Erika Schickel

HoopLA: Song, Story, Spectacle

2013-05-09T22:35:56Z

Los Angeles is populated with art tribes. There are the actors-who-write, the writers-who-read, the musicians-who-paint, the-painters-who-jam. There are comedians who want to be taken seriously, and drama queens who want to sing opera. And of course, everybody is a writer. Los Angeles, in its sprawl, allows artists freedom to push boundaries, define art in new terms, or to blow off definition altogether. And yet, I have always noticed how the tribes kept to themselves. The actors-who-write are over at the Comedy Central Stage, and the writers-who-read are at Beyond Baroque. The singer/songwriters are at McCabe's and the poets are in the coffee houses. We keep to our own.

I arrived in Los Angeles in 1988 with little more than, “a dance belt and a tube of Chapstick” and a deep love of books and theater. Like Corky St. Clair in Waiting for Guffman, I was slammed down by New York and had dreams of finding artistic license and success in this promised land. I started out as an actress, but wandered into many different genres, disciplines and venues over the last twenty-five years. I have done performance art at Highways, radio for LA Theatre Works, standup comedy at Igby’s, literary readings at Skylight and Book Soup. I have staged talent shows and vaudeville acts, dangled from trapezes, marched in parades, and performed political theater on the capitol steps in Sacramento. I have worked in journalism, moderated literary panels, appeared in films, and voiced vampires and cartoon characters for television. I have also been an avid consumer of all this culture.

I’m not bragging, I’m just saying—I have done it all, Yo— and I have met them all, and along the way I have marveled at how separate these art tribes remain. There is no shortage of shows and reading series’, gigs, galleries, cabarets and events to attend, but where is the place that pulls it all together? Where is our local talent show?

So I have created HoopLA to bring together these tribes, these disparate groups of brilliant, talented, funny, deep humans—the artists of Los Angeles. HoopLA will be free-wheeling and tender-hearted, heady and slightly inane. I will merge old-schoolers with up-and-comers, bringing their audiences together to explore and cross-fertilize around a central idea. I want HoopLA to be a place where we can all meet each other and create new connections, both artistic and social.

My co-producer The Los Angeles Review of Books, does this every day, and very smartly, online, publishing essays and reviews on a variety of topics. Like the LA Review of Books, I want HoopLA to feel as edifying as a long form essay but also as iffy as an episode of The Gong Show. Moreover, I want it to feel as friendly and spontaneous as a potluck.

Our first show is this Saturday, May 11th, and as this is Mother’s Day weekend, our theme is “Mother.” We will offer you a smorgasbord of female fecundity. We have Amy Simon lecturing her kids, Gayle Brandeis belly dancing, Garretson & Gorodetsky singing about the animals of Los Angeles, Samantha Dunn on the maggots in her mother’s kitchen, and God alone knows what the ever-spontaneous and hilarious Sandra Tsing Loh will do. I believe a violin will be involved.

If you can’t make it out, never fear, we will do it again the second Saturday of every month at 6pm at Club Fais Do Do. Every installment has a different theme and different artists, but it will always be fun. As Corky would say, I will not deliver "a stinky product, but a beautifully packaged, glossy, sweet-smelling show."

“Hoopla” in English means “ballyhoo,” “jovial commotion,” or “excitement” – all words which I am happy to have associated with the spirit of this show. But I chose the title it for its etymology; Hoopla comes from the French phrase, “Houp La!” which means, “Get up!” It’s something a Parisian mother might bark at her truculent child. That is the spirit behind this endeavor. Let’s get up and go out and see something, do something, meet each other, make something together, have some fun. HoopLA!

Erika Schickel, The Doyenne of HoopLA

The Sisterhood is Powerful

2012-11-07T23:38:54Z

On entering, Warren spotted a schoolgirl among the local politicians who had gathered to receive her, and went for her. “I’m Elizabeth Warren,” she told the youngster, extending her hand, and bending down to make eye contact. “And I’m running for the United States Senate. Because that’s what girls do. Remember that. It’s important.” Philip Gourevich, The New Yorker

Whatever your political affiliation, it is undeniable that last night was a watershed moment in American politics. Ninety-two years after the Suffragettes won us the right to vote, women have finally coalesced into a powerful political force to be reckoned with.

And while we celebrate Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Baldwin, and the other women who won senate seats last night, there is still a long way to go before we reach parity in the halls of local and federal government. Where we go from here is going to require not just focused effort, but a sense of entitlement that may be new for us. We are so used to supporting others, but it has become clear that if we want the issues we care about addressed, we're gonna have to do it ourselves.

In that spirit, Marianne Williamson, author, lecturer and longtime spiritual crusader in the name of peace and love, is hosting a two-day conference this weekend, at the beautiful Saban Theater on Wilshire Boulevard. Here’s the pitch: “The purpose of SISTER GIANT is to help create a new conversation in American politics, one in which principles of higher consciousness form a new foundation for political involvement.“

Saturday will be devoted to discussing the personal and political issues that prevent women from running for office. For many of us, politics is too toxic to go near, but of course, that is precisely why we, and our brothers in the “consciousness community,” need to be more involved. Yes, it's ugly, but if we don't step up and advocate for children, families, equal pay, reproductive rights, education, tax reform and fairness and transparency in politics, then the bad boys are just going to run away with the whole enchilada, and we'll be left barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen once more.

Sunday will be devoted to a day-long workshop led by The Women’s Campaign School at Yale University. It will be a hands-on training session in the nuts and bolts of running for office, demystifying the process and empowering women to launch their own campaigns for local and national elections.

There is a full schedule of events on the Sister Giant website, with fascinating speakers from five different parties laying out arguments for why we should campaign under their banners. So let's pull up our socks and really get in the game ladies—because as Ms. Warren said, that’s what girls do. It's important.

Sister Cities: A Letter to New York

2012-11-03T20:14:31Z

Dear New York,

When you Google “Sister Cities of Los Angeles” there is a list of foreign cities that include Athens, Beirut, Berlin and Mumbai. Those are lovely cities, I’m sure, but c'mon, they are all step-sisters at best, related to us by a civil ceremony that we didn’t attend. We all know that you, New York, are our real sister city.

New York and Los Angeles are made of the same genetic material, and like all siblings, we could not be more different, or more alike. You may have Dad’s chin and we have mom’s nose, but it’s the way we gesture, laugh at the same things, or sigh in unison that is the tell—we come from the same strange, brainy, artsy, independent, iconoclastic, self-absorbed, stubborn, salty soup.

Like all families, we have been known to treat each other shabbily. We take each other for granted, are passive-aggressive with each other, we flip each other a ton of shit, and make regular, stressful visits to each other’s homes where we quickly wear out our welcome. But in times of crisis, we should know we are there for each other, because, in the end, we are family, and we can’t imagine life without each other.

I was born and raised in Manhattan, but at twenty-four I left home and fled west for reasons both personal and professional. But the real truth is I had to get away from you, New York, in order to grow up and figure out who I was. There was not a street corner in Manhattan that didn’t hold a specific memory for me, many of which were painful and confusing.

Once here, I joined millions of other prodigal sons and daughters and got to work building a life that made New York feel further and farther away. Part of the "reinvention" contract that Los Angelenos are so famous for signing is the sub-clause of forgetting who we once were. It is that psychological distance, and not the 3,000 physical miles that separate us, that has caused tension in our relationship.

Now, many of those familiar, beloved street corners are underwater, and neighborhoods in which I once lived, loved and worked have been plunged into darkness or erased. I ache for the sidewalks and subways, for the friends, family and neighbors I left behind. But did I call anyone? No, and not just because I heard the phones were out, but because it seemed too far away and surreal to be real.

My friend Ellen lives in a high rise in lower Manhattan, across the street from the Hudson River. We worked together at the Odeon in the 1980’s, and over the years we have tried to keep our long-distance friendship alive, which hasn’t always been easy. It has probably been two years since we last spoke on the phone. A couple of nights ago she flamed my Facebook wall, where I was nattering away, like a stereotypical Angeleno, about (oh, forgive me, this is so embarrassing) a cleanse I had recently done. “Thanks for reaching out,” she sarcastically commented, apropos of nothing, and I realized, with utter horror, that I had been so far up my own ass, I had forgotten to check in with her.

So I did, and this is what she told me: “We just bought a house on the jersey shore, 59 days before sandy hit. it represented everything and cost everything we have... erika... i want to die at this point. i know that is a lot to tell someone in an email but you cannot imagine how bad it is for some of us. i re-activated my facebook account yesterday hoping people were reaching out to me... instead i got well, nothing.... “

And in that moment, I understood. I understood that I didn’t understand. I wasn’t fully comprehending the seriousness of what was going on back home. I still don't understand how cold, frightened and exhausted you are. As the images of devastation filtered in on TV and through the firewall of my own self-absorption and denial, I began reaching out to my New York family, most of whom are physically fine, but deeply stressed and bitter.

My mother lives alone in the East 70’s. She reports the constant sound of sirens, empty market shelves, and “depression, bad dreams and despair, hour by hour.”

My ex-boyfriend Jim had this to say: “Just drove downtown. Lights out below 35th street. Eerie. Like The Road with cell phones. Reminds [sic] of the feeling of NY after 9/11. On our knees. Buzz is that the nation doesn’t care. LA is at the tanning booth. While the straw that stirs the drink is crimped.”

The misspellings and screwy syntax in a couple of these messages tells me as much about the New York state of mind as the words themselves. This trauma refreshes the PTSD of 9/11. Things that have always been there are now gone, snatched away in a violent instant. Staten Island? Breezy Point? Coney Island? Gone. The Jersey shoreline? Gone. If New York is L.A.'s sister, New Jersey is our cousin. It bends the minds of those who are standing in the middle of it, and for those of us who are far away? Forgive us, for we cannot comprehend it.

I don’t have to read between the lines of my friends' emails to hear the anger and implication that us Angelenos, with our endless summers and valet parking, our Cobb salads and three-picture deals, just don’t get it. Of course, tanning booth clichés only trigger us. That is not us! We are real people with real problems, too! See, you've never understood us! Just when I was trying to build the rainbow bridge, you had to go and pick a fight. This is sibling rivalry. We keep score, we resent and lash out. Our wildfires and windstorms must seem so paltry compared to 9/11 and Sandy. It feels like only The Big One will make us even.

But I want to try to make amends. I love you, New York, and I don't want to us to fuss now, of all times. So, I want to say I am so sorry, New York, if we seem oblivious. Our news feeds are full of grey, churning water, sodden basements, endless fuel lines and the unspeakable horror of babies being swept from their mother’s arms, but we still don't get the picture. Your fear and helplessness make us feel frightened and helpless. All we can offer you is our celebrities for telethons and our utility trucks to help get the lights back on, but we honestly don't know what to do to fix something that is so unbearably broken.

Of course, the news we're getting isn't all bad. It is full of stories of you guys coming together, charging up each other’s phones, delivering free pizzas, and holding impromptu parades. That is the New York I know and love, and that is the New York that will prevail yet again.

I wish there was more I could do personally, other than donate what I can to The Red Cross. I want to get on a plane and come muck out Staten Island with you, but I can’t, for reasons too prosaic to list, and it hurts my heart.

I feel that by not being there, I am missing a family reunion, with all the pain, squabbling and stalwart love those insane events inspire in the human heart. I wish I could ship you my earthquake box with its extra batteries, baby wipes and Fig Newtons. I want you to know how proud I am to be part of such a bighearted, pugnacious family. You will survive and rebuild, because you are New Yorkers, goddammit! It's who you...who we are.

Erika

Dear Sugar, teach me how to be you

2012-08-12T17:39:08Z

I’m having a Cheryl Strayed problem -- her success makes me feel like a failure. There. I’ve said it. I know that there are some of you out there who feel the same way, though maybe even now, now that I’ve said it, you still can’t admit it, because to do so would expose you to yourself as the jealous wretch you secretly are. And that’s okay, Sweet Pea -- because I’m going to take the hit for you.

I had been reading and loving the Dear Sugar column on the Rumpus for a few months when I learned, along with the rest of the world, that Ms. Sugar was not some frowzy housewife safely tucked away in a Southern kitchen among gingham curtains and curling linoleum, but a groovy Minnesotan, living in Portland with social/cultural credentials that nearly matched my own. She is close, personal friends with several of my close, personal friends and when I heard that I actually had the thought that maybe if I hadn’t wasted so many good years smoking dope with some of these friends, with my head up my ass, I might have a beautiful, insightful paid column of my own now. But thoughts like that are par for the course around here. I can honestly say that at that point I wasn’t bitter... yet.

Then, about ten minutes after Strayed blew the cover off her Sugar bowl, her memoir Wild was published and Strayed became the instant darling of the literary world. That's when all hell broke loose and I went down the rabbit hole.

A week after Wild’s publication, trying to keep my nose above the rising tide of my own self-loathing, I went to see Strayed at a local literary soiree. I was trying to inoculate myself against further disgruntlement. She read an excerpt from her book, and was interviewed by a friend of mine, who is an oft-published and brilliant writer in her own right. This woman, a powerful, eloquent being, Strayed's equal in gift, made light of herself and her own accomplishments as a way of paying tribute to Strayed.

When women are jealous, we often tend to display a beta dog-like admiration toward those we envy. Whereas a man will flex and posture like an alpha before his perceived competitor, a woman will practically petit point her own shortcomings on a lavender sachet and gift it to her rival in an attempt to distance herself from the stink of her own uncomfortable feelings. Not that Strayed is anyone’s rival. Nooooo… We are all in it for each other, after all, because we’re lovely, supportive gentlewomen, and the Sisterhood is sacred.

Afterward the audience, mostly women and mostly writers, swarmed Strayed, practically prostrating themselves at her feet. I did too, kvelling over her Sugar column, congratulating her on her success. Strayed seemed appreciative, if a bit taken aback by it all. That night I friended her on Facebook, getting in under the wire before her page exploded with friend requests from a grateful nation of fans.

The next day I went for a hike with three lady pals who are all accomplished, published writers, and had also attended the event. All we could talk about was, you guessed it, Cheryl Strayed, and that's when the knives came out. We let it fly; the begrudging admiration for her work, the bewilderment at the seemingly random nature of her success and how people seem to be overreacting to a book that was, yes, wonderful, but not so much more wonderful than books that other people we knew had written, such as, oh, us, for instance. We agreed she was a fine writer, but so were so many others we knew, including ourselves, so why did she get the brass ring?

Here we were -- women all in possession of good health, loving families, interesting, paid writing lives, and yet we tromped along like a quartet of Grimm Fairy Tale stepmothers spewing verbal toads and lizards out onto the trail. We bemoaned the state of being middle-aged, mid-listers in a dwindling freelance market. We ragged on our feckless spouses, our useless agents, on Joyce Maynard’s hair. But underneath we knew we were simply feeling the bitter injustice that came with the territory of not being Cheryl Strayed. Even our day hike was paltry compared to her mighty trek on the Pacific Coast Trail. Of course, at that point, I hadn’t actually read her book yet.

So I went home and read Wild furtively on my Kindle, and dammit, I fucking loved it. I laughed, I wept, I practically lost a toenail, I was so engrossed by it. It is a truly beautiful book and held yet more evidence of our similarities.

It’s one thing to snark at E.L. James, whose Fifty Shades of Grey success feels freakish and undeserved. I mean, holy crap, she’s a bad writer. Her success is evidence of a chaotic universe utterly lacking in value, and that provides perverse comfort. But Cheryl Strayed completely deserves her success, which makes her success sting all the more. It seems to highlight some kind of personal lack -- of talent, of persistence, of specialness -- in my own soul. Where did I go wrong?

I was, like Strayed, once a broken-hearted young woman, estranged from my family, lost to myself. Like Strayed, I took a long, lonely path through the wilds of my heart. But unlike her, I lost the trail, wandering off into the woods of self-delusion, a decaying marriage, school volunteerism, addiction, Project Runway reruns and the many diversions a frightened ego will take refuge in. Strayed got her Bad-Girling done early, took notes and strode bravely toward achievement, whereas I dawdled, putting off the hardest part of my journey until my forties when I would find myself trekking across an emotional snow field in flip flops, an inter-dental pick my ice axe.

Cheryl Strayed feels like an artifact from that parallel universe in which a more talented, successful version of myself is writing and thriving. It is this element of molecular recognition that makes me and my friends compare ourselves to her. She is utterly one of us: a journeywoman writer, an ex-drug addict, a gal with a tawdry sexual history and a failed marriage in her past. She is lush-bodied, kicks around in a pair of red cowboy boots that look like a sassy thrift store score, and on the night I saw her, was wearing a black ensemble that was beginning its descent into grey from over-laundering, just like half the stuff in my closet. In other words she is just like me and everyone I love: human, shopping at Target, maybe sneaking a cigarette when she has one too many. Except I was watching her take a fork in the road that didn't appear to be anywhere in my cosmic trail guide.

If the success of Wild (#5 on Amazon at this writing) weren’t enough, Strayed followed it up a mere four months later with Tiny, Beautiful Things, (#350 on Amazon) a collection of her Dear Sugar pieces, which would have been enough of a publication coup in and of itself. I mean, for fucksake, two beautiful, heart-wrenching books in a year?? I’m still dining out on my first book, a collection of freelance pieces published way back in 2007 (Amazon ranking #1,323,491), which, on my darker days, when I allow myself to go full-Plath, I tell myself doesn’t really count as having written a real book. My own version of Wild, a memoir called Unsupervised which I started in 2008, sits half-baked on my hard drive while I write festering blog posts like this one that twelve people will read (and I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you for being one of them).

I understand that this scarcity mentality is the mark of a dysfunctional ego run amok, and that of course, there are no limits to blessings in God’s perfect universe. My karma is not helped by my smallness, and yet, this awareness only serves to make me feel more puny and unworthy. Rather than be threatened by Strayed’s success, I should be inspired by it, and applaud it, because it is proof that good things can come to good people who work hard. But that brings up the question of whether I am, actually, a good person. I already know I'm not working hard enough. I fritter away my days lurking on Facebook, I read self-help books instead of great literature, I interrupt my writing regularly to squeeze blackheads in a magnifying mirror.

Of course, Strayed doesn’t need my applause, not with 5,000 Facebook friends frantically posting comments like, “You continue to be an amazing person!!” on her wall every day. Not with Oprah high-fiving her and People magazine wondering what she’s reading, (there's not a self-helper on her list, btw). I lurk on her page, tracking her career ascendency, and her utter grace in the face of it. I wonder, if there are days when even Sugar feels like its all gotten a bit saccharine.

Sometimes Facebook feels like that courtroom in Defending Your Life where we are all called to account for our lives and provide evidence of having lived them honorably. Whereas Strayed has posts that show her selflessly supporting the work of others, healing the hearts of the burned and broken, forgiving her mother, celebrating her successful second marriage, rescuing puppies from burning buildings, I am out here, unattached, estranged from my mother, using only 2% of my brain and sliding off the roof of my life with a TV antennae clutched in my hand. In fact, this very piece could be used as evidence to keep me off the tram to heaven.

Some days I think the only one who can help me now is Strayed herself. I’d like to write to Sugar and unbosom myself. She would probably say something like, Pumpkin, it’s okay, everyone feels like an envious little turd at some point. Then she might reveal something similar from her own experience, where she coveted someone else’s life and lacked appreciation for her own. She would find the common ground, and turn it all around by making me feel loved and special just the way I am, thereby instilling fresh hope in my exhausted, withered heart. Either that or she would simply unfriend me on Facebook. Either one would kill me.

Baby's first bust: guerilla postering with Robbie Conal

2012-08-06T05:11:04Z

A crowd of about thirty people was gathered in a corner of Canter’s Deli close to 11pm on Friday night. It was a fairly grungy group, dominated by young people, but well seasoned with middle-aged duffers like myself. Graphic t-shirts were the uniform of choice, dreadlocks and face studs the predictable accessories of those who had shown up to be accessories to municipal misdemeanors. We were drinking coffee and milkshakes, laughing and kibitzing a few steps away from the Kibbitz Room, where the evening’s band could be heard warming up.

At the center of the group was Robbie Conal, a jolly, urban gnome in a chicken t-shirt. He was holding up his latest street poster, a Mitt Romney visage rendered in the classic Conal hand: over lined and jittery, a graphic manifestation of Conal’s genius as well as his A.D.D. Romney’s lipless mouth was pursed, eyes slightly crossed in a monumental effort to conjure a thought. An empty thought bubble floated over his head.

“So this is my take on Mitt,” Robbie began. “Mitt has deep thoughts. You’re getting a Sharpie with your roll of posters, so I’m sure you can write in something he can’t think of, which would be anything.”
“I got nuthin’,” someone shouted out.
“That works,” Robbie affirmed.

We were Robbie’s guerrilla postering crew. After two decades of watching his iconic posters crop up mysteriously on street corners around Los Angeles, I felt privileged to finally be there, at the center of the Los Angeles political art hub.

I came of age in New York City in the 80’s where Keith Haring’s chalk drawings were on every subway stop in town and Jean Michel Basquiat had recently emerged from his SAMO cover to dominate the art world. When I moved here at the end of 1988 Robbie’s work was basically it for L.A. street art -- Banksy was still finger painting and graffiti was mostly a disorganized, egocentric, gangster mess with occasional spurts of brilliance. This was back in the era of Jesse Helms and it was his “Artificial/Art Official” posters that made me a fan.

Conal’s art was something new: political discourse made tangible, fine art for the masses. The posters were graphic thought prods; Etch-A-sketch acts of outrage and pranksterism. They were funny, ugly, weird and righteous. They were also everywhere – on bus benches and construction sites, they covered billboards and light switching boxes, transforming Angelinos from passive consumers into what Conal calls “surface semioticians.” I remember, sometime around 1990, driving up La Brea and wondering how the posters managed to appear all over the city all at once. The mystery turned out not to be very mysterious; its a movement fueled by chutzpah, Dynamite glue and strawberry milkshakes.

“It’s a minor form of civil disobedience,” Robbie told us. “It’s about the same as being a little bit pregnant.” The analogy didn’t quite track, but it was comforting nonetheless. I had been a little bit pregnant sixteen years ago, and now that baby was all grown up and interning for Robbie over the summer. She had spent the day rolling his posters into tubes of 25 per and preparing for her first urban art attack.

Conal is not some riled-up, vitriolic art beast, but a sweet-natured, menschy soul who takes his art-mentoring very seriously. My daughter is one in a long line of kids he has taken under his wing over the years. She washes his brushes and runs errands for him and he pays her in home-cooked meals, chicken shirts and positive reinforcement.

“This is a lot of fun,” Robbie continues, getting down to serious business, “but for it to be a lot of fun, you need to follow Robbie’s Rules of Guerrilla Etiquette. No running. It didn’t work for Rodney King and it’s not going to work for you. That means not just no running from people in midnight blue suits with shiny accessories. It means not running across intersections because you’re so happy and are having so much fucking fun that you’re going to attract attention. Also, as you go along and everything’s going great, you might get a little cocky and get surface lust. You’ll think, ooh, great spot! I’m gonna climb up here where everyone can see it, but guess what? They’re gonna see you too.”

It went on like this for about an hour before we all went out to the Canter’s parking lot to get our posters and vats of Dynamite wallpaper glue. We struck out, my daughter (let’s call her by her baby nickname, “Bunnyhead” to protect her identity, unless of course you want to Google anything else I’ve written in the last sixteen years) riding shotgun, her accomplices in the back seat. I was there to chaperone the minors and drive the getaway car.

Bunnyhead had made a special mix CD for the ride, per Robbie’s instructions. We bopped through Santa Monica, postering Main Street, Wilshire, Santa Monica Boulevard and Broadway, listening to hip-hop and The Smiths, slapping up posters in a semi-haphazard manner per Robbie’s instructions: “If it looks too perfect nobody will think its us. It’s gotta be a little crooked, a little funky because that’s the way we are.”

After a couple of hours, we were headed home via Pico. It was around the time that Morrissey was whining about not having a stitch to wear that we passed the Westside Pavilion. On the corner of Pico and Overland was a beautiful, virginal traffic light switch box. Robbie had deliberately sized his posters to fit these boxes perfectly. I dropped the kids off and told them I’d circle the block, as I didn’t want to park in a red zone, careful driving being another of Robbie's, and my, rules of etiquette. Of course, “around the block” took about seven minutes, as the residential streets around the Westside Pavilion are blocked to through traffic. When I finally rounded the corner back onto Pico, I saw the flashing squad car lights and my kids being questioned by L.A.’s finest.

I pulled up slowly and immediately saw what had gone wrong. Their youthful surface lust had gotten the better of them. They had blown off the light box for a big, white, blank door on the side of the mall itself. The Mittster seemed to be wondering what the hell he was doing affixed to private property.

“Kids?” I said, rolling down my window and looking like a model of parental concern and dismay, “What’s going on here?” I figured it would go easier for everyone if I played it like a Westside Soccer Mom just picking up her juvenile delinquents. If I were identified as an accessory to vandalism, it would be far more complicated for all involved, especially me.

“Ma’am, is one of these kids yours?” the larger of the two officers asked me. I parked, got out and identified Bunnyhead as my personal perp.

What ensued was close to an hour of questioning. The children were asked if they had any tattoos, scars or gang names and I had to turn away to keep from laughing when Bunnyhead shot me a look. The kids followed Robbie’s rules and were impeccably polite and respectful. The cops were solicitous, even friendly. “Remember,” Robbie had said, “If the police are interested in what you’re doing, it’s their job to be interested. If you’re really polite they’ll just think you’re misguided youth, and they wouldn’t be wrong about that.”

These two officers immediately saw they had nabbed some newbies. They checked student ID’s and asked about their SAT scores. They even went so far as to admire the poster and tell the kids they thought their political activism was admirable, but private property had to be protected. The crew nodded in perfect understanding. Because everyone was so cool, they gave the kids a break on the vandalism charge, and let them go with a curfew infraction. The guilty parties scraped the poster off the door, parents were notified, citations were issued and everyone went home. We await our court date and anticipate a small fine.

The evening was fun until it suddenly wasn’t fun. Watching my daughter being questioned and fingerprinted by the police was not a peak parenting experience, and I must tell you, I questioned my own judgement. But this is where the rubber of progressive parenting meets the road of authoritarianism. Our family believes in free speech and political activism. Afterward we talked about how it would have been different if she had been out randomly tagging with malicious intent. It’s a fine line between vandalism and street art, and I wanted her to be clear about where it lay. I also made it clear that I would have felt very differently if she had gone and done this without my permission or protection. Call me a hypocrite, but I encourage my children to question all authority except my own.

The next day Bunnyhead texted Robbie a photo of herself holding up her citation and his reply was: “Congratulations! I’m glad you didn’t have a boring night.” No Robbie, it certainly wasn't boring.

Chalk it up to troubled times

2012-07-14T07:33:08Z

I was down at 6th and Spring on Thursday for Art Walk, killing time before I picked up my teenage daughter, Franny, from her summer internship at the Gloria Delson Gallery. I wandered up and down Spring Street where the Art Walk crowds had the sidewalks tightly packed. The energy felt frenetic and charged.

I walked past a group of kids who were handing out pieces of sidewalk chalk, encouraging pedestrians to draw on the pavement. I assumed it was some kind of spontaneous street art project in the spirit of Art Walk, but since the rain was coming down fairly hard, I thought drawing with chalk was a pointless exercise and passed it up.

The chalk kids were scruffy, pierced and dreadlocked, and though I heard no words of protest, they were Occupy-ish in their mien. They were there to whip us up, but into what, was unclear. I couldn’t decipher the moment or understand why they were there. It felt wrong, but harmless. The fat pieces of pastel sidewalk chalk were just like the ones my own kids have at home. The sidewalk in front of our house is often marked with kid hieroglyphics -- exhortations to live and love -- just like these. Chalk is so harmless. It is cheerful, temporary, and the medium of teachers, hop-scotchers and Keith Haring. So, okay, I thought, this is all okay.

It was the police presence that added a dystopian note to the festive gathering. It felt like date night, but with mean chaperones. Mini-skirted girls teetered in pumps and giggled beside their buzz-cut boyfriends in crisp shirts. Cops glowered at them from every corner. On the one hand the vibe was festive and arty, on the other hand, it felt like it could ignite at any moment.

The last time I was downtown it was for an Occupy event, and it felt just the same. Granite-faced cops pegged corners and crosswalks. Their sobriety stood in stark relief to the festive, tiddly energy of the art lovers. I didn’t like it, so I sought refuge from the rain in The Last Bookstore, flipping through a book of Robert Capa photographs. The men who fought the Spanish Civil War were as young as the kids out on the sidewalk. Revolution belongs to youth.

At 8:40 Franny texted me that she was done at the gallery and we met on the corner of 5th and Spring at 8:45, walked to my car and drove home.

The next day she and I were getting getting mani/pedis at our local nail nook and we saw the news reports of what happened fifteen minutes after we left Spring Street. All hell had broken loose. Bottles were thrown, rubber bullets were fired. sixteen people were arrested. We had left just in time. “Some of those kids were teenagers” Franny said. “I guess drawing with chalk is wrong, but child abuse is okay.” Out of the mouth of my babe, who is coming of age in zero-tolerance times.

As my nails got painted I watched footage of workers spray painting over the chalk art that had ended up on the side of a building, thereby graduating the doodles from harmless art to vandalism. I wondered why on earth they would go to the trouble and expense of painting over the chalk when a hose would have washed it off in a jiff. But this is the theater of self-righteous indignity. By defending businesses from harmless scribblers, the police were sending a message that it is business, not people, who are protected by the law.

These are troubled times, everyone is taking everything so seriously. There is a time for revolution, and there is a time for just letting people enjoy the street and neither the chalk kids, (whom I suspect were not an official an Occupy Wall Street group) nor the LAPD seemed willing to let Art Walk be about art. Throngs of people chanted, “These are our streets!,” and of course, they were right. There’s nothing wrong with using Spring Street as a temporary canvas for people who will never have their art on a gallery wall, to say something about what it feels like to be alive in this strange, exultant, fraught and confusing moment. The LAPD would have it all swept away, when in fact, the strange, unseasonal rain was already doing the job for them.

Addendum: My daughter reports that the chalkers came into the gallery on Tuesday to talk about what happened on Thursday night. They said they hadn't intended to cause a ruckus, nor had they anticipated the aggressive police presence. They were going around to all of the businesses to apologize and explain their intentions - which was to build community and allow people to participate more actively in the artwalk event. They told her they will hold a community meeting to talk about what happened. I will keep you updated if I hear of anything more.

Ten cents a dance

2012-06-24T17:54:56Z

Note: This piece was written for a recent "Bad Girl" reading I did. The song lyrics are meant to be sung.

I was a dreamy, romantic, MGM Musical-obsessed child, growing up in Manhattan in the '70's. My dad was a movie critic, so our family record collection was full of soundtrack albums. One of my chief childhood pleasures was memorizing show tunes and choreographing elaborate dance sequences to them. All I needed was a twirly skirt, maybe a pair of tights on my head to simulate long, flowing braids, and I could transform my parents' living room into a soundstage. I leaped off of ottomans, flung myself into sofa cushions and belted out ballads while my parents tried to write in other, quieter, parts of the house.

When I was about ten I became fixated on a song from a movie I had never seen called “Love Me or Leave Me” starring Doris Day. “Ten Cents a Dance” told the story of a woman who works in a dance hall, getting paid to dance with strange men. The song was full of pathos and mystery, and something almost dirty that I almost understood. I played this song over and over every day for weeks, one of my mother's unlit True's dangling from my fingertips, leaning against a buffet, letting the unshed tears of the lonely, haunted woman fill my throat as I sang:

I work at the Palace ballroom, but gee that palace is cheap
When I get back to my chilly hallroom, I'm much too tired to sleep
I'm one of those lady teachers, a beautiful hostess you know;
One that the palace features, at exactly a dime a throw.

Fourteen years later I was an actual lonely, haunted woman newly arrived in Los Angeles. I had spent my last dime moving west to get away from a man who didn’t love me enough. I was combing the back of the LA Weekly classifieds one day, looking for a fast way to come up with rent that wasn’t prostitution, when I came across an ad that screamed “Earn $400-$600 a night as a hostess at Club Flamingo!”

The club was downtown on 12th street. I walked up the wide, creaking staircase of an ancient building to the second floor and asked for the manager. A beefy bouncer walked me past the dance area. A mirrored ball sprayed colored dots across a rough, empty floor. There was a bar area, and a long banquette, where a few bored girls sat, legs crossed, their pumps dangling off their big toes.

Marty, sat behind a huge, oak desk in an office cluttered with ashtrays, posters and cracked disco balls. He explained the rules: “No alcohol or drugs, cigarette smoking only on breaks in the designated area. Single men are not allowed on the dance floor, no leaving the club with customers, no blowjobs, no hand jobs, no grinding.” He pointed to a closed circuit TV screen next to his desk. “Every inch of that dance floor is on camera. If you break any of these rules, I will fire you. We run a clean joint here.”
And with that, I became a Taxi Dancer.

Ten cents a dance, that's what they pay me
Gosh how they weigh me down.
Ten cents a dance, dandies and rough guys, tough guys who tear my gown.

Of course, with inflation, it was more like ten bucks a dance. The house took half and I got the other half, plus tips. I took my place on the red vinyl banquette alongside the other dime-a-dance girls – I was the only Caucasian in the lineup. The dandies and rough guys looked us over from bar tables. In heels, I was good a foot taller than just about everyone in the club.

My first customer was a stone-faced Hispanic man who followed me out to the dance floor just as “Hello” by Lionel Richie was starting up. As in Doris Day’s days, dances were timed by songs. He put his hands on my waist and drew me close. It felt strange to be this close to a stranger. We did an awkward shuffle, my forearms resting on his shoulders, my hands dangling in the air behind his back, which struck me as a gesture that was Doris Day-worthy, and got me out of touching him. We didn’t speak, and he didn’t even really look at me. I could feel his palms sweating through my thin nylon top.

“Hello” ended and I took him over to the desk to punch out and pay up. He didn’t tip me anything. Already I felt I was failing. What had I done wrong? It was a question that was always on my mind in those days. How am I fucking this up? Back in the days of the twirly skirt I had known who I was: a dreamer, a limerick-lover, a joke-teller, a girl with a dead-on Julia Child impression. But in the wake of my parents’ divorce, a troubled adolescence and a broken heart all that disappeared, and I looked instead to men to tell me who I was. I came west to be a movie star and find myself. Instead I found myself draped over an old man with gold teeth at the Club Flamingo who was telling me about his discount auto parts business. I was as far away from myself as I could possibly get.

Seven to midnight I hear drums, loudly the saxophone blows,
Trumpets are tearing my ear-drums, customers crush my toes.

I danced with a chatty, chunky fellow in a loveless marriage. He wanted to tell me his whole sob story, from his Bahamian honeymoon right up to that very evening when he got in his K car and drove in from Bellflower. He kept me swaying through four songs, sliding his hands up and down my back, stopping just at the top of my ass. He was misunderstood, he said, put-upon, a good provider, a man’s man, married to a cold bitch. I nodded and cooed my sympathy. When I clocked him out he tipped me ten bucks. I was starting to get the hang of this job.

Back on the banquet I chatted with a girl named Angela who was the only dancer there who would talk to me, the other girls seemed to hate me. “There are two kinds of girls here,” she said, “respectable girls and Corner Girls.” She pointed to the far, dark reaches of the ballroom where couples were nearly motionless, but for the subtle, curved, jungle boogie of the dry hump. “Those girls think they will make more in tips if they let guys take liberties. But it’s bullshit. And watch out for the pillar,” she said, pointing to a large, square pillar in the center of the dance floor. “Guys will try to get you back there because it’s the one area in the ballroom where Marty doesn’t have a camera.”

Japanese businessmen usually asked me to remove my high heel shoes, but I towered over them in stocking feet anyway. I tried to make conversation, but they didn’t have enough English. They were as far from home as I was, and their loneliness rolled off of them like Tsunamis. They were silent and polite, and I felt like a big, fritzing neon sign in their arms. The ancient parquet floor of the Flamingo was ragged from years of wear, and the splinters snagged my nylons and lodged in the soles of my feet as we danced.

Sometimes I think, I've found my hero
But it's a queer romance;
All that you need is a ticket,
Come on big boy, ten cents a dance.

I took a bathroom break. The ladies room was cavernous, with broken sinks that dripped, and soap dispensers filled with powdery Borax. I was washing my hands when two girls came in, one of them bee-lined for the sink and began furiously yanking out paper towels, dabbing at the front of her mini-dress. “The guy fucking came on me! I’ve got jizz on my fucking dress, Mija!”

“Damn Alicia, that’s what you get for being a Corner Girl.”

“Fuck you Yvette, I got kids to feed.”

I went back out to the banquette and was immediately picked out by a slick trick in a shiny suit and pointy shoes. He asked me questions about myself. I told him I was a runaway, that my father beat me, that I had three kids and was trying to put myself through school. He barely listened as he tried to dance me toward the pillar. I tried to dance us back out into the open. He danced me right back to the pillar and slid his hand up my shirt. I let him linger a moment before I pushed his hand away. He tipped me twenty bucks.

Fighters and sailors and bow-legged tailors
can pay for their tickets & rent me
Butchers and barbers and rats from the harbor
are sweethearts my good luck has sent me.

The Foot Doctor was a regular at the club. He rented girls, bought them Cokes and then rubbed their feet for a paid hour. It was a solid arrangement. My feet felt like raw hamburger, so I let him go crazy. He looked at me with soft, wet eyes as he cracked my toe knuckles. I purred with pleasure. He told me he was falling in love with me.

Though I've a chorus of elderly beaus,
stockings are porous with holes at the toes
I'm here till closing time
Dance and be merry it's only a dime.

Over the three weeks I worked at the Club Flamingo I became a for real Corner Girl. I never made $600 dollars in a night, but I came close. I would drive home to my chilly hallroom, my purse crammed with small bills, my clothes rank with sweat and Hai Karate. I would stand in a scalding hot shower at three AM, trying to wash it all off of me, but I couldn’t because it was inside of me

I was dancing with a polite black gentleman named Bill. He held me at a respectful distance, he spoke in full sentences and asked me about myself. Because he was the first intelligent person I had met at the Flamingo, and because I liked him, I decided to tell him the truth: I was new to Los Angeles. I was from New York. My parents were authors. I had graduated from Barnard College in June with a degree in English Literature. His eyes bugged out in disbelief. “What are you doing here?” he asked me.

“I don’t know,” I told him.

He put me at arm’s length and looked me in the eye. “The choices you make today will affect the rest of your life. Choose carefully, Young Lady.”

I drove home that night through the spooky, deserted streets of downtown Los Angeles, and knew I would never go back to the Club Flamingo. The next time I put on stockings and drove downtown, it was during daylight hours to work as an office temp – which turned out to be prostitution of another sort.

It would take me another two decades to understand what Bill meant, and by that time it would be too late. I made a lot of bad choices based on the bad notion that I was intrinsically bad. But now I know I wasn’t really bad, I just got swept up by a song and gave myself away.

Sometimes I think, I've found my hero
But it's a queer romance;
All that you need is a ticket.
Come on, come on big boy, ten cents a dance.

Scat!

2012-06-13T03:08:57Z

The tree in front of my building hosts a murder of crows. They are noisy bastards, but their cawing is so conversational it doesn't bother me. I like to lie in bed and listen to them yack. They sound like they're saying things like: “Hey Rita, look at this nice, soggy French fry I brought you!” or, "You know, I think I'll walk, my sciatica is killing me!" Crows are funny, canny creatures.

But last night I was jolted awake by a horrific screeching, as if Godzilla were fighting Mothra in the Chinese Elm outside my window.

At first I thought it was a catfight, but it was missing the low, rolling yowl that precedes the screechy tangle. It was the crows. They were shouting, warning each other, saying, "Get the fuck out of here you summana bitch!!" Then I heard an actual collision of bodies. It was some kind of epic fight to the death, and it drove me from my bed and out onto the street to investigate.

I found my neighbor in her nightdress, staring up into the tree where three enormous raccoons perched, glowering at us from a low branch.

The looks on the Ricky-Racks' faces told the whole story: they were eating some crow, but not in the way they had planned. It is fledgling season for crows, and the 'coons had been hoping for a midnight snack.They had gambled and lost to the birds. They looked like a gang of bullies thwarted on the schoolyard: hunched, unapologetic and clearly pissed.

My neighbor and I stood on the pavement for a few minutes, staring up before it occurred to us it might not be a great idea to stand directly beneath a tree loaded with hungry, angry raccoons. I backed away slowly and went back to bed.

Of course, I’m no Veronique de Turenne, so I didn't have my camera with me to capture the actual wildlife. But the next day I found evidence of the dark encounter. I'm so sorry folks -- if you want beautiful photographs of rainbows and sunrises, waterfowl and frolicking Labradors, then do go over to Here in Malibu -- because over here at I On LA all I have to offer you is a steamy pile of raccoon shit:

Hey, just be glad it wasn’t Godzilla.

A girl in no man's land: Singing for Johnny Mercer

2012-05-29T20:51:38Z

Dear Readers: I spent last week writing a piece for a "Bad Girl" lit event on Sunday, that I would share, but fear may be a bit too weird and dirty for LAO's distinguished readership. So I herewith offer something that was published in the LA Weekly in 2005, and republished in my book "You're Not the Boss of Me." Enjoy!

In the winter of 1975 my family made our annual trip from our home in New York to Los Angeles to visit my mother's parents. Designed by my Granddaddy in the ’50s, their house was a sleek, Neutra-inspired affair perched on a Pacific Palisades hillside, offering a sweeping ocean view that an 11-year-old couldn't have cared less about.

But the house itself was the ideal setting for a girl living in her own MGM musical -- all glass doors, white floors, stylishly decorated by my Grandma Dorothy. A palm tree grew out of the living room floor and crystals splashed rainbows across the walls. I’d slide across the slick, terrazzo floors in sock feet like Gene Kelly in An American in Paris or clickety-tap on them in my Mary Janes like Fred Astaire. I could tinkle the keys on the white baby grand, or bob like a Ziegfield Girl in the sunken bathtub, surrounded by jungle fronds, lathering up with richly scented, seashell-shaped soaps. I spent hours in the swimming pool, smiling underwater like Esther Williams and lounged in "the chatter pit," a subjacent, shag-lined den that had a TV with a remote control. I sprawled on the long, banquette sofa, like Jeannie in her bottle, blinking my way through channels, searching for my favorite TV shows on the unfamiliar West Coast stations.

On this particular trip, my grandparents threw one of their big parties. I helped with party prep: buffing their colored, Lucite coffee table knickknacks, Windexing the huge, sliding glass doors, lighting and launching floating candles onto the pool. Their guests were a mix of comedy writers and tennis partners, all of whom seemed incredibly old, smoky and uninterested in me. Forgotten by the grownups, I stayed up way past my bedtime, gorging on Spanish peanuts, lulled by the drone of adult conversation. It was late in the evening when my mother found me out by the pool, woozy with Shirley Temples.

"There's someone inside I want you to meet," she said.
"Who?"
"His name is Johnny Mercer. He's an old friend. You've met him once before, but you probably won't remember him."
"Mommy..." I whined, not wanting to give up my warm, sleepy spot by the lava brazier.
"He wrote the lyrics for a lot of famous movie songs."
"Really, like what?"
"‘Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Breakfast at Tiffany's,” Darling Lili.’"

I was wide awake. I loved all those movies, but Darling Lili was my current obsession. Though I had never seen the movie, I had spent that fall memorizing the soundtrack album.

Mercer was alone in my Grandaddy's study. This room was different from the others in the house. It wasn't like a movie set, it was a real place where actual work happened. The walls were hung with photos and memorabilia from a lifetime spent writing for radio, sitcoms, movies and magazines. There were awards, autographed posters and framed Playbills. Stacks of scripts surrounded his typewriter. The room was dim and had the sweet, pungent smell of pipe smoke mixed with the musk of his cork-covered walls with note of pool chlorine.

Mr. Mercer, sitting on a low sofa, looked like an ordinary old man. I had half hoped he'd be wearing a top hat and tails, but he was in slacks and a sports coat. He had a kind smile and seemed tired. He greeted me warmly and asked me the usual kid questions; how old was I, how did I like school, was I having a fun trip? Then he said, "Your mother tells me you're a fan of my songs."

"Did you really write ‘Darling Lili.'?"
"Well, I wrote the lyrics. Do you have a favorite song?"
"‘The Girl in No Man's Land.’"
"Really?" He seemed surprised and interested. I sensed I had an audience, a thing I was always on the lookout for.
"I can sing it for you if you'd like."
Mercer laughed, then looked me in the eye. "Would you? That would be lovely."

Suddenly my whole body got hot and clammy as I realized what I'd gotten myself into. I straightened up and started the first verse in a soft, wobbly voice,

They tell a story back in London town
That when you hear taps sound
Then all you soldiers have a sweetheart
Who always comes around

I knew I could sing this song better. I closed my eyes and pretended I was back in my living room in New York.

When night is falling
She comes calling
The girl in no man's land . . .

I picked up steam and as so often happened, I became taken by the sound of my own voice. I fancied I sang it just like Julie Andrews did on the album. I opened my eyes to see a look of utter shock on Mercer's face which made me go up on the next lyric, "Doughboys weary.... Doughboys weary...." I faltered and stammered. I had no clearer an idea of what the next lyric was, than I did of what a doughboy was.

"...Cold and lonely..." Mercer fed me the line and the rest of the song came rushing back.

I finished and Mr. Mercer applauded me. My mother draped her arm around my shoulder and I noticed that Granddaddy had slipped into the room. He stared at me from under bushy eyebrows as though as he were seeing me for the first time. I assumed these grownups were all stunned by my exquisite voice, but now, 37 years later, I think it may simply have been the incongruity of an 11-year-old girl singing a ballad about a hooker.

Mr. Mercer thanked me and I left him. A month later I received a package of Darling Lili production stills and a note from him, thanking me again for my song. He died the following year. It wasn't until much later that I truly realized who I had serenaded in my Grandfather's study, and how many songs Mercer had written that I love to this day. Only now can I appreciate that a child memorizing his songs may have meant a lot to a man who's life, and work, was nearly over.

The house Granddaddy designed is still up on Tellem Drive. I drove out there with my 10-year-old daughter a few years ago on a whim and knocked on the door. It was owned at the time by a distinguished German film actor and his son graciously gave me a tour. The master bath had been remodeled, but the rest of the house was just as I remembered it, if a little smaller and dingier. I took a picture of Franny standing by the pool brazier, and thought about the people who had gathered there to drink, laugh and tell their stories of young Hollywood -- a place and time that has long since faded into black and white.

Cat down: A mountain lion is slain in Santa Monica

2012-05-23T02:09:13Z

A mountain lion wandered into Santa Monica and sought refuge in a building's courtyard this morning, not far from the Third Street Promenade. She was shot and killed by fish and game wardens. I have already read too many tired Facebook comments along the lines of, "Next they'll be shooting cougars in Beverly Hills." The whole thing is sickening (so I will refrain from "let's go shop at the maul" jokes.)

Anyway, here is the AP story in case you haven't read about it yet. Also, you can scroll back to Kevin's LAO coverage from earlier today.

How this animal made it down from the Santa Monica Mountains, all the way into the flatlands of Santa Monica, is hard to imagine -- but I suspect hunger and shrinking habitat had something to do with it. How a bunch of Fish and Game wardens with tranquilizing guns couldn't subdue the confused and frightened cat, is also hard to imagine. It reminds me of the debacle in Ohio last summer, when exotic animals, set free from a private zoo, were hunted down and shot in a mass slaying that defied comprehension. In both cases, the animals were displaying erratic behavior. Er... could because they were lost in an unfamiliar and hostile environment and were rightfully terrified? Erratic behavior seems reasonable to me.

This story is heartbreaking, not only for this particular puma, but for the dwindling population of these magnificent beasts native to our environment. It seems that there is no end to the violence perpetrated on these animals. It has been a bad year for mountain lions all across the country, and this is one more shameful example of a Fish & Game Commission that treats native animals as pests, rather than as the precious, irreplaceable resources they are.

I have a particular fondness for cougars since my own close encounter with one a few years ago.

The one shot this morning was a juvenile female, so I don't imagine its the same cat I saw in 2006. But it is likely a too-close relation. These beautiful animals are suffering from inbreeding, due largely to a dwindling population as they kill each other for food and hunting ground.

It is time to re-vamp and re-assess animal control policy in this country. Certainly, a terrified cougar poses a threat to the human population, but instead of going in with bullets, can we not come up with more humane ways to subdue and relocate animals back into safe habitats? This cougar weighed a slight 85 pounds, and was trying (unsuccessfully) to leap over a fence and escape. I would bet she was moments away from sleep. I am no expert in this area, just a concerned citizen, who wants to see humans behave more humanely. A cougar caught me in her environment and let me live, I'd like us to return the favor.

Thrift shopaholic

2012-05-18T04:13:06Z

Back in 1989 I used to drive out to Glendale to visit the Salvation Army on Brand Boulevard. It was a huge, two-story thrift palace, jammed with the castoffs of the local well-heeled ladies of Pasadena, La Canada and Glendale. One could find old letter jackets, vintage sun-dresses, Le Creuset pots, and new/old stock table linens for a buck nutty-nuttin’. Among the many treasures I bought: a red, leather envelope clutch purse, a set of Bauer cereal bowls and a pair of wool trousers that had belonged to a short, fat man back in the 1940’s. I wore those pants cinched tight, letting the cuffs float dorkily above my high tops. I was young in those days could pull of any look I wanted. My teenage daughter wears them now and is the envy of her art school set.

That was back when I lived in Echo Park, itself a bargain, a neighborhood where you could pick up somebody’s castoff one-bedroom with a non-working fireplace and built-in breakfast nook for $400 a month. From there I would scavenge the St. Vincent De Paul’s in Lincoln Heights. I bought a chrome toaster that I set in on my breakfast table and I could feel like I was eating at my own private Ships Coffee Shop every morning.

Unfortunately that Echo Park one bedroom also came with its very own peeping Tom, and it was after seeing his transfixed mug pressed against my bedroom window late one night that I packed up and moved west to Culver City.

The Westside had many fine thrift emporiums in the early ninties, but my hands-down faves were two Salvation Armies, one on Washington Boulevard near Sepulveda and the big one one on 17th Street in Santa Monica, which still stands. For years I shopped there and it was so gooooood. Those stores routinely yielded vintage wool coats, cloche hats, satin bed jackets, opera capes, paisley shirts, and a beautiful maple stereo cabinet. Much of this stuff I still own and use. There was also a lovely thrift store near the Costco on Washington in Mar Vista, which I noticed the other day is gone. For some reason this place had the best selection of literary fiction in town. I could wander in and find an enameled orange juicer along with a collection of Alice Munro short stories, or the latest Jeffrey Eugenides novel.

Thrift shopping for me has very little to do with thrift – though I do enjoy a retail environment where I can afford to buy absolutely anything I want--I don’t do it to save money. I do it for the thrill of The Find.

The modern world is awash in crap. It takes a laser eye to find the treasure in all the muck and gack of what people had to have and no longer want. It’s a big game of “Where’s Waldo?” Can you find, among the stained plush toys, the Thigh Masters, the George Foreman grills and mountains of corporate logo’d mesh baseball caps, the one good thing? Can you locate, on a rack of sweatshirts with the necks cut off, the mutilated remains of our collective Flashdance past, that vintage, aqua blue “Loaf n’ Lounge” sweater? Will you find, in an avalanche of Dan Brown bestsellers and Zone Diet books the Little Golden Book with the breathtaking Tibor Gergley illustrations?

Once, when I was about to leave the Santa Monica Sally Ann empty-handed, I stopped to pick through a basket of bracelets and found a vintage, red and white polka dotted Bakelite bangle for fifty cents. Yessss.

There simply is, as far as I can tell, no downside to thrift shopping. It’s no-impact consumerism: everything is recycled and repurposed. A "closed circuit" as greenies like to say. It keeps stuff out of landfills and out of your storage space. The money you spend in thrift shops goes to help the less fortunate: the handicapped, the unemployed, the homeless, the Cancer-afflicted or the Jewish Ladies. Oh, pity the Jewish Ladies.

I get more out of thrift shopping than cashmere and cast iron -- it is good for my head. Thrift shopping is an escape, a time out. I walk in the door of Out of the Closet and I feel calm, focused and full of hope. Today could be the day I find that perfectly seasoned Griswold skillet. I imagine it's how gamblers feel when the walk into a casino looking for the big score. Don’t worry; I am in a 12-step program for this.

Thrifting isn't just about acquisition -- its also about letting go. As much as I love the thrill of the find, I also love a purge. I don't hang onto much, and my tax file is filled with Goodwill donation receipts. It's the big, cosmic flow. We let go so we can make room for the new -- or, rather, the gently used.

Thrifting took on new meaning when I had kids. Many was the afternoon I would escape the prison of our home and push them around a thrift store, treating them to anything they wanted. In the infant and toddler years, clothes are lavishly bought and barely used, and the children's rounders were crammed with adorable Osh Kosh B’Gosh outfits, pinafores and dirndls. I found an old, 1950's era, vinyl-upholstered toy box in butter yellow and filled it with the greatest dress-ups imaginable: clown suits, witch dresses, ruby slippers and twirly skirts of every variety. My daughters and I still bond in thrift stores, buying prom dresses and combat boots together, bopping to the oldies that are universally piped in over the P.A. Recently my youngest heard Billy Ocean’s “Caribbean Queen” on the radio and said, “Oh, I feel like I'm at the Goodwill!” So, okay, this may be the downside to thrift shopping.

In the mid-90’s, EBay came along and just fucking ruined everything. Now everybody is a antiques expert, all the good stuff is put up for auction, and anything that wasn’t mechanically extruded five minutes ago in China is considered “vintage.” Thrift stores, once the final resting place for the little old lady from Pasadena’s wardrobe, is now just a place that warehouses scratched microwave popcorn domes and nonstick pans that look like they’ve had a bad power peel. Add in the real estate bubble, and my favorite thrift shops have all been closed up and have either been turned into Verizon stores, or stand untenanted. I occasionally do a Pavlovian drive by the site where the Washington Boulevard Salvation Army once stood and feel the loss of it anew. It stands hollow and broom-clean in a bust market, when it once was full of amateur oil paintings and wingtip shoes. When I press my face to the window now, all I see is emptiness.

The Trees Fall (and sometimes rise again)

2012-05-11T01:49:17Z

This week, I noticed city tree trimmers on Olympic Boulevard near Doheny finally thinning a row of enormous Ficuses (Ficii?). It was a happy sight, because I haven't seen much trimming lately, what with budget cuts. The urban canopy, at least in my neighborhood, had grown rather top-heavy. These big boys on Olympic stood like noble behemoths, their bark scabbed with people's initials, their mighty roots heaving up the sidewalk. They needed some love.

The tree trimmers were doing their usual hatchet job, using chain saws to hack off limbs, rather than artfully thinning smaller branches out to open up the center of the tree and allow light and air to flow through. I hate seeing bad things happen to good trees, but I reasoned it was better than nothing.

The next day I drove past the site and saw that the limb-lopping was merely the first step in a total take-down. These trees weren't being trimmed, they were being murdered. Today I went to see what was left and this was all I could find:

Just a series of square, brown holes, like freshly-dug graves dotting the sidewalk. For a moment I naively hoped that this was in preparation for new planting. I felt sure that Villaraigosa would pop a few of his million trees into these empty spots. But the truth is, as my friend, the brilliant Emily Green who has written so elegantly in the LA Times about city trees told me, the urban street tree program in LA is "truly down the shitter."

There are so many factors working against our trees: neglect, root pruning (a gentle-sounding term for savaging roots in order to get to pipes, or dig trenches), even things we can't control, like insufficient rainfall. But the primary cause of tree death is over-watering by lawn sprinklers. Trees want deep watering a few times a year, but constant sprinkling causes roots to stay close to the surface, making them unable to support their heavy heads. One stiff breeze, such as the one we had last December and thousands of trees can topple, leaving us all the poorer.

In almost every neighborhood I walk in these days I encounter these sad stumps. This one is located a block from my pad, its rotten center providing the forensic evidence of its demise. This one was nearly five feet wide, and once provided lush shade to nearby homes, reducing the need for air-conditioning in the warmer months -- a two-fold reduction in greenhouse gases.

There really is no downside to trees, they provide us with loyal, silent service, shading us, scrubbing the air clean so we can breathe, and giving free housing to our animal friends. Yet we treat them as though they are disposable nuisances. We stuff them into tiny holes, gird them with stakes, insist on growing lawns at their feet. All around the city we can see the result of our imperious carelessness: stumps of Ficus, Carrotwood, Chinese Elm and Sycamore like so many heads on spikes outside the castle walls of a brutal king. I paused over this mighty stump, which looked like a shoe left behind by a dead giant and I felt the loss down to my own roots. I trudged on under an unforgiving sun, feeling exposed and sorry for us all.

Then, three blocks later I encountered a neighbor working in his garage. He was kneeling in a drift of sawdust, sanding an enormous tree stump into something smooth and graceful. Bryan Drinchich is a Montenegran craftsman, a soft-spoken man who makes exquisite furniture from reclaimed wood. The piece he was working on would be a coffee table, made from a stump salvaged from the big wind back in December. It was a beautiful and hopeful sight.

Of course, not all dead trees and tree-trimmings get turned into art. Mostly they get ground up into bits and dumped. But even then we can close the loop, especially if you call a conscientious arborist like Carl Mellinger, who will drive his big truck over to your house at the end of his workday and dump that divine hash right on your driveway. Suddenly, your property will smell like the Santa Monica Mountains and birds and insects will come flocking to your little fiefdom. For you will have, in abundance, one of the most beautiful things of all...

Mulch!

Mulch!!

MULCH!!!

Which, of course, is the perfect medium for planting trees.

Update: All those tree-planting wells on Olympic have been filled with Magnolias -- which appear to be the new tree of the moment in LA. A happy ending!

May Day! Occupying LA

2012-05-04T17:46:28Z

I let all of 2011 go by without participating in a single Occupy Wall Street action. It just seemed too hard what with the driving, the parking, the schlepping, the sitting on cold pavement, the banner waving and tiresome chanting and the risk of incarceration. It all just seemed too much for a busy mom. But I am unemployed (I write for you lovelies free of charge) and my LAUSD-educated teenagers have no college savings. I support my destitute, uninsured mother back east. Despite my WASP pedigree, my Ivy League education and my Harpers Magazine subscription, I am the 99%.

I felt I should go. I am so glad I did.

The view of downtown from the 10 freeway was apocalyptic. No fewer than eight helicopters hovered in the air like locusts. I was hoping it was press, I had a feeling it was LAPD.

The streets were strangled with police closures and traffic so I ditched my car in a pay lot at 8th and Olive and hot-footed it over to Broadway and 7th where I met the march. It turned out to be a parade and (cue Ethel Merman voice) I LOVE A PARADE!! Chinese dragons danced in the street, drummers thrummed out rhythms, whistles blew, and vendors sold hotdogs. Costumed stiltwalkers passed out fliers, children were carried on their parents' shoulders. Okay, some of those children wore t-shirts that read, “Fight the Power,” but it all seemed so festive and benign. How could anyone object to such earnest fun?

The only angst I encountered at first was a man rushing to join the march, his eight year-old son trailing behind him. “Hurry up!” he barked at his son, “stop reading!” The boy was reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Okay, maybe this wasn’t fun for everybody.

It was a left-wing hit parade, all the major groups were playing: Labor unions, Commies, Socialists, Hippies, Anarchists, education reformers, universal health care advocates, pot-smokers, Gays/Lesbians and those who maybe weren’t advocating any cause, just wanting to let their freak flags fly. They had painted faces, carried banners, wore masks and blew bubbles. I saw bright wigs and long, socked toes curling over the fronts of Birkenstocks. Brown people wore designer jeans and white people wore Mao Jackets paired with Huaraches and Guatemalan pants. It was a topsy-turvy, flashback kind of world. It seemed almost quaint.

But there was something less quaint here that looked like it had been pulled from a grainy newsreel from Selma -- lines of cops in full riot gear, truncheons held horizontally in front of their chests. The plastic zip cord handcuffs threaded through their belt loops and pepper spray canisters that bulged at their hips told us they were ready to tussle. Black and whites were lined up in neat diagonals on side streets. The cops looked as stern as the crowd looked festive.

A group of young men carried a black banner that read, “Fuck the Police.” A grim cache of cops stood behind them. Could they read it? It all depended which side you were on, I thought.

At first I was scared by the police. I walked past a long line of cops. I tested the waters by smiling at them. A couple of them smiled back at me. Okay, they were the 99% too. Then I saw a testosterone-addled sargent physically pushing his subordinates into position. It felt dicey again.

We made our way to Pershing Square for the General Assembly. The sun was setting and the glassy high rises sparkled against a cobalt sky. A Latinish-rappish band was playing and people danced. Pot smoke seasoned the cooling air, and everybody everywhere had a camera or an iPhone in their hand recording the moment for a media-saturated posterity.

The assembly began. We sat on the pavement (yes, cold, yes, gum fused to butt) and listened to the bilingual explanations of the Occupy hand gestures, and were told to introduce ourselves to the person we were sitting next to. I met Lisa from Altadena who was there “to see the future.”

The helicopters buzzing overhead drowned out the voices of the speakers and muting the message. We did a “Mic Check!” – the crowd repeating and amplifying the words of the speakers. It was explained that this was not a rally – but an autonomous, horizontal and all-inclusive movement that was about building community and enacting radical change. Toward that end we broke into small discussion groups. The suggested topic: What are the central issues confronting your community and what ideas do we have that might create change?

Our group included a librarian, a health care worker, and a postal worker. We had trouble hearing each other over a nearby drum circle which was louder than the choppers. I sizzled with annoyance. Fuck the police? Fuck the happy hippies who were drowning out positive change! We leaned into each other to hear each other speak. We discussed the challenge of overcoming isolation and the revelation of meeting your neighbor, building community by simply saying hello to a stranger, just as we were doing now. At the end of the session one member from each group was chosen to summarize our discussion for the entire assembly and that is how I ended up with a bullhorn in my hand, addressing the general assembly.

“Hi, my name is Erika and my group discussed the anxiety of meeting the person standing next to you even though nine times out of ten that person will be rightchuss.” (I was channeling Martin Luther King now, getting my oratory on.) "The only way we can build community is by reaching out to our neighbors. In a world that only wants to text what we lose is conversation. How will our kids learn to talk to each other if they don't know how to look each other in the eye, or listen? We have to open our hearts to each other! That is the first, simple step toward building a coalition and creating global change!”

Anyway, I think that’s what I said -- or some other softball, yet heartfelt stuff along those lines. It’s really all a blur now. I just know that the twinkly-fingered hand sign for “Yes! I agree!” was all around me and as I left the stage people I didn't know patted me on the back and thanked me. Somehow, this reluctant participant had become a passionate member of the Occupy LA movement.

On the way back to my car I passed a group of off-duty cops, laughing and bullshitting together. We all smiled at each other.

Westward Ho's! Manifest Destiny at the Autry

2012-04-27T17:26:34Z

“Does anyone know what this painting is about?,” the docent asks our group. I am at the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum standing with my daughter’s eighth grade class in front of John Gast’s painting, “American Progress.” The kids are responding to it like they are spotting Ke$ha at the 7/11 – this painting is totally famous among California middle schoolers – at least among those who paid attention during their American Expansionism unit in social studies.

Hands shoot up and the answer comes in a chorus; “Manifest Destiny!” We have seen covered wagons and mining tools and a huge, rigged bank scale that once weighed nuggets drawn from California riverbeds during the Gold Rush. The docent giving the tour tells us that the scales were rigged. That might have surprised a 49-er, but not the 99%-ers assembled before the exhibit.

I have come along as a chaperone on this field trip to the Autry because all the other New West parents are down at City Hall, representing the school at the final hearing for the conditional use permit that would allow New West Charter Middle School to open a high school in the fall. I have attended a couple of these hearings, and had even testified passionately before Councilman Bill Rosenhdahl and his development panel on behalf of the school. But today I couldn’t face the naked animosity of the neighbors who glare at us from their side of the aisle. New West is the enemy. They see us as a threat to the ‘hood, stealing their street parking, dirtying their untrammeled sidewalks with the wads of gum and candy wrappers that seem to slough off of adolescents wherever they go. They don’t want us disturbing their peace with our unruly, entitled teenagers. So instead I stand with those teenagers in quiet awe before “American Progress.”

The problem is, I can’t take my eyes off the docent, a raven-haired woman of a certain age with a beatnik vibe and a zesty teal manicure. I know I know her.

“Is your name Erika?” the docent asks out of the blue, looking at me.

“Yes,” I say, riffling through my mental Rolodex for a name, or even a place for this woman.

“I’m Suzanne Lummis, we met at Beyond Baroque.” Ah yes, of course, we know each other from the literary world, and here we are, completely out of context at the Autry. “I do this as a side thing,” she explains, almost apologetically, as though moonlighting in a museum might damage her good reputation as a poet and noir maven. It’s one of those classic moments, when Los Angeles, in spite of its sprawl, feels like a small town.

Suzanne turns back to the painting and breaks down its semiotics for us. The painting was commissioned, reproduced and widely circulated as an engraving in 1845 as part of a propaganda campaign encouraging settlers to move west. The image depicts “Columbia” a blonde babe in a white gown floating over the American landscape.

Columbia is a smokin’ hot allegory for American progress. She hovers over the plain with an Angelina Jolie-like leg vamping from the slit in her white skirt; her bodice clinging tenuously to her left breast -- wardrobe malfunction is but one stiff breeze away. On her brow is the “Star of Empire.” She clutches a schoolbook in her right hand and trails telegraph wire behind her with her left, symbolizing the education and communication that expansionism would bring to the West. The picture is allegory for the symbolism-impaired, an easy-reader in entitlement. Just in case you missed the message, Gast bathed the white settlers in golden light and left the western edge of the painting shrouded in murky darkness where native peoples and animals skulk off, banished from the landscape forever.

Suzanne hits this angle hard, making sure the students assembled fully appreciate the double-edged sword that Manifest Destiny wielded upon the West.

I remember that Suzanne’s grandfather was Charles Lummis, the eccentric, colorful poet and journalist who trekked on foot from Cincinnati to Los Angeles forty years after Gast painted this image. He was expanding westward for a gig at the Los Angeles Times. On his way Lummis bagged a coyote, fell in love with the Southwest and picked up a pair of fancily fringed buckskin jeggings. By the time he sashayed into to Los Angeles, he was already something of a celebrity.

Charles Lummis became a passionate Indian rights activist who inveighed against Indian schools. Suzanne clearly inherited her grandfather’s passion and poetry and I find it extraordinary that she is here, keeping his message alive for another generation of school children.

Suzanne pulls two, large sepia photographs from her tote bag. The first shows a group of Native American boys and girls, dressed in tribal attire, their glossy hair hanging in long braids. The second picture is of the same children, shorn of their braids and dressed in school uniforms. The native children’s faces, proud in the first photo, look stunned and vacant in the second.

Suzanne asks the kids how they might feel if they were made to cut their hair and wear uniforms. New West is a uniform school, and these kids know firsthand the indignity of the polo shirt. They think they can relate and they nod sympathetically, taking notes on crumpled index cards.

When the tour is over we all head outside to eat lunch and let the kids gambol on the lawn. I lie back on the grass, listening to them play, basking in the golden sunlight that, according to Gast’s painting, white people brought to this land a hundred and sixty-seven years ago.

History, for better or worse, is wrought by the ambitions of those with a sense of entitlement. It is what brought us to this moment in time, outside a museum that is largely funded by Wells Fargo, the same outfit that was so instrumental in carving out the West, and tipping the scales toward expansion and assimilation.

Our final lesson in Manifest Destiny comes via text message from a parent down at City Hall: we have gotten our expansion permit. New West Charter will open its new high school in the fall. This is how the west was won.

4/20 at the pot shop

2012-04-20T14:48:56Z

April 20th is the Day of the Stoner. Urban legend has it that in 1971 a group of San Rafael High School students gathered together after school to search for an abandoned cannabis crop in the nearby woods. This industrious purpose, like so many undertaken by the stoned, fizzled under inertia, and they just used "4:20" as code for blowing out. The term made its way into the popular vernacular and today (because stoners need to take a break from their hectic lifestyles) we celebrate it as an unofficial national holiday.

These are good times to be a pothead. Even though cannabis remains a Schedule 1 drug, and is still technically illegal, we are in the halcyon (if somewhat confusing) days of legal-ish Medical Marijuana here in California. This means, for the moment, nice ladies like me don’t have to go tromping through the woods (or the urban jungle) looking for weed like some kind of middle-aged Keanau Reeves in Danskos. We can just go to the corner pot store like the respectable, tax-paying adults we are, purchase it with our credit cards, and transport it responsibly back to our homes for our private enjoyment -- which, if you ask me, is the fucking awesomest thing ever.

My first pot buy was in 1977 when I was thirteen. I bought a nickel bag off a darty-eyed Puerto Rican named Jesus, who stood in front of the Azuma on East 86th Street muttering, “Smoke, smoke, smoke…” to every single person who walked by. I slid him my allowance and he retrieved his stash off the tire of a parked car. I rolled that nickel into a third-trimester joint that I smoked all by myself on the fire stairs of my mother’s high-rise.

Jesus was my gateway dealer. From there I bought Thai stick at the Band Shell, Acapulco Gold through a hole in a tenement wall in the East Village, oregano in Washington Square Park (back in that Kodachrome era when pot and oregano looked alike). For a brief, glorious time in the‘80’s, I could call a guy named A.J. and get an eighth of Sativa delivered to my walkup by a preppy with a briefcase -- it was as easy as ordering up Kung Pao chicken from the Hunan Cottage.

When I moved to Los Angeles, I began my first and only long-term relationship with a drug dealer. Michael was a lissome Brit of dubious sexual orientation who had the two key qualities of a good dealer: he was always holding, and he was always at home. He was also non-threatening and didn’t sell anything stronger than hash. It was a nearly perfect business relationship. The only problem was, Michael insisted upon acting like we were friends hanging out, which meant I had to smoke him out from the baggy I had just bought from him, before I might politely get the fuck out of there and go smoke my pot with my real friends.

The big buzzkill with buying pot, of course, was that it was illegal. You never knew if the man was listening in on your cordless phone call, or waiting around the corner with his big, drug-sniffing dog ready to nail you for that pinner in your pack of Marlboros. The drive home with the stinky snack bag of weed in the trunk was truly a white-knuckler. Even though I have never bought more than an eighth (Scarface, I’m not), every transaction was laced with the PCP of paranoia, because at any moment I could theoretically ruin my life and end up in the clink.

Back in my youth, ruining my life had a certain appeal. Doing something illegal carried a jolt of excitement and rebellion. But the older I got, the older it got. I outgrew the risk, if not the habit. When I was forty-five, my friend Danny rolled his eyes at me over lunch, called for the check and marched me over to his pot doctor for a prescription -- then he drove me to his favorite dispensary.

California Patient’s Alliance (CPA) is discretely located within a nondescript office building on Melrose Avenue. Only a small green cross on the door and a faint note of skunk in the air advertises its business.

Danny and I were buzzed into a reception area that was so bland and pleasant it could have been a chiropractor’s office. Barry, the proprietor, who was about as scary as a Golden Retriever, checked my prescription and ushered us into the inner sanctum, the showroom.

It was dimly lit with two long, glass showcase counters. Spotlights pinpointed the different strains for sale, which were stored in adorable glass containers that looked like they came from Martha Stewart’s spice rack. There were hairy Indicas, crystalline Sativas, hashes, edibles, topicals, oils, lollipops and lozenges. This place was the Tiffany’s of toke, the Cartier’s of Cannabis. Barry let us sniff the different artisinal strains, describing the notes of moss and strawberry as if he were the sommelier at Le Cirque. I stood there, staring at Danny with a stunned look -- Danny just grinned back at me.

I felt as though I had been wandering in the dark woods alone and frightened for thirty years, searching for the crop, and had stumbled into Shangri-La. I was suddenly in a friendly, reasonable, safe world where "Purple Haze" came in a handy, airtight prescription bottle and I had been magically transformed from a common criminal to a patient. I was no longer a miscreant, but garden-variety self-medicator just like everybody else out there washing down their Xanaxes with a lively Grenache. The stress, guilt and fear from all the risks I had taken over my life vaporized and the relief and joy I felt was so profound that I became utterly verklempt. A single, grateful tear spilled down my cheek. “I know, I know,” Danny said, patting my shoulder, “I cried the first time, too.”

The spell was broken by Barry, who was ringing up my purchase, “Would you like to join our frequent buyer’s club?” he asked. And then, like someone who had held the hit a little too long, I exploded into a fit of laughter that practically put me on a ventilator. Oh Capitalism, sometimes I just can't help loving you.

This is why I can assure you all that legalization is inevitable. But for now, this semi-legal state is under constant threat, especially in an election year when people have a stake in seeming less high and more mighty. So if you are one of the many thousands of Medical Marijuana prescription holders in California, I suggest you celebrate this day at your local dispensary while you still can. Because with the ever-changing cannabis laws, by 4/20 of next year we may well all find ourselves wandering around in the dark woods once more.