LETTER FROM LOS ANGELES - BIG NOWHERE
Published: The Age, A2, March 20, 2010.
Dan Rule takes a walk on the city’s less glamorous side.
It’s almost respite, but the mere concept of reprieve seems ridiculous here. It is dark in here, our Buds warm. To the left of the bar, the “smoking room” – a filthy, fluorescent-lit, perspex cube – glows a very off white against the competing flicker of beer company neons. There are two men in there, and their smoke. They stare out. Our eyes drop. A pair of placards, positioned on the cube’s outer and inner walls, spell out the policy. Smoking, only.
…
On 5th and Los Angeles, we’re two streets deep into Skid Row, downtown. We’re taking my friend Toby Burke’s “real LA” tour and these are real streets. We wander from the historical Angels Flight Railway on Bunker Hill – where late author John Fante once lived – through the mad tangle of bodies and grand, decaying buildings of South Broadway, and down, down into Skid Row. The flophouses, the drug afflicted, the maimed, the prostituted. A man with a blaring sound-system strapped to shopping cart walks past, running a hand along my wife’s behind. We walk on. No words are spoken
…
It’s 2pm and the bar is full. Men. Late middle age, older, though it’s hard to tell. Professionals, as Toby puts it. King Eddy’s is a professionals’ bar. Full-timers. It is where Charles Bukowski drank during his dark years, and now us. Three Australians, sitting against the wall. It’s safer that way.
…
You can see downtown from Toby’s home-studio in Silverlake. The smog-lined cityscape, a foreground of palm trees and rooftops and powerlines and intermittent foliage. A Melbourne boy, he’s been in LA on and off for the last decade, writing songs and stories and releasing records with his band Horse Stories. His wife, Jessica, is from San Diego and works for a major movie studio. They both know the showbiz side of this city too well. The networking, the fake tans, the business; the kind of fame-desperation that leads our waiter, one night, to somehow weave the assertion that he “worked on Survivor” into his description of the wine list.
…
Since 2007, Richard Schave’s company Esotouric have run increasingly popular bus tours of Raymond Chandler, John Fante and Charles Bukowski’s former homes and haunts in downtown LA and East Hollywood. He says the tours came from a need to “explain Los Angeles”. Deep in the heart of South Central, meanwhile, $65 and liability waiver puts you inline for one of former gang member and community worker Alfred Lomas’s LA Gang Tours, a 12-stop, two-hour bus ride through Los Angeles high-profile gang areas, including discussions with current gang-members. Critics have branded the venture voyeuristic and dehumanising. Lomas, who brokered a cease-fire for the tour-path, frames his operation in terms of insight and understanding. Profits are channelled back into community education, training and employment programs. Since debuting in late November, each of LA Gang Tours’ six outings has sold out.
…
We sit against our wall, eyes lowered. But it’s only a matter of time in a place like this. He’s an old Mexican fellow, eyes rolling, inebriated and friendly as you like. There are pleasantries, the shaking of hands (especially my wife’s). He speaks neither Spanish nor English. This late in the day, he has a dialect of his own. We chat on, nonsensically, regardless. There is some mention of the children’s hospital, of tarantulas, but that’s all we catch. We’ve been caught, nonetheless, by another. You can never hide an accent. A large, imposing man in stained chinos spins around, wildly throws his arms in the air. I flinch. A grin broadens on his face. “Aussies in the house!” he bellows at the top of his voice.
…
It’s easy to lose your brain in LA. That’s how Toby puts it, anyway. The vacuousness of Beverley Hills, the sleaze of the Valley, the money, the business; beneath it all there’s a gritty, sometimes scary metropolis with a history and stories and people. He too feels he has to “explain” LA – to friends, to family, to new acquaintances. It’s a city that he has grown to love.
…
When we left New York three days ago, it was minus 10 degrees. Wandering back west on 5th, the afternoon has a warm winter glow and we wear t-shirts. There are still wild eyes on South Main, still decrepit shopping carts filled with every meagre possession, still the odd scream or holler. But if you look and listen hard enough, there’s the odd smile and occasional tattle of laughter. There’s giggling about King Eddy’s and there’s talk of cheap tacos at a Mexican market on Broadway. We walk on through LA’s discarded blocks, not a fake tan or boob-job or networking opportunity in sight. It really is a lovely afternoon.
