LA in Reverse:
Had a great few days in Los Angeles to celebrate Passover with my parents. Got to check in on old friends and new, see a fantastic art exhibit and spend a lot of quality time with family. The hotel we were staying at was only a few blocks from the former site of the legendary Hollywood restaurant Chasen’s. I was lucky enough to have one meal at Chasen’s, dinner on my 20th birthday, before it closed in 1995. I took some time to walk around the parking lot and think about how much time has passed since then. I made a note to see the documentary about the restaurant’s closing sometime soon but the truth is, it may be too sad for me.
I am a sucker for old Hollywood lore. Maybe it’s because I worked at movie studios at the impressionable age of nineteen. Even though my second summer of it cured me of ever wanting to be that close to the business again, it’s still the image I have in my head of Los Angeles, an unwieldy, howling, sunshock that still draws young people filled with crazy ideas, a place where, as Steve Martin wrote in his valentine L.A. Story, “They’ve taken a desert and turned it into their dreams.” It’s why, when I visit, I stick to old hangouts and places long out of fashion. I’m just not interested in the LA of now. I get so much more out of the LA of then.
Soon I’m going to go back to LA for a few days and have a completely manufactured old Hollywood experience: Stay at the Chateau Marmont (Harry Cohn said “if you must get in trouble, do it at the Marmont”), dine at Dantana’s and Musso & Frank’s, have a drink at the Rainbow, and take in a show at the Magic Castle. It won’t resemble any sort of experience a real Los Angelino has but for a weekend, I can live with that. It’ll be great fun for me. I may even wear a seersucker suit and walk with a gold topped cane.