Sunday, January 27, 2008

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Windward Avenue - Venice

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Not only did Orson Welles redress Windward Avenue to look like Tijuana for his 1958 masterpiece TOUCH OF EVIL, but it serves as a location in David Duchonvy's series CALIFORNICATION. I spent a lot of time here in the early to mid 1980s, when The Townhouse Bar used their basement for bands and dancing. (Not that I did any dancing.) Somewhere along the way it became condemned and they boarded up the down staircase. In the back, the pool table wasn't ever too crowded and I met a lot of authentic folks there in those days. The drunks and the bikers didn't bother grad students and once in a while a decent blonde would come through the doors and be talkative. I always loved the broken urinals left broken and crumbling from year to year. They were as bad then as the public school toilets are today. But don't get me started.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Miceli's on Las Palmas - Hollywood

Miceli's on Las Palmas - HollywoodMiceli's on Las Palmas - HollywoodMiceli's on Las Palmas - HollywoodMiceli's on Las Palmas - Hollywood

My wife, a native Californian raised in the Fairfax and Carthay Circle, tells me she used to go to Miceli's as a kid with her family. We've been going there since we lived together on Cochran Avenue just south of 3rd street. Upon your arrival at a table at Miceli's, you are greeted with the most supple white rolls, steaming hot, with iced butter of course. The pizzas are flawless. The meatballs taste like mom palmed their creation. We like the antipasto salad. The new house wine is more tasty than any Trader Joe's wine under $10. Once, around 1989 I think, I remember being here with playful friends and slightly intoxicated. I must have been intoxicated because I remember standing on a chair and singing HOORAY FOR CAPTAIN SPAULDING. Thank god they don't remember me. I can still get a table.