Adventures on Pico

I am in LA for a week for both business and pleasure, and was feeling a real need to soak up LA while I am here. Although most people want to get out of the car and walk around, see sights and take pictures in the fresh air, I moreso felt like I wanted to revisit the main activity of my past LA life: driving.

I took off for a bookstore, searching for a place to re-up after completing the two novels I brought with me (more on that later, but for point of information they are In the Drink and The Great Man, both by Kate Christensen). I Yelped for a book store after unsuccessfully searching the new hipster downtown of Culver City (who knew Mid-Century Modern could look so great?!), and was lead to a Barnes & Noble on Pico. The program neglected to include that it was inside the Westside Pavilion, which was actually nice to revisit, as well. After finding two nonfiction selections that look nowhere near as light as I was planning on buying (including a memoir by Danzy Senna, who I met through Damien when I was at Cal; looks like an interesting book). I also noted that there was a movie theater on sight. So upstairs I went, in search of a screening of The Proposal, starring Sandra Bullock.

The Landmark Cinema at Westside Pavilion is marvelous in the way that only things in LA can claim to be. It’s sleek and clean and spacious and has a lighting scheme. The kiosk where you can purchase your ticket not only tells you the theater number and showtimes, it also tells you what percentage of the auditorium is sold and lets you pick whatever seat you’d like to sit in. It’s a movie goer’s dream in a way that only a movie maker could imagine it. I was really nervous when, halfway through the flick, I dropped my M & M’s wrapper on the floor. I quickly scooped it up and put it in my half empty popcorn bad for later disposal.

The movie was a lot funnier than I thought it would be; I genuinely enjoyed it. Afterwards I found myself on the same familiar drag of Pico that I used to drive all the time, when heading home from Santa Monica. I was pulled eastward by the road, sort of anxious to recreate that same sense of driving around that I used to have when I lived here.

Everyone who has a car knows about the lure of the road; the sense is much amplified in the west, I think-- you know you could just take off, in your car, at any time, with very little to encumber you. Although I was quite solitary most of the time that I lived in LA, I also remember feeling a tremendous sense of freedom. Most of it came when I was behind the wheel; it was that sense of taking off, that sense of control, that sense of invention. Despite my solitary existence, or maybe because of it, and maybe also because of the consistent oddity of my work life, I felt very much alive during the years that I lived here. I remember a constant sense of expectation, and feeling like things were just around the corner, and they were things that I didn’t dread in the least.

I worked my way up Pico and saw so many familiar and comforting things: the glatt Kosher delis and food stores, the Roxbury Inn, the odd chockablock houses mixed with small Spanish/Mediterranean casitas mixed with “French Normandy” apartment buildings ( since when is Normandy not French?). Jack In the Box (great drunk/late night party/hangover food-- 2 tacos for a dollar with the tart, tangy not so hot hot sauce, or a burger deluxe for a $1.50 with barbecue sauce and bacon on it; also drive through egg rolls and root beer floats), Vons (which for an entire semester I thought was Vaughn’s) and Sav-on (which I still call “Sav-on’s” and thought was “Say Vaughn’s” when I kept hearing it from SoCal friends). I cut over to Olympic after a pit stop at Jack in the Box; love the wider boulevard an amble of traffic. I went up, back up to my old hood, and then cut back down to 3rd Street, just to see and remember.

The house with all the little statues of David is missing its statuary. I wonder if the owner was finally successfully entreated by neighbors to take them down or if he sold the house. The Ralph’s where I shopped a lot is at the intersection of 3rd & La Brea. I remember trolling around in there for good stuff, and watching the Orthodox Jewish husbands who were grocery shopping with two carts each, filling them to the brim. I remember wanting to follow them home, just to see what size household consumed that much food.

Further down 3rd; past the Beverly Center, and the kitschy stores before it; left on Robertson, right on Wilshire into Beverly Hills. Past Saks, Barneys & Rodeo Drive. Left again, jogging over back to Olympic. Curving around up and down and through Century City. Down to Sepulveda, where I cut over and keep going some more till Washington Place, back in Culver City.

To me LA is always hopeful. The neighborhoods that are crusty and old, the ones that are neglected; they still contain a hopeful element to me. The palm trees and the sunshine and the manicured lawn, even if the grass isn’t that green, still looks tony to me. Those boxy buildings with their dull grey or yellow coat of paint on stucco, they seem to say, “you could live here and still enjoy the sunshine” to me. I thought that I didn’t really miss LA too much, but I guess that’s not so true.