Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Gloria Comes Across for Money
you’ll have to ask me about the title.
Times change, and we had best change with them. Our options are to live in reality, or not. Which brings me to Los Angeles.
Actually, what brought me to L.A. wasn’t an ontological exegesis, it was a bilateral laminectomy, which my dad needed to have performed on his poor aching back. It’s the sort of thing you’ll want a friend around to help with, and that was me. And I didn’t even really go to the Los Angeles part of L.A.; I landed in the Grand Duchy of Burbank and never left the San Fernando Valley. Despite that the valley is technically in L.A. county, and is mostly actually incorporated into Angel City itself, the greater urban basin south of the hills feels a world away.
The valley - the east valley, particularly - is where I grew up; it’s a world ostensibly familiar to me. Much of it still is as I remembered it, too - street names and schools, various “heritage” hotels and churches and liquor stores. It’s not like they’re untouched by time, but they are mostly as they once were. They ground me, and I really appreciated that steady presence on this trip.
There’s also the stuff that’s been changing ever since I’ve moved away, that I’ve already seen evolving, incrementally if not cataclysmically. Ventura Boulevard now has a big stretch where more of the signs seem to be in Hebrew than in English, but that’s been going on for years. The Galleria mall of my youth (as featured in Fast Times @ Ridgemont, if you care to culturesurf) was replaced a decade or so ago by some new whippersnapper mall at the same location. Maybe these things are less actual changes than mere differences, but they’re old news either way. I’d noticed them before so they didn’t surprise me when I noticed them again. But in a town as fast-moving as L.A. - even the relatively sedate bit where I was raised and to which my peregrinations were restricted on this trip - something will be different every time I visit. At least, something will seem different, and sometimes that’s for the better. Other times, I’m inclined to reserve judgement.
My first day with dad at the hospital was long and tiring. I skipped lunch to keep him company when his surgical slot got pushed back several hours, and there was something about the whole experience that just blunted my appetite. But as soon as I stepped outside at 8:30 at night and filled my lungs with crisp rainwashed air, I suddenly knew exactly what I wanted - nay, needed: an authentic hamburger like L.A. does better than anybody, crammed with thick tomato slices and viscous chili and all manner of life-shortening but -enhancing goodness. And for me that meant a cruise east on Ventura all the way from Reseda Boulevard to to Colfax, where Fat Jack’s has always served up the best of the best of this maligned but magnificent meatwitch.
I enjoyed the drive, enjoyed the generally-familiar sights along the way, but was nonplussed, arriving at my destination, to find it… not. Some other non-burger-related establishment was doing business where Fat Jack’s was supposed to be. Was I at the right strip mall? I reconnoitered, first at the wheel of dad’s car (which I was borrowing), and then on my smrtphn, where the inestimable Yelp listed FJ’s as “closed.” Fat Jack’s, for so many decades the alpha and omega of burgerosity, the shop that proudly declared itself to have the best meat in town ("if you can’t eat it, beat it"), a place I’d known since it had been a standalone wooden shack on a sleepy stretch of a minor byway - Fat Jack’s was no more. And dammit, bereft as I was by this sudden tragic loss, I was still hungry. So I 180’d it back to Carney’s in its train car out by Coldwater, and ordered up a replacement burger.
Even in my depressed state I had to appreciate that burger’s heft, its pallet of flavors and textures, its coherence as I plowed through its many layers. The chili fries, too, were crisp, hot, and didn’t wilt under their generous mound of meatgoo. So I sat, alone and at loose ends, to eat my Carney’s burger in testament to the late lamented Fat Jack’s. But even in that effort was I thwarted, as the Security dude honed in on me to regale me me with stories of going to classic concerts from the 60s and 70s, and recommendations for obscure music I’d never explored. We bantered about Scofields’ contribution to MMW, and Vandergraff’s 50 albums, and the ways Jackie Green is like Neil Young… by the time I looked down, I’d already finished my burger; I was mopping up the last of my chili with the last of my fries. As the security music dude bade me safe journeys and I left the restaurant, I couldn’t help but miss Fat Jacks - but I’d started to reconcile myself to its absence.
Started to reconcile, but still feeling moderately discombobulated. Dad remained laid up in an antiseptic suite, and my fallback burger had just received a battlefield commission to hamburger prime. I could see from where I sat - the front seat of my dad’s car - that a drink was in order. And not another light-ice root beer like I’d just enjoyed. I wanted real beer, dammit, and I wanted it recognizable, low-key, and comforting.
I’d already seen, just on my drive that night, any number of places that served beer - big busy joints with wide windows, long bars, and hordes of pretty young people trapped inside. In my day these places had been furniture stores, stationers, jobber outlets, unassuming little shops. The new boites that had moved in to replace them were too glitzy and garish for my state of mind. I wanted an old-man dive bar, dammit. I didn’t want those kids all up in my grille whilst I relaxed with a classic midwestern pilsner.
Again my phone had an answer for me - with on-line recommendations of a place right on my short drive back to Dad’s house where I was staying. The Oaks had always been a shabby old tavern, that had somehow sustained itself at a sleepy intersection across the street from where, at the dawn of time, Raldo’s Burgers had once reigned supreme. I used to ride my bike past it on my way after school to a now-defunct record store, but I had long forgotten even forgetting those old days. Yet I remembered this tavern from then, the men who would shamble in and out in the late afternoon, the smell of cheap tobacco and stale beer that washed out their door as I’d pedal past. I’d never been inside - my recollections predated my seniority - but I immediately felt in my bones that this was the old man dive bar for me.
It was just where I remembered it, looked like it had always looked - a small establishment with a rough brick front and a white box sign over the door that reflected no contribution from any marketing design professionals. It was just as I’d recalled and hoped. I pulled into their parking lot, but was surprised to find it packed solid. I drove across the street to the old familiar veterinary offices since they were closed for the night, but there were no spaces there either. Their lot was full of cute shiny little coupes and big new pick-ups - not my idea of old-man cars. A tiny doubt crept into my heart.
I finally found a spot to beach the car up a side street and walked toward the tavern. A man passed me, wearing a hoodie, a van dyke, and expensive sneakers. He bade me a polite good evening. I could tell what he was. He was a hipster, dammit. This wasn’t the demographic I remembered from this neighborhood. Despite all the comforting holdovers surrounding me from my childhood, I might not really be where I thought I was.
Outside the bar stood two young men and three young women - all looking disconcertingly Saturday-night for a Tuesday evening. The music being played inside sounded nothing like Dean Martin, nor even Nancy Sinatra. It was some kind of motown mashup. Young person’s music. As I pushed my way in, I couldn’t avoid the reality that this was a young person’s bar. Hordes of pretty young people were all bunched up together with fancy drinks and stylish handbags and beer in at least three kinds of glasses. Both fedoras and porkpies were in abundance, and heavy-framed eyeglasses rested on a plethora of noses. Irony lay as thick as eyeliner. The Oaks appeared to have evolved into a hipster den.
I sure wasn’t seeing any grizzled old dypsomaniacs in dungarees. I didn’t know how I felt about that. The eye candy was nice enough, in theory, but eye-candy wasn’t really what I’d come looking for. But that would not dissuade me now. I’d already been through enough that day - I wasn’t about to give up and leave just because this place was too popular. Its popularity would have to withstand my social inertia. I would get me a beer at the young people bar.
I muscled my way past co-eds in fancy skirts and spied out the row of taps on the far side of the bar. To my surprise, one seemed to suggest that they were pouring Gulden Draak, one of the best beers anywhere and not typically found at your run-of-the-mill boozehole. The 25-year-old barmaid in her little red cocktail dress fixed me a glass and I stood back with it against a wall, watching young people posturing extravagantly for each other. I was as good as invisible. I’d been hoping to find a place where invisibility was sought by a larger percentage of the clientele, but it seemed the Oaks had turned from a place from which to disappear, to one at which to be seen.
I finished my bulbous glass of beer and took my leave of the Oaks. It had done its job for me - it had put a beer in my belly, and a damn fine one at that. If it hadn’t met my expectations of a slow-pickled haven for the seasoned inebriate, well, looks like I’m in the market for some new expectations. My old ones seem to be somewhat past their expiration date.
Moral: The more things change, the differenter they am. Get used to not being used to it.
