Do You Have a Pen: The Greater Los Angeles Area

The Greater Los Angeles Area

My first trip to California was to Los Angeles and I loved it.  I didn’t realize it at first how good I felt in the atmosphere there but it was just amazing.  I had to take a truck to Norwalk,  California which is part of the greater  L. A. Metro area,  though it’s a city of its own.  I walked up on the loading dock to get a signature that the truck was delivered and I jumped off the loading dock to get back to the front of my truck.  The dock is three or three and a half feet,  but my knees hurt so often that I haven’t jumped from something of that height in at least fifteen years.  My point is,  I felt fine.  The atmosphere out there is just healing and I felt alive.  Things that I’m used to having hurt weren’t hurting at all.  Let’s pause there so I can explain,  I’m not old.  The things that hurt on a regular basis are from me doing things that injured them and things just hurt.  Out there,  they don’t and this is true of all of Southern California for me. 

While in Norwalk,  my friend Robert and I had a flight to catch at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX),  so we went to dinner first at a Korean chicken place named Doctor Chicken.  While at dinner,  Robert gets an email maybe ten minutes before we’d be ready to leave and there was a considerable amount of swearing at his phone.  Our flight was canceled.  So we booked a new flight late the next morning and found a Motel 6 so we could use our five percent discount from work so we saved two dollars each since we just got a double room.  Walking through the courtyard, the entire motel smelled like weed.  Whatever.  It’s California.  After that we got to the room.  He wanted to talk to his girlfriend via Skype and I needed a drink or two so I dropped off my stuff and decided to see what I could find.  At worst there was a convenience store next door that sold some type of alcohol so I’d be ok.  I asked the front desk clerk if there were any bars in walking distance and he said there were not.  It’s not that he lied to me.  L.A.  is a car culture.  Those people will drive to their own mailbox at the end of the driveway.  I went for a walk if nothing else and figured a route that looked like a place one would find a bar.  I walked past a mobile home park that actually made me consider wanting to live in a trailer.  Three-quarters of a mile away,  I heard loud unedited hip-hop music and saw a blue neon sign that read  “cocktails.”  Well,  I was either gonna have a good time or get knifed.  I walked in and the bouncer greeted me.  I had no clue what to expect of the place when I walked to the door.  The bouncer was the only white guy in the place besides me and the women were equally mixed black,  Hispanic,  and Asian with maybe two white ones in the crowd,  all wearing little enough to be mistaken for sex workers,  so my eyes,  ears,  and something else all perked up.  I’m loving this place already and haven’t even ordered a drink yet.  So I ordered a Long Island.  I wasn’t sure what to expect on price since Indiana is statistically the cheapest state to drink in and we all hear about the cost of living in California.  The Long Island was eight dollars and I’m used to six at home,  so whatever.  That was no big deal. The beautiful bartender spoke almost no English and had a thick,  sexy Mexican accent that I could have gotten lost in.  She may have never made a Long Island before.  She poured in the alcohol and had almost no room left for the sour mix or Coke.  After a few good sips,  it tasted just fine so whatever.  I was tipsy after just the one.  After the being stranded overnight,  I was having a bad day and that helped.  The bartender,  to prove to a customer she wasn’t wearing underwear,  bent down to get something off the bottom shelf and you could see Heaven between her thighs.  Now my night is good!  I even thanked her halfway through my second drink for making my night that much better.  Now I’m in a good mood.  This may be my favorite bar and for a Tuesday night,  it had a hell of a good crowd.  I may have found my happy place.  Notice I’m not naming names here.  I don’t want anything bad to happen to this awesome little bar to change it,  but I do have the address saved in my iPhone. 

In L. A,  I love Old Town.  The area by Union Station,  the train station  (also LAX, but for trains, not planes and no where near the airport)  is awesome.  They have these vendors that open up daily and sell hand made crafts,  cloths, foods,  etc.  plus they have restaurants in the area adjacent to the little pop up shops so there is good,  mostly Mexican,  food.  I love Mexican food.  There is a nice park nearby and a place voted the best French dip in California and I believe it may be.  Their French dip is almost as good as my Italian beef.  So please check out Philippe when you are in the Old Town area.  My first experience there was with Robert when he dragged me in.  It was after nine at night and they are still busy. How good could it be?  I was skeptical that it would be worth it and I was gladly proven wrong.  It was great!  I ordered a second one.  I even asked Robert with as busy as they are,  why a place would bother closing at ten with people wanting to come in still and he said,  “They’ll come back tomorrow for this.”  Valid point.  The place could do a cash only policy and still be packed.  People will figure it out to eat there.  Chinatown is next to Old Town in LA and if you want Chinese food,  it’s where you go.  I’m not talking about the food you get at the buffet,  but authentic Chinese food in a nice restaurant with a good atmosphere.  It was so weird to see a scene out of a movie,  where a bunch of Chinese men in an ally were betting on dominos and chain smoking.  I really thought that was just in the movies.  Hollywood kind of surprised me.  It is big and glamorous just like I expected,  but not quite as over the top as I thought it would be.  With that,  the Walk of Fame and the Chinese Theater with the hand and shoe prints of some of the celebrities we grew up with is amazing and a testament to their greatness etched in semi-immortality with concrete.  The souvenir shops and restaurants are open late and it has a livelihood similar to Times Square,  just on a smaller scale.  Unfortunately when I went there, the train back to Riverside leaves at nine something at night so we couldn’t stay too late.  

One much more recent trip to the L.A.  area,  I stayed the night at a Best Western,  again,  in Norwalk.  I had to first go to the same place I went my first time.  I noticed Doctor Chicken is either closed or a new restaurant now.  There is a Korean chicken place there,  but I can’t tell if it’s the same location or next door to the Doctor Chicken location.  Either way,  I am not a fan of Korean fried chicken.  I ended up at a Chinese restaurant and donut shop  (odd combination but good donuts)  and then Ubered to my hotel.  Robert was meeting me the next day in L.A,  but he had to go to Fresno and then bring the bus down to Los Angeles to fly out for a much cheaper flight. I explored a bit.  One thing that deeply disturbed me was while in the Uber,  we turned onto Studebaker Avenue and the first thing I saw was a Honda dealership.  It seemed—sacrilegious.  At least be dealerships selling American cars.  I checked into my hotel and laid down.  Around nine o’clock I got up and took an Uber to the bar I discovered almost two years earlier that I loved.  I got there and the bouncer asked if I needed something.  Yeah.  I was going into the bar.  He then asked if I was sure and if I had been there before.  To back up,  I wasn’t  “feeling cute”  exactly.  If I’m going out and it’s planned,  my head and face are shaved,  thus reducing the levels of grey and some apparent age.    Couple that with driving fourteen hour shifts for the last three days and I was exhausted and looked it.  I didn’t have the time to shave prior so I was shaggy.  It’s not an old man bar,  but I like the place,  the music,  and especially the women.  When the bouncer asked if I had ever been in the club before,  my mind flashed with different thoughts and if I were to personally define a club verses a bar,  not a single criteria I would use for a club was possessed by this bar and I felt his use of the word  “club”  was overly generous,  but I just affirmed that I did wish to go into  “the club.”  The music and women were still amazing.  After three strong-ass Long Islands,  I went to the Denny’s that was like two blocks away for a quick bite and back to my hotel.  I ran up to my room and dropped off my stuff and went back downstairs to have a cigarette.  From what I could see at this point,  there was a good looking black girl sitting on the steps by the front door of the hotel,  but I went to the sidewalk to smoke so and I wasn’t really looking at her initially.  She came over to me and asked if she could bum a cigarette and I gave her one.  Her name was Ebony,  or so she said and she was dressed somewhat like what I think a prostitute would dress,  but this is Southern California and just because the weather is so much warmer year round,  women tend to wear less.  I still went with my initial assumption,  because I learned in New Orleans,  hookers start off with bumming a cigarette from you before they go into their sales pitch,  which I always decline since I don’t pay for sex.  Ebony started off with asking,  “why do men suck?”  Oh,  Christ!  I’m too drunk to listen to some hot chick that can get any guy she wants bitch about the guy she has.  We talked and she asked what I was doing the rest of the night.  At this point,  I’m still cautious because the possibility  (or probability)  of her being a hooker or scam artist are still pretty high in my mind.  She said she was staying in the hotel but didn’t want to go back to her room yet and she wanted to come to mine and watch TV with me.  Umm...sure.  I was too drunk to argue.  I took a leak when I was up there already and can keep an eye on her so I know she’s not taking my stuff while I am in the bathroom and she’s not wearing enough to have a gun or knife covered up that I wouldn’t be able to see.  I closed the door when we got there and turned back around to see her already revealing sundress drop to the floor and there was nothing underneath.  I said,  “TV?”  She grinned and started kissing me.  It was a very good night.  Afterwards,  she said that she should get back to her room and left.  I took inventory and all my stuff was still there and I had both kidneys so it was indeed a very good night.  She never gave me her number.  The next morning I went to check out of the hotel right at the eleven o’clock time and she was down there in the lobby with a guy.  It could have been husband,  friend,  or boyfriend and I had no clue which.  Like Baptists that see each other at Hooter’s,  we pretended not to recognize each other and they check out and then I did.  It was a good night and an one-time thing. 

Later that afternoon I met Robert at Casa La Golondrina Mexican Cafe when he got into town knowing his preference for margaritas and their extensive tequila selection.  I was not so lucky since they carried no bourbon and had a very limited selection of basic whiskey.  I almost got stuck with Jack Danials,  but would rather drink rock gut bottom shelf whiskey before Jack.  They also had some Canadian stuff and a guy that that seemed like a regular there said,  “if he won’t drink Jack,  he won’t drink that Canadian crap.”  Spoken like a truly wise man.  They ended up having some crap but at least it wasn’t Jack or anything Canadian.  I was there first and had to wait a couple hours for Robert since he was coming from Fresno via Amtrak so I ordered a chicken quesadilla since I wasn’t overly hungry because I ate at Philippe right when I got into the area,  but I felt like I needed to order something else since I’d be there so long.  We sat and did our normal talking about the trip we did and went over what we saw that was cool and what wasn’t and had a couple drinks.  I was having phone problems so I was only using my iPad at the time,  so everything I did was through text from the iPad for the week.  I told him to find a place for dinner and we’re right by Chinatown so he suggested Chinese.  We walked down to the area of the restaurant he proposed and he saw a new part of Chinatown he hadn’t seen before.  Though Robert and I have taken a few trips for work into the L.A.  area,  we never went to Chinatown together and I had actually been here and he had not seen this part.  The alley had really cool,  paper  (looking)  lanterns going over the walkways and there was a bronze statue of Bruce Lee.  It really doesn’t get much cooler than that.  We actually walked past our restaurant because there was a park he wanted to check out and found this part of absolute coolness.  We went back to Yang Chow for what was the best meal I have ever had in a Chinese restaurant.  The wall is adorned by a who’s who of celebrities and ordinary people and the joke was made that the restaurant looks like a place you’d see a mob hit in New York or Chicago.  It kind of had that layout and vibe to it,  but served Chinese food that was absolutely amazing.  I have a bad time in Chinese restaurants because I can’t tell good Chinese from bad and a good buffet or even a crappy buffet and a decent dine-in Chinese restaurant all taste the same to me.  Yang Chow did not taste like that at all.  This was discernible high quality food that even my unsophisticated Chinese food palate could appreciate.  After dinner we Ubered to LAX for our flight back to Chicago and then subsequently home.  Before Robert got to L.A.  that day,  he received a text from me that said,  “I’m not going back!  You’re going to have to tase my ass,  hog tie me,  and drag me on to that plane kicking and screaming.  I don’t want to leave.”  Instead he bribed me because he reminded me how good the Admiral’s Club at LAX is in Terminal 5.  At times,  I need to be treated like a child.  After returning home,  Robert and I went to lunch or dinner several days later and there was a movie on the TV in the bar,  with which I was not familiar and the scene was some fight scene in that ally and plaza we just saw in Chinatown.  How freaking cool is that?

Every time I’m in L.A,  it’s harder and harder for me to leave.  I just love it there.