Saturday, May 27th
I promised a friend I'd see a play he was doing in Hollywood, and tonight was the night. From my house in Manhattan Beach, it's only about 25 minutes to the heart of the Hollywood. The most famous section of Hollywood Boulevard between Highland and Vine is a crowded artery pulsing with life and filth; sadness and extravagance. Much like the Sunset Strip, it is an area jammed with tourists eager to catch a glimpse of the Hollywood of their dreams. Unfortunately, they are instead treated to a dichotomous clash of extravagance and poverty; a transparent facade of a city much more promising in the imagination than in reality. Hundreds of pink, terrazo stars emblazoned in gold, with mostly long-forgotten names line this strip of storefronts, tourist traps and souvenir shops. The street is bustling on a Saturday night, and nestled in the darkened doorways and the false glow of neon beacons are the Hollywood homeless, transients and freaks; weathered Marilyn Monroe and Michael Jackson impersonators, panhandlers and other sharks preying upon the dreamers. It is something of a nightmare on a Saturday evening, and as I exited the 405 at Cahuenga, I could see the traffic backing up as the hordes of visitors, club junkies and cruisers lined up to jam Hollwood Boulevard with cars and chaos. Mix in a few buses and more than a few pedestrians, and you've got yourself an odd combination of streetlife and traffic; tourists and locals.
Greg Pitts, an old friend from my days at the Groundlings (and perhaps most well known for his "Oh Face" in the Mike Judge cult classic Office Space), is performing for a limited run in a play written by Mark Goffman at the Stella Adler Theatre on the corner of Hollywood and Highland. For that reason, I found myself paying ten dollars to valet park down the block at 7:55 pm. I handed the valet my keys and threaded my way through the crowds of people who never saw me. I met up with another old friend at the show, and as we entered the small theatre on the second floor of a building on Hollywood and Highland, I perused the program. Danica McKellar (Winnie Cooper from Wonder Years) was one of the leads in the play, and I rather enjoyed having an excuse to watch a play that wasn't simply a workshop or showcase designed to get paying work for the actors.
After the show, I congratulated Greg on a nice performance. It turns out he's only doing a couple of more weeks of the run, and he asked me if I had any interest in taking over the role for the last two weekends. It's been too long since I've been onstage in a dramatic piece, and I told him I was very interested. We said our goodbyes, and I walked back downstairs to Hollywood Boulevard and out past the Wax Museum. Tourists and vagabonds crowded the star studded way, and music and bass pumped out of lowered Civics and blackened SUV's and rental cars. I took my valet ticket out of my pocket, and handed it to a younger kid with a foreign accent working at the kiosk. As we waited for my car, we talked briefly. He told me that he recently moved here from France to attend school. I asked him what he thought of LA.
"Well, I imagined big stars and big cars and movies and all that, but now that I'm here I see that none of it is real," he told me with a look in his eyes that was a strange mixture of disappointment and embarrassment. I had the feeling he felt suckered by his imagination, and was coming to terms with the fact that the reality bore little resemblance. He was only two months into being here, but he saw through it. I imagined that parking cars for club patrons probably woke you up to the reality of Hollywood fairly quickly.
I continued the conversation: "You know, ten years ago this stretch of the boulevard was much worse."
He seemed interested to know more about the history of the neighborhood, and as I mostly made up the answers to questions I was pretty sure I knew the answers to, I hated the guy I was; the self-proclaimed expert on a region that I am not indigenous to; the guy who says things like: "It's better here now that they've re-gentrified it a bit." I heard the words coming out of my mouth and tried to make them stop, but conversation poured out of me. Some part of me wanted to be the expert to this French transplant, even if that meant guessing the date that the El Capitan Theatre was revamped or telling him how old the Hollywood Roosevelt was. As I spun my web of "pretty sure these are truths," I looked around and saw three bedraggled tattoo parlors, an old Saturn four door maroon sedan with cheap spinning hubcaps, three drunk women in an Escalade wearing straps, and two gentlemen in an Infiniti revelling in the dankiness of their medicinal marijuana. I recognized the orange prescription bottle the two guys were holding with the creative name of the strain of marijuana printed on an outside label. I imagine it to be something like: "Purple Power" or "Lemon Drop" or "First Lady." They laughed as they passed the weed back and forth, each inhaling the aroma deeply.
After several minutes, my car appeared. I handed the valet guy a handful of singles and immediately cut across two lanes of stop and go traffic to get off of the strip and into the bowels of Hollywood back streets. My cellphone rang, and it was Mike, an old college friend. He was on the way to a dance club on Santa Monica that used to be called "Giant." Normally that would not interest me, but he was with Julie and Amy, two women from my college theatre department that I haven't seen since the mid-90s. I got directions, and snaked my way through the darkened, trafficless side streets.
I pulled down Las Palmas and spotted the lights and the line of cars and the longer line of people waiting to get in. I found a parking spot a couple of blocks away and wondered if my black sweatshirt and jeans would be appropriate club-wear these days. I'm much more a dive bar guy, so getting dressed up to go dancing with a bunch of hipsters is pretty far off my map.
"Fuck it," I thought as I locked my car and made my way up to the club formerly known as Giant. Mike called again and told me it was twenty five bucks to get in, but that he was trying to find me a ticket that someone he knew had. "That would be awesome," I told him. I wasn't that psyched about paying $25 to get in, but I've spent $25 on worse things. We agreed to meet at the front door.
I joined the line of assorted club-goers waiting to go through the metal detector (which I am doubtful was even plugged in), and noticed a bouncer guarding the opening next to the line of people waiting. I walked over to see if I could find Mike in case he had found my ticket, and the bouncer that looked like Ted Nugent crossed over to block my way. He had a black shirt and a goatee, and I got the impression he'd seen Roadhouse one too many times.
"What's up buddy?" he asked me in an entirely confrontational way.
"Right boot," I replied.
"I'm sorry?" he asked me?
He was oblivious to my Roadhouse reference, and as he started to say something else, I spotted Mike holding up a ticket.
"I'm just getting a ticket from my friend there," I told him as I pointed over to Mike. He looked back to see Mike waving at me. I stepped back into the line of people waiting to be frisked and thanked the Swayze wanna-be for no particular reason.
Mike greeted me at the door and handed me the ticket. We walked into the enormous dance club, and I wondered how they could have possibly renamed the club to anything BUT "Giant." The place is HUGE. The outdoor section was filled with people drinking, laughing and smoking. It was a pretty cool vibe, I was shocked to find myself thinking, and the thumping and buzzing of the techno from inside was somehow inviting. We walked into a room that was roughly the size of an airport hangar, and I looked around at the scene. Hundreds of people bounced and jumped in the strobes of light on the dance floor, and women on perches swung hula hoops around them in thongs and go-go boots. There were people wearing fur coats and tailored baseball uniforms and silver pants and a handsome woman in a thong walked on stilts directly in front of us. I looked down at my ticket stub and noticed the new name of this place: "Circus."
Perfect.
I spotted Amy and Julie and an unexpected friend, Melanie in the bar section of the Giant Circus and we hugged and talked and reminisced. I tried to order a glass of wine, but the actress working behind the bar told me that "It's not that kind of a place." I felt stupid for not realizing that Cabernet is not to be ordered at hip Hollywood clubs, but I enjoyed the sting of the horribly mixed Beefeater and tonic instead.
Julie and Mel and Mike went out to dance, while Amy and I caught up on the couch by the bar. It was deafening, but we managed. It was nice to talk to an old friend, although I was at a slight disadvantage. She confessed to reading my weblog daily, and I found myself in the somewhat familiar position of knowing far less about her than she does of me. We addressed that fact, and I lamented the fact that more of my old friends don't have blogs.
After an hour or so, Mike and Julie returned and I offered to drive them back to Santa Monica. We said our goodbyes to Melanie and her friends and walked back to my car. It was nice to be back with three old friends from college; three people who were there when I realized what it was I wanted to do with my life. I look back on those college theatre days as some of the best days of my life, and anyone associated with them is a welcome reminder of a really important time to me. I often wonder where I'd be now if I hadn't somehow landed in a big play in the second to last year of my five years at Keene State.
Something tells me it wouldn't be on a side street in Hollywood, California walking with three old friends, thankful for all of the events that brought me here, and even more thankful that I still have friends from the beginning that were there when the whole thing began.
I pulled out of the parking spot next to the non-descript warehouse, and out of the glow of the streetlights of Hollywood towards the darkened road home.
