To read Part 1, click here. The read part 2, click here.

If the Westside is the forsaken domain of rail service (although there are plenty of buses), then the wasteland south of Ventura Boulevard, between Studio City and Encino, is the place that buses forgot.

There are bus lines that cruise down the Cahuenga Pass into Hollywood and a few that link the Westside to the Valley through the Sepulveda Pass, but in the vast expanse between these two passes, there is one, and only one, bus line that dares to slink through the mountains. That’s right, mountains. Nothing makes the geological formations we affectionately call “The Hills” seem more like what they really are, the eastern tail of the Santa Monica Mountain Range, than trying to cross them without using your car. That lone bus line is the 218, but its official and hilarious word title, as designated by its final destination, is “Cedars Sinai.”

The author, at the intersection of Mullholland Drive and Beverly Glen.

Relying on this infrequent bus to get into town on a Saturday night is tough enough, but to count on it to get to the city’s marquee hospital is to give up on living. For one thing, it stops running at 8 P.M. Apparently people don’t need hospitals after dark. Second, as the day progresses, the schedule of the runs shrinks to once every fifty minutes–hardly a frequency worth planning a trip around.

Normally, I drive my car or take the Rapid Bus down Ventura Blvd. to the Universal City Red Line Station, exit the train at Hollywood and Highland, and walk twenty minutes to Santa Monica Blvd, where the Rapid Buses roll more often than they do on Sunset. It’s a bit of a hassle, but walking briskly allows me to justify it as my workout. If I’m lazy, I just drive to Universal, park my car in the free lot (One of Metro’s best features. Let’s see how long it lasts), but that means I still have a short drive waiting for me at the end of the night or, if I’m really hammered, cabbing home and taking the bus back to get my car in the morning. This onerous task has got to be the eco-friendly, 21st Century version of the Walk of Shame.

In all my daring bus and rail adventures of late, a journey on the 218 is one I had been finding every excuse to avoid. In truth, it is the most direct Metro route between Sherman Oaks, where I live, and West Hollywood, where I’ve been told I drink. Something just told me that a bus and a winding canyon road was a bad combination. And a look at the arrival times at the Metro website confirmed that it was not a speedy journey–about an hour from Studio City to the end of the line at Cedars. But one night I bit the bullet, mainly for the purposes of being thorough for this story. Jumping off a perfectly good Rapid Bus at Laurel Canyon in order to sit on a bench outside the Walgreens to catch the day’s last 218 was like giving up a guaranteed seat on an airline flight for the chance to ride stand-by on a plane that gets me home an hour sooner–it could work out splendidly or all go horribly wrong. The result was somewhere in between.

As I stood on the corner, anxiously peering into the encroaching night for the familiar orange and grey paint job, I was hit with a realization. In all my years in Los Angeles, though countless car rides over that particular hill as a delivery driver, out-of-work actor, seething screenwriter and semi-comatose passenger, I could not once recall ever seeing one of LA’s lumbering buses negotiating the turns and sudden stops of Laurel Canyon Boulevard’s twisting mountain stretch. When a vehicle with the familiar MTA paint job and the numbers 218 illuminated about the driver’s window make a jerky left off of Ventura and stopped in front of me, I understood why. It’s not a bus at all. It’s a van–the large, people-moving kind that an airport Sheraton might’ve used to haul hardened business travelers to and from LAX for a decade until the squealing brakes, rattling windows and worn out seat cushions dictated that it was time to sell the thing for scrap metal, or dump it off the Redondo Beach Pier, or better yet, sell it to the MTA.

I took a seat in the row along the back. My two fellow riders plopped down on the seats running along the side windows. Turns out they knew more than I did, because four feet in front of me, with nothing like a seat belt, a handstrap to hang onto, or the slightest bit of padding to protect me, was a pair of chrome bars which encaged the spot where a wheelchair would be anchored. One bar ran floor to roof. The other was horizontal, about three feet off the ground. As we twisted up the canyon and started our descent into West Hollywood, I fought off visions every time the driver touched the brake of my flying forward and the horizontal bar catching my teeth so perfectly as to knock them out cleanly and permanently. Meanwhile the vertical bar seemed to be perfectly placed to catch me squarely in the balls. I finally changed seats somewhere near the Country Market, about two miles after I should have.

I haven’t been back on the 218 since. But the Red Line and I are still friends, in fact something romantic has even developed. Standing on the platform at Universal City, there’s a moment, about a minute before the lights of the approaching train peek from around the bend, when the train announces her arrival in a whisper of wind. The whisper is quickly a warm embrace and then blasting kiss over every inch of your body. The shot of air is the train telling you she’s almost there. If you’re on the stairs still coming into the station, and the wind is bellowing up from the platform, then you’d better hurry. She’s almost there and she won’t wait for long.

Posted by Aaron Black at 2:21 PM

For part 1, click here.

I returned to Los Angeles determined to continue my zealous use of public transportation that evolved during my two-month stint in San Francisco. But after falling in love with the Bay Area’s trusty, efficient system, coming home to LA felt like entering into an arranged marriage with someone I had never met but had only heard about through vague, disturbing rumors. The standard was high, my expectations low, and the reputation of the bus system I was about to investigate was worrisome, to say the least.

There’s been much written lately about the cost advantages of public transportation over skyrocketing fuel costs at the pump. The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and NPR have all done stories in the last few weeks about the influx of riders on various metropolitan bus and rail systems around the country. Indeed, gasoline costs, snarled traffic jams, extortionate parking and a general desire to green-ify one’s existence contribute to the push toward going Metro. Financially speaking, the difference is noticeable, but only by a few dollars. Taking the bus, and then the Red Line, to Hollywood for dinner costs me $2.50 one way, involves a one mile walk from my house, and takes about thirty minutes if I time it perfectly (which is possible, but not easy). And then there’s the $40 cab ride home, because no fucking way am I standing on a street corner at two in the morning, waiting for a slow-ass bus to take me almost home. I’m not insane, people. Conversely, driving costs me $4.00 in gas and approximately $10 for parking (unless I find some ninja street spot, which is getting harder and harder in resurgent Hollywood). This is a difference of about $30. But there is one other economic factor that throws any cost-risk analysis so heavily toward taking Metro that even a five year-old would arrive at the unavoidable conclusion of “Duh.” It is that a DUI, when you consider fines, penalties and legal fees, costs anywhere from ten to fifteen thousand dollars. Monthly bus pass, anyone?

MTA Chief Executive Officer, Roger Snobel.

My penchant for taking the Metro leaves most of my friends scratching their heads–”You lost your license, didn’t you?”–or at the least, mildly amused. “Well, aren’t you all green and shit.” I’ll admit, it’s been more of a game than anything else, a game most people I know think I’m an idiot for playing. If I were truly dependent on Metro, living where I do and having to get to the places I need to get to, relying entirely on Metro, I would step into the path of a Rapid Bus after the first week.

I am not a typical Metro user: I’m not a forty-something Latina, I work at home (on the couch, if you must know), I have two perfectly good cars with paid-up insurance sitting in my driveway, and I use the Metro system only at night. It is this last distinction that sets me most apart from those to whom the system is geared. It is also the thing that screws me the most. If you want to use Metro to avoid nightspot parking fees, enjoy worry-free drinking and the convenience of never having to remember where you left your car, the Metro system is not designed for you. But it should be.

Imagine the ad campaign: a handful of beautiful hipsters laughing and smiling their perfect American-Idol-white teeth as the Red Line hustles them into Hollywood for a night of drinking and being fabulous (not to mention economical, green and relatively un-hazardous to the health of others). Endless possibilities for ad slogans come to mind: Take a ride on the wild side, or Forget the valet line, try the Red Line, or my favorite, METROsexual has a whole new meaning. Indeed, with a little effort and a slight re-imagining of its target audience, The Metropolitan Transit Authority could make night-riding cool for the cool kids, or at least a diverting novelty for the Hiltonistas.

The end of the ad would show the alternative to taking Metro: One of our unsuspecting hipsters blowing a .12 into the Breathalyzer of one of LA’s or CHP’s finest, then spending the night downtown with the big boys at the County drunk tank before separate criminal and DMV costs and fines gobble up rent for the next year and a half. The ensuing suspended license would kill any chance of employment and make taking the Metro for twelve months an unavoidable certainly, instead of an occasional choice.

Unfortunately, taking the Metro requires more of a gamble than it should. There have been times when the decision absolutely left me high and dry–like the time I let 12:30 A.M. come and go (the last Red Line) and decided to hit up a friend’s after-party. By 3 o’clock we were all ready to go home. I was looking at a $50 cab ride and a wait of God knows how long for the cab to get to me. (Apparently I’m not the only one needing a ride at this hour.) We were in Hollywood and a friend offered to give me a lift, but only part of the way–he was reasonably sober, we agreed (very scientifically), but would certainly not pass a field sobriety test if pulled over. We compromised on his dropping me at the Barham freeway exit, where I could wait for the cab I was already calling and he could slink down the back of the hill into Burbank, where he lives. We got to Barham so quickly that I wasn’t even through being on hold with the taxi dispatcher before I found myself dumped unceremoniously in front of the flower stand at the top of Barham. Granted, my call was slowed by the fact that I could not understand why the first operator I called could not send a cab right away.

“Because I’m the 411 operator, sir. Would you like the number for a cab company?”

But in a true stroke of luck, a cab magically appeared while I was still holding. Even more amazing, the driver saw me and agreed to stop. I climbed in. The man turned around to look at my face. It was 3:30 A.M. on a Friday morning. He had found me standing on a corner at the top of a mountain without so much as a streetlight to deliver me from the darkness.

“What the hell happened to you?” he said.

“I got dropped,” I said.

“I’ll say.”

The third and final installment of this story will appear in few days.

Posted by Aaron Black at 1:20 PM

Public transportation, mystified.

While working on a film earlier this year, I spent two months living in downtown San Francisco. With my car sitting dormant back in Los Angeles, a paltry per diem of $60 and a nightly penchant for getting blindingly drunk with my coworkers, I quickly became a user, and before long a fully-green, civic-minded, tree-hugging advocate, of public transportation. San Francisco’s BART/Muni system has its problems, but it is relatively cheap (and a downright bargain compared to shelling out for cabs or parking), gets you where you need to be with a healthy, but not onerous, amount of walking and proves you can survive in a West Coast city without your own wheels.

Yet its efficiency is marred by a glaring, under-reported fact: San Francisco’s mass transit system, like that of Los Angeles, London and many other cities, is not aimed at visitors. It is for the locals. And that means navigating an often obtusely difficult and unwelcoming puzzle of regulations, ticket vending machines, city geography and coin hoarding in order to use the system effectively. It isn’t just that it’s difficult to learn the ins and outs, it’s that the difficulties are intentional. One gets the unavoidable feeling that the designers of the system are, as the English say, taking the piss.

Welcome!

My very first ride on the Muni subway brought down the hammer of bureaucracy and showcased publicly funded customer service in all of its odiferous splendor. Trying to get from Union Square to Civic Center Station, only two short stops away, I accidentally put a BART ticket into the Muni turnstile. As the ticket disappeared awkwardly and irretrievably into the slot, a middle-aged dragon lady arose from within the glass booth thirty feet away and bellowed at me through her squawk hole.

“Did you just put a BART ticket in there?!” Her contempt was so deep, so palpable her rage, it was as though I had launched a specific assault on her person with venal and malicious intent. I had no choice but to instantly fall into apologetic, plaintive culpability.

“Ma’am, I believe that I must’ve done just that.”

“Here’s a hint. If it says BART, it’s for BART. If it says Muni, it’s for Muni!” The fire from her throat nearly melted the defenseless microphone.

“I’m terribly sorry. It’s my first time riding your system. I don’t know the difference between the two.” She glared at me, not because I was some stupid yahoo tourist, which I was, but because I wouldn’t return even the slightest whiff of hostility–a phenomenon she clearly wasn’t used to. She huffed a bit, looked down at her computer, then complained some more.

“Oh, and the BART ticket cost more. You’ve gone and wasted fifty cents. Oh! Just..Just go on through.” She buzzed me through the gate without looking up. Score one for being nice.

I figured out the system relatively quickly, it is, after all, public transportation. But even after several rides there was always a groan that escaped my mouth at the most egregious junctures of ridiculousness. Here’s how a ride on the Muni subway from my hotel at Union Square to points elsewhere would work.

Step 1. While still at hotel, in fact, at every restaurant, liquor store and cashpoint of any kind: collect quarters! You’ll need six of them for subway or bus. On the subway, they don’t give change and they don’t take bills. If you have six quarters skip to step 5.

Step 2. Walk down the non-functioning escalator of the Powell St. station. Avoid countless individuals aggressively asking for spare change. Very few of them are able to break a twenty.

Step 3. Even though you are going to ride the Muni system, go directly to the BART ticket machine to get the required six quarters. There is no sign telling you to do this. You just have to know.

Step 4. Magically know that you have to hit Button “H”, which says “make change”. DO NOT put your two perfectly crisp, flat dollar bills (the only kind it will accept) in the machine BEFORE hitting Button H, as this will stop the whole transaction and cause deserved consternation from the line of antsy passengers already forming behind you.

Step 5. Take quarters from machine and proceed to the Muni side of station. Turnstiles await you. There is a slot for your quarters. Sometimes the slot is inexplicably sealed shut. If not, drop them in slowly, one at a time. Anything else brings a stalled transaction and wrath of said dragon lady.

Sound confusing? Try doing it after a round of Absinthe shooters with a bunch of twenty-two year-olds. Seriously, when did that paint thinner become legal again?

Others have tried to decipher the Muni system as well.

The whole quarter rigmarole can be avoided by purchasing a Fast Pass. This highly losable slip of paper costs $45 and is good for all public transportation within the city (no outlying areas), including the cable cars, but even the rules for buying this liberating little card are hindering and seemingly random. It is only good for that calendar month and can only be purchased from an official kiosk or Walgreens* starting the last five days of the previous month and up to the “first few days” (according to the website) of the month in which it is valid. Cash only. The pass itself is your receipt. Much like owning the Oyster card in London, however, nothing made me feel more like a knowing resident or saved more time than possessing one of those multi-colored bad boys.

Once you’re downstairs in the windowless, disorienting boarding area. There are two sets of tracks. If you look closely, buried between the advertisements are two small signs, one on each side of the concourse, that say Outbound and Inbound. You will have to know which one applies to you. (Seriously, outbound of what?) I’m staring at a Muni “map” as I write this and still can’t figure out the distinction. What is obvious to the local resident is inscrutable to the first-timer. That you understand that Muni trains end (or begin) at Embarcadero station and flow to the outer areas of the city is implicit, but far from obvious. Only when placed in the more accurate and to-scale map of the city do the terms outbound and inbound make sense in context of the peninsula that is San Francisco.

Once the train pulls up, you can’t see the sign anymore. And don’t look for help from the train itself. The train will be marked by a letter, and not a helpful one. “J” for instance is for Church. Okay, if you happen to know Church Street, that’s easy enough. But how about “N” for the Judah line, or “L” for Taraval? Taraval isn’t even the terminus of that train. The last stop is the San Francisco Zoo. How about calling it the “Z” line? Perhaps that would make it too comprehensible.

BART trains are even worse. There will be only one small identifying sign on the very front of the train near the driver. It will have only the name of a town such as Richmond, Millbrae, or Dublin/Pleasanton which is the terminus of that particular line. So if you don’t know in which directions these towns lie, you don’t know what train is meant for you. Thus, not only do you need to know which cardinal direction you want to go (reasonable enough), you have to know which little burg lies at the end of the line, even if you are only going a few stops to say, the Mission District.

But aside from that first-timer flummox, my riding history in San Francisco was reasonably quick. I even discovered one destination, the bank where I deposited my paychecks, that was best served by taking the cable car. More about spectacle and charm than convenience, the cable cars ARE for tourists, while the bus, street car and trains are for the locals. How can you tell? Price. One way on a cable car is a whopping $5 ($11 for all day), while other modes are less that $2.

And despite the little annoyances, I grew to love taking mass transit–so much so that when I returned to Los Angeles, I was determined to keep the habit alive–come hell or Hollywood Hills.

In the next installment of The Wreckoning, I leave the sportscar in the driveway, hop on the bus or Red Line and scoff drunkenly at the letters D – U – I.

* So the story goes. The concierge at my fancy hotel ensured me that a Fast Pass was easily purchased at “any” Walgreens. Yet when I went to my local Walgreens and asked the man behind the register for one, he looked at me like I was speaking Klingon. You can also buy a Fast Pass online via credit card and have it mailed to you, but only between the 10th and 22nd of the previous month. I kid you not.

Posted by Aaron Black at 8:14 AM

To read Part I, click here. But just to fill you in, I’m at a Lakers game with my friend, Jacob, and we’re both starving.

I have several friends who hold season tickets to the Lakers and every one of them now keeps only about ten games for himself, selling off the remaining thirty games at cost or, in the case of the Lakers being playoff-bound or facing a marquee opponent, for a tidy profit. When my friend Taylor used to take me to Lakers games, back in the Shaq glory days, we had a deal. In return for his extra floor seat, I would handle the driving and cover the food and drinks. Unfortunately for me, Taylor drinks like a soccer hooligan–one of the reasons we are friends, no doubt–so the bill for getting enough alcohol to get us both drunk and to wash down two orders of garlic fries would top out at around $100. I’m not sure how we arrived at this arrangement, but over time, the chance to go to a “free” Lakers game got too expensive. Once or twice, we stopped off at the liquor store on the way to the game and picked up a bottle of whiskey, but clandestinely spiking up our five-dollar Pepsis between our ankles amid the glare of the floor lights and the roving eye of the JumboTron proved more hassle than it was worth.

The only way to really motivate a Laker fan….free shit.

But on this night I smuggled in no outside treats. I was at the mercy of what the Staples Center had to offer. It was several minutes into the first quarter when Jacob emerged from his internal weed trance with an observation.

“There are a lot of strippers here,” he said flatly.

“No, those are the Laker Girls.”

At the first timeout or thereabouts, the lovely Laker Girls are sprung from their cages and flitter onto the court for the first of many high-energy routines carefully and lustfully crafted to keep us from having to stare at a staid clutch of very tall men in warm-ups huddled around another very tall man with a clipboard.

“Maybe they’re more like biker chicks,” Jacob said, amending his earlier observation. An aggressively unglamorous image of Dikes on Bikes from the Gay Pride Parade rumbled through my brain and mercifully exited. I gazed back at the court. In their shiny black short-shorts and matching, skin-tight tops, the sirens of the Staples Center were far hotter than any woman on the back of a motorcycle ever, but I saw his point. These ladies were exceptionally tarted up this evening. I looked around at my fellow Laker fans—affluent, apathetic and popping pieces of Staples-made California rolls into the mouths of their bored children and buxom second wives. These men were used to repressing the lower classes, not having sex with them. The Laker Girls represent the unattainable, the girls from the other side of the tracks, the dirty chicks you want to fuck backstage, but can’t bring home for Thanksgiving.

At a Clippers game, however, the entire model is reversed. The same seats cost half as much. The fans are blue collar and used to losing, just like their team. But their version of the Laker Girls, the wanly-named Clippers Spirit, also dress in the unattainable archetype–not black jeans and rocker skin-tight T-shirts–those girls live in the trailer next door. At Clippers games, the cheerleaders hit the court in cute little field hockey skirts, knee socks and tied-off white oxfords. No less hot, in that private school sort of way–and equally out of reach to the poor kid pumping gas at the Chevron.

Curiously though, even hilariously, there is something currently taking place at Lakers games that makes these affluent, apathetic fans lose their fucking minds. It is a promotion. If the Lakers win the game, but manage to hold their opponents to less than 100 points, all fans in attendance get…are you ready?…two free tacos! Make that a coupon for two free tacos–Jack-in-the-Box tacos, no less, the ones that are smaller than a harmonica and taste like fried packets of steer gristle. When it gets towards the end of the fourth quarter and the stipulations for the giveaway look like a possibility, you’d think the Lakers were about to win the championship. LA fans, notorious for passivity, coming late and leaving early, go absolutely bonkers at the prospect of two crappy tacos dangled in their faces. Not since Derek Fisher’s miracle three-pointer with .4 seconds to play have I heard rich people screaming with such enthusiasm.

Tacos, bitch!

The whole revelation depressed me and amused me at the same time. I looked at the game clock. Nearly four minutes remained in the first quarter of a tight game. My buzz was wearing off. I sucked down the last of my beer and let the foamy dregs slide back down the edge of the cup and thought about the food options available outside.

“I’m gonna get some food, what would you like?” I asked Jacob.

“I’ll come with you.”

We bounded down the aisle and were out at the concession stand before the horn sounded to resume the game. In the end, dinner was a couple of hot dogs.

“And maybe some peanuts,” Jacob asked. The woman brought a throw pillow of unshelled peanuts to the register and Jacob shuttered. “Never mind,” he said.

“What’s wrong?”

“There’s no where to put the shells.”

“Throw’em on the floor.”

Now you must understand, I have way too many Dodger games under my belt to even give a moment’s pause at leaving a thick carpet of husked peanut carcasses in my wake after a game.

“If they didn’t want you to throw them on the floor, they wouldn’t sell them in shells,” I continued.

Jacob just looked at me. He was trying his best to be one of the boys, but what I was suggesting was something straight out of a drunken pirates’ den. He had to draw the line somewhere.

We sat glued in our seats for the remainder of the game, munching hot dogs and stuffing our discarded shells into the sludgy foam of an empty beer cup.

It turned out to be one of the best Laker games I’ve ever seen. And one of the tidiest.

I wasn’t sure Jacob had enjoyed it that much, though. He cheered when everyone else did, but mostly just smiled and hunkered down in his seat, his knit ski cap pulled tightly down on his head. It wasn’t until we were back at the car, having B-lined past the crowds who haven’t yet learned how to negotiate their way around the new Nokia Center building next to Staples, that Jacob turned to me, true excitement in his eyes for the first time, and said, “So when are we coming back?”

Posted by Aaron Black at 8:26 PM

The quandary is one we can all relate to: what to do about dinner when you’re going to the Staples Center. It doesn’t matter who’s on the bill–Clippers, Kings, Streisand, Garth Brooks or women’s tennis (Oh, wait, the WTA moved that tournament to Spain because no one went to see it in LA)–the show starts at 7:30. That means getting yourself downtown through traffic that is comically awful six nights a week. The only clear sailing on the freeways is on holidays and Sunday nights, but if your tickets are for a sporting event, then the Sunday start time is more likely 3 or 5 P.M., when, cruelly, weekend traffic can be at its worst.

Nothing whets the appetite like this color combination of iguana green and slaughterhouse red.

Last week I dragged my friend, Jacob, to his first Lakers game. I say “dragged” not because seeing the Lakers is an unpleasant affair (unless they’re in one of their disjointed, sloppy-defense moods), but because, Jacob, like many of the folks your correspondent had dated since becoming single, isn’t sure why watching grown men throwing any type of ball around for any reason is compelling entertainment. But having initiated many a non-believer to the grace and drama of sports through patience and expertly-scalped tickets, I had no doubt the combination of beer, Kobe and Jack Nicholson–”Oh my God, that’s the back of his head!”–would make for a worthy spectacle.

Getting to the arena in time for, at best, the pre-game shoot-around, or, more realistically, just in time to snag a large Sierra Nevada from the beer kiosk as the national anthem starts and make it to my seats before the rockets red glare, means leaving the valley at 6:15. Because I am addicted to my iPhone and all its sleek, gleaming glory, I knew from Google Traffic (iPhone’s most underrated feature) that the Hollywood freeway was a solid line of red all the way to downtown. That meant busting out my patented, uber-stealthy 134 to the 2 to Alvarado to the alley behind Jack in the Box to Olympic Boulevard shortcut. (And I’ve left out a few steps in case you’re getting any ideas.)

We pulled into my top-secret, classified, I-refuse-to-pay-$10-ever free parking spot (again, don’t ask) at exactly 7:19, which gave us eleven minutes to smoke a joint, make out, walk four blocks to the arena, negotiate security and get to our seats. My default walking speed is something akin to that of a tweaker with stolen goods in his pockets, so we made it to the main gate with three minutes to spare. The lines to get through security always look intimidating, but in truth, move quickly. This is because the obligatory metal detectors are set so forgivingly low that Robocop himself would barely earn a pat-down. My own cell phone didn’t even set it off–and I was talking on it! From there it’s a straight shot from getting your ticket zapped by the scanner brigade to the myriad food and beverage choices that skirt the lower level.

But we were pressed for time. It wasn’t so much for my benefit; I wanted Jacob to have the full effect of Staples Center pageantry–from the darkened, strobe-lit introduction of, “Your Los Angeles Lakers,” to standing ten men deep in the line for the urinal. Fortunately, the evening’s Star Spangled Banner butcher was long-time LA Phantom and overwrought scenery-chewer Davis Gaines, who could, without breaking a sweat, unearth a staggering seven minutes out of “There once was a man from Nantucket…”

The seats I had bought from a friend were in the 200 level, which for the most part provides decent viewing of any sporting event and acceptable acoustics at concerts. The 300 level, so named because of its elevation above sea-level, sits high above three floors of skyboxes. Thus, viewing from up there is equivalent to watching a game from a seven-story window. Basketball and hockey are about as appealing as they would be watched on the screen of an iPod–well framed, but miniscule. For concerts, however, the upper section is a waste of money, unless hearing a muted version of a song that ended thirty seconds ago is your idea of a good time.

There is one and only advantage to the 300 level, the City View Grill. This outdoor patio concession area is the lone place in the building where you can purchase garlic fries–delicious, not too greasy, and when paired with a Jody Maroni sausage and a Red Hook beer, the best meal in the building. And that includes the “sumptuous spread” laid out in the suites, which I have also tried. Those buffets of chicken wings and macaroni salad manage to have that institutional feel, like you’re eating in a rehab facility or a Delta Crown Room.

A seasoned Stapler knows exactly how soon to bail out of his seat before halftime in order to beat the rush, for me it is with about ninety seconds remaining in the second quarter. That’s precisely enough time to catch the elevator (those giant, archaically slow escalators are strictly for the amateurs), order food and snag a choice table before the lines become impossible and the quest for seating becomes vulture-like. You also want to be done eating before the 87 remaining cigarette smokers in Los Angeles burst forth from the building and collectively exhale the purified air they’ve been forced to breathe for the last 24 minutes of court time. Technically outdoors, but walled on three sides, the patio gets smoky by the end of halftime, which is great news to those enjoying the other marvelous perk of the patio, the unofficial “stoners’ corner”, a poorly-lighted dead space wherein the medicinally-inclined can spark up a fatty, shielded behind a wall of cigarette smoke.

In Part II, I order something to eat and explain the biker chicks….Coming very soon.

You’d think the current strike by the Writers Guild of America against Hollywood’s Eight Biggest Assholes would’ve allowed me the time to double, even triple, my postings on the Wreckoning, but here I am having gone over a month since my last post and nothing to show for it but several half-written stories and a spam-filled inbox tirelessly offering second mortgages and fake Viagra under the guise of readers’ comments.

Out of the tremendous respect I hold for my hundreds of thousands of readers, I am compelled to offer an explanation. The reason for the absence is twofold. Two months ago, yours truly stood helplessly by as the cloud of domestic bliss that had hung thickly about the castle for the last five years blew away in the dry, deathly heat of the Santa Ana winds, leaving in its wake only the gutting, tear-stained revelation that love is, in fact, a chainsaw.

A broken heart and a dour Scotsman…A crippling combination.

A breakup is flawless in its ability to make the stupidest, sappiest love song elicit such a dam-break of tears that even the Ice Queen receptionist at the dentist’s office was so moved as to get out of her chair, come out into the waiting area and deposit into my lap a billowing mound of pink tissues. That, and I was upsetting the children.

What a breakup is not good at, in my case, is getting me to eat, much less write about something as trifling as eating out. I still had Thursday Dinner with the Gays as my weekly restaurant outing, but as my ex has always been part of those dinners, they just served as painful reminders of what had been destroyed.

So I’d stay home, where, under happier skies, I am an excellent and enthusiastic cook. But on many nights over the last two months, when even frying a pork chop seemed too daunting, I’d find myself sprawled across the couch, shoving down handfuls of undressed, triple-washed Ready Pac field greens straight from the bag while weeping through repeat viewings of Tell Me You Love Me.

The tears come in times like these and you learn there’s not a damn thing you can do to stop them, even when you or your friends are trying to do something to cheer you up. Enough weeks have passed since Aaron’s Legendary Sobbing Round of Golf for it to rightly become the punch line it deserves to be among a certain circle of my friends, but at the time, it was truly life’s nadir. “Wow, that guy’s game must’ve really hit the shitter,” came a voice from one passing foursome.

But over time, the storm clouds begin to part. The sun peeks out for longer and longer. My self-worth returned. I remembered I’m a rich, white American male and that’s not such a bad thing to be. I get a glimpse of myself in the mirror and realize that I’m a catch and a half. I’ve lost ten pounds, eight from my recently wash-boarded middle and two more from my overworked tear ducts. The crying jags have become the exception rather than the norm these days, provided I don’t see any film involving a wet, injured woman in war-torn Europe or hear even a snippet from any of eleven Snow Patrol songs.

The second reason for my absence is the writers’ strike itself. Even a spend-happy mogul such as myself is keeping a tighter grip on the wallet in these uncertain times. I recently had to scale back my assistant’s schedule from eighty-five hours a week to eighty hours a week. And I’ve forced myself, grudgingly, to switch from the 16-year-old Lagavulin to the 12-year-old Macallan as my go-to Scotch. We’re all feeling the crunch, but we’re in for the long haul.

In the meantime, I’m getting back out there. Now the Wreckoning becomes not only a place to sound off about the places where I eat and drink, but an examination of the children, train wrecks and emotionally-stunted monsters I bring along as my dates.

This should be fun. For you, at least. Thanks for not breaking up with me.

Posted by Aaron Black at 12:16 PM

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The Fox-ified American version of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares loses some of the soul of the original, but even the programming goons of Murdoch Inc. had enough good sense to preserve most of what was right about the show’s winning formula. Predictably, the sincerity of the BBC series is sacrificed in the name of forced dramatic fireworks, glitzier production value and sneaky product placement in the American counterpart.

The Fox incarnation is sticking so much to its own narrow ideal of what works and what doesn’t, that it’s in danger of becoming repetitive. We’re three episodes into the Fox series and have yet to get out of the state of New York. One of the dives, Dillons, is in midtown Manhattan while the other two, Peter’s and The Mixing Bowl, struggle like dying fish out on Long Island.

More specific, it doesn’t take Gordon (or anyone with half a brain forced to spend a week in these temples of dysfunction) long to suss out that the core and most debilitating problem with all three restaurants is a clueless, egotistical, emotionally stunted manager. Invariably, Ramsay discovers a manager who has little regard for the fact that his employer, the restaurant’s owner, is about to lose the business to creditors.

This man will ruin your restaurant.

These goombahs treat their bosses’ restaurants like their own personal social clubs – glad-handing customers, giving away a crippling amount of free food and ensuring that their own appetites are sated before worrying about the needs of anyone else. They show up when they feel like it, take cash directly from the till or, even more offensively, from hard-working servers. The weepy manager of The Mixing Bowl, Mike, after deducting half of a server’s tips to himself, has the audacity to tell her: “How much money would you be making if it weren’t for me?” The answer: a hell of a lot more than she’s making now, douche bag.

The reasons the restaurants were failing in the BBC version, while always having a few similar causes like over-ambitious menus and cuisine prepared too pretentiously for the locals, still showed a great deal of variation from one another. There was the one chef who was terrific until he starting drinking halfway through dinner service every night. There was the kitchen that couldn’t function properly because the owner, a true pack-rat, couldn’t bear to throw away any of his useless machinery or piles and piles of redundant tableware from his cluttered kitchen. Or there was Mamma Cherri, of Mamma Cherri’s Soul Food Shack in Brighton, who so micromanaged her kitchen that her chef did little more than reheat food cooked by Mamma days earlier.

The American show hasn’t found as many colors yet, perhaps because it is afraid to. The restaurants I’ve worked in over the years were seriously debilitated by things like cocaine in the stock room, employee theft and, in one case, a narcoleptic owner who was also a compulsive liar. Now that’s some good TV!

For their part, the restaurant owners bear much responsibility for letting things get so bad. Consistently, they are unconfrontational, myopic and stuck in the past. Gordon tries to get them to cut the dead weight, find their balls and kick some ass. Helping those who have lost confidence in themselves has always been the real reason Kitchen Nightmares is such a great show. It’s the Dr. Phil of dinner service.

There are two other unfortunate changes and one glaring omission in the American version that hurt the show noticeably. Almost always Gordon calls for a much needed face lift of the décor. In the British show, the entire staff–owners and managers on down to line cooks and busboys, closed the shop for the day, rolled up their sleeves and got busy with the paint brushes. There was something wonderfully Zen and democratic about the do-it-yourself nature of this. It was also the only way the cash-strapped BBC could make the remodeling happen. But for Fox, the staff goes home and overnight Gordon’s “Design Team” (a.k.a. art department) comes in and does a whirlwind professional makeover. The results of course are that the show gets the emotional value of the staff coming in the next morning to see their place of work transformed. The tears flow like cheap champagne.

And then there are the new kitchens. If any equipment was upgraded or replaced on the BBC show, the owners paid for it…as they should. But in the American world of product placement, the gang comes into work to find a brand new, state of the art kitchen waiting for them. It’s like Christmas morning forty minutes into every episode. The statement this makes about America can’t be ignored. There is no sweat, no sacrifice, no agonizing penny-pinching. There is only entitlement.

The effectiveness of Gordon Ramsay’s week in residence at the British restaurants is highlighted by his return a few weeks (or sometimes months) later to see if his improvements are still in play. Sometimes they are. Sometimes, the players have reverted to their former selves because people aren’t always capable of change. Old habits die hard. This too is what makes the show great. The American show doesn’t do this follow-up and it is a shame. Knowing that there’s a good chance that all of Gordon’s time, expertise and energy get slowly washed away adds an extra level of drama to the proceedings–a lot more drama than, say, the Fox solution of bringing in an angry “bill collector” (mobster) just before dinner rush to stir up problems (and incite a fist fight on the sidewalk) as the case at Peter’s.

I will keep watching. The show has already been picked up for a second season. Let’s hope the producers let the gloriously self-destructive act of running a restaurant implode on its own without too much meddling.

Kitchen Nightmares: Fox Network, Wednesdays at 9, or it could be 8–I’m not sure. I Tivo the fucker.

How Eating at The Water Grill Saved Me $800.

I recently received my first paycheck for writing this column, so as a result, haven’t been able to eat out much. I thought it a fine time to dust off a few choice stories that twenty years of eating out in Los Angeles have produced. Here is one that holds up better than a Craftsman claw hammer.

A few years ago, a group of us–two couples and a single guy–decided to dress ourselves up and have a terribly civilized meal at a classy place none of us had tried. After some brief research, the winner was The Water Grill, chef David LeFevre’s highly-regarded seafood restaurant located in the heart of downtown.

The Water Grill. (Lobster not to scale)

I made the reservation under my own name for a mid-week evening in late spring. When Peter and I arrived, I gave my name to the host, who directed us to the bar where two of our party, David and his wife, Monica, were half-way through their Chardonnay in an otherwise empty bar.

The sun was still up. An off-night at the Staples Center down the street meant that bookings were light and the staff of The Water Grill were able to give us their undivided attention. As I ordered our cocktails, the bartender nodded to me, but not just the polite nod of a courteous professional toward a stranger. This was a knowing nod, a nod that said I was a man to be respected and he knew it and he wanted me to know that he knew it. It was so quick and so subtle, I thought it my imagination. I needed a drink. Regardless of traffic, a drive downtown at rush hour is always taxing, so the Stolichnaya slid itself down my throat like a homecoming.

We waited for our straggler, my occasional friend, Simon, a British import whose uncontrollable shiftiness, horrible socks and pretentious musings are not even his most irritating character traits. That honor goes to his smug, condescending opinions on fine food and drink. A few years ago, Simon decided, seemingly overnight, that he was the grandest of epicureans. When I once told him that I had been underwhelmed by a restaurant he had tediously raved about, he said, quite famously, that I “must have ordered wrong.” Needless to say, I can effortlessly go months without missing his company. He is, however, despite all his buffoonery, a friend, so when he somehow had gotten wind of our Water Grill outing, he grumbled until I relented to inviting him.

Simon trundled in ten minutes late and instantly found a way to teeter between being on charmingly good form with my friends and annoyingly high-status with the staff. He pressed the bartender about which Pinot Noir varietals were on hand from the Santa Ynez Valley–a region Simon proclaims to be “rigorously” familiar with. Satisfied with the bartender’s ability to understand phrases like fruit forward, he allowed the man to pour him a glass. Thank God our table was ready.

As I tried to close out the bar tab, the bartender gave me the knowing nod again. This time there was no mistaking it. The vodka had done its job; I could see clearly.

“Don’t worry about it, Mr. Schlemmel,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

The man looked at me, a bit of uncertainty in his eyes for the first time. “You’re Mr. Schlemmel?”

“No.”

I am many things. A Schlemmel is not one of them. I was flattered he had tried to address me by name, but he got the name wrong, way wrong. He wasn’t even on the right continent.

“But you’re friends with him, no?”

The manager must’ve seen me tapping my credit card on the counter, because he walked over. “Sir, go ahead and have a seat, we’ve got your drinks covered.”

I had just been bought a round of drinks–expensive drinks–at a non-gay restaurant I’d never been to for seemingly no reason. Let’s see, that’s happened exactly…never. But what a classy move, I thought. This guy could tell we had come down here to spend some serious money so why not show his gratitude ahead of time? We were potentially great long-term customers. It was an impressive display of forethought.

We all sat down at a choice table and started at the menu. I informed Simon right away that I would be needing no help with my ordering, but he still took charge of the wine list. I didn’t mind. It occupied him completely while the rest of us caught up on conversation. The wine steward was summoned (by the only one of us who would ever “summon” anyone). Simon finally agreed to a Pinot in the $60 range, perhaps remembering, grudgingly, that although I invited him, I was not treating.

Halfway through the meal–which I’m sure was excellent; I can’t really remember–Simon ordered a second bottle, a heavy red this time. For some reason he skipped the tasting part, instructing the waiter to “Go ahead and pour,” like it were some capricious decree from a power-drunk despot. “No hangings today! More wine!”

Simon rattled on through some ludicrous story as Monica and I each took a taste of the new red. We looked at each other. Not bad, we thought–tangy, but not bad. Simon took a break from his story to grab a quick sip and his face imploded.

He beckoned for the wine steward officiously. “It’s gone off, I’m afraid,” Simon pronounced. The steward poured himself a tiny swallow, gulped it, frowned, and promptly whisked the offending bottle and all tainted glasses away without a moment’s pause. Simon gloated, as every snob’s wet dream had just come true–detecting a bad bottle of wine and being proved right.

The occasional off bottle is no reason to crucify a restaurant. Wines go bad all the time. If it happens repeatedly, then there is either a problem with storage or supply. But the steward’s face and the speed with which he produced a suitable replacement told me that this particular incident was an aberration.

The management and staff were winning me over in spades with their professionalism, helpfulness and accommodation, but nothing prepared me for what happened next. We sat there, fat and happy after dessert, and leisurely asked the waiter for the bill. He informed us with a smile that we were all the restaurant’s guests that night.

After a few seconds I quietly lifted my jaw from the table. Comped. The whole meal. Two bottles of wine, five starters, five entrees, a few desserts–we were looking at a bill well north of $600. There were some gasps of protest from some in our group, possibly from, but not limited to, myself.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“We want to. It’s our pleasure.”

“Well…wow…thank you very much.”

The waiter walked away and let the initial shock dissipate. David and I quickly whipped out some cash and stuffed an enormous tip into the leather folder sitting empty on the table. And then it was time to go…before the restaurant changed its mind.

On the drive home, Peter and I tried to piece it together. My first thought was that Simon had pulled some stunt–complaining to the manager about the “grievous offense” of a “rancid” bottle of wine. But Simon had never left the table. It just didn’t fit. When a restaurant makes a mistake, even a big one, or wants to impress some newcomers, free desserts usually do the trick. No, this was a big chunk of change. The whole Schlemmel confusion came to mind. But by now they had surely figured out that I was not, nor was I friends with, the mysterious Mr. Schlemmel.

Over the next few days, the free meal ate at me. It ate at Peter too. Instead of feeling like we had gotten a free gift, we felt like we had found a wallet that didn’t belong to us. We decided to clear our conscience. What better way to return a restaurant’s kind (if unnecessary) gesture than with decadent patronage?

Peter and I decided to go back to the Water Grill and spend like Rockefellers. I made a reservation for the two of us, again in my own name, for the following week. The night arrived and again we were greeted with a kind, grateful welcome from the host. He sat us at a prime corner table. We had both skipped lunch because we had serious, guilt-abolishing work ahead of us. I selected an $80 bottle of wine right off the bat. The array of starters came, followed by my steak and Peter’s grilled lobster. We were stuffed at dessert time but ordered two of them anyway. Dessert wine? I had a lovely 12 year-old tawny port. Peter had the Moscato.

Never had I been so excited to receive a bill. My credit card practically jumped from my wallet as the waiter approached smilingly and said, “Was everything all right?”

“Everything was wonderful,” I said.

“Good, because Mr. Schlemmel is picking up your bill tonight.”

The words hung in the air like cigar smoke. What bizzaro-world had I walked into? I combed the restaurant to make sure I was still in the city of cell phones, bare midriffs and self-absorption. Yep, I’m still in Los Angeles, where the only thing you can count on after a night on the town is the arrival of the reckoning. And that was now asunder.

“There must be some mistake. He doesn’t have to do that,” I said.

The waiter seemed puzzled as we protested. Finally, he got annoyed.

“I’m going to check in the computer. But if it says your meal is free, then your meal is free. And that’s the end of it.” His tone was bordering on aggressive as he stomped away.

Peter and I looked at each other in disbelief. The manager approached our table a minute later.

“You’re friends with Mr. Schlemmel, yes?”

And here is where I paused. I did not blurt out an emphatic “No.” I did not throw down my credit card and demand to pay and say, “I am not leaving this table until you have charged me for the entirety of this meal!”

What I said was: “Not really.”

It was that “really” that condemns me to hell. The manager smiled, as if I was just downplaying my relationship with the famous Mr. Schlemmel. He set down the folder on the table and asked me to initial the credit card slip, but not on the payment line. That was already filled in by Sam King.

Sam King, I have since learned, is the seafood maven of Orange County. He is also the owner of the Water Grill. I dutifully did as I was told and initialed the bill. At least I had tried, I thought to myself.

In the days that followed, Peter and I did our best to formulate an explanation. As best we could figure it, some dude named Schlemmel is either a big spender or a crony of the owner, Sam King, or both. Clearly he’s got enough juice to have a charge account at one of the more expensive restaurants in town–a phenomenon so anachronistic it feels ripped from a gangster movie. Somehow, someone made an association, erroneously, that I knew him or he knew me when I made the initial reservation and entered some type of footnote into the restaurant’s computer system–something like, Aaron Black: bill to Schlemmel account.

This would explain why the association with my name and his existed on our return visit. As it turns out, Peter and I got it pretty much right.

Cut to two months later. I was sitting at my desk when I received a call from an accounts payable officer at King Seafood in Orange County. The very polite woman had a question about a very large bill from the Water Grill. She was calling about the first bill, the party of five.

“Mr. Black. I’ve just spoken to Mr. Schlemmel and, well….He doesn’t know you.”

“No kidding!” I explained everything to her, just as it happened, but at this point, felt completely exonerated. I knew Schlemmel wouldn’t have to pay; the restaurant would eat it. It was their fault. But she gave it a shot.

“I just don’t know how to bill this,” she said.

“Ma’am, that sounds like something you need to take up with the Water Grill. Someone there clearly made an overzealous assumption, but I can’t be expected to track down everyone I was at dinner with and get them to pay for a meal from two months ago.”

It didn’t take long for her to realize that I was right. And no call ever came about the second bill. I’ve been to the Water Grill a few times since, but always under someone else’s reservation. If I were to go back on my own I know just what I’d say.

“Dick Schlemmel, party of six. We’ll start with a couple of lobsters.”

The Water Grill. 544 S. Grand Ave, Los Angeles. Excellent seafood. Even better prices–if you’re V.I.P. or F.O.S. (Friend of Schlemmel).

(Read Part 1 here.)

The heavy, immovable stanchions are meant to control the unruly crowds and funnel them up to the door, where heavy, immovable doormen pat them down, scan them through metal detectors and inspect, rub and verify every driver’s license with the humorless suspicion that each one card is probably a fake. Security like this must be for an event with a notoriously bad reputation. Perhaps this is a troublesome nightclub in Fort Lauderdale or South Padre Island during those insane two weeks known as spring break. Or maybe it’s the swamped VIP tent at the Coachella Music Festival–where the prospects of air conditioning and alcohol are enough to get even the emo boys to start throwing elbows. It could be the House of Blues, where an east vs. west thunderstorm is brewing because tonight’s lineup is a double bill of The Game and 50 Cent, and neither man is going on stage first. Or maybe it’s Saint Patrick’s Day, when everyone is Irish, drunk and gearing for a dust-up. But the truth behind this near prison lock-down is something much more puzzling. We’re outside Saddle Ranch Chop House at Universal City’s Citywalk. It’s a Tuesday night. And the place is a ghost town.

The phenomenon is something I call the siege mentality–whereby a club, or concert venue, or theme park, or middle school prepares itself for a riot that never materializes. The security men working the door at Saddle Ranch–and there were at least a dozen on this very dead night–are a menacing bunch. With bright yellow windbreakers usually worn by men protecting the stage at the Staples Center, covering bodies that usually protect quarterbacks, they are also impossible to miss. But Saddle Ranch has taken a step to soften their appearance. Written across the back of these yellow jackets, without a hint of irony, is the word “Host.”

It’s as if by calling them hosts, instead of security (or, God forbid, bouncers), the true purpose of these men is more palatable. The New York Police Department, at the height of its thuggish, smack-down era in the 80s, tried a similar move with powder blue police cars. The public wasn’t fooled that time either.

Host, huh? Something tells me he’s not taking a reservation for Sunday brunch.

I asked myself, what could be going on inside that building to warrant TSA-like security measures. TSA is not an exaggerated comparison, right down to the no-liquids rule. Try sneaking into Saddle Ranch with a bottle of water you bought elsewhere.

Once I’d been carded, frisked, and magnetized, I was allowed to enter. Saddle Ranch has an enormous amount of square footage, yet every time I go I feel instantly cramped. Being herded like cattle just to get inside doesn’t help any and there is really no good place to stand without being in someone’s way. Tables are hard to come by. The bar is nearly inaccessible and always sopping wet, which, considering it is the backbone of their revenue, is really a problem that should be addressed. Ubiquitous TV screens assault you at every turn as do packs of stumbling, shrieking girls, most of whose bare, unfortunate midriffs seem quite familiar with chop house cuisine.

Marty wandered off to find seats while I tended to the drinks. I considered the small, beer-only bar outside, but then saw that the bottles of Heineken were poured into plastic cups. I don’t mind coffee in a paper cup, but beer, wine and cocktails have got to be in glass. (Straight out of the bottle is perfectly fine.) I showed my ID yet again and ordered a beer for myself and another for Marty, who had snagged an empty (and filthy) table in the corner.

“Who’s the second beer for?” the woman behind the bar asked.

“My friend,” I said instinctively. The idea to say, “None of your fucking business,” didn’t come until a few seconds later.

“Where is your friend?” she asked pointedly.

“Sitting at a table.”

“I have to see him before I can release the beer.”

Release the beer, by the way. I tried not to get indignant–too many “hosts” lumbering by–and went for reason instead. “He is sitting at a table in the corner. You can’t see him because there’s a huge post in the way, but I assure you he’s there.”

“I have to see him to make sure he’s old enough to drink. We could get shut down.”

Okay, whenever an employee uses some dramatic phrase like “We could get shut down,” or “I could get fired,” or “That’s our policy,” they are lying–unless you were trying to snort a few rails off the bar or to top your high school beeramid record. Responses like that come from laziness and contempt for customers. I know. I used to say them.

My heart rate quickened. The pitch and volume of my voice rose noticeably. It was starting to happen: the unavoidable stare-down with idiocy that seems to find me every time I go to Citywalk.

“If he comes over here, we’ll lose our table.”

“Then go over there and have him stand up so I can see him,” she said.

The thing about stupidity–it’s unbeatable. It can’t be swayed by negotiation and is impervious to reason. “Terrific system,” I said, and stormed off toward our table. A few seconds later, the bartender saw Marty, all forty years of him, emerge from behind a column like a six-foot-two, red-headed sock puppet.

Still, she had the nerve to be skeptical of his legality, but grudgingly released the beers by taking my money and walking away. I snatched the glasses off the counter. They were plastic.

More contempt. Plastic cups, posing as glass, sends one of two messages to you, the patron: either you are too much of an imbecile to keep from breaking your glass and thus cutting yourself, or you are too much of an imbecile to keep from breaking your glass over the skull of the asshole next to you. In both cases the message is, “We don’t trust you.”

This lack of trust at The Scrappiest Place on Earth is not limited to Saddle Ranch. Most employees at Citywalk’s myriad businesses seem to believe that every patron is there to hassle them, steal from them or generally serve up some form of abuse. So the employees strike first. Survival of the fittest.

One night about a year ago, I was yet again with Marty (about the only guy on the planet who can put enough spin on a night at Citywalk to get me to join him). We were listening to some horrendous live music at B.B. King’s Blues Club & Grill. It was one of those pay-to-play showcases, whereby club owners pad their dead, mid-week nights by unconscionably extracting as much as $50 from desperate, deluded musicians for twenty minutes in front of a microphone and a dozen friends and mothers. Some acquaintance of Marty was on the bill.

I got there first because Marty decided to be green (or a drunk) by taking public transportation. On paper, a trip to Citywalk via the MTA’s Red Line looks attractive; it’s only a five-minute ride from Hollywood and the Universal City train station is right there at the bottom of the hill–the very bottom. What doesn’t come across from the website or train schedule is the half mile hike at a forty-five degree incline that awaits you after you step off the train.

Last week, while researching this story, I had to swerve to avoid a drunk man who stumbled off the sidewalk and into the road as he was coming down the hill from Citywalk. It’s a serious climb. Needless to say Marty was winded and sweating like a hooker when he finally made it to B.B. King’s.

The thick, plexiglass ticket window at B.B. King’s is siege mentality gone amok. It’s about as necessary as a Hummer in Manhattan. The chilly, apathetic woman behind the counter asked me which performer I was here to see.

“Does it really matter?” I asked.

Apparently, it did. Some rigorous head-counting affects which acts will be invited back and so forth. How that is my problem, I fail to see. I told her I had no idea of the guy’s name. It turns out “Marty’s friend” wasn’t a sufficient answer. There I was, willing to break my no-cover-charge-ever-ever-ever rule, to hear some loser I didn’t know play some God-awful music at 8 P.M. on a Wednesday in August in a cavernous club that was completely dead. And still, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to sell me a ticket. Get over yourselves, people. I had to promise–and I’m serious here–that I’d be eating and drinking enough to forgive my offense of not knowing the name of the douche bag taking the stage in about an hour.

After ninety minutes of plastic-wrapped Heineken, leaden quesadillas and tedious caterwauling, Marty and I were more than ready to be done with Citywalk. We were a few steps out the door when Marty realized he’d left his backpack inside.

I sat down to wait for him at a deserted patio a few yards down. There were some empty metal chairs and a bar to my left. A bartender stood there idly. After five minutes Marty came out with his bag. He sat down across from me. We were still trapped in the perturbing confines of Citywalk but at least were free of the cacophony of B.B. King’s. It was a comparative moment of calm.

Until a voice seething with forced affability turned our heads. The guy smiled broadly, too broadly. I can spot a restaurant manager a hundred yards out. It’s in the walk, a walk that says “I’m not a waiter anymore, mister. Look at these keys!” This kid was twenty-five at the most and had the Gap khakis to prove it.

“Hey guys, how’s it going?” There was something in his tone that screamed security breach. We were clearly in violation of some rule and were now going to hear about it.

“Great,” I lied.

“Great night, huh? Hey listen, I’m gonna need you guys to go see my doormen over there and get a security stamp. Gotta make sure you’re old enough to be in here.”

I turned around to look. Until that moment, I didn’t realize I was in the providence of another establishment. It turns out that what I thought was an all-purpose rest area, was in fact the dining patio of a saccharine, woefully ill-conceived venture called Howl at the Moon, whose gimmicky centerpiece is a pair of grand pianos, from which dueling crooners delight the surrounding patrons with an encyclopedic repertoire of pop tunes and impossible-to-ignore sing-alongs. At the moment, however, both pianists were on break, business was thin and aside from the lonely bartender and Mr. Junior Manager, not a sole was on the patio except for us. Two bored doormen stood at the front entrance forty yards away.

We stayed put and started to bust out our IDs, but Junior stopped us. “No, no. I can’t check your IDs, only my security guys can do that.” His use of “my” was beyond ridiculous, but I was still coming out of my post-B.B.’s daze–too exhausted to even think coherently.

“Uh, we’re not staying, I don’t think,” I looked at Marty, who nodded forcibly. “We’re just catching our breath.”

“Yeah, I’m still gonna need you to go see my door guys.”

And that was it. I was off. “Let me get this straight. You’re a manager and you can’t check out IDs? You want us to get up, walk all the way over there…”

Marty was already rising, on his face was a singularity of purpose–to get me out of there. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

Junior Manager changed. I had just become someone who had to be “dealt with”. All at once the ‘roided out pleasantness vaporized and his true colors emerged. Moreover, so did mine. I was now the kind of screaming asshole he was used to. “No, I am not fucking with you!” he began. But before he could finish, and before he could summon his door guys to escort me down the escalator head-first, Marty bustled me out of there.

Despite a wide, but insipid ad campaign–Way more NEW. Way MORE to do!–and a desire to be family-friendly, Citywalk hasn’t done much to shed its thuggish image. The crappy old retail outlets have been replaced by a wave of crappy new ones. Nothing of importance or value is on sale. It’s all useless, ephemeral tat and street-punk eye candy. Is there anything more fleeting than oxygen? The O2 bar at Zen Bar will hook you up. An Apple Store, you ask? There isn’t enough security in the world.

The closest you’ll find to high-end apparel is an Abercrombie & Fitch. All other clothing stores at Citywalk are slinging skater or gangsta wear. There’s even a place selling nothing but Raiders gear–and it’s no hold-over from the L.A. Raider years, this place is relatively new.

Embracing the sports franchise with the most belligerent, confrontational and rude fans in all of sports is a coming-out party for Citywalk. This is who we are. These are the people we are here to service. I say you’re welcome to it, Citywalk. Enjoy!

Universal City’s Citywalk: just off the 101 freeway and around the corner from Hell. A knife-fight waiting to happen. A great place to buy popcorn, magnets, buffalo wings and other essentials. The only thing more perilous than parking there is arriving on public transportation. Proceed with extreme caution.

I wasn’t looking for trouble. I never am. I am rarely confrontational and never physically so. But at Citywalk, trouble has a way of tracking me down. My intentions for the night were entirely wholesome, even innocent. I wanted to see the new Pixar movie, Ratatouille, so that I could write about it for this column. A quick study of the day’s show times reminded me that in greater Los Angeles, Disney allows its films to be shown only at Hollywood’s El Capitan, which it owns, and at assorted AMC or Pacific theaters that don’t cut into El Capitan’s business. Apparently, Universal City’s Citywalk is one of those. With its assaultive neon signs, cartoonish chain restaurants and thuggish clientele, it’s a venue I’ve never enjoyed very much. But a new billboard near my house bragged that Citywalk was now better than ever, with Way more NEW. Way MORE to do! as the ad claimed. The time seemed right to give the place another chance. It’s not like I’m a gangbanger. I don’t seek out fights or even arguments. But what can I tell you?

Citywalk brings it out in me. It seems to bring it out in a lot of people. If Disneyland is known as The Happiest Place on Earth, then Citywalk, surely, is A Place to Scrap.

Citywalk at Universal City. Gotta get my stab on…

So on this night a week ago, I was determined that I was going to get in and out of Citywalk for the first time in years without so much as raising my voice, much less my heart rate, my ire, or my boiling hatred of authoritative stupidity.

If there was a defining moment that gave Citywalk its shady reputation and let troublemakers know that this was the place to be, it was in 1991, before Citywalk was even open (that happened in 1993). Back then, the hilltop overlooking Universal Studios boasted only two hotels, Universal Amphitheater, the theme park and the Cineplex Odeon megaplex (at the time, the largest in the country). The film Boyz N the Hood came out, and on its opening weekend, a gang-related scuffle erupted in one of the theaters. Gunfire and panic sent the patrons running for the street. I know. I was there.

Well, not in the theater. I was living in Hollywood at the time. My roommate and I, broke and with nothing to do, heard about the melee on TV and decided to drive five minutes up the 101 and check it out. All the roads up the hill were blocked by police. But we were undeterred. Getting up that mountain and witnessing some “serious cop shit” became our goal. We slipped into “Commando mode” just like we were fourteen again, terrorizing the neighborhood with bottle rockets. I distinctly remember at one point squatting low and scurrying up a downward moving escalator. We reached the top undetected and made it into the Cineplex building where the last of the moviegoers were leaving their theaters and finding the world’s largest megaplex bizarrely empty. Only the Boyz theater had been evacuated, so they had no idea anything had happened.

My roommate found a man who looked in charge–he was in a tie–and plied him for information.

“Excuse me, sir. Some friends of ours were seeing a film here tonight and we wanted to make sure they were all right.”

“Let me ask you this,” the manager began, his eyes bleary from a rough night. “Are your friends gang members?” My roommate shook his head. “Then your friends are fine.”

And so was ushered in a new era in thuggery, or at least a new venue. Westwood, long the local epicenter of weekend shoving and chest-bumping, had lost its appeal as the place to cruise for a fight. I remember a night in Westwood, back in ‘89, when a car full of menacing young black men lowered a tinted window and asked ominously, “Hey kid, where the skinheads at?” I blurted out that I hadn’t seen any and fought off the urge to wet myself, grateful that my Midwestern mullet had just saved my ass.

Universal has its own security guards. But those wide-brimmed Dudley Do-Rights are more ornamental than functional. They are also unarmed, putting them at a severe disadvantage. Real security is subcontracted to the Los Angeles Country Sheriff’s Department. Shortly after the Boyz N the Hood fiasco, the Sheriff’s department realized the need for a permanent sub-station up at Universal. The special detail assigned to patrol the area operated out of a trailer until a permanent office, complete with holding cell, was opened in 1993. While assaults, weapons charges, and other violent crimes are the main focus, there are plenty of lesser offenses to keep the guys in green busy too. Theft is always a problem. Cars get broken into, purses and wallets disappear and stores get shoplifted.

But with so many overpriced stores filled with garish, useless merchandise, what is there really worth stealing at Citywalk? Imagine getting tossed into Universal’s mini-jail for shoplifting from Magnet Max. If that doesn’t get you kicked out of the 18th St. Posse or the Rollin’ 20s, I don’t know what will.

Meet me at Popcornopolis, yo!

Of course gangs are a problem, but let’s be realistic. The odds of getting capped in a gang shootout at Citywalk are pretty slim. Most of the people who go there are not criminals. There are tons of families, couples on dates, and countless children frolicking in that stupid fountain every night of the week. The Boyz N the Hood shootings were sixteen years ago. But just the possibility of violence, no matter how remote, tends to get everyone’s guard up.

The parking garage especially sees its share of dust-ups. The structure itself is not terribly well designed, which is part of the problem. And after you’ve shelled out ten bucks for parking you’re already amped up enough to lay on the horn at the first asshole in a Hummer H3 who clogs up the traffic flow waiting for a mother to load two kids and a double-wide stroller into her car so he can take up two spots near the escalator. It’s all about you, isn’t it, buddy? At least turn your goddamn turn signal on so we don’t think you’re dead up there ’cause that would break my fucking heart! You see? There I go. There’s just something about that place.

One night in ‘95 my friend Mark and I went to a concert at the Universal Amphitheater, which shares the parking garage with Citywalk. As we were waiting in the line of cars to exit the garage after the show, a woman tried aggressively to cut in front of us. Mark honked at her and edged forward to keep her out–a dick move, sure, but she had it coming. The woman slammed on her horn and yelled something through her open window.

My friend’s response was a pure dose of knee-jerk, schoolyard nastiness. “Shut up, you four-eyed bitch!”

Her surfer boyfriend was out of her car instantaneously and flip-flopping his way over to us with the single purpose of scraping Mark’s face across the pavement. Mark instinctively reached onto the floor of the back seat for his “car weapon,” a baseball bat.

For the record: unless you plan to get out of the car and do some damage with the bat, a full-sized Louisville Slugger is a terrible choice of car weapon, because swinging it within the enclosed confines of a Dodge Omni is a geometrical impossibility. Mark got the bat as far as the window when the guy grabbed it. There they were, both gripping the bat, but not much more. Keep in mind, we weren’t coming from a Snoop Dog concert or a Metallica gig. It was a Counting Crows show. I sensed the chance to dissipate the situation.

“It’s over, dude, just let it go.” And he did. He had made his point. He couldn’t just sit by and let his woman get disrespected like that; he had to at least make a show of it. But neither man really wanted to kill someone, which, despite what you see in the movies, is what a baseball bat does to you.

It’s true that a lot of the people who frequent Citywalk are people you wouldn’t let into your home. These are the same people who made going to Raiders games at the Coliseum some of the most frightening experiences of my life. But for the most part, the sensible patron of Citywalk knows whom to avoid and whom not to pick a fight with. But there are those folks who have to deal with the troublemakers–the employees. And they have been poisoned by the hostile environment.

In fact, most of my run-ins at Citywalk have not been with visitors, but with employees. In Part II, we’ll look at how a “siege-mentality” ruins things for everyone else. In the meantime, if you find yourself at the Scrappiest Place on Earth, keep your eyes down, your mouth shut, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll survive brunch at Bubba Gump Shrimp Company without getting knifed.

To Be Continued…