Once Upon a Time in Barnes City, Los Angeles ...

Remember Barnes City, L.A.?

Of course you probably don't.   It was once a briefly promising winter quarters for the big 4-ring Al G. Barnes  Circus.

City-hood officially granted on Feb. 13, 1926.

But the vision of Barnes flamed brightly for only seven months before getting crushed in slow motion by a series of devious maneuvers to send it packing. 

Barnes City rose  on the edge of Culver City, in the shadows of movie giant MGM.  Installed its own town hall.   Soon Culver city wanted to expand, likely a ploy to 86 the lions, tigers and daredevils grabbing a lot of noisy attention.  An affront to celluloid fantasies?

After a fractious public debate over the intruder, and even a vote that favored Barnes City 145 to 128, the courts stepped in and Al G. Barnes, said to have been  "a victim of local politics, and one of L.A.'s shortest-lived municipalities," stepped out. 

Ah yes, all circuses have to leave town sooner than later.  

Getting Denied, Turned Away, Trapped in Traffic, Stood Up and Let Down and Pissed Off in the City of Angels: I Vowed Never to Return, and then --- Something Magic Happened

Have you ever made travel plans, only to see them fall apart, one by one, once you reach your destination?  Here is my story.

Okay, so it's clear I like Union Station. Always the best way to enter the ugly sprawl that is the Los Angeles so hated by so many people.  I understand their disdain.  For me, though, it's what you'll find amidst all of the mind-numbing vastness that draws me down there time and time again.

Is there a more beautiful train station in the country?  In the world? 

The tunnel to the trains, once a barren walk through, has been greatly upgraded with with uplifting  panoramas.

Charmer on a bus:  There's Peppy, whom I sat next to on the 780 out to Glendale.  I touched the frosty top of his nose, and he smiled back.

First big let down: Had the streets not been so clogged with traffic, I would have arrived at my first destination of choice, Moonlight Rollerway in Glendale. Rink owner Dominic, above, is one of the best dance music organists ever, having put out dozens of tunes set to regulated metronome dance tempos (fox trot,tango, waltz, etc.)  We are friends, and I wanted to to say hello  

Had I arrived in good time, I would have spent an hour or so simply listening to Dominc's pulsing music, which takes me back to my boyhood in roller rinks.  You may recognize Dominic's rink in movies and TV shows, many filmed there   

BUT, my bus into Glendale was so late, to have walked the rest of the way, as I planed, would have not given me enough time to make an early exit. A bummer.

Next morning, on foot to another let down ...

Setting out for the new Broad Art Museum downtown, I took a familiar walk down a dreary stretch of Vermont.  Full disclosure: Urban decay fascinates me.

Once upon a time, so vital.  Now, they hang around like abandoned skeletons.
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Biggest dream buster of all:  I went the stunning new Broad Modern Art Museum, hoping not to find a long line. Last time, the waiting line, just for a chance to maybe get in, was so long that I gave up.  Yes, I hate waiting.  You can book a free ticket on-line, but two or three months ahead. And, still, I assumed that with the museum now open for nearly a year, there would no longer be a line.

How wrong I was.  That damn long line was still there. I am now officially suspicious of a sly promotional stunt by Mr. Broad, going Barnum on us, to create the illusion of  his venue being still (and maybe forever, if enough people will put up with his cynical charade) the HOTTEST ticket in town.  After a half hour, I walked to the front to ask a staff member what were my chances. She said quite good, but once I got a ticket, I would be waiting in another line for around one or two hours!    XX*!!xx+|{"{{##@!!!!!

I refuse to be a pawn for Mr. Broad, who, I'll bet, loves the image of perpetual lines clamoring to get into his spectacular galleries. I walked off.  Never again. The Getty on the Hill?  Free, too, and I've always walked up, only waiting a few minutes for the next train up the hill.

Glorious Restoration:  Curtain up on the reopening of the famed Clifton's Cafeteria on Broadway. A must-see item on my list.   I took a dash down there.  Love those dashing little buses that feel like private drawing rooms on wheels.

Thus multi-storied architectural extravaganza, bathed in moody lighting, offers a dazzling variety of settings, including cozy little alcoves.   You keep climbing up stairs to yet more options.  I wondered if in its early days, a higher floor offered adult pleasures. Well, study the decor!

People sit in all kinds of places.

But, I did  not dine at Clifton's.  My heart that day belonged to Traxx at Union Station, where I usually entertain one meal during each visit.   I enjoy sitting at a table out in the lobby.  This time, all were taken, so I opted for the restful courtyard.

Not stood up, simply left a little wanting. I would like to have raved about mt seared wild Salmon  Trouble was, the skin was too stiff to cut into, so I easily pushed it away, as if it were detachable.  Do salmon wear topees? 

Another big let down:  Since they've been talking up a glorious renaissance underway for a number of grand old  movies palaces on Broadway, I wanted to check out the scene.  Not what I expected.  The theaters seem fairly lost in a very pedestrian street, far more Tijuana than Hollywood.  Who would want to come down here?  Totally unsold on the idea.

Redeeming serenity:  Next goal, I took a long bus ride out West Adams to the Peace Awareness Labyrinth and Gardens.   You need to reserve a free ticket on line to be admitted.  Even for the same day.  They put you through some hurdles.

Surprisingly confined to a rather small space, there is s section of descending walking paths through  lush exotic vegetation, and one can find a comforting respite from the humdrum city. 

Here on the circle of something to do with working out one's problems, you are suppose to follow an intricate circular path while working out your issue, in stages. The path pulls you deeper into the middle, and then it takes you out in a  less arduous walk. Can't remember what my "problem" or "issue" was.  The heat that afternoon wilted my inner Plato. I dispensed with the challenge as if it were an "E" ticket in the original Disneyland. (Please don't tell them; they are lovely people.)

Sorry to report, a semi-let down:  Website photos lend the appearance of a vast and deep landscape, the very opposite of  what I found.  But I did enjoy walking the intimate paths, and sitting on chairs.

Back to being let down:  I had to take a ride on the heralded new new Expo Blue Line. And it made me blue.  Far too many stops make the journey an ordeal.  Whatever scenic elements are worth taking in (hardly any)  they are fairly obscured by  the stern utilitarian barriers, which make the ride feel like being shuttled through a high security zone. 

From what I heard, I expected a lot more. This is nothing like the rather entrancing Gold line from Union Station  to Pasadena and points beyond, the latter, I think, over track running parallel to one of LA's ever delightful freeways.  Get OFF at Pasadena.  

Crap!  Even the Santa Monica beach scene stood me up! Can you find any sun in this picture?

Bus ride into Hollywood Hell

Onto one last chance: My spirits down to near zero, I was wondering, why do I come to this city?  I had little desire to return.

I had wanted to save the trip by catching a performance of a new musical, I Only Have Eyes For You, playing that night at the Montalban in Hollywood.  More than enough time to get there.  At 5:40, I boarded a Number 4 in Santa Monica for Hollywood.

Moved at a good clip, then slowed down to a  crawl. In  Hollywood near Fairfax, traffic came to a near halt, and the bus had to follow a bypass.  All around were automobiles stalled in a sea of vehicular hell.  The end of the world, it looked to me.  I hate this city.  I'm never coming back!  But then, back on Hollywood Boulevard, traffic thinned out, and then a rush of wheels beneath me!

We might make it!   Two hours had passed.  Still had ten minutes to get there.  The bus coasted like a breeze, and put me off at Vine, eight minutes before curtain.

I ran down to the theatre on wings of joy -- my last night in LA might not be the last.  Settled on one of two lines, At the  window, with my billfold out, I asked the lady on the other side of the glass for an inexpensive seat.

She looked at me, then she inquired:  Does it matter where you sit?

No, anywhere, I answered.

She picked up a ticket and raised it in her hand.  "I am giving this to you"

Front row, orchestra.  I was stunned.  "Free?" I said.

Yes.

Well thank you!

I could not believe myself.  NEVER have I ever been given a ticket from a theater ticket window seller.

Had Fate sent her a message: We have one last chance not to lose that guy. It's up to you.

The show's songs and production numbers engaged me passionately.  My review of the show can be found here under the subject category "musicals." 

Next morning, shunning the underground like a death sentence, I took the Sunset #2 downtown, and transferred to a Dash for Union Station.

Back to the starting point.  Okay, LA, you got me again.  How could I ever desert you after the ride that got me to the theatre on time, and  the free ticket handed me by the lady on the other side of the glass?

It may be an urban nightmare, but I gotta tell you, this town has a heart, and it can even feel like a city of angels.

Photos not by Showbiz David:  Those of Moonlight Rollerway and the of the musical, I Only Have Eyes for You, at the Montalban.

New Musical About 42nd Street Songwriters Rides Sky-High on Socko Songs -- Plods Along in Fairy Tale Scripting

 Jared Gertner and Constantine Rousouli as Dubin and Warren.

New Musical Review: I Only Have Eyes For You
at the Montalban, Hollywood
through June 12

Bottom Line:  The singing and dancing is so exhilarating, it's a must-see.

Out of Warner Bros. during the great depression came a hot slate of Busby Berkeley musicals with songs by probably the greatest song-writing team ever created in Hollywood: composer Harry Warren and lyricist Al Dubin.  Best known for their contributions to Forty Second Street, their toe-taping tunes include Shuffle Off to Buffalo, Lullaby of Broadway, You're Getting to Be a Habit with Me.

A new musical about the life of Dubin. I Only Have Eyes for You, opened recently in tryout at the The Montlaban theatre on Vine Street. The smartly crafted production soars with an emphatic sure-footed sizzle across the stage, if only its shallow book was less afraid to face the real life of its subject.  Writers Jerry Leichtling and Arlen Sarner push a superimposed theme of ever-lasting love onto Dubin and his stay-at-home wife, a former showgirl.   Dubin agreed to convert from Jew to Catholic if she would give up showbiz (hard to believe) to raise a family.

The Dubin marriage on this snap-happy stage is a one dimensional affair of break ups and make ups, so many I couldn’t keep track of them all. The jokes are not very funny.  Dubin becomes ever more erratic, gone for days on binges and womanizing, exasperating both his more grounded collaborator,  Warren, and his dutifully bland wife.

Between the powerhouse singing and dancing — the entire cast, a fair sensation, is spot on perfect — a plodding book charts Dubin’s gradual fall into alcoholism and professional failure  Towards what feels like the inevitable end point for the musical, we see him collapsing onto a New York street in lonely disarray.  This scene gives the treatment a suddenly gripping gravitas, and I could feel a final curtain about to fall.   In deed, this did happen to Dubin in his real life; three days later, only in his mid-fifties and estranged from his wife, he was dead. But not here. Not on this stage.  No, comes yet another embracing reconciliation for the two inseparable  Dubins.  Pure fairy tale.

Darkness is something this musical has a hard time facing.  We see a homeless man wandering across the stage at intervals, and his presence can send shivers of reality down the spine. Dubin is sympathetic with money, and, so,  how can we not logically expect the arrival of the team’s great song, The Forgotten Man?  Incredible, that song never arrives, even when Dubin, stumbling down into a shell on the street of his doom, becomes the song himself. 

Director-choreographer  Kay Cole does a terrific job in shaping the dances, pacing the show fluidly.   Orchestrations by Doug Walter and Steven Scott Smalley are heavenly fine, especially the reprisals of melodies just sung, now instrumentally floating below the surface.

Warren and Dubin produced very few ballads of note;  September in the Rain, a notable exception, gives the tuner some depth.  But, Don’t Give Up The Ship, an obscure number, falls flat.

The team’s greatest movie musical, Forty Second Street, is a true rags to riches story.  Here, in I Only Have Eyes for You, is the making of a more dramatic riches to rags tale.

I loved this musical despite its flaws.  Tuner could easily shed 30 minutes and come out ahead.  Some of the production numbers, trading on old movie musical imagery, are supernatural to behold.  Surreal scenic effects by the gifted John Iacovelli, with lighting by Brandon Baruch,  create a misty cinematic sheen.   Al Jolson and Carmen Miranda both have cameos so real, it is almost like watching them springing back to life from the dead. And to sit with an audience composed, I had to, wanted to believe, of old-line Hollywood pros, knowing that they who helped create such film legends as these were watching them come back to life -- now that perception alone was electrifying to contemplate.

The stars were out that night -- only in Hollywood.

See it if you can.

Hey, LA -- Bring on Stephanie and Bob at the Great Parade!

Here they are, today -- their last parade, they say, and I say, no no no!

I love Stephanie and Bob.  Love having them narrate the Pasadena Rose Parade for me.

Together for 35 years in the KTLA booth, they are a dream team.  Stephanie radiates a fresh sparkle.  She is the epitome of what is best about small town LA -- a vast landscape under the sun of endless little towns.  Bob, who favors the horses, exudes an earthy charm. The real guy from down the block. 

None of the other voices out there trying to compete can compare. Indeed, so much a part of the  fabric of Los Angeles are Stephanie and Bob, in my view, that I gave them due coverage in my new book Hopelessly Hollywood.

 I watch the parade streaming live on my PC, from KTLA.

And KTLA, a class act, keeps its cameras on the parade, virtually no commercials.  

About seven years ago, KTLA axed Stephanie from the booth, giving Bob a new partner who rather stumbled over a certain lack of knowledge about the history of the revered parade.

Public outrage was so great, Stephanie was brought back, and I thought, well, forever.

But forever does not last ... forever.

Although, I don't see the sun setting in their eyes, just yet.  To my eyes, they are still much too youngish and in shape to leave us. 

So, might they one day return?

Not likely. But we are talking LA, where rainbows make encores.

I'm dreaming SEQUEL

Hollywood Inflatable, Audition City on Demand. So, Who's Auditioning -- Them or Me?

We start on the 704 down Sunset Boulevard.  You tell me, please, was it a joke on me?  If not, circus owners under siege, beware! Prepare!  A new phobia may be in the air!

To your growing list of iffy things not to offer the public, here's yet another.  Bright young student-type fellow brimming with charisma, chatting merrily away with female pals on a crowded bus down Sunset Blvd, all of them standing before seated me, the fellow glibly confessing, “I’m scared of balloons!” ...  I stifled  a bus-rattling laugh. Balloons??? Fellow’s two friends, amused by the audience in me, pointed scaredy-cat in my direction, and he proceeded to entertain me with more of the same: Remember, we’re  are in Audition City:

“Yes, when I see a balloon, I get anxious!”

“You’re kidding” That’s me egging him on.  “You’re afraid of the popping sound?”

“Oh, no, everything – even if a person just holds one up to their lips, or if I see some balloons in a store, it’s scary!”

My turn. I told him I get creeped out in small elevators.

He ran with it:  “Oh, inside elevators, I love jumping up and down!”

Actors imrpov in transit?    I should have raised my camera.  Perfect opening for my three-day sprint through the city of angels and angles.

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That evening, over a boffo burger at Fred 62 on Vermont in Los Feliz, I found fresh whimsy in kids around a table reveling in group selfies. When they noticed my camera rising to snatch a snap, they went into full performance mode. “Do you want us to look at you?” shouted one of them   “No, don’t look at me!”  And there they are.  Such giddy delights.  Wonder how many of them want to be in pictures.

Where the sun once met the grill:  Next morning, I had planned to share the sunshine with a stool at my favorite outdoor grill, somewhere on Vine a little south of Hollywood Blvd, a place that’s been there since 1929.  A place that felt half-constructed, like a carny joint on the midway. How I loved –  Well, here, quoting shamelessly from my book, is the set up:

“You sit there on a tall sidewalk stool in the warm easy calm with other dreamers.  And you might feel, once more, like you have just arrived.”

I wanted to just arrive again, but my stool did not.  I ran into high rise construction, or had I got the location wrong?  I approached a member of the building crew, hoping he could speak English.  Was this not where a stand had been?  Bingo!  He spoke fluently, answering “Yes,” ready to commiserate with my shock. “I went there many times. The owner did not want to sell.”

Okay, so how else can you stand me, up, LA?    I pushed on through withering heat to my next scheduled enchantment, to check out The Broad, the city’s new contemporary art museum, just across the street from America’s greatest piece of architecture, the Disney Concert Hall. Built by philanthropists Eli and Edyth Broad, so, what do you see — Sees Candy Paris?  I see an Andy Warhol stack of white wafers inflating.  Tell that scared student up there to avoid Grand Avenue.

What I respect the most about Eli Broad — the town’s art-loving sugar daddy — is that he is not trying here to compete with Disney, which he also helped fund.  The Disney floats like steel clouds.  The Broad hunkers down low in cool virginal white.

But no room in its galleries for me.  People in a long line with tickets, waiting, and I learn it’s best to book in advance.  Always free, just like the Getty out in Brentwood. Who said this town hasn’t a heart?

Some pics while killing time under too much sun, walking here, there, no where.

The Disney, of course

 Amoebas on Sunset, where vinyl lives again!

When my dumb phone dies, maybe Apple

At La Brea and Santa Monica

To Raleigh Studios for the private screening of  ... Drum rolls!

Came my Big Moment: Documentary film maker Phil Weyland had invited me down to attend a private screening of his The Last Great Circus Flyer.  In it, I am one of the interviewed.  The screening to occur at Raleigh Studios, just across the street from Paramount.   Before the audience arrived, I would get to meet quad legend Miguel Vazquez, who spun quadruple somersaults on the flying trapeze.

To get there, I’m walking down Melrose, hoping to see Norma Desmond drive by in her big old overdone auto.  Approaching Raleigh, I thread my way through an audition-happy stream of costumed characters, above, just out of a tapping of Let’s Make a Deal — a show that began 48 seasons ago and was revived in 2009.

Security checks my name, tells me where to go — no, not back to where I came from.  Inside at the far end in one of many buildings, I meet up with Phil, and, in time, he leads me up sets of stairs to a small reception room of sorts.  I wonder what it will be like seeing Miguel Vazquez in person for the first time. And there he is, calmly seated. He looks up at me, rises to his feet with a warm smile and offers an elevating hug. So naturally perfect.  A hand shake from the prince of mid-air miracles would have felt so stiff, so grounded.

Catcher Juan, Miguel's brother, is there, too.  Heck of a nice guy.  It’s good to see them both together.  Lights are popping off.  News of the World (oops! Make that TMZ) filming our meeting?  Never so much flash bulb attention.  Hey LA, nobody does it like you do!

Between Miguel, left, and Juan

Visit goes great.  Film goes great.  Since I am in it, it would be wrong to formally review, and I wuold never do that.  Can say this, there are loads of goodies in it to enjoy.  But that’s for another time, once the film is released in January, out in Vegas.   In the meantime, Phil is lining up film festivals, biggest so far being one in the Twin Cities, where Miguel is slated to give a master class to top students at the city’s major trapeze school.

Comes and goes so fast.  Next morning, before catching Amtrak for my return, I’m at Philippes restaurant mourning the death of the Los Angeles Times, a sad and embarrassing skeleton of its Pulitzer-rich glory days.  Book reviews?  Only five or six.  Can’t believe it.  I used to read it every Sunday morning, big event, until it was no longer sold in the Bay Area.

Eli Broad is said to be trying to buy it away from its parent, Chicago-based Tribune Publishing; that itself, windy city ownership, marking one of the most humiliating episodes  in L.A. history.   If Sir Eli has his way, let them nickname it the LA Broad Sheet.  Wrap the old Times building in white chiffon wafers.  But hold the balloons.

Bye for now, L.A.   Phil and Miguel – and the student suffering from inflate-a-phobia – thanks for the memories!

There it is, Molly's Burgers, last day in business.  I like the feeling this photo gives off.

BTW: A bus ride in LA can be one of the friendliest places on earth.  This town has a sense of humor.

10.4.2015