From the South Bay to the Valley

From the West Side to the East Side

Everybody’s very happy

‘Cause the sun is shining all the time

Looks like another perfect day

I love L.A. (we love it)

              – Randy Newman                

   From our room on the 18th floor of the Loews Hotel, just down from the corner of famed Hollywood and Vine, we could see the LA skyline, the iconic, concentric floors of the Capital Records building and even the world famous Hollywood sign atop Mount Lee in the Santa Monica Mountains. These are a few of the optics that help sustain the myth of LA. And while what brings Carol and me to Tinseltown is a product of that myth-making (this time was a road revival of Jesus Christ Superstar), LA’s mythology does not mesmerize me the way, say, New Orleans, New York or Chicago seem to. The City That Care Forgot, The City That Never Sleeps and My Kind of Town, all weave myth and reality into something that is palpable upon arrival.. Second Lines, pulsing neon glitter and bone chilling winds are certificates of authenticity for the myth and reality that are those cities. But LA lacks any comparable certificate of authenticity. It’s myth and reality are simply ones of make believe. Its myth can only be seen on a silver screen; its reality is a mindless shuffle of the shabby, the seedy and the just plain ugly. Or at least that’s how this pair of beady, myopic eyes sees this town.

But LA lacks any comparable certificate of authenticity. It’s myth and reality are simply ones of make believe. Its myth can only be seen on a silver screen; its reality is a mindless shuffle of the shabby, the seedy and the just plain ugly.

   Yet, it’s this very Nathaniel West quality of Los Angeles that is beginning to grow on me. We stay at the Loews, not just because of the room views and the quite reasonable $20 overnight parking fee, but it is also less than a mile walking distance from the Pantages Theatre. And what a mile straight down Hollywood Boulevard it is. Street gawkers wander amidst the street walkers. A thinly clad man with a live yellow boa constrictor blends with someone dressed in a Mickey Mouse outfit hustling street selfies. Tattoo parlors and seedy longest rub shoulders with historic attractions, such as Grauman’s Chinese Theatre (which caused a riot among stargazers when it opened in 1927), the Russo and Frank Grill (where the likes of Chaplin, Faulkner, Hemingway and Orson Wells dined and dashed) and, of course, the tapestry-like red and gold brocades of the Pantages interiors. To walk this stretch of Hollywood Boulevard is to create a montage from your own version of The Day of the Locust.

   My favorite visual of LA, though, is at the bottom of the ceiling-to-floor window in our hotel room, a bird’s eye view of the  Highland Liquor store, located in a shoehorned strip mall that boasts an insurance agency, a 7-11 and a Thai massage parlor. The steady influx of take-out carrying denizens who enter the liquor store and wander back out with no sign of a purchase fascinates me with the stories they suggest. A group of five, toting rectangular Styrofoam containers wandered into the trailer of a delivery semi and back out again, as if the meth had begun to wear off. An LA squad car parks and remains for a good half hour before the cops saunter out of the liquor store, their “investigation” apparently complete.

   The musical at the Pantages was great, but the floorshow at Highland Liquor also couldn’t be beat.

   I love LA. (we love it. )