Gateway Center is the headquarters of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority, which conveniently goes by "Metro" most of the time. The building has a lovely lobby with a mural in its atrium depicting the vast ethnic diversity of Los Angeles. I bought Metro passes from a woman named Luz Diosdado ("God-given light" in Spanish), and we made our way to the subway. I also got a metro map, which is one of the most enormous things I've ever seen. You could literally use the map for a tablecloth. It measures 4 feet by 3 feet and is covered on both sides with a maze of colored lines that indicate nearly 800 different bus and rail routes that are operated by MTA and by forty-five suburban municipalities. In addition to its rail lines, MTA operates the world's most extensive bus system, and this map definitely proves it.
This trip would show the error in many myths I had heard about Los Angeles. I had heard, for example, that Angelinos did not take public transportation. Everybody drove here; the new subway was a pathetic white elephant that cost way too much and didn't go much of anywhere. The subway may have cost too much, but it's definitely not a white elephant that nobody uses. There are actually three rail lines in L.A, which locals seem to collectively refer to as "the rail" (as in "You take the rail to Wilshire & Normandie and then catch the bus from there"). The red line is the true subway. It runs underground for seventeen miles from downtown, through Hollywood, and on to the San Fernando Valley. That's the line you've probably heard about that cost $5 billion-the most expensive transit line ever built. A large chunk of that money was spent on various legal proceedings. What the subways in places like New York and Boston have going for them is that they were built before people felt they had to litigate every little thing. It's really amazing that anything gets accomplished in today's legal environment.
The L.A. blue line starts underground in downtown Los Angeles and then runs south at ground level for 22 miles to the port of Long Beach. Finally there's the green line, which runs down the middle of the 10-year-old Century Freeway. It starts at a park-and-ride in Norwalk (at a station named "I-605/I-105") and runs west for about 15 miles to industrial areas in El Segundo, near the LAX airport. All three lines are busy. The trains are absolutely packed at rush hour and quite full even at off hours. Most of the riders are minorities, which is no surprise given that most Angelinos are minorities.
That red line subway was not originally supposed to go to Hollywood. The original plan was to follow Wilshire Boulevard (L.A.'s answer to North Michigan Avenue) west to Fairfax, a posh avenue of galleries and restaurants that is also home to CBS's famous Television City. It was supposed to nip the edge of Beverly Hills before proceeding through the independent city of West Hollywood and on to the San Fernando Valley. They built the subway about two miles west on Wilshire. Unfortunately then they ran into natural gas pockets that were causing explosions that endangered workers in the tunnels. They figured out that the ground was filled with natural gas all along Wilshire, so they had to come up with a different plan. Instead they went up Vermont Avenue, which was apparently quite seedy when they started building the subway, but is steadily gentrifying. They then turned to go right under Hollywood Boulevard through the heart of old Tinseltown. The subway then tunnels under the Santa Monica Mountains and emerges at the Universal Studios theme park, before continuing well into the San Fernando Valley. From a tourist perspective, it's really a better route. It's also better for poor people who need to get to work, since it goes closer to both their homes and their jobs. The rich complained bitterly about the new route, though. Basically they didn't want to pay taxes to subsidize a line for through poor neighborhoods. That was the source of much of the litigation. Fortunately for us the red line was diverted. It really could not have been more convenient, since we boarded right at Union Station and were deposited in Hollywood, just a block from our hotel.
The red line has three parts. The original part (the "subway to nowhere" you may have heard about) runs for just a few miles from Union Station to MacArthur Park, just west of downtown. That part of the line has been open for 10 years. The stations are small, simple, and utilitarian. Lighting is poor, and seating is limited. They're basically newer versions of the subway stations you'd find in eastern cities. The next part of the subway (the part that runs up Vermont Street, together with the little spur on Wilshire and the first couple stations on Hollywood Boulevard) is newer. The stations are larger and better lit, but still hardly luxurious. Many of these stations feature elegant building materials-another thing that probably jacked up the cost of construction. The final part includes the western stations on Hollywood Boulevard, together with those in the San Fernando Valley. These are brand new stations, having just opened in Summer, 2000. They are bright and airy, even though they lie deep underground, and they all include strange works of modern art. Both the stations and the trains are surprisingly clean. With the exception of some carving on benches (notably at the Hollywood & Vine station), there is virtually no graffiti and almost no litter.
Los Angeles is the largest city on earth to use "honor system" ticketing for public transit. There are no turnstiles in L.A. rail stations. Instead you just go down the escalators and head straight to the platform. You must have a ticket, though. The city police and the county sheriff's department both patrol the trains and stations, and on at least three occasions I saw them issuing $250 citations for fare evasion. That's a lot to pay to avoid paying $1.35 (the standard fare, regardless of distance). For us, the fare wasn't even that much. Our weekly passes cost $11, and with the amount of rides we took on trains and buses, the cost per ride ended up being almost nothing.
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One thing that is sort of strange about the subway in L.A. is that there is no advertising on the trains or in the stations. The station walls are empty, and the area above the seats where they normally place ads on trains doesn't have brackets to hold any ads. There are two poster holders beside each door (above the handicapped seats). These contain system maps or other information from MTA. The most amusing featured a bilingual character called "Safety Guy " in English and "Don Seguro" (basically "Sir Safety") in Spanish. He basically urged kids to use their common sense-don't cross outdoor tracks when a train is coming, for instance. More than half of the MTA system runs at grade, and they apparently have had 18 deaths from people crossing in front of moving trains. You'd expect people to have common sense, but I guess not everybody does.
At Hollywood and Highland made our way up a series of three escalators from the deep subway tunnel and then went out to the street. Right next to the station was a massive construction project. They're building the new Kodak Theatre, which will be the new home of the Oscar ceremonies starting next year. Right now it doesn't look anywhere close to done; it's basically just a mess of scaffolding. They've blocked off an entire side street, though, and they diverted the sidewalk out into the street for about half a block.
We walked west past the construction to the famous Chinese Theatre ... the place where they did all the gala premieres back before the age of cineplexes. While it is still an active movie house (they were showing the summer hit Tomb Raider while we were there), the Chinese Theatre is basically the mother of all tourist attractions. The place was crawling with Asian and European tourists, and we had a bit of a problem getting past them with our luggage. We managed, though, and then we crossed the street to our ultimate destination: the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.
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The Hollywood Roosevelt (named after President Theodore Roosevelt) was originally erected in 1927 by a consortium of actors and movie producers. You've probably heard of Greta Garbo, Charlie Chaplin, Gloria Swanson, Douglas Fairbanks, Will Rogers, Mary Pickford, and Louis B. Mayer; they were all among the founders. Their idea was to build a luxury hotel that could house movie makers and other dignitaries who were visiting Hollywood from the East Coast. In addition, many movie stars (from Clark Gable in the '30s to Marilyn Monroe in the '50s) took up residence here while they were in Hollywood, and it became one of the most prestigious locations in the city. Many important events have been held at the Roosevelt, most notably the first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929. For years the hotel's main ballroom also served as a television studio for shows such as "This Is Your Life", and the ... "Cinegrill" cabaret launched the careers of many Hollywood musicians.
Central Hollywood started declining in the '60s, and the Roosevelt went downhill rapidly. A new owner turned the place into a budget establishment, trashed the inside, and painted every surface in the place "seafoam green". In the '80s it was slated for demolition.
Then came another group of investors-again mostly movie stars-who used tax incentives to start the first in a series of major renovation projects along Hollywood Boulevard. They re-built everything according to the original blueprints and restored it to its former luster. In 1990 the Roosevelt re-opened as a first-class tourist hotel.
Since its re-opening, the Roosevelt has served as the anchor for what the local promoters call "the Hollywood Renaissance", where they've managed to transform a formerly very sleazy red light district into a reasonably wholesome tourist trap. The "renaissance" has also brought new life to six old theatres that were on the verge of decay, with nine others under restoration at this time. An enormous new mall opened just west of the Roosevelt, and another will be part of the Kodak Theatre construction project. There are new restaurants, shops, and museums springing up all through central Hollywood. They've scrubbed away virtually all the graffiti, and there are special security patrols throughout the area.
The "renaissance" is not thoroughly completed. The place is nowhere near a sanitized as New York's Times Square, for instance. It's still rough around the edges, and they haven't managed to banish all the strip clubs and adult book stores yet. You'll still see homeless people lingering on the corners, and I'm told (though I can't confirm) that on weekend nights a few prostitutes of both sexes can still be found cruising. ... You've got to give them points for effort, though, as well as a lot of points for what they've already accomplished.
So what's the Roosevelt like? It reminded me most of the Gran Hotel where I stayed on the Zocalo in Mexico City years ago. The lobby is about as nice as that of any hotel you'll see anywhere. Its is surrounded by ornate Spanish arches and grand staircases, and there are potted palm trees and a fountain in the middle. A beautiful crystal chandelier hangs from the intricately painted ceiling. There are soft velour couches, leather chairs, and marble tables. There's a grand piano at one end where they play show tunes in the evening. The mezzanine and the meeting rooms are equally elegant. The main ballroom (the Blossom Room) has a gorgeous hardwood floor, three grand chandeliers, and brass fixtures everywhere. The other public areas feature Oriental rugs, and lovely original paintings and tapestries. The elevators are sculpted brass on the outside and elegant hardwood on the inside. The whole place just exudes a feeling of elegance.
I had read ahead of time implied that the rooms did not live up to the lobby, and that's certainly true. It would be hard for any hotel room to live up to that lobby, let alone one that is priced in the "moderate" category. ... It was quite acceptable, though. We had what they called a cabana room. "Cabana" to me had always meant a little grass hut, but of course this wasn't. They have a whole separate building surrounding their Olympic-sized pool. Most of the rooms in that building have patios or balconies that open onto right out onto the pool. Ours ... didn't--which actually turned out to be a good thing in the end. Instead we had a microscopic patio ... screened off and surrounded by palm trees. The room was basically a standard-issue hotel room, with a bit nicer furniture than most: two beds, a dresser, a table and chairs, a nightstand, a television, and excellent lighting (all with compact fluorescent bulbs). There was also a minibar--though we didn't have the key to open it--and a full closet. The bathroom had marble cabinets and very old fixtures. In hotels "old" is actually a good thing where plumbing is concerned; unlike most hotels I've been in recently, we had an old-fashioned high-pressure shower in the tub and a toilet that actually flushed on the first try. The bathroom was supplied with high-end toiletries, but the towels were old and starting to fray. We had an ironing board and iron, and we were supposed to have a coffee maker, too, but for some reason that was nowhere to be found.
After reading a description of the hotel's history, I was a bit alarmed that our room was decorated in what could be called "seafoam green" (a pastel lime shade), with one wall painted in alternating lemon and lime colored stripes. Above the door to the patio was a valence made entirely of bamboo, and the requisite art prints (a progressive series of palm trees in varying lighting) were also framed in bamboo. One wall of our room was the brick outer wall of the building; the others standard plaster walls. The ceiling was wood that was not plastered over, but well maintained. Facing neither the pool nor the street gave us a very quiet room, which was pleasant and relaxing--especially when a rather rowdy convention arrived later in the week.
When we first got to the Roosevelt, we would have to wait to actually see our room, though. It was not yet noon, and they didn't have any rooms ready. We did manage to check in, though, and we left our luggage and proceeded to go out exploring. .....
We took the subway all the way back to Union Station, and our first sightseeing was at the station itself. You've almost certainly seen Union Station; any number of TV shows and movies have done location shots there. It has an adobe exterior and an exquisite art deco lobby. Los Angeles built the last of the grand old railway terminals back in the '30s. Being that new, it really never really went downhill the way some other cities' stations did. They've had on-going restoration projects, but they never had to totally gut and re-build the place. ... It's still a very active station, too. Amtrak sends over 20 trains a day through here, not to mention connecting bus service all over California. There are also dozens of Metrolink commuter trains each day running from here to places like Ventura, Anaheim, San Bernardino, Lancaster, and San Juan Capistrano. With the new subway station and a major local bus terminal adjacent, Union Station is a very busy place--as well as a very beautiful one.
Directly across the street from Union Station is the oldest place in Los Angeles, a state historic site that preserves much of what's left of the original "El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora, la Reina de Los Angeles". (Technically that Spanish phrase is still the official name of the city; it means "the town of Our Lady, Queen of the Angels".) The main part of "El Pueblo" State Historic Site is Olvera Street, a pedestrian mall set among adobe buildings that features a tourist-trap replica of a Mexican marketplace. I was less than thrilled by the glorified by all the glorified street vendors, but it did make for an interesting walk.
We had lunch on Olvera Street at a restaurant called El Paseo, which served authentic south-of-the-border cuisine to a mostly Mexican clientele. I had a delicious bowl of "sopa de tortilla" (chicken broth and lemon juice with tortilla chips and assorted vegetables thrown in), followed by an enormous combination platter of assorted Mexican delicacies. Margaret had a dish whose name literally translates to "cut meat" and amounted to a mountain of delicious shavings of roast pork. The only thing bad about the meal was my iced tea, which tasted more like cleaning fluid than tea. I managed to squeeze in enough lemon juice to make it palatable, though, and overall the meal was excellent.
There are several things to see at El Pueblo--none of them really spectacular, but reasonably interesting sites. The Sepulveda House, for instance, was the home of a social matron of the city in the Victorian area. The oldest house in the city is Avila Adobe, which is restored to its 1840s appearance. In another adobe adjacent to this they have an exhibit that fit right in with what I was reading on the train, a small museum tracing the history of water in Los Angeles. Probably most interesting is the basement, where you can see one of the original "zanjas", the pumps and canals that provided water before the days of the aqueduct.
To the south of Olvera Street is a lovely little plaza centered on a fountain and lined with palm trees. One side of the plaza includes a Methodist Church and several commercial buildings. Across from them is the original Spanish mission in Los Angeles, which has signs with two names--"Queen of Angels Church" and "Iglesia de Nuestra Señora, la Reina de los Angeles". (By the way, the new cathedral in L.A. is also named "Queen of Angels"). This is the oldest church in the city, and it has been an active parish since the 1700s. They had adoration in the sanctuary, so I didn't go inside, but we did explore the courtyard and the adjacent church offices. There was also an elementary school next door. The church serves an almost exclusively Hispanic, mostly inner-city parish. It's obviously a very busy church that just happens to also be historic.
Another side of the plaza includes Los Angeles Firehouse #1, which as the name implies was the first fire station in the city (and the first in California). While there wasn't a lot to see in their little firefighting museum, this was an interesting sight for me. That's because I spent many hours of my childhood watching "Emergency", the '70s drama that followed the L.A. firemen and paramedics. (Every kid watched that show when I was growing up; we all wanted to be like the doctors and firemen we saw on TV. ...) Station 51 was a set at Universal Studios, and the exteriors were shot at a station in suburban Carson that would be all but impossible to get to by public transit. At least at Firehouse #1, though, I could get a bit of an introduction into the world of the L.A. firefighters. (I could get technical and say that they weren't really the same L.A. firefighters that were on the show; Emergency featured the county fire department, whose department museum is in the industrial city of Santa Fe Springs that we passed through this morning on the train--this was close enough, though.)
Actually, over the course of this trip we'd see more than our share of the L.A. Fire Department. It seemed that everywhere we went we saw pumpers, ladder trucks, and rescue squads (those same little red trucks they had on "Emergency"). I don't know when I've seen so many firetrucks! .....
We bought churros from a street vendor and then made our way back to the subway. We returned to the hotel and found our room. I showered quickly (something that is essential after spending two nights on a train), and then set out to explore the neighborhood on my own while Margaret rested.
The Roosevelt sits right on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. As the song says, "you can see all the stars as you walk down Hollywood Boulevard", and the first few times I went out, I--like every tourist--mostly looked down as I walked so I could see whose names were on those stars. Later, though, I found that as I got acclimated, it became just a big pink and black sidewalk. Unless you make it your destination, you couldn't possible see every star on the Walk of Fame ... There are literally thousands ... and many celebrities have more than one (you can get them for movies, television, stage performance, recorded music, and radio--with appropriate bronze logos inlaid to tell which is which). ... Honestly the majority of the names I saw were those of people I had never heard of. "Celebrity" can be a very fleeting thing.
The Roosevelt is at the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Orange Drive. I started out today by walking down Orange Drive past the hotel's palm-lined valet parking lot. Kitty-corner across the street from the parking lot is the place that is probably the alma mater of more famous people than anywhere else: Hollywood High School. Name a star who became famous before 1975, and there's a very good chance they went to school here. The alumni range from Rudolph Valentino (in whose honor the sports teams are named the Shieks) and Judy Garland to Carol Burnett and John Ritter. Just like we do at Garrigan, they have a wall of fame saluting some of their successful graduates; the big difference is that people who aren't local have actually heard of the Hollywood High graduates.
Like many big-city schools, Hollywood High is a campus of many buildings. The oldest was built in 1910 (when Hollywood was an independent village) and now serves as an adult education center. The main building is an enormous streamlined concrete edifice from the '40s. The campus takes up two full square blocks, plus another block for the athletic field. Everything is whitewashed, and the grounds are among the cleanest of any school I've seen anywhere.
Hollywood High is still a major part of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Today most of the students here do not speak English natively. About half of the students are Hispanic, and about a third speak any of 82 other languages--primarily south Asian or east European tongues. It looked like "We Are the World" when I walked by the athletic field during soccer practice.
... And speaking of "We Are the World"--just a couple blocks away at Sunset and LaBrea is the building that used to be A&M Records, where the charity song "We Are the World" and hundreds of other hit records were recorded. Before it was A&M it was Charlie Chaplin's original studio in Hollywood, and now a big frog out front declares it to be the home of Jim Henson Productions. I don't think there's particularly anything to see there, but it certainly is a historic building.
Aside from those two historic sights, most of the area south of the Roosevelt is fairly nondescript. There's a lot of small apartment buildings--two or three floor buildings with about six apartments in each. Everything in Hollywood is apartments. I read that over 90% of the housing is in multi-household units, and 75% is rental property. In some ways it seems almost like a European city that way.
What doesn't seem European is the strip business. Three blocks south of the Roosevelt is the city's most famous street, Sunset Boulevard. The well-known "Sunset Strip" is actually a few miles west of here. We would see that later. Even if it's not "the" strip, though, in Hollywood Sunset certainly is "a" strip. It's chock-a-block with chain hotels, chain restaurants, convenience stores, and minimalls. It reminded me of Coralville in the '70s, except for one thing-it's much more densely built-up. Even more so than in the suburbs, there's no space between anything along Sunset. I walked past a Days Inn and a Travelodge, which were separated by a fence and maybe 2 feet of open space and both of which had underground parking. I think you'd have to be an Indy driver to maneuver the tight turns at the drive-thru for the neighborhood Burger King. ... The minimalls around Sunset and LaBrea are two and three floors tall. ... Many of them have parking ramps instead of lots. I'd love to know just what real estate costs here; it must be a fortune, or nobody would build things so densely.
Now it's time to debunk a few more L.A. myths. Myth #1: Nobody every walks in L.A.; traffic's a mess, because people always drive everywhere--right? WRONG!!!!!! There is a lot of traffic in Los Angeles, though not proportionally more than you'd find in any city. I wouldn't want to drive here, but I don't really like driving in Minneapolis, either. We never got a good up-close view of the L.A. freeways, but the major streets (which tend to be quite wide) handle traffic better than those in many cities. And--believe it or not--L.A. really does have pedestrians. Trust me, I've been to cities where nobody walks (Kansas City, Dallas, and Gainesville all instantly come to mind) or where the only people who are on foot are people you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley (Denver and Cleveland). L.A. may not have the sidewalk crowds you'd see in New York, but there's never a shortage of pedestrians. A lot of people in this neighborhood seemed to combine walking and driving. They'd drive to the ramp at one of the minimalls and then walk to stores all over the neighborhood.
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Now for Myth #2: Everybody in L.A. is blonde, tan, trim, and beautiful--right? WRONG!!!!! I don't know where "Baywatch" got their talent, but it certainly wasn't a cross-section of Los Angeles. Local people tend to divide people into four "races": Latino, Anglo (which means white, but not Latino), Black, and "other" (which is usually Asian of some sort, and the nationality is important-Korean is different from Thai, which is different from Japanese). Roughly half of Los Angeles County (and the majority of the city proper) is Latino. No Latino anywhere is naturally blonde, and while you might describe a Mexican person's skin as "tan", it's not quite the "beach baby" image that would come to most people's minds. Add in the Blacks and Asians, and already better than three-fourths of the city has what the Spanish would call a "moreno" (dark) complexion. Most of the Anglos are also dark-haired. A large part of them are recent immigrants from eastern Europe, and even the Europeans who have been here for generations tend not to have fair complexions. As for trim and beautiful ... well, they look pretty much like people-the same sorts of people you'd see in any big city--fat, thin, cute, homely, whatever.
It's also interesting that the Angelinos do not seem so preoccupied with peroxide as, for example, the boys at Garrigan. No one has that Mountain Dew-colored hair that we see so often here. Those people of both sexes who do color their hair seem to go more for highlights than for the full dye job.
... which brings us to Myth #3: L.A. is full of bizarre pink-haired people who cover their bodies with tattoos and piercings-right? This might come closer to being true for San Francisco--which we'll get to later--but as L.A. goes, WRONG!!!!! Of course there are people who go in for "body art", but then so do many of the students I teach here in Algona. There were tattoo and piercing salons in Hollywood, but not in excessive numbers. If anything I'd say I saw less people with piercings and tattoos than in places like Chicago--and far less bizarre hair. It maybe that the fashions have run their course, but I'd also bet part of it has to do with the fact that tattoos and piercings cost quite a bit of money. L.A. is not a wealthy city, and I think a lot of the people (particularly the recent immigrants) have better things to do with their money.
And finally Myth #4: L.A. is a dangerous place where gangs rule the streets and crime is out of control--right? In case you can't guess the pattern--WRONG!!!!! L.A. is a big city, and lots of crimes happen in big cities. As I teach the students in my Statistics classes, though, it's the crime rate that matters, not the number of crimes. All cities in the West (and South) have higher crime rates than eastern cities do, but L.A. is actually toward the bottom of western cities in crime rate--less than Phoenix, Houston, and Denver, for instance--and way below anything in the South. Yes, there are gang-infested neighborhoods, and unlike in some cities these are not that far from some of the major tourist attractions. As in all cities, though, gang crime is almost universally directed at members of other gangs. Unless you're involved with things you shouldn't be (like drugs or prostitution), it's unlikely you'll be bothered by the gangs. That said, there were places in L.A. that I didn't go because I knew they were in bad neighborhoods. But there are places in Chicago where I've made that same decision--and there are places in Des Moines that I have gone to only because I had to.
There were no murders in L.A. during the four days we were there. ... The most heavily reported crime involved a drive-away at a suburban gas station where the thief held other customers at gunpoint. A police chase then ensued that ended in a stand-off that closed the I-10 freeway for 8 hours and backed up traffic for over 13 miles. The crime itself was irrelevant to most of the reports; what everyone cared about was the traffic snarl. The second biggest crime was also traffic-related. A car ran a light and rammed into an MTA bus in Pasadena, smashing it and seriously injuring 39 passengers--many of them children on their way to school.
... And that makes yet another place to force a transition. We were getting toward the end of June, but school was still on in Los Angeles. In fact Hollywood High School would be having graduation this Thursday, June 21. I'm not sure if they have lengthened their school year, if they have lots of vacations, or if they just start incredibly late, but school was still going on everywhere. Here in Hollywood we saw lots of buses of elementary kids taking field trips to the tourist attractions. I'm not quite sure what the educational value of that is, but it would fill the time when the year drags on so late.
Well, I've detoured for nearly a page here, so it's time to get back to my walk around the neighborhood. At Sunset and Orange Drive there's a fast food place called In 'n' Out that claims to have opened "America's First Drive-Thru" on this very spot over 50 years ago. Every travel book highly recommends the In 'n' Out chain, so I went in and out of their dining room. What can I say--it's a fast food place. Their smallest burger was overpriced and, like every burger in California, more salad than meat. ... The burger was also slathered with mayonnaise, a condiment I've never cared for in the least. I gnawed a bit, but threw out about as much as I ate. I also couldn't finish my fries. I At least three different guides describe them as "the best fries anywhere". Being of the generation I am, I have come to rather like the extruded mashed potato product that places like McDonalds call fries. The problem with the fries at In 'n' Out was that they were "real"--actual hunks of raw potato, thrown straight in the deep fryer. They were greasy and hard, and I found them truly disgusting. The one thing I liked in what turned out be more of a snack than a meal was the fresh-squeezed lemonade. That's not really a reason to recommend the place, though, since virtually every restaurant in L.A. offers fresh-squeezed lemonade--many of them at lower prices than In 'n' Out.
I stopped at a 7/11 in one of the area minimalls, where I got some cash from an ATM ... and picked up several single-serving bottles of juice and a bag of pretzels. The hotel had no vending machines, and I figures 7/11's prices couldn't be any more than the hotel gift shop. 7/11 had no gas, but across the street there was a Chevron station where unleaded went for $1.969 a gallon. That was toward the high end of what we saw around the city ($1.899 was more common), but it was by no means the highest. While taking the train through Watts a couple days later we saw gas prices as high as $2.299--and that's for the cheapest grade. Chevron, by the way, is the brand of gas here. I'd bet two-thirds of the stations are Chevrons. You see a few Union 76 stations and an occasional Mobil, but not much of anything else.
I turned north off Sunset and walked north on LaBrea Avenue. At the corner of Sunset and LaBrea there's a scruffy little park in the median of Hollywood Boulevard that marks the official start of the Walk of Fame. At the center of it is an incredibly ugly aluminum statue of four nude women holding up a globe. I'm not sure who commissioned it, but it's definitely not at the top of my list of public art.
Back at the hotel I walked through the pool area on the way back to our room. This is really a charming area ... lined with palm trees, ferns, and flowers; with ... chaise lounges and umbrella tables scattered all around. They even have a poolside bar where you can swim right up and purchase $8 cocktails. .....
The pool is another of the famous parts of the hotel. The bottom of the pool was originally painted by British pop artist David Hockney (basically a big blue squiggle on a "seafoam green" background), and Marilyn Monroe had her first job in "the business" posing for an ad for suntan lotion on the diving board at the Roosevelt. Unfortunately that diving board no longer exists. Apparently regulations forbid having a diving board in a pool of this depth. I didn't notice the Hockney painting either, and when I asked about it at the desk they told me that it was "under restoration". I can't imagine how you could restore a painting in a pool without totally re-painting it, but then I never knew you could paint a work of art in a swimming pool either.
There was a hint of the Marilyn Monroe days today at the Roosevelt, though. In the southeast corner of the pool they had a bunch of lighting umbrellas set up, together with a video camera on a tripod. Some blonde bimbos (there's no other term for them) were posing in beach towels and bikinis for the camera. I have no idea what the point of this was, but it was fascinating to wander past it.
Margaret was rested up by this time, so we set out for the evening. We took the subway to the famous intersection of Hollywood and Vine. I really have no idea why this is such a famous intersection; honestly I think It's mostly famous just for being famous. There's not a great deal here. The only thing of any real interest right at the intersection is the old Pantages Theatre, where we would go later in the week. Otherwise there's a bar on one corner, a gift shop on another, and the subway entrance in the middle of a small plaza on the remaining corner. Nearby there's lots of parking, as well as a number of crumbling buildings that look like they ought to be bulldozed for parking. I got the feeling that this was what Hollywood was before the "renaissance", and if that's true, then I'm all for rebirth. .....
Probably the most interesting thing at Hollywood and Vine is the Walk of Fame. The Walk is centered at the famous intersection, and at all four corners they have special stars honoring the astronauts of Apollo 11.
Also about a block north of Hollywood and Vine is the Capitol Records building, the world's first circular office tower that supposedly looks like a stack of records with a needle on top (maybe in an abstract way), and another of the Hollywood "hit factories". It seems like everyone has recorded here--even people you don't think of as having anything to do with California. You associate the Beatles with England, for instance, but many of their hits--particularly their later albums--were recorded right here at Capitol in L.A. While the movie industry has mostly left Hollywood proper, it is still indisputably the music capital of the world. ...Every record company has a major office in L.A. Most of them are headquartered here, and most of those headquarters are right in central Hollywood. Capitol remains the biggest recording studio on earth, but a lot of today's bands are also recording in small studios on the side streets around town.
From the intersection you can also see the famous "HOLLYWOOD" sign. Travel books say you see it "from everywhere in L.A.", but this was about the only place we had any view of it at all. The sign is a registered trademark of the local chamber of commerce, and it's really kind of fascinating that what amounts to an enormous billboard should be such a tourist attraction. Perhaps the most amusing thing about the sign was its restoration. Most people know that when Hollywood was going downhill, the sign also went into decay. They considered tearing it down, but people thought of it as a landmark. Unfortunately no one could seem to come up with the money to fix it. Finally in 1978 Hugh Hefner held a big party at the Playboy Mansion to benefit the sign. People could "adopt a letter" for $28,000 each, and celebrities as diverse as Gene Autry and Alice Cooper coughed up money for the restoration. Today the sign has been declared a historic landmark, and the city is responsible for its upkeep.
Mentioning "Hef's" party brings to mind another interesting tidbit. It's not exactly a secret that pornography is a big industry in Los Angeles; in fact more adult films are produced here each year than mainstream films. As long as it doesn't involve children, pornography is perfectly legal, and the chamber of commerce even offers a guide to points of interest for aficionados of the X-rated cinema. While I didn't go check it out, I understand that down on Santa Monica Boulevard there's actually a "Porno Walk of Fame", with the handprints (but apparently that's it--hands only, no other body parts) of the artists of that craft. .....
Our destination this evening had nothing to do with pornography, but it was an equally bizarre attraction: the Museum of Death. This strange little museum is located about a block west of Hollywood and Vine in a rundown building with warped floors. It's exactly what the name implies, a surprisingly comprehensive look at death and dying around the world. They cater to two audiences: people who want to look at death from an sociological or anthropological point of view and people who want to be grossed out by gory stuff. There's plenty of both, and it's really a fascinating place. To add to its macabre appeal, the museum is open primarily in the evening--till midnight most nights and until 2am on weekends.
The galleries begin with an entire room full of funeral home fans. This is part of a rotating exhibit of death-related advertising. Next is a comprehensive display of morticians' instruments from throughout history. That reminded me a lot of the Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago, and the two occupations are really doing very similar things--if you think about it. Next up is a big display of coffins.
They have a whole series of videos of deaths around the world (which I found the dullest part of the museum, but the "gross out" people would probably like), and there are two rooms full of actual newspapers showing headline stories of high-profile murders and executions (the McVeigh one had been recently added). The newspaper display ends with the obituary section from today's Los Angeles Times.
An entire hallway is devoted to drunk driving, and another area is a tribute to the Holocaust. There are also several rooms dealing with serial killers. What I found most interesting, though, was the Heaven's Gate re-creation. You may remember that cult that thought the world was going to end when a comet came a few years back and publicized their mass suicide on the internet. The city of San Diego had an auction of the Heaven's Gate property, and the Museum of Death bought original bunk beds, jump suits, and Nike sneakers that had been used by the cult in the suicide, together with assorted other paraphernalia. They have an eerie re-creation of the room where some of the Heaven's Gate people died.
Like any good museum, the Museum of Death has a gift shop at the exit. Margaret bought a book on customs of death in Mexico, while I picked up The A - Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers, a fascinating book that occupied hours on the train. I also got several postcards, most notably a reproduction of John Wayne Gacy's famous self-portrait of the serial killer as a clown. This was certainly one of those "only in L.A." things (although the museum was originally founded in San Diego), but I don't think my mind was too warped by spending an hour or so in there.
We took "the rail" back to Hollywood and Highland and then walked down to Sunset and LaBrea. We had dinner at the neighborhood outlet of a chain called "El Pollo Loco" (the crazy chicken), which serves a combination of Mexican food and baked chicken dinners. We had their "loco bowl" value meals, which feature a large bowl of black beans, rice, spicy chicken, and pico de gallo, together with tortillas to scoop it all into. .....
The clerk at the registered hesitated a minute when she rang up the order, and we noticed when she got the receipt that she had given Margaret a senior discount. While Margaret is not a young woman anymore, she would not qualify as a "senior" by even the broadest definition of that term. Nevertheless, her long straight hair is now white rather than chestnut. I'm sure the girl at the counter has had far too many seniors argue with her about saving a few pennies (I always seem to be behind oldsters with an attitude when I visit fast food places), so she wasn't going to take the chance with Margaret.
Back at the hotel I settled in to do what I always do at hotels: read the local newspapers. Los Angeles has one excellent newspaper. That newspaper is not the Los Angeles Times (which is not a bad paper, but nothing really great either), but rather the Spanish-language La Opinión. My Spanish is far from excellent, but I found La Opinión very readable. I also found it well edited and well written. They had more real news and fewer features than the other papers, and I felt they just did a better job of telling what was going on in the world.
La Opinión had some fascinating ads. By far the most common advertiser was an attorney named Juan José Domínguez who called himself "el mejor abogado" (the best lawyer). Domínguez was a classic ambulance chaser. Behind his smiling face in every ad was the Spanish word "ACCIDENTES" in enormous letters and an 800 number you could call if you were involved in one. Domínguez advertised in every possible medium. In a tragic twist of fate, when the papers ran photos of that bus that crashed in Pasadena, it had a big "ACCIDENTES" ad on its side.
You get a bit of an understanding of L.A.'s history and culture when you realize that 2001 is La Opinión's seventy-fifth year of publication. A lot of the students I teach think of California's Hispanic population as "wetbacks" (even though there's no river between the U.S. and Mexico out here). The fact is, though, that a large part of them are Mexican-Americans who have been in this country for generations. Certainly there are Hispanics of questionable legal status, but there are far more who speak English fluently and whose parents and grandparents are American citizens. Margaret commented that she noticed the same pattern among the immigrant families here that she had noticed in among the Czechs in Cresco when she started teaching there. The grandparents spoke only the language of "the old country", the parents were bilingual, and the kids spoke only English. La Opinión caters to those older Hispanics who do speak Spanish only, as well as to the new waves of immigrants who continue to find America the land of opportunity.
CONTINUED IN PART 4
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