego and access, the vaunted pedestal of success,
if you will. While I respect more the ones who deserve to be egotistical but
instead choose humility, I can understand and appreciate the ones who take up
the conquering throne they worked for. But only about 5% of the people in L.A.
are really deserving of that ego and entitlement. The other 95% are busy
posturing and puffing themselves up because they feel they deserve it. I was
regularly sickened by the show of folks clinging dearly to the illusions of the
success they’d felt they were promised when they first got to the city. It
becomes even more sickening when those people use these illusions as an excuse
to act like dickheads to everybody around them. This leads to even more anger
because they know, on some level, their whole life and image is a lie which just
makes it even more uncomfortable. As a caveat, I really have to emphasize that
often the people who actually had made it – some of the people at the agency
where I worked, a few folks I knew who’d managed to make a living in their
chosen art form, and the others who had found what they wanted to do and did it
with passion – seemed to have no need to prove their worth but were in fact
some of the kindest, humblest people I’ve met.
So yeah, that's only 9 but I'll stop there. I really can't hate like I used to and, hell, that’s the bad, glad to get it
outta the way. The truth is I don’t want to bag on the metropole that I called home longer
than any other single city except Baltimore and in general I have nothing but
great feelings about the place. Which sets up my next top 10, the one I’m
looking forward to, the things I WILL miss about that place.
10.) You can do what you want to do. It’s tough
sometimes to hear your own head among the maddening hordes but if you can take
the time to look inside yourself and figure out exactly what you want to do,
you can make a livelihood doing it in L.A. like nowhere else. Of course the
entertainment industry is the most visible industry there and really you can’t
really find a job working in film and TV anywhere else. A little in New York.
And then there are all the small international offshoots. But nowhere else even
comes close to L.A. And then there are all the banks there if finance is your
things – it’s notable that the tallest buildings downtown all have the names of
financial institutions on their crowns. Wanna work in porn? Wanna be a
fisherman? Wanna be in the skate industry? Wanna be a beach bum? The Burton
West Coast flagship is right across the street from the Improv, with all the
pictures of such notables who came through there, from Jay Leno to Andy
Kauffman, pained on its side. We’ve got a friend who’s a gigging blues
guitarist with an all-white band who we saw play to raucous applause at an old
dirty blues bar on the edges of all-black south central. Which leads me to
point 2.
9.) You can be who you wanna be. You a freak who
prefers to walk around in nothing but fishnets and Mohawk with several hundred
piercings? Cool. You wanna be an aloof artist? There’s a spot for you. A
hipster? While I don’t necessarily agree with your lifestyle choice, I will
defend to the death your life to live it. Dress in a 4000 dollar suit or
wifebeater and baggy shorts, it’s all good. And even more, you can feel free to
dream. In very few places in this world can a person feel free not only to
dream but also to pursue those dreams, if only because you’re surrounded by
hundreds of thousands of fellow dreamers all aspiring to achieve their dreams.
There’s electricity in the air in Los Angeles, more than any place I’ve been. I
wanted to be a writer. I still do. But at the same time I discovered last year
I wanted to be a mountaineer. And I’ve summitted quite a few mountains but the
two big ones myself and my climbing group have mounted are Mt. Whitney (at
14,505 feet, the tallest in the lower 48) and Mt. Rainier (the most glaciated
and prominent peak in the lower 48). Which then takes me to number 3
8.) No other great city in America is so close to
such amazing and varied natural splendor. One of the things I hated most about L.A. was that so
many people lived and worked within the city without ever venturing outside;
folks who called the couple mile Runyon Canyon loop a “hike”. L.A. is probably
the only place on earth where you can drive an hour and a half to snowboard in
the morning, then get back to surf in the afternoon, then go out at some
mind-blowing club, cool bar, international headliner show, or 4 star
restaurant. The tallest point in the city of Los Angeles is 5,066 feet (Mt.
Lukens). The lowest point is the ocean (at least if you include Santa Monica /
Venice as L.A., which I do). The tallest point in L.A. County is Mt. Baldy, at
a little over 10,000 feet. And only a 2-hour drive is Mt. San Gorgonio at
11,500 feet; let’s not even discuss the 4 hour drive to Mt. Whitney and Mammoth
Mountain, just past it. I live in real mountains now, the Tetons, but the nearest
Apple store is a couple hours away (hope my computer doesn’t crap out).
7.) The beach. God I miss the beach. And the ocean.
Other than my year in Steamboat Springs, 9 months in Jackson and this return
I’ve never lived more than a few miles from an ocean or watershed. I had
started college as a Marine Biology major the smell of the ocean the sights of
marine life will always hold me in awe. I first moved out to Southern California because of "Baywatch". Seriously (I had a crush on Pamela Anderson forever and the Hoff is still a hero of mine). The view from the top of a mountain is
God-affirming but the view of a sunset over the ocean, especially when its
dying rays trickle over the hills of Malibu (or light up the Catalinas from
behind like sleeping giants out in the Pacific) can move me to tears. And while
I like snowboarding more, there’s a certain recklessness and bum history to
surfing, combined with the simple fact that really it’s from surfing that all
modern extreme sports came, that I miss greatly. Also, there’s something to be
said for bikini-clad coeds walking the beach that really adds to the scenery
from the lineup.
6.) L.A.’s culture and history. As I’ve gotten
older I’ve become more of a history buff and the thing that’s amazing about Los
Angeles is of all the great cities in the world, it’s the one that’s most
prominently still writing its history. A hundred years ago it was rolling
farmlands and a few missions. The film colony they called it. And someday
there’ll be a movie called “Hollywood”, you know, after L.A. crumbles thanks to
the big one, and you’ll have Charlie Chaplin and Tom Cruise fighting to make
their own studio while Brad Pitt and JFK fight over Marilyn Monroe, Angelina
will be Brad’s second wife, of course, after Marilyn overdoses outside the
Viper Room. But on top of the film and TV history we have the musical history
(like how Mama Cass introduced Crosby and Stills to Graham Nash at her Laurel Canyon house; the
Doors in general and Jim Morrison, UCLA acid-freak extraordinaire, in
particular - you can have a drink at the spot where he pissed on the bar at Barney's Beanery; Punk (Black Flag, Suicidal Tendencies all the way to
RHCP) ; hair metal; Guns N Roses; the current hipster/folk explosion or, as I
see it, the end of rock) and of course the history of great American oil barons
(see THERE WILL BE BLOOD). From the Beach Boys popularizing surf culture
(though the only one of them who surfed drowned doing it) to the Z-Boyz
inventing modern skate culture. Go see a movie at Mann’s Chinese theater or the Vista to see how grand movie houses used to be. Yes, it’s great growth is
rapidly coming to an end as it gets rehabbed and rebuilt and cleaned up and
reaches capacity. But that happened to every other truly great history in the
world (if not the history of man) long before now.
5.) Convenience. Yes, it’s impossible to drive
round L.A. But let’s say it’s 4 in the morning and I’m starving, my options are
endless for where to eat. 11 on a Sunday night and I needed another bottle of
wine? I skated down to the Rite Aid on the corner (or 3 in the morning and
needed cigs, to the 7/11 on the other side). Within a few blocks of my old
place stood In N Out Burger (almost deserves its own category), Chic-Fil-A,
Whataburger, Skooby’s (not to mention all the dirty dog vendors on weekend nights), BK, Subway. And don’t even get me into the whole
Mel’s/Musso and Frank’s/Katsuya of it all. Now if I want anything I have to
start my truck from a negative freeze, wait 10 minutes for it to warm up, and
drive somewhere, just hoping it’s still open. They don’t even sell beer at the
supermarkets up here!
4.) Geeks. Haven’t been able to have one serious
talk about literature, film, TV, or any of the other geeky topics I used to
debate on the daily. Everybody here is too busy climbing mountains or building
and chopping things or helping out special needs kids to discuss how much
better the ending to DJANGO the movie was compared to the ending written for
DJANGO the screenplay (that 6 person draw? What the fuck was that?). And my wife agrees that BACHELORETTE, that sad attempt to make a female HANGOVER,
was one of the worst movies we’ve ever watched.
3.) The variety. I know this is kinda like a combo of a bunch of these but it’s
truly something to marvel at. You can look through palm trees framing
snow-capped peaks. See Warhol and Lichtenstein at LACMA, then the ancients at
the Getty, then have dank food off a truck and top it off by drinking at the bar to which Rudolph
Valentino, Charlie Chaplin, and Douglas Fairbanks once had a horse race down
Hollywood Boulevard to determine who picked up the tab (Musso's). Here’s just a few
specific places I’m gonna miss:
- Beverly
Hills around Christmas – something so opulent and amazing about that place at
that time
- Malibu Seafood. The calamari steak sandwich is one of the best things I’ve ever
eaten. The best seafood on the coast, hand's down (though Geoffrey's is pretty dank too).
- Pantages
and the Frolic Room. You can’t see a play at the Pantages without having a
drink at the classically seedy historic Frolic Room. There’s more history stuck
to the floor of that place than most towns.
- St. Nick’s. It’s also just so dirty and gross you gotta love it. Irish Times comes
to mind too, though I didn’t make it there as much. Real dive bars, not fake
ones like you find on Melrose.
- The Roosevelt Pool Bar. Okay, I have a bad memory associated with this place,
namely a night when I came out of a blackout to be savagely beaten by 7 kids
who were loosely affiliated with THE HILLS (they were there for the series
wrap). But at the same time I got a bunch of great memories there, including
that night’s drunken swim before the beatdown.
- Hemingway’s.
I mean it used to be cool, when it first opened. Then the girl at the front
door stopped dressing like Martha Gellhorn and started dressing like a Hell’s
Angels mama and the DJ’s became increasingly low-end but still, anyplace bedecked
with books and vintage typewriters deserves some notice.
- The
Venice canals. Many a day was it that I parked here and walked over the bridges
to get in a quick surf. These beautiful houses with their faux-italian rivulets
almost inspired me while filling me with a beach bungalow calm.
- Nichols
Canyon. The next ridge over from Runyon with like 10% of the crowd. Alex Trebek
donated it to the city and it’s accordingly called the Trebek Wilderness. Most
of the time we were the only people there and could let our dogs off the leash.
Our beloved pup Annie is buried there, with an ocean view off the promontory.
- Franklin
Canyon. With a couple redwoods, the turtle pond (look for the one sitting in
the filter hose in the middle as if it’s taking a wiz), and long desert trails,
this spot doesn’t even feel like it’s in the city. I used to run here on my
lunch breaks with Steve John, decompressing from the stale office environment.
- The Beverly Hills Public Library. High school kids and crazy hobos. And books. I’ve
written and/or revised no less than 4 books and 2 screenplays here, not to
mention plenty of blog posts and short stories. And thanks to their used book
store, I have a massive book collection (was averaging 1 to 2 new books a week
for a good bit there), much to my wife’s chagrin.
- The grassy knoll at Elysian PArk
- La Descarga, the main Library downtown, Mastro’s, Burgundy Room, the Dresden,
Hyperion Lounge, El Siete Mares, Dusty’s, Millie’s, the Vista, the El Capitan,
the ArcLight, Shatto 39 Lanes, Barney’s, the Santa Monica oceanfront trail,
Rustic Canyon, Mishe Mokwa, the Hollywood Bowl, La Caña, the Greek, the Wiltern, Book Soup (and Mystery Pier behind it with its signed first editions of everything from FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS to FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS), Coffee Bean, and I could go on
and on but, hell, that’s a good start at least.
2.) Celebrity sightings.
Not to say I’m some tourist gaper walking around trying to see famous people
because they’re famous. It was more of a reminder to me that, yes, these are
real people and, even more, the Hollywood dream is attainable. Coming from
Baltimore (or, I would imagine, most cities), people tend to think of dreams as
silly things children have. Nobody becomes a Hollywood actor. Nobody makes a
living as a writer. Now grow up and get a 9 to 6 you can work 50 weeks out of
the year with 2 weeks to find a beach and sleep. But by seeing, shaking hands
with and talking to real living flesh and blood humans who’ve made it, you
realize that it is possible. Sure, it’s hard. But it is possible to live your
dream.
1.)
The people. To all our friends, God we miss you. Everyday Becca and I talk about how much we’d love to be
able to just hang out, do dinner, watch a screener together, grab a drink, get
twisted, all sorts of fun stuff. While we love it in Jackson, we’d built a
wonderful life surrounded by friends who were more like family, especially
since our families were so far away. While I said earlier I met a lot of pricks
in Los Angeles, they only made the good ones that much more wonderful. Up here
in Jackson everybody’s really nice. Almost makes it a little boring (if not a
bit disconcerting), such all-enveloping kindness. And there are also some truly
genuine unique characters in Los Angeles you wouldn’t find anywhere else. Like
Richie the Barber, the tattooed mustachioed 3-generation barber who, for 35 bucks gives you a straight razor shave
and all-you-can-drink whisky. Last time I went there I ended up hanging around
after my cut drinking and shooting the shit with the next guy, a bartender who
ended up hooking us up when we came to his bar. Or Jordan’s mom, who bought my
piano, and was just a super cool-seeming woman. Or the homeless black man with
the nice dreads who hung out at the BHPL all day reading in a deep, dulcet
baritone.
But of course in the end it really comes back to our
friends. All of us laughing, sometimes crying, always struggling and
occasionally reveling together. L.A. is possibly the hardest place I’ve ever
lived, Axl wasn’t kidding when he said “Welcome to the Jungle”. Jackson is hard
in a “you could freeze to death if you’re not smart and strong” way but L.A. is
a daily fight, against conmen and swindlers, against competitive colleagues and
accessible vice, against exhaustion and noise, against the dirt in the air and
the hard hot concrete under your feet. And as such your brothers and sisters in
the fight become that much more important to you. We’re all fighting this foul
demon together in hopes of maybe, if we’re lucky, someday getting that little
taste of the good life, our day in the sun which is always up there waiting for
you. Maybe a place in Laurel Canyon or the Venice Canals.
We truly miss you all. And we truly miss Los Angeles. And
you and it will always have a special place in Becca’s and my hearts.
- Ryan
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