Los Angeles 1996

The City of Angels, the city of filth and depravity, the outlet for which all the garbage, sewage, filthy lucre, and darkness must run through before being washed into the Pacific Ocean. The rain is coming down as our plane touches down at LAX, a light mist which evaporates upon contact with the ground. MacGreggor and I grabbed our luggage and queued up at the taxi stand, shifting from one foot to the other amidst the racket of planes, humans, cars, and those stupid little golf cart things used to transport the lazy from one end of the sprawling metropolis of an airport to the other. Eventually the next cab was to be ours. The driver muttered something to us and tossed our gear roughly into the trunk. We jumped in the back.
“Biltmore Hotel.” MacGreggor said to the driver as I tapped the bullet-proof shield that was betwixt the cabby and we two with great brevity. A thick, solid metal shield was bolted to the centre posts across the seatbacks, topped with triple thick tempered glass which contained only a tiny ashtray sized door with which to speak and slip your money through. The cabby sent his taxi speeding across multiple lanes of the freeway, cutting into spaces too small for a car half the size of the Crown Victoria in which we rode. On our way down town we passed through a myriad of filthy, polluted, defiled, garbage strewn neighbourhoods on which every corner there stood a liquor store, a pawnshop, a bail bondsman shop, and grubby people panning for change, selling oranges, or cleaning vehicle windscreens with squeegees. We arrived at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown L.A., and after meeting up with Mike and a couple of others from the company, we were told that our rooms were not yet ready. The pasty guy behind the desk told us to check our luggage, and indeed if we would only be kind enough to come back later our luggage would be waiting in our rooms and it should be only a couple of hours. In other words, everything was just ducky.
MacGreggor, Mike and I stepped outside and grabbed a taxicab to take us to the Electronics Entertainment Exposition or E3 for short, that was being held at the L.A. Convention Centre. I asked MacGreggor on the way if he was absolutely sure that the company had a membership waiting for me, and he assured me that the owner had taken care of it himself. After waiting in line for more than an hour at the membership pick up window I found out that no, in fact no one had “taken care of it.” After another two and a half hours of fiddling around and getting my own membership taken care of myself (if you want something done…), we three headed back to the Biltmore to find we had a message waiting for us at the front desk from the company owner stating that he and the rest of the people in the company were staying at the Westin Bonaventure. We asked the pasty snob at the front desk what the story was and he sneered:
“I know you have reservations, sirs, but there are no rooms available here. We have however arranged for you and you,” he pointed at MacGreggor and Mike, “to be put up at the Westin Bonaventure.”
“So you can take reservations, but you can’t keep them.” I said, annoyed. “What about me? Will I be getting a room at the other hotel?”
The snob behind the desk stuck his nose in the air and snorted, “Sir did not have a reservation under sir’s name therefore we will not be putting sir up at the Westin.”
Fuck him, now I was pissed off. “So that whole business about checking our bags earlier was basically bullshit.” MacGreggor put a hand on my shoulder and quieted me before I said something that he might regret. We grabbed our luggage and halfway through the doors, some five-dollar an hour luggage check choad chuckled at us.
“Ya don’t get to stay huh?” He said in between guffaws, “Bummer. Better luck next time, huh!”
“Up yours, asshole.” I said, turning on him and ready for fisticuffs.
“Let it go man,” Mike said, in that smooth, calming manner of his, then louder he said: “This cocksuckers’ not worth it.”
A number of people milling around the front entrance looked momentarily towards us, but none said a thing. We jumped into the Biltmore’s courtesy bus, much to the chagrin of the driver, and yet another luggage boy who were busy playing cards. Soon we were at the new hotel. We stepped off the bus and walked right passed the outstretched hand of the tip-expecting driver and luggage boy, an act that seemed to annoy them both to no end. I couldn’t believe they were still expecting a tip after being such pricks, but that’s L.A. for you! After passing through the front doors of the Westin, MacGreggor and I noticed almost at the same time that this was the same hotel used in the “horse chase” scene in the movie True Lies. We three ended up staying in the Redondo Suite and were immediately besieged by the company owner (and lead coder), Christian, along with several other greasy haired coders, none of which I was on a first name basis with. They wanted to do nothing more than throw couch cushions, glasses and coffee cups out of the window and into the courtyard while watching the porno channel all night. By about two thirty in the morning we were finally able to boot them out and go to sleep.
The next morning we checked out and got into a taxicab for Hollywood, where we would stay for the rest of the convention. I strongly suggested to MacGreggor that we actually check in to our hotel room before buggering off to E3 for the day, just so we wouldn’t have to go through the same shite again today. He agreed and I sat back in the seat, sipping an Evian (naïve?), and looking out the window, warm air blowing on my face, and the palm trees gently swaying in the breeze as we entered Hollywood Hills. Everywhere we drove there were signs and billboards imploring everyone who read them not to give money to the “so called homeless people.” The signs claimed that the people in the street who grubbed for change “are not homeless! You are only hurting them by giving them money!” At every stop light a half dozen people at least would rush the cab, once again attempting to foist upon us bags of oranges, hand rolled cigarettes, and other crap while at the same time another grub began to squeegee the windscreen. To this, the cabby would yell out the window at them shaking his fist in rage: “Get the fuck away! You are fucking bastards! Fuck you!” To this the people would either jump back or curse at the driver, or merely move on to the next car.
The front desk person at the Holiday Inn Hollywood was an extremely pleasant young Nihonjin girl who informed us that even though there were no clean rooms (there never are in L.A. apparently, no matter what time of the day you arrive) she would be more than happy to let us check in. She gave us our key cards and we headed up the lifts to our rooms to deposit our gear. A pleasant surprise considering the shit we were put through by the sanctimonious pricks at the Biltmore downtown.
Later in the day while wandering around the Nintendo booth at the show, we found out that Dave would not be joining us. Apparently, the fifty grand per year boarder guards at the airport found a microscopic sliver of an eight-year-old roach in the neither regions of his wallet. The item had no toxicity left in it, how could it, but was a huge score for these fat assed rent-a-cops who gave Dave a fifteen hundred-dollar fine and refused him entry into the country. We shook our heads after this news which to us was completely absurd. There were big time coke dealers crossing the boarder all the time with steamer trunks full of blow, and they are allowed to move freely, but a guy in his mid-twenties with a steady job who hasn’t smoked pot since high school gets the highest punishment you can imagine, just because he hasn’t cleaned out his wallet in a few years. Of course Dave doesn’t have the kind of money a big time dealer does, so he can’t offer the guards certain incentives (bribes) to look the other way. Money talks, especially for those who are supposed to be on the side of upholding the law.
Friday night the company managed to get us tickets to the Ministry show at the Palladium. MacGreggor, Mike and myself came out of the hotel and asked one of the taxi drivers to take us out to the Palladium which was several blocks away, yet we knew not where. The driver looked right put out that we should be asking such a question while he was chit-chatting with his friend, then refused to take us saying that it was only a block away, and not worth it to him. Mike then asked if it would be too much trouble for him to give us directions. The one driver turned to the other one he was speaking with earlier and said something in what sounded like Swahili. The other one laughed and said something back, and then they both split a gut laughing at what was obviously our expense. Cabby #1 turned back to us and told us to walk up to Hollywood Boulevard, turn right, then walk about six blocks. We walked past Hollywood High, and several more than six blocks before realising we had been hoodwinked. Jeezus! It really gets you in the yarbles… you know you’re in L.A. when you ask for directions and some fucker deliberately steers you wrong.
The gig itself was a religious experience for us and the hundreds of other young adults in attendance, as we bounced and slammed, crashing, spinning and sweating, the music infecting everyone in its own way. There seemed to be about fifty small three to five man pits surrounding the central mosh pit from which shoes and plastic beer cups occasionally erupted causing us to duck lest we be hit. Every couple of songs a trio of HUGE skins would shove their way to and from the main pit, at one point one of them grabbed a tiny boned girl in a belly button shirt by the face and slammed her to the floor. The three of them were quickly bounced by a set of even BIGGER doormen. As the show continued the sweat and humidity was such that it seemed to rain down upon us from the very rafters. After the show we all piled into a taxi and headed back to the hotel where we consumed metric tonnes of American style (light and watery) beer which had no effect on us other than sending us on frequent trips to the toilet.
The next day MacGreggor and I decided to head over to Melrose. It was apparently such a good idea that the “coder choads,” led by their fearless leader Christian, decided to follow us. Would the fun ever end? Upon arrival we suggested they break up into smaller groups so they would look less like tourists, but as with most good ideas, it fell on deaf ears. The coder choads clumped together and went into store after store together, giggling and leering like a bunch of imbeciles. MacGreggor and I hung back so as not to be associated with them. The sun shone brightly through the smoggy haze upon us and the motley inhabitants of the area. Storefront hustlers, paid to stand out front of the shops and get people in the door, stood shouting about Levi sales, each one claiming the lowest prices on the avenue. We stopped in at a small, grubby comic book store, MacGreggor checking out the latest Tick comics, and I keeping my eyes peeled for classic Star Wars figures. The selection was abysmal, no more than a half a dozen figures, loose, paint chipped, dog chewed, weaponless, and with insanely high prices on them. Twenty-six bucks for a loose, chipped up dirty 8D8? I laughed in the face of the fat, balding; greasy haired, pimply faced guy, as he sat on his stool behind the counter. Eventually we all ended up at some Mexican restaurant and were seated in a private room made to look like a wine cellar with a huge oak table in the centre. The waiter was a Jeckle and Hyde type who would smile and bow to us one second, and the next yell and slap around a poor little Mexican bus boy who couldn’t speak English. We drank pitchers of margaritas and shot tequila. The Mexican bus boy came around to fill our water glasses and accidentally spilled a few drops on Christian’s shirt, sending him into a rage. He began yelling at the small Mexican in English about how fucking clumsy he was, and he’d have his job, etc. Our obsequious waiter caught on to this quickly and smacked the bus boy upside his head a-la Basil Fawlty all the while chasing him from the room and screaming at him in Spanish. I looked around me at the table to see all but MacGreggor and Mike laughing at this turn of events; it was enough to put me off my chicken enchilada.
The evening finally rolled around and we were invited by Scavenger Entertainment to a party at Whiskey Au Go Go’s. As I looked around I asked myself what the hell is so special about the L.A. club scene? The place was about as big as my apartment would be if a third room was added, had no air conditioning and was about two thousand degrees inside. It took an hour to get a fucking beer at the bar because it was so packed you could barely move. I grabbed MacGreggor and we headed down to the dance floor which was slightly less crowded and it was down there I caught sight of a girl I spotted earlier in the day at E3. She was short, and very fit. She wore a tight Everlast crop top over small, hard teats, a ring through her tanned belly button. Her thick curly black hair had a bright white streak through it that hung down in front of big, dark brown eyes. Her thin face was lovely and at the same time interesting, from her arched eyebrows, and straight nose to her cupid bow lips. She jumped effortlessly onto the small stage and stood like a goddess surveying her realm before beginning to dance an intoxicatingly smooth and elegant dance to the overpowering BOOM-BOOM-BOOM of the techno beat. She gyrated before us, a sight for my sore and tired eyes; a sight burned into my mind. A dark and beautiful flower in a world of weeds, a piece of fine china in a world of lumpy clay ashtrays. Before I knew what I was doing I was up on the stage dancing with her. She turned her tight, lithe body toward mine and rubbed up against me, her small hands on my hips, mine on her muscled shoulders, moving, in sync, as one, lost. The rest of the world was gone and all that mattered was the moment, the music, the dance, the flashing lights, the manic activity of dozens of other sweaty humans, and we two. After about fifteen minutes I heard MacGreggor shouting my name and saying that we were leaving. I separated from my goddess, bid her adieu, and vaulted down from the stage.
“What the hell was that about? You don’t dance!” MacGreggor shouted over the din.
“What? Didn’t you see that girl?” I shouted back. “She was hot!”
“She was nappy,” he grumbled, obviously pissed off about something else, “with her piercings and shit. What the fuck was up with that? And that stupid streak in her hair…”
“Fuck off,” I said, “you’re just jealous.”
“Whatever.”
We joined up with Mike and the others across the street in front of a Blockbuster Video. A pair of Porsche’s with the plates “HIZ” and “HERZ”, one white with a black ragtop, the other black with a white top turned onto the street at a high speed and slammed on their brakes, not knowing it was a dead end. They turned around and headed back up to Sunset, scattering pedestrians as they squealed into traffic. We sat around trying to decide what to do for the rest of the evening when Mike pulled out a rave flyer. He called the number and we were soon in a cab and on the freeway. The cabby seemed a little concerned when we gave him the address, but said nothing to us when we asked him if this place, (Compton, was it?) was a bad place to be. A forty dollar cab ride later we arrived, the driver squealing his tires in an attempt to get the fuck out of the neighbourhood as quickly as possible. MacGreggor, Mike and I got in to the back of a line up of young people who seemed to have a distinctive Afro and Latino slant to them. One of the kids in line struck up a conversation with me.
“Yo, man whassup?” The kid said
“Hangin’.” I said.
“Yo, I gotta tell ya, those guys up there,” he pointed to a pair of doormen armed with pepper spray and portable metal sensors, “they’re being real fuckin’ strict man.”
“Whadda you mean?” I wanted to know.
“They’re not lettin’ anyone in with headbands, and they’re, like takin’ people’s smokes and lighters and shit.”
“Thanks man.” I said and shuffled over to where Mike and MacGreggor were smoking a joint.
“Hey guys, that dude over there was saying the doormen are giving everyone a real hard time. Do you still want to stay? I really don’t give a shit either way, but it did cost us a fortune to come out here.”
“Fuck that.” MacGreggor said. “Were getting the fuck out of here. Look at all these fuckin’ homies! We gotta get out of here!”
“Come on, man. It’s not that bad.” I said, it really wasn’t, or at least it didn’t seem like it to me. It just looked like a bunch of kids out to have a good time.
“Fuck man, as soon as those Pyrotech guys get here we are gone! You can stay here and get shived if you want.”
Mike chuckled and shook his head, taking another wheeze on his phat chronic blunt.
The five guys from Pyrotech pulled up, crammed in their rented Volvo. MacGreggor, Mike and I squeezed in after telling them the reason we were not staying (“…there’s too many fucking homies here man.” MacGreggor moaned). We were packed in like clowns in a Volkswagen Beetle at the circus. The Volvo bottomed out several times going over bumps and the jostling became more than we could bear.
“This is fucking ridiculous guys, find a gas station and pull over so we can call a cab.” Mike grunted, uncomfortably as the rear tires scraped the fenders again. The road we were on had more craters than the surface of the moon. In a few minutes the driver turned into a twenty-four hour Circle K. The building was in sad shape from the pock marked cinderblocks and barred windows; right down to the spray painted “tags” by local gangbangers. A car pulled up behind us to get some petrol, only to have the driver find out that the pumps were locked down for the night and no amount of pleading on his part was going to get the clerk to unlock them. This seemed a little odd to me, as the brightly lit sign overhead said: “Open 24 Hours.” The would be gasoline patron cursed bitterly and gave the pump a swift boot before getting back into his ride and speeding away into the night. MacGreggor and I approached the store and found the doors locked. We signalled to the clerk inside that we needed to use a phone and he screamed at us.
“Get the fuck away before I call the cops!” He screeched, looking totally demented.
“Relax bud, we just need to use your phone.” MacGreggor said, calmly lighting up a smoke.
“I’m warning you! There’s a pay phone down the block! Get out of here!”
“How about you call us a cab then?” MacGreggor offered.
“I’m calling the fucking cops!” The clerk screamed, freaking out and grabbing hold of his phone.
“Relax pal, were going!” I said and Mac and I headed back to the car.
“So, what’s the story?” Mike wanted to know.
“The guys’ a fucking nutcase, he kept threatening to call the cops if we didn’t leave. He said there was a phone booth just down the road.”
“Yeah,” MacGreggor piped up, “he was a total fucking ‘tard about it too.”
I looked around and saw the phone the clerk was talking about; it was just on the other side on the convenience store parking lot. I told the guys I’d be back in a minute and shuffled over to the phone booth, passing the five Pyrotech guys who were playing hacky sack under the light of a streetlamp.
“Those fucking retards are going to get us shot.” Mac said to me upon my return, gesturing towards the Pyrotech guys who were giggling and jumping around like imbeciles.
“Don’t worry,” I said, “they’re all standing in the light, if the shit comes down maybe they’ll just shoot them.”
“We should be so lucky.”
About ten minutes later, a huge Crown Victoria taxicab glided into the parking lot. A black tinted window slid down and a blond longhaired surfer dude poked his head out.
“So, what’s goin’ on boys?”
MacGreggor gave him the low-down and the driver nodded his head.
“Ok, dudes, get in.”
On the way back to the hotel the surfer dude cab driver told us we were lucky.
“Man, I knew somethin’ must have been up for someone to be callin’ from where you guys were at two in the morning. Dudes, you are so lucky I was workin’ tonight! No one wanted to come out and get you! Dudes, I can’t believe nobody drove by and popped a cap in your asses! Especially those twits that were hacky sackin’ under the streetlamp! Talk about target practice! Dudes! You guys should pay more attention to where you hang out at night. There’s fireworks goin off in Compton every night and they ain’t the legal kind!”
“Yeah, when we came out here the cabby who brought us didn’t say a thing when we asked if it was a bad neighbourhood. Mind if I smoke?” Mike said.
“No, go ahead dude, I was just going to ask if you guys would mind if I did. Yeah, no, most cab drivers in this town are fucking assholes; I wouldn’t trust any of them not to try to rip me off. That’s why I only work at night dudes, I can’t stand the daytime traffic you know? And like, I live in Laguna so I like to have my days to surf and hang out on the beach.” I nodded, wondering ever so briefly when it was he slept.
The surfer dude dropped us off at the hotel and we gave him a huge tip to thank him for helping us get our skinny, white, Canadian asses out of Compton, which he initially tried to refuse (I’m just doing my job dudes!) until we insisted.
A few days later, when we were headed back to LAX for the trip home, one of the African American cab drivers from the night of the concert sat in the comfortable air-conditioned confines of his yellow L.A. Cab Co. taxi. He became instantly alert as we exited the hotel, weighed down by our suitcases and bags of free swag from the trade show, and hopped out of his car. He jumped towards us, all smiles, hoping for a thirty-dollar airport fare. MacGreggor and I sneered at him as we walked past his cab and signalled to the driver behind him in the driveway.
“Hey,” the jilted cabby called out; “you have to take the first car in line!”
“Yeah, thanks for the directions the other day bud!” MacGreggor snorted, not looking at him. I threw my stuff in the trunk and took a spot in the back seat, laughing. I laughed, and laughed, and laughed, all the way home.

San Fran 1998(?)

It was on a Tuesday, and about two-thirty when I decided to hike down twenty-fifth street to Baker Beach (far away in time, no wait, that’s Echo Beach – my bad!), as the low flying antics of the Blue Angels in their modified F-18’s were starting to rattle my teeth as well as the windows of MacGreggor’s flat. Strolling down the streets, I passed a small Korean convenience store and in the window a newspaper headline proclaimed in bold 80point type: “MAN SHOOTS CAT AFTER ARGUMENT.” I chuckled at this trying to picture in my unbelieving mind what the man and the cat could have been arguing about that could have led to the cat paying the ultimate price. I arrived at the beach and sat down at the top of a small dune, to my right, sand, people, and a little in the distance, the Golden Gate Bridge. In front of me there’s more sand, and the bay, and a freighter was making its way through the inlet towards the bridge. All around me people were peeling off layers of clothing to reveal taut, sun-tanned skin. I rolled up my sleeves, but that’s as far as I was willing to go. I didn’t think any of these humans had the least desire to see my overly hairy, pasty, beer gut glistening in the afternoon sunshine. The sun shone intensely in this land of money, and beaches, and ocean, and beauty. I pulled a bottle of Sobe Black Tea from my battered green rucksack and took a long draught, quenching my craving as the fair oceanic breeze from the bay cooled my sweating body.
I got a different feeling in San Fran; it’s unlike any big American city I’ve ever visited. It lacks that crazy feeling of anxiousness, the breakneck pace, the feeling that at any moment the whole kit and caboodle could go up in an insane conflagration of crime and hate, and vomit, and bile, and ferroconcrete. It’s a big city that feels like a small city. What I mean is, at no point when I was walking the streets, day or night, did I feel that some drug addled crack head was going to shoot me in the face for the five bucks in my pocket. Not like L.A., no, these two cities are polar opposites, black and white, yin and yang.
The waves crashed against the shore and I felt a happiness wash over me, a pleasure and contentedness hithertofore unknown to me. I looked up again and the freighter is gone, swallowed up by the bay, preparing to dock and unload, or perhaps load up. I removed my shoes and let the warm sand slip over my feet and betwixt my toes. I closed my eyes and tried to capture the moment, to etch it on my mind for eternity; it was a feeling I never want to forget, the sun shining, warming me to the core, the sand, the sounds, the sea. I opened my eyes and looked up and down the beach; four or five people were frolicking in the surf, one of them, a lovely young devotchka had on a blue bikini bottom and a white lace bra. She jumped over the waves as they crashed, deafeningly to shore, breasts bouncing like the Gainax Bunny Girl. Further out, a bleach blond chiselled surfer dude was swimming in the cool water, his sleek, hairless, tanned body glistening in the sunshine. Directly in front of me a fat hairy turista wearing nothing but a Speedo was walking with his similarly clad wife. The horror… the horror. Sand started to collect in the crease of my notebook, tiny grains, a thousand colours and shapes. To my left, people lounged under colourful Chinese parasols, unwrapping chicken salad sandwiches. The Gainax girl, tired of jumping the waves, headed back to her towel, across the sand, her bra soaked through and completely translucent dark, rock hard nipples poked through the material for all to see. She made her way up the dunes and lay down on her towel next to her huge, tanned, chest hair waxed, boyfriend whose name just must be Chad. Just down the beach from me a pair of Nihonjin girls in orange and green neon swimsuits strolled past an artist and his easel as he paints his exquisite surroundings. I gazed silently and appreciatively at their gentle curves, their tanned faces, one with short bleached hair, the other with a luxurious raven mane partially obscured by a large orange straw hat. I lay there on the beach and thought that if I had the money, the resources, the choice to live anywhere in the world it would be here, one of the last areas of true beauty on the planet. I gazed again, down the beach and saw another lovely devotchka wearing a black tank top and black bikini bottom, the tank top pulled up above her waist to her chest, a reddish brown pony tail was hanging playfully down the back of her head, tickling her neck. She was sitting on a blanket by herself, her mountain bike on its side in the sand behind her. She too was scribbling away in a notebook, and maybe, just maybe she’s writing about how she feels the same way about this place that I do.
I can see how easy it would be to take this place for granted in this world we live in, with the acrimonious, nasty, discordant reality of the daily grind intruding on our everyday lives. I cannot, however imagine anyone in the states not wanting to live here, work here, and play here. Then for an instant, I see the beauty swept away before my eyes as I catch a glimpse of a cigarette butt, half buried in the ivory sand and realise once again that even the most lovely of places on earth can be uglified by the humans who live there.