GOOD MORNING LA

 

What constitutes an LA sorta day? Friday was definitely one.

Starting with Mr. Squeaky Clean.

These wonderful windows in the room we’ve dubbed porch west came with a problem. They were dirty, dirty, dirty:

 I made it my mission to get them washed. Not something I could not do myself; they’re way higher up than any ladder we have. I went to Google and entered “window washers near me.” That produced thousands of results. Trying again I entered “window washers in Silver Lake”. Among the results up popped Squeaky Clean with an address in the neighborhood. I called on Monday and left a message on voice mail. The how things get done in SoCal process was launched. That evening I received a text from Fred, Mr. Squeaky Clean his very self. It was the first of several texts and calls from Fred most of which postponed his arrival to look over the gig until eternal tomorrow. He showed up on Thursday morning. I accepted his offer and he said he’d be back that afternoon to do the job. Of course, because this is LA where one day is pretty much like the last, he showed up on Friday. And, hooray, hooray, he and his partner did a super-duper job. Wow, what a difference, day and night.

That afternoon I left Shelley off at Bang Bang on Hollywood Boulevard. I rolled on to Rite Aid with a list of items I could nab for her while she was getting her hair cut. And that’s where I met Deliciosa. Upon entering, I was approached by an imposingly large woman outfitted as security. “Can I help you find anything?” she asked. Not a question I’d expect from security. I declined her offer. But soon, I realized that I could use some help, found her and took her up on her offer. Deliciosa and I had fun shopping together as she led me through the vagaries of a LA Rite Aid.  Like toothpaste. All the toothpaste was locked up but fortunately Deliciosa had the key. She took the tube I chose from me. 

“I’ll put it at the register for you. You can get it when you check-out.”

I crossed the street to the bank of user-friendly ATMs. I’ve used ATMs all over the world and they’re pretty much the same everywhere. Except, of course, here. It started out as you’d expect: insert card, enter pass code, request a withdrawal. Then, well if this were a movie the ATM would be played by Owen Wilson and it would go like this:

“Hey, I’ve got bills in all kinds of denominations. Want me to choose for you?”

“No. let me choose.”

“Hey, no problem.”

“I’d like all twenties.”

“Oh, bummer dude. I’m all outta twenties. Here comes your withdrawal “

I got a big pile of tens.

 

         Los Angeles in the Time of Covid

 

Right off the bat the title is pretentious. Los Angeles is a sprawling five hundred square mile megalopolis. (By comparison, Buffalo is fifty square miles.) To say I know this city is at best an exaggeration. It’s not possible. There are huge sections that are a mystery to me. Then again there is a whole lot I know very well. I can get around, get around. But this visit, constrained by the pandemic, I haven’t been outta Silver Lake, our neighborhood. Even so, we’ve noticed real differences between this visit and those halcyon before times.

TRAFFIC

Writing about LA and not about the traffic is akin to writing about the forest and leaving out the trees. For years I’ve defended LA traffic. Yes, it’s fearsome I’d say but it rolls along. But in recent visits it was clearly worsening.

This was particularly noticeable at our corner. We’re on a semi-major street that connects one block away to Sunset Boulevard, a maxi-major street. During our last stay on this corner, we were concerned that it was becoming untenable. The traffic never stopped. Day, night, it didn’t make any difference. It was loud, it was constant.

But not now. Day time traffic at our corner is back to ignorable. Night comes with long stretches of quiet.

                                                          THE NEIGHTBORHOOD

We’re in Silver Lake where the city begins to climb up the hills. It’s funky and flashy, a typical LA mix of classic SoCal cottages and contemporary wide glass windowed boxes. Flowers bloom everywhere. Palms sway in the breeze and all size and shapes of cactus abound. Parking can be tricky although during the day a new space opens up about every twenty minutes. Get a good spot and you’re loathe to leave it. Since just about everything we need is in walking distance my car hasn’t moved in days.

Nighttime used to attract crowds to the restaurants and shops on Sunset. Now two of the trendy restaurants have closed and the remaining places have, as best they can, moved outdoors. The crowds have thinned out. Saturday night around ten all was quiet.

 

                                                          MASK AWARENESS

 

Everybody here is much more mask conscious. Everybody is masked all the time. Basically you put one on when you walk out the door and don’t take it off until you’re home again.

 

                                                         DEVELOPMENT

The breakneck pace of development has ground to a halt. In before times those quaint California cottages were being ripped away from the hillside to be replaced with big undistinguished multi-tenant apartments. Over on Sunset the old Army Navy surplus store where once you could find anything if you could maneuver the narrow aisles between the big piles of stuff is gone. Construction of something new and way bigger was started but is now stopped. This all means our views west over downtown Hollywood has been, for now, saved. It also means that the abandoned Church across the street is now a total eyesore surrounded by plywood fences topped with concertina wire. Well, it was slated to be resurrected as a boutique hotel which would have added lots of coming and going. We can put up with it.

 

GOOD MORNING LA       Thursday Morning 

My body, still on EST and thinking 8:30, was up and running while it was still dark, very dark, outside. Time for few hours of hypnopompic liminal dreaming.

Now up and about powered by a coupla cups of coffee. Finding stuff. Organizing, well one of us is organizing,

Bill has offered to drive me downtown to pick up the rental. I’ve accepted.

Feelin’ good so far

 

GOOD MORNING LA    Thursday 

Our first full day was inhabited by a sense of the familiar.

After coffee we set about organizing the apartment, searching through drawers and cabinets inventorying what we had and what we needed to get. And then, as we always do when we’ve arrived somewhere recently, we went shopping. This time we tossed Erewhon, a brand new upscale grocery just a short walk away. As we walked the neighborhood, I was struck how it hasn’t changed all that much. Oh, there have been changes; some shops are gone, replaced by the next ones. But it’s still Silver Lake, flashy and funky. Flowers bloom everywhere.

We have a noticeable effect on the average age here. Bill says that all the hip, young and beautiful head here while they’re still hip, young, and beautiful. Nothing we see here refutes his theory.

Bill gave me ride downtown to pick up our rental car. Quite confidently, I drove back to Silver Lake over streets I know well.

Evening came and Bill and Alvaro invited us to put on coats (cold is a very relative term.) and spend some time in their garden. They’ve created an urban oasis just outside their door, lush and at night, softly lit.

Then back upstairs. Shelley had baked bread and made chicken and veggie soup. The cliché is “all the comforts of home.” But in a certain sense, this is home.

 

GOOD MORNING LA    Friday 

There came a time late afternoon when I thought to myself how mundane this all has been. It had been a day of household chores, straightening up, window washing, hanging a spice rack, trying, pretty much unsuccessfully, to keep the imitation Ikea dresser from collapse. Nothing here to write about. Move along.

And then, as night descended, with beer, bubbly, and some California grass, we settled into the comfy chairs in the windowed room that looks west out over Hollywood lights. Mellow tunes from Pandora played.  Bliss came rolling in. Shelley noted this is remarkably like how we would spend a summer evening on the second-floor porch on Columbia Blvd. “Porch West,” she says

 

GOOD MORNING LA       Saturday

Saturday morning off to the farmer’s market. We buy tomatoes, avocados (oh, the piles of just right ripe avocados) strawberries and flowers. I’m just so impressed with the piles of fresh produce. Here in mid-January fresh veggies abound.

We take a walk over to Sunset to shop for a birthday present for Bill. Jennifer recommended Yolk, a shop that mostly sells kid’s suff. Good tip. We find just the thing.

Early eve we’re off to Betsy’s to celebrate Bill’s birthday. When we arrive the Bills’ playoff game is already in the first quarter. Was there ever any doubt that Betsy would have the game on? She is wearing her Bills gear, snackies on the table include chicken wing dip, there’s Bills napkins and her little bity dog is wearing a Bills doggy jersey.

Buffalo dominates the hated Patriots. Game ends; birthday party rolls on. Alvaro has brough tamales. So good. They should be traditional birthday fare.

It’s our first visit to Betsy’s charming LA 20’s home. I struggle to describe it. Exquisitely enchanting, so very SoCal, something delightful meets the eye everywhere you look. And oh my, the tiled bathroom…shoulda took pictures.

 

GOOD MORNING LA       Sunday

We went shopping for a long list of mostly staples at Vons. Vons is a B-list supermarket which reminds me a lot of Tops before that chain changed owners and the new owners lightened, tightened and brightened the stores. But we knew from past experience Vons is the only place that carries our favorite probiotic. We rolled our piled fulla stuff shopping cart to the yogurt section and sadly discovered Vons no longer stocks it. This more than mundane story has a kinda happy ended. I’ll get to that.

This visit is unlike any of our previous visits which as you so well know were filled with music, art, culture and plenty of fine dining. None of that this time. Instead, it’s been pretty much dealing with our lives as we typically do when we’re home. (I shan’t mention shoveling snow.)

But it’s also been catching up with friends. So far Bill and Alvaro, then Betsy. And then I stepped outside to go to the car and a heard a hearty hello from the porch. It was Badwater Bob. We chatted. Well, mostly I listened ‘cause he’s always entertaining.

Later I went downstairs and there was Mark Levinthal. Earlier he’d taken Bill out for birthday wings. I asked about the kids He told us he hopes to bring them to Buffalo this summer and show them his heritage. Naomi (gasp) is eighteen!

Dinner was humus veggies, Shelley’s scallions, cucumber, cherry tomato and avocado salad piled on my own home-made humus in pita topped with guacamole. And even those veggies from the B list supermarket tasted so great because they were, here in mid-January, so fresh. A happy California ending.

GOOD MORNING LA       Monday

 

Kinda more of the same.

Not too long after we arrived the sink in the bathroom would not drain. Gallons of Liquid Plumber had absolutely no effect. By Saturday we concluded that professional help was required. But we didn’t want to pay weekend rates, so we decided to put up with it until the long weekend was over.

Then yesterday morning Bill spots a plumber’s truck parked across the street. “I know this guy. He used to live in the neighborhood.” The boys track him down and ere too long he’s here. And ere not much after that all’s well. Apparently, plumbers don’t celebrate MLK Day so we get away for far less that what we’d expected to pay.

We walked to the hardware store on Hyperion. I bought some clothes hooks which I’ll install in the closet today. Shelley bought paint and brushes. She plans to repaint the floor in porch west.

Buffalo and the Columbia Blvd fb pages are fulla pics of huge piles of snow. I resist posting that we had some light rain and the temperature never got out of the mid-sixties. That would be way too smug.

 

GOOD MORNNG LA     Tuesday

 

Is this getting boring? Is this already boring? What if I wrote today I went to Dash’s, bought milk and bread, came home and made toast. Would you wish i hadn’t bothered? Bur really, that’s what it's like here pretty much just normal life in a warmer place.

So I put up a new towel ring and some clothes hooks. Shelley painted a shelf in the window room. We walked over to the Tuesday afternoon farmers market where we bought broccoli and strawberries. We chilled on porch west. Then dinner and bed.

Oh, and yet another acquaintance showed up. Spiro stopped by to visit the boys and was on the porch when I came down to empty the trash. We chatted. He said he had to depart. Good-byes all around.  Later I went downstairs to return a drill I’d borrowed. Spiro was still there, just now inside. “Take my chair. I’m leaving,” he said. I did just that. He went and sat on the coach. More chat. Then I left for upstairs. Spiro was still there.

This is a pattern I’ve observed, not just here. Visitors state their intention to leave but then don’t. Am I supposed to say, “Oh no, please stick around.”? I tend to take people at their word. If they’re ready to leave, fine. If not that’s OK too. I donno.

 

GOOD MORNNG LA     Wednesday

 

I actually drove the car somewhere. Not exactly an excursion, I drove to the user-friendly ATM at Hollywood and Vermont, then to the gas station where $60 (yikes!) filled the tank.

I figured my iPhone 6s needed a new battery because it would not keep a charge for very long. Keeping a charge for when I had to depend on the phone, like when making a cross county flight, was a constant challenge. So a week or two before we left, I took it to the Apple store. I was told the battery was fine. The problem was with the phone. Seems so much has been loaded onto it since I acquired it seven years ago that it rapidly ate its way through a battery charge just trying to keep up. And, they told me, Apple would soon cease support. I knew then that its days were numbered. 

So Shelley and I took a long walk down Sunset to the Verizon store. I needed her support to overcome the raging anxiety I experience whenever I’m facing a major purchase. Net result: my new iPhone 13mini will arrive next week. It’s weird to be sentimental about a device. But my little 6s has been my constant companion for so much of my life for so long. I’m gonna miss it if but briefly.

On the way back we stopped at CCA Silver Lake where I became the newest member which admitted me to the retail room. What an intimidating selection. Shelley, who was not admitted as the driver’s license, she carries for ID had expired, once again saved me from purchase anxiety by specifying ordering Blue Dream. We left with a quarter which should last us for quite a while.

Rather than cook dinner as we’d done every night we ordered take out from Pine and Crane. Boy, was it good.

 

GOOD MORNING LA    Thursday

 

Gelsons, on the other hand, is a class A1 supermarket, bright, clean, wide aisles and sufficiently stocked with stuff I want to buy. For instance, unlike the other stores we shopped, there’s a craft beer cooler. I walked there, two and a half miles there and back. Combine that with our three mile walk to the Verizon store on Wednesday.

Shelley’s painting project continues. Expect pictures when she’s finished. Meanwhile, I’m running out of home improvement projects.

 

GOOD MORNING LA       Friday  

Shelley finishes her repainting. The furniture goes back. It’s hard to get a good photo:

(Not to scale)

Back to Gelsons, this time we both so we can carry more stuff. We score artichokes bigger than softballs and fresh sea bass. Shelley breaded the fish with seasoned crumbs made from the last of a loaf of bread she’d baked. Dinner: Baked breaded Sea Bass, Artichokes with Hollandaise, Oven baked French Fries. We agree this was a meal as good as served in any fine restaurant.

 

        

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LA JOURNAL 

ACCENTUATION 

 As I travel about the country I keep an ear out for how pronunciations change, one regional accent sliding into the next. There is, I’ve observed, a sorta continuum that flows down from Maine across New England then spreads west and south. But I’ve never been able to detect a California accent. At first I thought it might well be because everyone there is from someplace else. That was before Erik, George and Heather came into my life. All are native Californians and all speak that unaffected mid-continent anchor desk media English (essentially a Nebraska accent). Turns out I was listening in the wrong place.  

              Bill, down at the corner on Sunset, spotted two guys washing the windows on the Pharmacia building. Likely motivated by my kvetching about our very dirty, very difficult to reach apartment windows, he asked them to stop by and give us an estimate. It proved to be so reasonable that we and some tenant neighbors hired them on the spot.  

              They did a great job.

Before

After

 

             

 

 

 

 

 

 

The window washers were very congenial guys. When conversing with us they spoke English; between themselves they kept up a lively banter in Spanish. They were equally facile in both languages. But their English was spoken with a light Latin lilt. 

                “That’s it!” I realized. That’s the California accent. Well, at least the Southern California accent. It’s where that slowly changing flow of spoken English blends into its near neighbor which just happens to be a different language. There’s that flow again. It disregards borders. Anglosphere meets Hispanosphere.  

              While I was drafting this post, Alvaro stopped by. Together we recalled a conversation that took place during his last visit to Buffalo. He engaged two fisherman on Unity Island in Spanish. Later he noted how much their Puerto Rican accented Spanish differed from his Mexican accented Spanish. That prompted me to further inquire about the many different Hispanophones here in LA: Mexican, Guatemalan, Honduran, Salvadoran, etal. Of course he can, he told me, distinguish one from another by their accent. For instance he told me those window washers were speaking Quechua, a dialect from the highlands of Guatemala.

                LA JOURNAL

 

 

                                                 GET AROUND, GET AROUND, I GET AROUND. 

“Do you know where you are?” Bill asks. We’re on our way back from a club when Bill suddenly hangs a left and we’re headed uphill through the narrow streets that wind past the homes that cling precariously to the hillsides.

It’s always a lesson going places in LA with Bill. He’s a veritable Rand McNally, a living breathing road atlas. Indeed, on our way out this evening we’d a “watch this” moment during which he taught me a short cut only a real Angelino would know.

“We’re on top of the hill between Griffith Park Boulevard and the actual Silver Lake. We're on Micheltorena Street. If we continue downhill we’ll come out by the school on Sunset,” says I, the proud ardent student.

 

Silver Lake

 

But really, it’s getting harder for me to get lost here. I pretty much know my way around Silver Lake (our neighborhood as opposed to the former reservoir now repurposed as a decorative water feature after which our neighborhood is named) and Los Feliz, the next neighborhood over. I can get downtown; I can cruise Hollywood. I can meet a high school friend for a beer way out in the San Fernando Valley. I know which freeways to take and even better I know which “surface” streets to take to avoid the freeways.

Let me not get too ahead of myself. There’s lots of this five hundred square mile city (by comparison, Buffalo is forty square miles) and its huge attendant sprawl that remain a complete mystery to me. Then again, strictly by accident, or so it seems, I left Garminella at home in a box on a shelf in a closet. I imagine her muttering to herself, “recalculating, recalculating.” That was an error but nowhere near as egregious as it would have been in previous times here. Sooner or later, the training wheels must come off.

 DRIVING

 

 It’s just not possible to write about Los Angeles and avoid writing about driving here. As I’ve noted in previous posts, LA traffic has only gotten worse in the years since we’ve been wintering here. Its by now pretty extensive public transit system doesn’t really help much. In fact, faced with a 13% decline in ridership, the authorities commissioned a study to account for it. Their conclusion: the problem stems from low interest rates. No really! Low rates have allowed more folks who might otherwise rides the buses or the Metro to buy cars and join the stop and go, mostly stop, jams on the freeways. Making matter worse, I suspect, is prosperity. Southern California is now experiencing the lowest unemployment rate ever in the history of keeping track. More folks are on their way to work in the morning and irascibly heading home again in the evening. It’s almost enough to make one wish for the return of hard times.  

ADAMS AT DISNEY 

I consider John Adams to be the preeminent living American composer. So when a program is billed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic as “John Adams Conducts”, say no more, I wanna be there. It turns out Adams holds the position Creative Chair of the LA Phils. That meant this night he was more curator than conductor.

A world premiere set to open the program was cancelled due to performer illness. The Los Angeles Percussion Quartet filled in. Their selection, “Aura” played on a large ensemble of percussion instruments was performed in the dark. No really, the house lights were turned off and the players wore LED lights on their hands. It was less of a spectacle than what you might expect and for a percussion piece unexpectedly subdued.

Adams came to the stand for the second piece, yet another world premiere. Scored for brass, piano, harp and percussion, Anthony McIntosh’s “Shasta” proved to be more academic than engaging.

After intermission Adams came on stage microphone in hand to introduce the concluding two pieces. Both works he said were by composers he’d known and worked with during his early days in San Francisco. I’d read his delightful autobiography, “Hallelujah Junction” so I had a pretty good idea of what to expect.

First up, Julius Eastman’s minimalist “Evil Nigger” scored for four pianos. Notes reiterated, themes appeared and disappeared, all the while sonority rolled along. Intriguing though prolonged.

And then the finale, Salvatore Martirano’s “L.’s G. A. for Gas Masked Politico, Helium Bomb and Two-Channel Tape”. In which L is for Lincoln, G.A. is for Gettysburg Address and in which a gas masked narrator recites portions of Lincoln’s text while hitting on nitrous oxide and prowling the stage backed by a rudimentary psychedelic film and prepared tape. Silly? Perhaps. Then again, it's a preserved artifact of another time when the potential of creativity seemed infinite, at least so it seemed in 60’s San Francisco.

In all an evening more interesting than enthralling. I would way have preferred a full philharmonic orchestra filling this beautiful place with John Adams compositions. At least it was a return visit to the Frank Gehry architectural masterpiece that is Disney Hall.

 

 

Headed down to the Music Center we wondered, “Why are we even doing this?” The evening’s presentation, Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide”, had never been on our radar. But it was what the LA Opera was offering during our visit. From experience we expected a world class production which, it turned out, is just what we got: brilliant direction, an engaging cast and super stagecraft.

Kelsey Grammer sang but mostly acted, cleverly transitioning between the dual roles of Voltaire and Dr. Pangloss. I’d only ever seen Grammer on TV as Frazier Crane on two series I’d never watched through a complete episode. Acting in a TV series entails working small on tight sets. The challenge of performing on the immense Dorothy Chandler Pavilion stage is just the opposite. Grammer nailed it. His speaking voice, unamplified, easily filled the hall. His singing voice, not operatic but strong, suited his only solo number just fine.

              The other leads, soprano Erin Morley as Cunegonde and Jack Swanson as Candide where just what we’ve come to expect at the LA Opera, strong, vibrant and youthfully attractive. Indeed, the entire cast including Broadway star Christine Ebersole, was exceptional.
 

 

               I’m guessing “Candide” was programed in recognition of the Leonard Bernstein centenary. I’d always known Bernstein as a great conductor. I’ve a shelf full of his Beethoven recordings. I quite recall watching him conduct the Young Peoples Concerts from the black and white days of TV.  I’m less familiar with him as a composer. As a pious former altar boy I was thoroughly confused by his “Mass” which I’d watched when it was televised as part of the Kennedy Center inauguration. It wasn’t like any mass I’d ever served. And then, of course, there’s” West Side Story.”

“Candide” is more operetta than opera although there are some stirring operatic parts including some soaring choral work. It’s also a pastiche of musical styles, some blues, some Broadway, a tango and, imagine that, some satirical bel canto soprano parts. I look forward to hearing more Bernstein this centennial. He did write three symphonies, a dance suite, chamber music, choral music and (I gotta hear this) “La Bonne Cuisine: Four Recipes for Voice and Piano”. Meanwhile I’m happy to have attended a fine production of “Candide” and hope the work stays in the repertory.