Single In The City

In this city even the weather wants to be hot. But today the weather is slightly mousy and unattractive.

I step into Sams on Sunset. Mostly because a few months ago I'd seen William H Macy having what looked like a business meeting there. Before that I had assumed the "restaurant" was a mafia front, and I wanted to see for myself what the fuss was about.


It looked like an Italian bagel nosh, without the corporate flare, a very under the radar, establishment so close to the Griddle, I was surprised it had stayed open this long.

The Griddle, has a line outside of it, of cut out girls clad in Lindsy Lohan leggings, waiting on Sunset past the DGA to get in, pretty much every day. It's the kind of place people congregate at hoping that their coolness will be mutually contagious. I didn't understand why anyone would open up a place next to The Griddle. the Griddle is like that rare popular guy in high school that everyone kisses up to and at the same time genuinely likes.

Sams on Sunset reminded me more of the girl in high school who will do your chemistry homework for you and like you all the same, even though she knows you're using her. The girl who somehow manages to keep her eye on the world outside of high school while still remembering her locker combination.

I ordered the oatmeal with strawberries, and the woman running the place assured me I would love it. There was something about her. Something about her face, was softer, a light flickered behind her eyes. That's the thing about LA. The waiters are kinda magical.

There's Hope at Du-Pars, in the Farmer's Market at the Grove. Yes, her name is actually Hope.

The first day I met Hope, she stood over me and my BFF Jen as I took my first bite of a stack of five fluffy Du- Pars pancakes.

She smiled, watching over me, like a pancake angel, in a 1950's diner waitress outfit, as I relinquished my Du-Pars virginity to the fluffy body of Christ (aka the Du- Pars butter soaked pancake). In that moment I felt that Hope truly loved me, only had my best interest at heart, and actually believed in my potential as a human being. The way she smiled, and supplied extra napkins was divine. Believe me I have looked hopefully into the eyes of many a super hot, super coiffed boyfriend, hoping for a modicum of the acceptance that poured out of Hope's eyes.

BFF Jen is herself a little dreamy. She grew up in LA and never seems to run out of giggles, or amazing purses. Everything is a little Mary Poppins when she's around. Her Prada purses don't intimidate, because she carries them with the fearlessness of a teenager, and the aplomb of a post feminist theory advisor.

Jen and I will often find ourselves post break up, at DuPars, with Hope smiling over us as we slip quietly into the magical world of pancakes. Into the Los Angeles that once was. A los Angeles that hums underneath the Apple Store, the gurus, the Prada purses.

A Los Angeles that is softer, that doesn't mind a woman with some hips. A Los Angeles that remembers that people come here to fall in love or to make people fall in love. They come here to stand up from the audience and leap into the silver screen. To loom over the people in the theatre, and somehow crack open their hearts, and make them wake up to the person sitting next to them, or the person who they left in Ohio, or the person who they secretly wish they were brave enough to kiss.

This Los Angeles isn't about doing nine lines of cocaine before doing fourteen pilates classes, throwing up and attending nine twelve step groups.

This Los Angeles that I see , in the relic faces of the occasional waiter, has a sense of humor about itself, a sense of love towards all of us who sit in the audience longing to be on screen.

When it's me that's gone through the break up Jen always pays for dinner, and vice-versa.

Which means that Jen always pays.

We walk into the movie theatre at The Grove and Jen also buys our tickets.

As we walk into the safety of the dark theatre Jen whispers

"You're going to have to learn to let your friends date you"

"Stop being such a lesbo" I whisper back.

Giggles. Giggles. More Giggles.

It makes me want to cry when people are that kind. Especially people you've known for ever. It means more somehow. And then to sort of top the whole thing off, Jen gives me a perfect brown leather boho purse. Because really in LA, as long as your purse and your sunglasses are slamming, you can kind of wear whatever the fuck else you want. It takes a best friend to understand the importance of that.

Back at Sams, on this unattractive day, the woman running the place, with the kind eyes hands me a bowl of oatmeal and tops off my coffee. The oatmeal has a simple arrangement of red sliced strawberries. The red of the strawberries is like a transfusion into my own heart. I start to feel it beat a bit. And as my heart beats the city of Los Angeles stirs with it.

I take a bite. It's been sweetened to perfection. The woman who runs the place looks at me and smiles.

"Perfect, isn't it?" She acknowledges.

"Yes" I say. Nodding my head. "Perfect".




Sams On Sunset: 323-850-7267
7864 W. Sunset Blvd


Du-Pars, Farmers Market: 323 933-8446
6333 W. 3rd St. @ Fairfax

The Griddle: 323 874 0377
7916 West Sunset Boulevard

The Truth is Sexy

Had a frustrating meeting with my agents today. They brought me in as if under a firing squad and told me that I was of a certain age. It's true. I am of a certain age. That age being thirty. I believe the day I turned thirty they dimmed the lights on all the street lamps. Another girl who didn't make it by the end of a sultry decade.

A decade that began by lighting a cigarette, donning a pair of knee high, kick ass boots, filling diaries, living in New York, moving to Los Angeles, hurling my soul into the depths of romantic love, as if I was a French Poet,and hopefully learning somethings along the torrid way . A decade that ended by putting out a cigarette, still wearing boots and dancing to a Cure song in front of the beach.

And now I roam these streets. Oh who am I kidding. There's not a lot of roaming to be done in these streets. Mostly it's parking. So I park in these streets looking for the authentic. Looking for the heartbeat.

I can feel the pulse. The pulse is undoubtedly sexual. The pulse of twenty two year olds, drug addictions, short skirts, gas stations, worn out head shots, lost memories, forgotten promises, a willingness not only to sell ones soul but to photograph the garage sale.

But the heart. The heart of the city. I'm not sure what it is. Joan Didion says it's in the piano bars of the old hotels. But I've lived here for five years, and never found myself understanding LA in a piano bar. Perhaps in the nature. Although yesterday when my girlfriend and I went on a hike, we heard more cell phone chatter, than birdsong. One girl in particular striding past us, said into her phone : the truth is sexy.

So I'm in search here. For the heart of this city. Underneath the desire for validation (parking, and other) the need to be the hottest in the room, the funniest, the most fuckable, the highest paid, the most evolved, where is the heart? There's gotta be more heart in this city than the red blink of my blackberry. So I'm gonna look- and I'm gonna record- what I see- what I recognize as truth in this city.

Someone else said that truth is beauty. But if it is sexy. Then bring it on. I want to find what is true beautiful and sexy about this city. I know it's here. I can feel it, underneath the blink of my blackberry, the laugh of my best friend, the daily reach of the forever ambitious, the breath of the surfer, the insecurity of the class clown. I hear something. I think it's a heart. I hope so.