Yesterday Kristi Maddocks, Tom Ward and I (Matt R.) had a reunion lunch (at the fabulous uptown Vynl restaurant on NY’s Columbus Ave.), and we were comparing notes on our respective migratory patterns since leaving San Diego.
The conversation turned to a subject I’d planned to raise here: While many of us used LA as an occasional or frequent playground in our youth, it seems most of the expats on this blog made a beeline to San Francisco once they’d decided to leave San Diego.
Study question: What did LA mean to you when you were a kid? What does it mean to you now? Why’d you make it home or pass it by?
(Bonus question: How’d you end up where you are now, be it SD, LA, SF, NY, Hawaii or Nairobi?)
Re-reading these hellishly complicated questions, I thought it only fair to put myself through the obstacle course first:
1. I’m a little puzzled by my own lack of connection with LA, considering my youthful thirst for urban excitement. I didn’t get up there as much as many of my peers and somehow never internalized the geography. I had a few fun musical experiences in Los Angeles — both watching and playing — but my own definition of “city” seemed pretty focused on SF or NY, even as a kid.
2. I like visiting Los Angeles now, but I still have the same bipolar kind of relationship I did as a kid: Some days I get everywhere I want in the city and it’s all easy and fun; some days, it seems like a big confusing maze. (It’s worlds easier now that I rent GPSes standard with cars.)
3. LA wasn’t on my radar when I was picking places to live. I fled SD to Europe for half a year to decompress, but I never had much doubt that I was ultimately going to live in San Francisco.
4. I was born in New York, and I have relatives and a deep sense of connection to this part of New Jersey. Plus it was cheaper than SF, with better public schools and lots of media jobs. Paradoxically, it wasn’t until I arrived here that I realized how very Californian I’d become in my 25 years out there with you folks. (Call me fickle!) I get a lot of pleasure out of every visit to California, south and north — hope to do it again soon.
“Study question: What did LA mean to you when you were a kid? What does it mean to you now? Why’d you make it home or pass it by?”
When I was a kid, LA seemed like an exciting, creative place… very romantic and glamorous with a cool funky vibe all it’s own. Whatever I was going to do in life, LA seemed like the best place to do it (Im sure that first X album was an influence on my thinking there).
It’s been my home for the last 10 years. In that time I’ve grown to dislike a lot of things about it, but it still has more of the things I like than anywhere else I’ve been. The main thing I miss about San Diego is the sense of community (something that San Francisco also seems to have a lot of) .
My wife and I just saw a t shirt that said “It’s 100 degrees in New York, and 73 in LA. It’s 10 degrees in New York and still 73 in LA. There are 8 million interesting people in New York, and 73 in LA.” Sometimes that seems to sum things up. Still, there are so many great things about living here.
It’s my home. …and Los Angeles by X album is still one of my favorite albums!
Oh my I wrote paragraphs.
You don’t want me to answer any of this.
“Just Do It”
Matthew, you might think L.A. is confusing, but as far as I’m concerned NOTHING is more confusing than getting around on the New York subway system.
We were pretty familiar with L.A. by the time we moved here, but one of my favorite things about this place is being able to discover things you’ve never seen. You can live here for years and not see all of it (I dont think you’d really want to see all of it, anyway).
i was wandering and floundering and i met { her } ! and she was moving back to st petersburg fl. and off we went. i wasent planning on staying but when i got there i found a home and host of great friends and family. not to diffrent from the ones i had lost in the great exodus and more so through my painfully long puberty and poor caracter. a slow friendly liberal culture where in i could lay down roots and stert anew in the subtropics. the little red head i followed out here, we have been with for over 17 years now. i enjoy my yearly trips back to sd & am always relieved to get back home when i do.
I flew into LA a few years back (right after 9-11) and experienced total culture shock. The terminal was under major repair and had sort of a war-torn feel about it. Plus I’ve been out in the sticks most of my post San Diego life and while I really like visiting the city and exploring, I don’t like air travel (did I mention I was in a plane crash in Tahiti in 2000?). It felt like I imagine a major hub in Africa or Southeast asia. Plus there were these angry looking storm troopers hanging around with vests and automatic weapons.
I really needed to get to Disneyland. Bad. Fuggin kids and the shit they put me through. 😉
I also had a moment in a grocery store somewhere near Aneheim where I felt like Tim Robbins in that pshyche/horror flick Jacob’s Ladder. It looked like a regular store from the outside but I get inside and I’m like the only person there speaking English, the lights are flickering and there’s a jar smashed in the middle of one of the aisles with little dirty faced kids running around by it unsupervised.
We spent quite a bit of time up there during and after high school and I really thought I liked L.A. But back then I was high as a kite on multiple psychotropic substances and totally into going to towns that looked and felt like Mos Eisley from Star Wars (“no more villainous den of sin and scum exists on the planet.” How do I remember this shit? I can’t tell you what I had for dinner last night!) Nowadays I’ll take San Francisco any day over L.A.
sorry bout alll the typo frenzy. in sd moving fast. my kids bridezilla and im on my sisters kids old crap box slow sloow slooow computer
Cricket’s back in San Diego! Mini-Che Underground reunion in Presidio Park — hoist an Olde English and think of me in New Jersey. 🙂
Patrick: Last I heard from Dave Rives a couple of weeks ago, he was hoping to buy a huge-ass swathe of land near Arcata … It does give me pause when I think about how much I paid for these postage stamps in SF and exurban NY!
Cricket,
I’m really glad to hear your story, and its happy outcome. You have been more generous in your recollections of me than I probably deserve -- and kind in your comments.
I think Patrick nailed it on the head for me. LA was a place just North of the Matterhorn! And I too found it a little too superficial for my liking (all of Southern California, and the Bay Area too- but that says as much about me as it does about the place.)
I think there’s nothing healthier than spending some time listening to what forty or 100 acres of empty woods sounds like. In Wyoming I found that streams are just paths that beckon me, and I spent like 6 and 8 hours at a time just hiking up streams, trout fishing in silence and listening to everything around me. Same with Hawaii, only I spend that time paddling a twelve foot paddle board 3 or 6 miles at a pop, a half mile offshore- or shorefishing on lonely stretches of coastline or shooting photographs of Japanese graveyards. It’s pretty sad for me that the wonderbread exodus of Orange County has found us and are moving here in droves. We already have two Starbucks, a borders, a Walmart and a Kmart, Quiznoz, Jamba Juice, Outback, burger king and Taco Bell. Thankfully the Hooters went under almost as soon as it opened. What a tragedy! It was a beautiful, funky little place up to about 5 years ago. Just a sign of the times, I suppose. Next stop for me is somewhere to the East, I suppose- or down in Tahiti. Someplace lonely with a lot of space, where a persons word and a handshake mean something and people still fight with their fists.
“Jeremiah said it best “LA is all people with red cars and too much plastic surgery”. I’d have to add that those who don’t have those things aspire to having them…I’m not sure which is worse.”
Beyond that, the people who aspire to having them want to convince you that they KNOW the people who have them, because they assume that you’re as impressed with those people as they are, and therefore, you’ll be also be impressed with THEM. There are so many ridiculous buffoons in L.A. with this mindset, it’s unbelievable.
It really isnt the majority of people here… but there’s enough of them that it seems like it sometimes.
for me, the city angels never seemd like it could be a home. it was a perfect place for what it was. following jeff up there looking for adventure ! it was dirty and scary and big . drunk on the street id taken what ever that was jeff was taking and asking men who were hanging out on st corners in very small leather shorts , how much for a hand job -- cus jeff said it would be funny. then hearing our great battle call sounded ! run uhh waaaay !!! la was a testing ground for me. did i have what it took to be a real real criminal, a fearless scum bag, my logic -- the fool who persists in his folly becomes wise. i think i thought if i went far enough with it i would sudddenly emerge lou reed or boo kowski or somthing other than a soppy scared drunkin fool of a kid. no go, la was cool for a testing ground but in the end icky
of angels, damn it. some day im gunna hire a proof reader
Of course, Im only talking about the bad things in L.A. because I could sit here typing all day and still not cover all the things I love about the place.
There was another facet to my view of LA: the scary, freaked-out, Manson-family-players kind of film noir perception of the place.
Since starting this convo, I’ve been humming Hair Theatre’s “Nightfall” (another great song I hope we can put online soon).
It ends with Sergio singing, “Did I mention her house, located in Los Angeles? It is HEELLLLLLL! It is HEEELLLLLL! … ” I could always picture her hell house very clearly, probably up in Topanga Canyon or somewhere where the screams wouldn’t carry.
Anyone ever make a trip into the burned out hulk of the Garden Court Hotel? That was a scary place. What- two blocks North of Manns Chinese (or maybe four- it’s a blur) and the Seven Seas. All kinds of punks and hookers and junkies living in the empty rooms. Needle park squared. And then there was the blood at the bottom of the elevator shaft. Some spooky shit.
We used to go up there with like $50 and a tank of gas and trip the weekend away, sleeping wherever we could (yeah- sleep- as if.) Greg Imbecile, Jeff Marino and I and a few girls were up there and some punks told us about an empty apartment in West Hollywood they’d been sleeping in. So we go there and lay on the floor with the lights off, but the girls huddle up in the bathroom smoking cigarettes and taking baths. Pretty quick there’s a knock on the door and it’s the managers- two gay guys who are pretty big and kind of butch. They were actually really cool about it but they said the apartment is empty because the bathtub leaks and we had to split. They invited us to crash at their place but we looked at their door and there was all kinds of weird nazi memorabilia on the door and we figured we’d opt for wandering around or sleeping in a park somewhere.
Another time my buddy Dierk was sleeping in the bathroom foyer in a schoolyard in Hollywood and he woke up to find like thirty mexican lowrider guys partying on the picnic benches like 40 feet away. He said he just curled back up and went to sleep.
I remember Greg Imbecile, Jeffo and I sitting against the front of that building the Seven Seas was in and watching the sun come up. The greyhound bus pulls in and these two girls who look just like Joan Jett get off. They obviously have no where to go so they hang out with us. Turns out they had run away from somewhere in the midwest and were going to be rockstars. I’ve always wondered if they ended up hookers or not. I imagine the percentages were for that outcome.
I also remember the church of scientology or one of those paying us five bucks each to listen to their presentation. We bought booze and cigarettes with the money, so I guess it didn’t make much of an impression.
Even another time- five years later- like 85-86ish- I ran into Marlon Brando’s son in the burger king by the Hollywood Holiday Inn. We were going to the Paladium to see a show later, but went to grab a coke or something. He was in a toga type thing and carried lots of records with him, and he told me he’d met Jesus. I asked some punks what was up with that guy and they said that he was Brando’s son, that he was a fixture around there and had a few loose screws.
From birth to age 17 in San Diego life I rarely made north of Orange County. Once in ’82, Malia Rives climbed on the back of my little Vespa and we waddled it to LA to hit some of the big thrift stores; all off-freeway on that little oil-smoking 150cc piston. Never saw a show there myself. 6 hours after playing my last show at Headquarters with Noise 292, in the summer of ’83, I fled to Arcata for schooling; then flash forward to Amsterdam for a few months in ’87 where I cooked breakfasts and sold hash at the “last watering hole”, a smelly red light district bar and hostel. While serving my customers food and drugs, I tried to interest them in my acid-rap band cassette recordings done back in Arcata and SF. Two Belgian kids appreciated that rot, or at least said they did. For kicks check the bottom billing of this Mr. Bungle flyer for “local rappers: Los Miserables.” That sizable venue was later to become the Humboldt brewery. May have been my last live show I think… I found my way back to the comforting, damp green bosom of Humboldt County by heading East through South Asia. Sour economic conditions in Humboldt pushed me eventually to SF, where I have been ever since ’91, well settled now. Nowadays I only drive through LA en-route to Disneyland with the kids, or to take them surfing in Leucadia or to visit my mom’s out at Lake Hodges. I don’t even stop for gas in LA County.
To me, LA was the the place to find all the records you couldn’t find at Off The Record, and cool shoes. Other than that; punk gangs.
This is the 2nd time I’ve ended up in New Orleans. The first was in 2005 after the american tour I was on with Fang and Verbal Abuse fell apart. I was going to play bass for Fang at the closing of CBGB’s festival and the plan was for the new drummer and I to meet up with them in New Orleans where we would practice a few times at my friend’s house and head up to NY from there. I had been on the road for awhile with Verbal Abuse as their roadie and met Sammy from Fang in Oakland a few weeks earlier. VA were getting some rest in their hometown of Houston when I got a ride down to Nola to meet Geza, the new mutual drummer of both bands, who had just flown in from Oakland to replace the previous drummer for VA, who was the son of the guitar player, and had to quit the tour to start his senior year of high school. I missed him by a few hours as he was kidnapped by the band Municipal Waste, who were going to be the third band on this eastern leg of the tour and were planning on meeting up with us in florida. Sammy was supposed to pick up VA in Houston, then sweep down and pick me up in Nola, then we would all rendevous with Geza and Municipal Waste. The plan fell to shit when Sammy stopped in Austin to visit an old girlfriend who was a heroin addict. He then checked out in an opiate stupor and blew us all off. 3 weeks later, by the time VA had rented a mini-van and caught up with Geza(who had been stuck on the road with MW the whole time since Nola) in NY, and offered to buy me a plane ticket to NY to resume my stint as their roadie, I had fallen in love with the Crescent City, and declined their offer to fly me up there. I landed myself a construction job and worked a total of 45 minutes before I was told to go home because a terrible hurricane was on the way. I evacuated New Orleans with my old friends from San Diego, Heather Sher and Natasha Fis, 5 other people, 8 dogs, and 4 cats in 3 cars. It took me over two years to get back here, but I made it and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the country, except maybe a nice beach right now.
Say Hello to Harold Gee for us, and buy the gentleman a beer.
Say hello to the beach for me.
I’m feeling decidedly bereft of excuses to get to California at the moment. When I worked for Ziff Davis, our San Francisco offices brought me to the Bay area with some frequency … At Hachette, the presence of Road & Track and Cycle World in Newport Beach was a great opportunity to visit San Diego.
Now that I’ve reconnected with all you lovely people, I hope that one of my current engagements gives me occasion to come see our California contingent (at least) and rally an impromptu reunion. (Sorely tempted to co-ordinate a SoCal visit with Dave Rinck’s return stateside in December!)
I was actually hoping to host the Che-Luau at my house. Bring your ukuleles and we can roast a pig in the yard.