I was up at 6:30 this morning. I must not have been fully awake this morning, because when I got out of the shower, I knocked my electric shaver off the counter and onto the hard tile floor, breaking it beyond repair.
Again I went out to get us coffee. This time I walked to a McDonalds at Sunset and Highland, just across the street from Hollywood High School. Out in front of the parking lot they have what amount to sculptures of a shake and a carton of fries that rotate on a pedestal. .....
You can tell this McDonalds is in a Hispanic neighborhood, too. There's a billboard about half a block away advertising the McDonalds that features two people biting into two burgers-a regular cheeseburger and a Big Mac. There are only two words on the sign. Next to the regular burger it says "sabrosito", and next to the Big Mac it says "sabrosón". "Sabroso" is a Spanish word that would literally translate as "flavorful". the "-ito" ending makes a something smaller, while "-ón" ending makes it bigger. So they're saying that the little burger is tasty, but the Big Mac is d-eeeeeee-licious!!!!!!!!
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Either Hollywood High runs split shifts, or they start their school day incredibly early. It was before 7am when I got to McDonalds, and lots of students were sitting around in front of the school. Shortly after 7:00 I left the restaurant. All the students who had been there before had gone inside, and a couple of people were rushing down the sidewalk as if they were late. I'm definitely not a morning person. There are plenty of times I'm at school at 7am (and I'm pretty much always there by 7:30), but you couldn't pay me to actually start teaching at that hour.
We took the red line downtown to the "7th Street-Metro Center" station this morning. We walked up a flight of steps and almost immediately transferred to the Metro blue line. The blue line is a modern light rail system that mostly follows the route of a turn-of-the-century (20th Century, that is) streetcar. We came out of the downtown tunnel right next to the Staples Center sports complex and the enormous L.A. Convention Center, turned east on Washington Boulevard, and then went south in a semi-private right-of-way between Compton and Wilmington Boulevards. We headed South through one of the most famous sections of Los Angeles, though not one the travel guides tend to rave about. People younger than me will know the area as "South Central", while those older than me will know it as "Watts". Under each of those names, the place is most famous for riots--one in the '60s and another about ten years back. This is "the hood", the slum where about a third of L.A. lives.
In Walter Cronkite's autobiography, America's most trusted man recalls going to Los Angeles after the Watts riots and being a bit disconcerted to find a "slum" of private homes, palm trees, and flowers. I can certainly relate to that feeling. As a child the first slums I saw were in Chicago and Detroit. My mental image of a slum is based on those cities--block after block of crumbling rowhouses, broken only by towering public housing projects. In Watts, everyone does like in detached homes--though they're crammed so close together they might as well be rowhouses. The typical home here is a four-room bungalow that would be significantly smaller than my apartment. There's nothing wrong with these homes; they're fairly similar to my parents' friends Bob and Verna Edwards' house in Moline, and Margaret related that her late husband Brian grew up in an even more modest place in Sioux City.
What really makes Watts a slum is overcrowding. I'd bet that when the neighborhood was new, most people had fair sized yards. Over time, though, it has been sub-divided and filled in, so what used to be someone's back yard is now the site of another house that faces on an alley. The "yards" that remain are not much more than the size of my deck, and they are often filled with junk. The space between the houses is so narrow that a person with long arms could literally reach out of one home's window and reach into the window of the house next door. There are palm trees and flowers everywhere, and they do take a bit of the edge of the crowding. Nonetheless, you it was very clear to me that this is not in any way a wealthy neighborhood.
One of the most startling things about South Central L.A. is just how big it is. We took the blue line for about ten miles from downtown to about 120th Street, and we were still nowhere near the end of the neighborhood. If crumbling rowhouses get repetitive, block after block after block of crowded stucco bungalows--broken only by ratty industry--seem even more monotonous. The most interesting break in the monotony was a Pentecostal church that was set up in a large building that looked as if it had once been a warehouse. You wouldn't know it was a church, except for huge letters on the side that announced in Spanish "ĦUna voz que clama en el desierto!" ("A voice cries out in the wilderness!")
The Spanish sign on that church brings to mind another of those L.A. myths: Watts is a black neighborhood--right? We'll leave off the capitals and the exclamation points this time, but basically the answer is "wrong". Back in the '60s Watts was almost totally black, but today it's very diverse. A little less than half the residents are black, more than a third are Hispanic, and the rest are mostly Asian. This is where the most recent immigrants end up, those who can't afford to live anywhere better. I've read that the diversity is one of the big sources of tension in South Central L.A. The blacks don't like to see their traditional power base eroded, even though most of those who left Watts now live in much better neighborhoods in the suburbs. The gangs in the area are all organized by race, and a lot of the skirmishes have been racial in nature--particularly with blacks vs. Asians, the two groups that hold the lowest rungs on the L.A. social ladder.
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Before long we reached the Imperial and Wilmington station, which has been re-named "Rosa Parks Station". Every city has a "King Drive", but it's not often you see things named after the lesser figures in the civil rights struggle. It certainly is appropriate, too, that the woman who stood up for her right to sit at the front of the bus should have a public transit facility in a minority neighborhood named after her.
We walked upstairs to an elevated platform at Imperial and Wilmington and transferred to the green line. I had read descriptions that called the green line "a train to nowhere" and "the train nobody rides". Whoever wrote those descriptions obviously hasn't taken the green line recently. The "train to nowhere" reputation probably comes from the fact that the green line goes near, but not actually to the Los Angeles International Airport. (The MTA wanted to extend the line to LAX, but the airport authority vetoed the idea. The reason they gave was that the train would cut into parking revenues at the airport.) Where the green line goes instead is a major industrial area south of the LAX, and hundreds of people were taking the train to their jobs there this morning. The green line trains are short, so they don't have the capacity of the other lines. That meant it was standing room only this morning.
The green line was originally designed to be an automatic driverless train that shuttled down the median of L.A.'s newest freeway. They found that people didn't accept the concept of being in a computer-driven train, so they added human operators. Apparently these people really don't do much of anything other than open and close the doors, but they are there in case something goes wrong.
We got off at Aviation station, a massive park-and-ride that is across the street from the airport. From here you can catch a shuttle bus for a ten-minute ride to the terminals. We were here to catch a bus, but not to the airport. Instead our destination this morning was the beaches that the locals call "South Bay". We got off the train, came down to street level, and waited by the busway.
Like all the metro stations, Aviation is decorated with public art. One of the most common ways they do this is to make the benches into objects of sculpture. I already mentioned the benches at Hollywood and Vine that were shaped like antique cars, and we had passed a platform at Crenshaw station where the benches looked like open books. Aviation is where you catch the bus for the beach, and their benches followed that theme. While we waited for bus 439, we rested our bodies on concrete beach furniture. That's right, chaise lounges and drink tables sculpted in pastel-colored concrete. I felt like Fred Flintstone, with his home full of Stone Age furniture.
South Bay is not one of MTA's primary service areas, and service to the area is infrequent at best. Much of the day the buses here run hourly. So it's no surprise that we had quite a bit of time to read the local papers while we waited. What got frustrating was that every couple of minutes buses would pull into other bus bays in the terminal. Almost all of them were labeled "BIG BLUE BUS", which is a service run by the City of Santa Monica. Since MTA can't possibly provide frequent service on every street in a region the size Rhode Island, many of the suburbs have their own city buses that supplement MTA's service. They can then run local routes that just serve their own suburbs and express routes that run frequently from the suburbs to key destinations like the airport and downtown L.A. I can't imagine that people would want to go from the airport to Santa Monica every five minutes, but that's what the buses appear to do.
Eventually another "OUT OF SERVICE" bus showed up at our bus bay. This time there was no visible label on the bus, and the driver seemed a bit testy when people were hesitant to board. She had apparently put the temporary sign that said "439" on the side window on the side window on the driver's side, a place where it would never be visible to any passenger. ... We boarded and headed off west past the airport.
The LAX neighborhood looks a lot like the area around O'Hare in Chicago. It's all new factories and office parks, interspersed with lots of business-oriented hotels. Absolutely no one was waiting for the bus at any of these places this morning, so we zipped on past them all.
We turned south near the ocean and entered the town of El Segundo (the Spanish word for "second", by the way, is pronounced "suh-GUNN-doe" around here). The name makes it sound like it might have been an old Spanish town--perhaps it was the second of the missions, or maybe it was named after King Somebody the Second. No such luck. El Segundo was founded as a company town for Chevron Oil. The name comes from the fact that this is the location of their second refinery (the first was in up north near Oakland). The refinery is still by far the largest employer in town, and it looms over what would otherwise be a gorgeous stretch of beach.
Away from the refinery, El Segundo is a lovely little town. That's exactly the right description, too--it comes across as a little town, rather than a city neighborhood or a suburb. It has its own substantial downtown area--still quite active with a variety of businesses--and pleasant, if crowded, middle class residential neighborhoods. El Segundo is racially mixed in the way a Midwestern city might be. I'd say it's half to two-thirds Anglo, with Blacks and Hispanics present, but in a clear minority. There are a lot of retired people here, but there's also many young families.
The mix of people changed dramatically when we went southward into the towns of Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach (the locals pronounce the "H' in the Spanish word for "beautiful"--"her-MOW-suh"). These are among the most exclusive communities in Los Angeles County-though to look at them, you'd never guess that. Everything is pastel stucco rowhouses. I'm sure their owners think of them as luxury condominiums (and they cost up to a million dollars each), but to me one stucco rowhouse looks like another. ... The overall appearance was really rather ratty.
One interesting feature of a lot of the newer condos was that the "streets" that they faced on were actually walkways, lined with trees and flowers. The houses looked out onto these park like promenades, while cars were banished to back alleys.
This is a resort area. The beaches are gorgeous and crowded, and the businesses cater to the "beach bum" set. You can buy T-shirts and seashells and gourmet coffee, but there's not really anywhere to shop.
Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach are Anglo communities--almost 100%. We found out that this was where all the blonde, tan "Baywatch" babes had been hiding. We saw lots of blondes here, natural and peroxide-enhanced. We saw buff-bodied men and silicone-enhanced women, all scantily clad. We even saw one boy walking down the street carrying a surfboard--though the local water was being very "pacific" this morning. We also saw lots and lots of senior citizens. I really can't picture this being all that pleasant of a place to retire, but I guess these folks must like it.
Our ultimate destination this morning was Redondo Beach, the largest of the South Bay beach towns. Redondo (locals almost never add "Beach" to the name) is really a city in its own right, with around 75,000 people. It's by far the most diverse of the beach towns. The largest ethic group is probably Latinos, but we saw lots of people of all races here. We also saw rich and poor, but mostly it's a middle class community. There are new condos (wood, instead of stucco), as well as old bungalows and ranch homes. Parts of the city look beautiful, while other parts are showing their age. Nothing is seedy, though, and Redondo Beach is proud to claim the lowest crime rate of any town in Los Angeles County. The whole place has a laid-back "beachy" feel to it that I really liked.
We got off the bus toward the north end of the downtown area, next to a new condo development. Then we walked through a lovely little park to Fisherman's Wharf. This was, of course, not the Fisherman's Wharf--we'd see that in San Francisco later--but rather a small marina where mostly sport fishermen dock their boats.
Much of the coast in central Redondo is lined with what they call a "boardwalk", even though most of it is asphalt. The boardwalk is lined with shops, but most of them weren't open for the day yet. We did stop in one store where I picked up a lovely beach towel woven in the design of a palm-lined beach at sunset.
The boardwalk leads to Redondo Pier, the center of the town's resort area. The horseshoe pier extends well into Santa Monica Bay, offering lovely views of the ocean. On the pier we saw fathers teaching their children to fish and old people out for their morning walk. We also saw lots of handicapped and mentally retarded people whose family or friends had taken them for a day at the beach.
It was definitely not classic beach weather at Redondo this morning. The temperature was probably in the lower 70s, and there was fairly heavy fog. As the morning progressed, the fog gradually burned off, and I'd imagine that in the afternoon it would have been good sun-bathing weather. This morning, though, it was if anything a little on the chilly side.
We stopped at a little restaurant right on the pier and ordered hot chocolate and homemade potato chips. We breakfasted at an umbrella table and then made our way to the other end of the pier. Here we encountered the South Bay Bicycle Trail, a thirty-mile bike path that runs from Malibu to Redondo, always within sight of the ocean. On a weekday morning it was not really busy, but there were a fair number of people-mostly senior citizens-pedaling down the coast.
Along the bike path we ran into a skateboarder. This was definitely not your typical "cowabunga" teenager, though. The guy had to be at least as old as me, and he was more than a little overweight. He was also obviously just starting to learn how to skateboard. Time and time again he tried simple jumps, and time and time again he fell. You hear about those people who never really grow up and move to California to just bum around forever; I think we found one.
We went down to the sandy beach and walked along the water for a while. There were quite a few people here, but they were spread out so it really didn't seem crowded at all. Unlike the "beautiful people" on the Hermosa Strand to the north, the crowd at Redondo is very middle class. No one was wearing a bikini, and almost no one was wearing a swimsuit. That was sensible, given the weather. I think most of the people here knew, though, that they looked better in shorts and a T-shirt than they would ever look in beachwear. These people weren't at the beach to see and be seen. They were here just to have fun. Some fished, some waded, and some played volleyball. Most, though, just sat around and enjoyed the salt air.
I was pleasantly surprised with how clean the beach was. They have an "Adopt-a-Beach" program all over southern California, and it seems to work. In Mississippi I got sick of all the bottles and fireworks trash that were buried in the sand. There was virtually no litter at Redondo; I wish all beaches could be like that.
We walked down the beach to the south end of the resort area, where we came upon a lifeguard tower. While "Baywatch" was set at Malibu, they have the same towers all along the coast. I was surprised to find that it's the L.A. County Fire Department that runs the beach patrol, but as with the paramedics I suppose they think of as an extension of search and rescue operations. Unlike the dudes on "Baywatch", the lifeguard at Redondo appeared to be a young Hispanic man who covered his chest with a T-shirt and wore knee-length trunks (in blue, not red). There was nothing much for him to be watching this morning, but it's good to know there are rescue people there when a need does arise.
At the south end of Redondo they were having a farmers' market. I really don't know where they scrounge up farmers to come to it, when there's nothing but city for 50 miles in every direction, but they managed to attract stall after stall of people selling produce. Unlike the sweet corn and garden vegetables you see at such things in Iowa, the Redondo farmers' market was heavy on fruit--particularly citrus and cherries--at unbelievably low prices. There were also people selling such diverse foods as honey, cheese, homemade baked goods, and "natural California herbal tea". Neither Margaret nor I bought a thing, but we had a delightful time strolling through the place.
We made our way to the corner of Torrance and Catalina Streets and settled in for another long wait for the bus. Once again other buses zipped past at regular intervals. This time they were bright red buses bearing the moniker "Torrance Transit". Torrance is a city of about 200,000 people that is just inland from the beach towns. Their buses run at 10 - 15 minute intervals throughout that city, as well as into Long Beach and Redondo Beach. In retrospect, it might have been quicker to have taken Torrance Transit all the way to Long Beach (over an hour away) and picked up the blue line there. Instead we waited better than half an hour for our MTA bus, and then had to make a minimum of two rail connections to get back downtown.
This time the bus was marked #439, and when we boarded a perky young lady handed everyone who got on a survey. The survey was printed in Spanish on one side and English on the other, and in big bold letters at the top it said "Answer to win valuable prizes!" They didn't specify what those valuable prizes were, but Margaret and I entertained ourselves by filling it out and entering the contest. They asked extensive questions on where you were going to and from, and how you were getting there. The form had space to list four different bus routes or rail lines, which is precisely what it took to get from Hollywood to Redondo Beach. They also asked us to rate such factors as safety, cleanliness, courtesy, speed, and on-time performance.
Those last two factors were hard to do. The buses tend to go relatively fast, and most of them held to their schedule. Unfortunately, they have to cover long distances and they aren't scheduled to run all that often. If they asked me for my input on how they could improve things (which they never really did on the survey), I'd suggest they buy a bunch of mini-buses and run them on the same routes, but more frequently. They won't do that, of course, because then they'd have to pay more drivers--which is really where the biggest expense of transit comes from.
The last few questions were for demographic classification. It was fascinating that the choices under the "race" question were--in order: Latino/Hispanic, Black/African American, White/Caucasian, Asian/Pacific Islander, American Indian, and Other. That's probably the breakdown from top to bottom in terms of who uses transit here. Hispanics are clearly the majority of bus riders, followed by blacks, who are then followed by whites. I don't think I've ever seen the races listed in that order on a survey before, though.
Another telling question was dealt with "household income". For most of my adult life, whenever I've answered that question on surveys, I've been in the next to lowest box. As my income has increased, they've kept increasing the categories in step with inflation. Obviously, though, L.A. expects its transit riders to be poorer than me. The lowest income category (clarified as "before tax, the total for all persons in a household) they had was "under $7,500", and the categories increased gradually so that I would be in the second-highest of their six possible categories. I can't imagine any family, even a family of one, living in America in the 21st Century on just $7,500 a year. L.A. is not nearly as expensive as some cities, but even so the cheapest apartments advertised in the papers were going for around $500/month. That would come to $6,000 a year, just for housing. Since the surveyed clientele presumably rides the bus regularly, they would spend at least $500 a year for passes. Even with food stamps, they would have $1,000 or less for a year's worth of utilities, clothes, and any incidental expenses. I certainly don't feel rich, but looking at the categories in this survey made me feel very fortunate indeed.
A large group of junior high kids boarded the bus in El Segundo. Today was obviously the last day of school, and they had been dismissed early for summer vacation. Several of them were discussing their summer plans, and it intrigued me that most of them were not from El Segundo. They apparently take the city bus (and possibly a train connection) to school each day from other places in the area. The place the kids got on was a public school. I have no idea if it was some sort of magnet school or if there's an open enrollment program in California or what, but I'd think it would be odd to commute so far to school each day--and by city bus, at that.
At another stop a little kid got on carrying a skateboard. He had been waiting at the bus stop with an older boy, who he apparently didn't know. The kid looked a little bit scared, and after looking around the bus he sat down next to an old black man, a rather grandfatherly looking man. We overheard the kid saying that this was the first time he had ridden the bus by himself, and he was obviously a little scared to do so. He got off at a residential area by the airport and skateboarded off like he knew where he was going, though.
The truth is, this trip was also the first time I've ever taken a city bus--unless you count the little circulator thing we took in Plymouth, Massachusetts, last summer. I've always been a little bit scared of city buses, because compared to trains they're complicated. ... Unfortunately, if we were going to see all of L.A., there wasn't much choice but to take the bus. The good news is that with the exception of the long waits at bus stops, all our bus rides went like clockwork. Having successfully navigated L.A.'s buses, I might now be more willing to try them in other cities.
We made our way back to Aviation station, and then set out on a little excursion by train. I mentioned before that all the metro stations in Los Angeles are decorated with various forms of public art. I had read about some of these earlier, and this afternoon we made a quick trip exploring some of the more interesting stations.
We first went southwest to the El Segundo green line station. This is located in the middle of a bunch of aerospace factories, and the artwork was funded by those firms. The main feature is a large wire mesh sculpture at the end of the platform designed to look like a giant hand throwing a paper airplane. It's fascinating, and really rather attractive. They also have little tubes that look like telescopes scattered throughout the platform. The weirdest feature at El Segundo station, though, is its seating. Instead of benches grandiose chairs that look like concrete and cast iron thrones. They're really low and uncomfortable (most of the artistic seating is uncomfortable; the concrete beach furniture was about the best), and they're spaced so far apart that you have to yell to have a conversation.
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... The MTA website says the Harbor Freeway station "overlooks the dramatic interchange of the 105 and 110 freeways". Dramatic doesn't really do justice to this colossal maze of spaghetti. I-105 is eight lanes, and I-110 is ten lanes. In addition to having the usual ramps from every direction to every direction, they have a separate set of ramps that directly connect the diamond lines (the leftmost lanes, which are restricted to buses and carpoolers) on each freeway with those on the other. Then there's the green line tracks, which tower above everything. You always hear and see pictures of the famous four-level interchange in downtown L.A., the first of its kind anywhere. I'm not sure how many levels this thing had, but I know it was more than four.
We continued east and got off the train at Lakewood station, which is in the suburb of Downey, east of Watts. The artistic feature of Lakewood station is what they call the "Wall of Un-Fame". They got hundreds of everyday people from the neighborhood to make handprints and then sign their name in terra cotta slabs. The entire station is covered with these tributes to the ordinary people of the neighborhood. Like most of the metro art projects, this one was designed by the people in the neighborhood. That's a wonderful idea; it really gives the people a sense of ownership in their station. I noticed that the stations in Watts were much cleaner and had far less graffiti than equivalent stations in Chicago--even though there are no turnstiles in Watts; anyone could come onto the platforms at any hour. MTA seems to have really tried hard to make the stations part of the neighborhood, and that probably helps to keep down vandalism.
While I liked the Wall of Un-Fame, I didn't like Lakewood station. Nobody could. Like most of the green line stations, this one is located in the median of I-105. Unfortunately, the station is located right under the overpass of a six-lane street; the overpass itself serves as most of the roof of the station. As traffic speeds by on the freeway, the noise bounces off the overpass and reverberates. I don't know when I have been in a louder place, and I was certainly glad when a train came along so we could leave.
Our last look at metro art this afternoon was at Rosa Parks-Imperial and Wilmington, where we again transferred to the blue line. MTA asked kids at a local elementary school to design the station art here, and they came up with the idea of large cut-outs of children mounted so they look as if they're playing hide-and-seek among the huge pillars that support the freeway. Apparently the children themselves do exactly that on occasion.
The blue line train we got on was very crowded. In addition to the usual passengers, there were three classes of elementary school children taking a field trip by train. I felt haggard enough trying to keep track of eight quiz bowl kids on the subways in New York and Washington. I can't imagine watching over a whole class of children on the train.
As we passed the 110th Street station ... we caught a glimpse of the closest thing to a tourist attraction in South Central L.A. The Watts Towers were built by Simon Rodia, a European immigrant who lived here back when it was European immigrants who were at the bottom wrung of society. He supposedly built these spindly conical towers out of scrap metal, tile, and stone as a way of "giving something back" to the country that had given him so much. When the European immigrants moved on and black people moved in, the towers became a symbol of black L.A. I first heard about them when I was in elementary school, probably not long after the Watts riots. The place is now a state park, and the towers are being carefully restored and preserved. I suppose that's a good thing. They are old enough to be historic, even if they aren't especially beautiful. I read one book that said they resemble Gaudi's Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, and indeed they do. That's hardly a compliment, though, as (at least in my opinion) the unfinished Sagrada Familia is one of the ugliest churches in Europe.
The last thing we saw on the blue line before we entered the tunnel downtown was the overpasses for the Santa Monica Freeway. This is one monster of an interstate. We went under four separate overpasses, each of which had to contain at least four lanes. This was the freeway they had closed down when the police were chasing after that man who had driven off from a gas station-tying up traffic all night long. I tried to imagine how much traffic must move over this thing in a day and what a tie up there would be if things were disrupted.
We got off the train at 7th Street/Metro Center and found an ATM right in the station. I normally wouldn't mention something so mundane as a bank machine, but this one amused us with the name of its bank. We got cash this afternoon from "Tomatobank". The official name of the company is InterBusiness Bank, N.A., and they say their mission is "bringing banking to the people". Their symbol is indeed a tomato, though, and you can visit them online at www.tomatobank.com (... and I thought "Boatman's" was a silly name for a bank).
Once again it was way past lunch time, but we hadn't yet had lunch. The good thing about that is that you usually have your choice of where to eat, and by going late we managed to get in without waiting at one L.A.'s most popular downtown restaurants (voted "best power lunch" by the Downtown News, "best American cuisine" by the Los Angeles Times, "best downtown restaurant under $25" by LA Weekly, and given the "Award of Excellence" by Wine Spectator magazine). Engine Co. No. 28 (the restaurant with all these honors) was originally a downtown firehouse. The fire station moved to better quarters years ago, and the building fell into disrepair. Then about fifteen years ago, when downtown L.A. was starting to gentrify, somebody bought the old firehouse and decided to turn it into an classy restaurant. They've done a nice job of hinting to the place's history (they left the old brass fire pole and the ornate tin ceiling, for instance), while at the same time gutting the interior and replacing it with a modern, elegant decor.
Another tribute to the place's firefighting past comes in the restaurant's menu. Every item on the menu is a recipe contributed by a fire station somewhere in America. As you might guess, that means they tend toward hearty all-American cuisine, yet everything has a flair that makes it different from and somehow above normal home cooking.
One problem I had with almost every restaurant we patronized in California is that every meal comes as a set plate--that is, you take the side dishes they give you, with no mixing and matching. They design the meal for presentation so that the side dishes are essentially garnishes, and they'd hate to make an alternation to such a perfect work of art. So if something is supposed to come with mashed potatoes, you cant have it with baked potato or rice. If it comes with arugula salad, you can't substitute soup. In fact, often you can't even specify what dressing you'd like on your salad.
This was again a problem at Engine Co. No. 28. While there were several main courses that sounded good, the side dishes that accompanied them lessened their appeal. For example, I had read many reviews praising their meatloaf (an odd item for an elegant restaurant, but certainly appropriate for firehouse food). They had a baked meatloaf dinner, but it could only be accompanied by mashed potatoes with gravy, sauteed greens with balsamic vinegar, and steamed "California vegetables". The meatloaf would have been fine, but none of the side dishes tempted my tastebuds.
I settled on a soup and sandwich combo, which included a meatloaf sandwich. This was a mistake. The sweet corn chowder was excellent, and the coleslaw that accompanied the sandwich was not bad. I had to choke down the sandwich, though. I was expecting a hot sandwich, but this was a cold slab of congealed meatloaf topped by a tomato and a slice of pretentious lettuce and then placed onto barely toasted mayonnaise-slathered sourdough bread. I'm sure it was exactly what it was supposed to be; I just didn't like it. Margaret had pork chops in a wine sauce that looked excellent, and I envied her all through lunch.
Dessert was much better. Margaret had shortcake with assorted berries and whipped cream. I had creme brulee (caramel custard with a hardened sugar crust), also topped with whipped cream and fresh berries. I'm sure we devoured a week's worth of calories in one dessert, but it was truly excellent.
After lunch we headed back toward Hollywood on the subway. Margaret went all the way back to the hotel, but I got out at Hollywood and Vine. ... I made my way down to Sunset and Gower and stopped in at the Rite-Aid store in the Gower Gulch Mini-Mall. It took me forever to find electric shavers, which turned out to be stored behind a counter next to the tobacco products. ... I selected an exact replica of the shaver I had broken which I think actually cost less than what I had paid for the old one.
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I took the subway back to Hollywood and Highland. I don't think I've yet described the artwork in there, and since I've gone into detail about so many of the others, I suppose I should also describe our "home" station. Above the platform and mezzanine is a weird white metal thing. It's really hard to describe. It looks like it's a structural support lining the tunnel, but I think it's supposed to be a decorative sculpture. The main thing it does is diffuse what would otherwise be very bright lighting. The real artwork at the station is in the escalator atrium. They have a series of projectors hanging above the escalator that turn on and off in succession. While they do an ever-changing pattern of eyes flashes on the wall in front of you as you descend the escalator. The eyes are highly stylized. On one the white part looks like a soccer ball, for instance, while on another the iris looks like a tomato. Margaret obviously didn't care for this artistic touch at all, but I was rather amused by it.
* * * * *
When I walked into the hotel lobby there was a little bit different crowd than had been there the past couple of days. From tonight until Sunday, the Roosevelt was hosting a convention of a group called "Midnight Insanity", which is for devotees of the motion picture The Rocky Horror Picture Show. They had entitled their convention "Frankie Goes to Hollywood", which I know as the name of a pop band from the '80s but apparently was supposed to be honoring a character in the movie.
For those who don't know, The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a 1975 musical starring Susan Sarandon that has developed quite a cult following. The Internet Movie Database describes the plot as follows: "After Janet accepts Brad's marriage proposal, the happy couple drive away from Denton, Ohio, only to get lost in the rain. They stumble upon the castle of Dr. Frank-N-Furter, a transvestite who is holding the annual convention of visitors from the planet Transsexual. Frank-N-Furter unveils his creation, a young man named Rocky Horror, who fears the doctor and rejects his sexual advances. When Frank-N-Furter announces that he is returning to the galaxy Transylvania, Riff Raff the butler and Magenta the maid declare that they have plans of their own. (An audience participation film)" The parenthetical comment is really the whole point of Rocky Horror. People who go to the film dress up as the various characters, act out the plot, and sing along with songs like "Time Warp". I remember going to a screening of the film with a group of friends in the basement of the Union at UNI back in 1982. It was a fun time--if mostly as an excuse to drink too much--but honestly the movie seemed stupid and dated then, and I can't imagine that it's gotten any better with 19 more years under its belt.
That obviously didn't deter the black-clad group in the lobby of the Roosevelt, though. Almost all of them were college age, and for most this was probably the first time they had stayed in a hotel on their own. They proudly expressed their individualism through identical tattoos and piercings. They were full of life and primed for the party of the year. I don't think I've ever felt like such an old fart in my life.
To each his own, though. The kids were being perfectly well behaved, and they certainly had as much of a right to enjoy their convention as the California Association of School Superintendents who were here before them or the International Society of Sound Recording Engineers who would follow. I must say, though, that I was glad at this point that our room did not face the pool. That was the kids' main gathering place, and I think the rooms there would have been awfully noisy. (I think the hotel purposely booked most of the kids into the cabanas that faced onto the pool, so they were basically just disturbing themselves.)
Margaret and I lounged around the hotel a bit and then set out for the evening. We took the subway back to Hollywood and Vine, and as we were going up the escalator I was amused by a group of people in front of me. A young man who acted as if he was from around here was showing the "landmarks" of the area to his friends. He gestured in front of himself and talked about Capitol Records, the Hollywood sign, RCA Records, and the House of Blues. Capitol Records and the Hollywood sign are indeed visible when you leave the Hollywood and Vine subway station. It's about a block north, right on Vine Street to Capitol, and you can just barely see the famous sign at the top of the hill. I'd only been here for a couple of days, though, and I knew he was way off base with the other two. RCA is southeast of here on Sunset. It would be within walking distance (5 or 6 blocks) of the station, but nowhere near where the guy was gesturing. The L.A. branch of House of Blues isn't even in Hollywood. I already described its delta shack building on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, probably six or seven miles from here.
The main thing you see when you leave the Hollywood and Vine subway station is the Pantages Theatre, and that was our destination this evening. ... We were headed to the stage production of The Lion King, the Disney extravaganza which is a combination operetta and puppet show with music by rock star Elton John. I had never seen the animated film of the same name, so I had no idea what the play would be about. ... I think I might have enjoyed the show more if I had known a bit more about what to expect. As it was I was concentrating hard trying to follow a plot line that was mostly revealed through music. That said, it was a very nice show.
The Pantages is also a lovely theatre. It was one of the last of the old vaudeville houses to be built, and Disney has restored it beautifully. Its architecture is strongly art deco, with simple, but dramatic geometric shapes. The lobby is sumptuous, and the highlight of the auditorium is a spectacular one-piece chandelier covering about a third of the ceiling. Oddly for a recently restored theatre, the stage at the Pantages is remarkably small. Disney got around this by doing many of the entrances and exits for The Lion King through the audience.
The biggest problem with the Pantages was their air conditioning, or rather lack thereof. I'm not sure if there was no air or if they simply didn't circulate things properly, but it was HOT all through the show. As hot as we were, I couldn't imagine how warm the actors on stage must have been in their costumes, with theatrical lights shining on them.
The show was a sell-out. In fact, it apparently was over-sold. When we took our seats, a group of Asian people was seated across from and a bit behind us. ... A while later a black family, dressed to the nines, came in and went to the same section. They compared tickets, and it became clear quite soon that both groups had tickets for the same seats. I don't know if there was a computer mix-up or if one group somehow had counterfeit tickets or what, but they both were trying to sit in the same place. The Asian group did not speak English and would not move for the black family. They got an usher, who in turn got the manager. He looked at the tickets and chatted with the mother of the black family, who all this time had been calmly waiting by the door. Eventually an interpreter arrived, and the manager said something to the Asians through her. They left, and the black people took the seats. I have no idea what became of the Asian group; I do hope they were able to accommodate them somehow.
The crowd was very different from any other I have ever seen at the theatre. First of all, it was an extremely multiethnic group. At every show I have ever been to, the crowd has been almost totally white. Here it was a good mix of people of all races--probably whiter than the city, but still very well mixed. It was also the youngest crowd I have ever seen. The Lion King is, of course, a family show, and lots of parents brought their children here to see it. The theatre even had booster seats available at the doors so kids could see everything better. It was a very casual crowd. They were dressed much less formally than the theatre-goers in Chicago. I wore a tie, but not a jacket, and that was definitely on the formal side of this crowd.
The group was also up and down all through the show. Several people came in late, and others left before the curtain call. Still more got up to leave during the performance; in fact, sometimes the same person would go in and out several times. I felt like I was at a ballgame instead of a play.
A family behind us talked so loudly that we couldn't help but overhear them. They had come in from the suburbs and made a family outing at the theatre. After the show they planned to go to Tommy's, a famous fast food place that is known for serving chiliburgers. The father in the family is apparently a gun enthusiast--which wasn't exactly something that to me seemed to go together with the theatre.
The show finished with a rather endless curtain call, during which every animal in the forest paraded in individually to a standing ovation. It surprised me that after the curtain call, they just put the lights up. At every other show I've been to recently, the lead actor has come forward at that point to make a pitch for donations to "Broadway Cares: Equity Fights AIDS", the charity sponsored by the actors' union. Then invariably members of the chorus wait at the exit to take donations and pass out red ribbons. I've gotten that pitch in Chicago, in Des Moines, in Minneapolis, and in Aurora, Illinois. This was an Actors' Equity show, and given the prevalence of AIDS in California, I assumed we'd have the "Broadway Cares" come-on here. I had already put aside a small amount of money in my pocket to give as a donation at the end of this show. It stayed in my pocket, though. There was no pitch, so we just made our way to the exit.
It surprised me a bit that there was no security (and indeed no employees at all) in the subway station when we left the theatre. ... Thanks to the lack of employees in the station, we encountered a beggar in the mezzanine. Margaret and I just rushed past him, but he went up to the husband in the couple behind us and said, "Can I ask you a question?" I could hardly keep from laughing out loud when the man from the theatre simply said "no". The beggar simply shrugged and went on his way.
There are a lot of beggars and homeless people in Los Angeles, though Margaret and I agreed that they are among the most laid-back, least aggressive beggars we'd seen anywhere. This man in the subway was about the only one I heard actually say anything. Mostly they just sit on the corner looking helpless. The majority seem to be elderly white men. I saw almost no homeless women in L.A., and the youngest people I saw asking for handouts were probably 45 or 50. My bet would be that most of these people have some form of mental illness. Almost none of them looked like they were really capable of doing productive work. While I always have a mental debate when I see street people, I would think that L.A. would be a comparatively easy place to be homeless. I must confess that I felt a bit less sorry for the beggars here than the people who huddle by heating grates in the midst of a Chicago winter.
We waited a long time on the platform at Hollywood and Vine. They were doing tunnel work, so after 9pm trains ran only every 20 minutes. Eventually, though, we got back to the hotel. We were greeted again by the "Midnight Insanity" people. They were having their official "Welcome Dance" this evening in one of the hotel's ballrooms. California prohibits smoking in public areas of hotels, so when we arrived the sidewalk was crowded with boys and girls in black leather and pink satin--all out having a cigarette. Inside many of the non-smokers were gathered in the bar area, mingling somewhat uncomfortably with a busload of Japanese tourists. We made our way past all the excitement and retired to our room for the night.
CONTINUED IN PART 6
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