Wednesday 21st June 2006

It's illegal to walk in Los Angeles, no-body does. The film L.A. Story, with Steve Martin, gleefully plays on every cliché about this city and in one scene he gets in his car and drives five yards to his neighbours house. That's almost realistic. In that film he plays a TV Weatherman and happily just plasters Sun stickers all over the map because that's all you ever get. Always sun. Always 73 degrees.

But walking is the biggest no-no. But there are plenty of perfect pavements, under palm trees, that are great for walking on but absolutely empty, which is a waste but makes them more enjoyable. It's quite insane, when you get to a pedestrian crossing and see the red 'DON'T WALK' sign, that's not an instruction but the cities slogan.

But I enjoyed a thirty minute stroll this morning, which is probably a federal offence, and took in the West Hollywood area. It takes some getting used to. Los Angeles isn't attractive in the traditional sense. Like many American cites, it's full of low rise units, which is a better word for them than buildings, which don't really have any uniform features, but contain a glass door and windows at the front which could be anything from a fast food outlet to an antiques shop. This is all interspaced with open areas for parking, because no-one would walk to the shops needless to say, and hundreds of signs offering deals and rates for leaving your car. It's bitty and disjointed.

But that's not to say it doesn't appeal. There is a dreamy quality to it, and the sun helps. If LA was designed like this and it was dark and rainy it would look horrendous, but as it is there's a Mexican influence, as there would be, and in it's own strange way it seems to work.

I hate being a tourist but thought I should do a couple of touristy things and so went to Hollywood Boulevard, where all the stars in the pavement are, hundreds of them too. They are outside The Kodak Theatre where the Oscars are currently held and so I paid $15 for a tour. I regretted this as soon as I and the other two people to want to do this, congregated in the foyer. I hate going on tours at the best of times but when there's only three of you it's often quite awkward, especially when you have a hyper host who insists on making jokes so you have to laugh out loud the whole time. His name was Matt, and he was slightly mad. I mean mentally unbalanced, not 'a bit of a character'. One of those bouncy, too fit, energetic twenty-something's that you can't stop smiling or suppress. But what was really fascinating about him was that he was the most desperate actor I've ever seen, but in a rather creepy, very jealous and resentful way. For example, we didn't know he was an actor at first, so one of the other two (who were Canadian) asked him innocently "So are you an aspiring actor?"

"No. I am a WORKING actor. I work" he said, suddenly very serious. We looked at the floor. Anyone with any nerve would have pointed out he was giving theatre tours but we didn't have that gall.

But he kept telling us off. In the foyer there were large prints of various stars. He started quizzing us and got annoyed when we didn't know the answers.

"Who's this?"

"Um... is it Vivian Leigh?"

"Um, YEAH... but what film is she getting the award for?"

"Umm?"

"GONE WITH THE WIND! Come on people! You British and Canadians!"

We went to the stage and walked out from the curtain at the rear into the huge auditorium, a sea of seats facing us which had the actor cards in some which they use for planning the Oscar ceremony. That was quite thrilling. Having been on a few stages in my time I pictured it full, and it sent a shiver down my spine. It's big, seats about 3,500, but it's the drama of the place that's so incredible. What price a stand-up gig there? We stood on the stage for a long while and I didn't listen to anything Matt said after that, I was busy imagining my own show, or collecting an Oscar. It was quite hard to drown him out but my imagination won in the end.

Outside, I walked around a corner and saw the Hollywood sign a way away up on the hill. That too was thrilling. I stared at it for a while, thinking about what it symbolised and all's it's come to mean to people. Originally it read 'HOLLYWOODLAND' and advertised a new housing development. It's best not to think about that when you look at it.

It's easy to forget that you're by the sea because LA doesn't feel like a costal place. Los Angles is actually a vast collection of 28 cities, and a few, such as Venice and Santa Monica, are on the coast and so I got a cab out to Venice Beach. Cabs are the only option if you don't have a car, there's no metro or anything. There are buses but I couldn't figure out how they worked, nor did I really want to. I am a Chap.

Venice Beach is a bit like Camden Town in London by the sea. Lots of henna tattoo stalls. T-Shirts with amusing messages on them. Those shops selling crack pipes. Jugglers. People playing the guitar or body popping. It's also the home of Muscle Beach, a pen of weight lifting equipment in which massive specimens flex themselves for the general disinterest of the public. The expression 'only in America' couldn't be more apt, or more gratifying.

I walked about three or four miles up the wide sandy beach to Santa Monica, which is probably punishable by death, and from there a long cab journey in typically hellish traffic back to the Beverly Hills Hotel. I feel I might well LIVE here if I was rich. I was welcomed back like an old friend by the staff and got chatting to a particularly friendly and down to Earth employee called Jeremy. He told me that he knows about 50% of the clientele personally, and even goes out socially with them. It's like a big family. And once more I was enchanted by the bar, again looking irresistible in the sunshine.

I asked Jeremy about the history of the hotel. Apparently when it was built, in 1912, there was nothing here but scrub land. Sunset Boulevard was a track. When the hotel opened, the invitations advertised it as 'half way between Los Angeles and the sea'. That area is now one of the plushest and most exclusive residential areas in the world, containing Beverly Hills, Bel Air, and Brentwood. To think there was nothing here one hundred years ago... But then America is just so young, you always have to remind yourself. So refreshingly young!

The guy that built the place was looking for oil. He hit water. But he decided to use the land regardless.

So anyway, The Beverly Hills Hotel is now my spiritual home. It's utterly perfect.

I went back to my, slightly more modest, hotel and took an evening walk. I'd not noticed, but The Comedy Store is over the street. On it's black walls are scrawled in white pen the names of the people who have plated there. Jay Leno. Rosanne. David Letterman. Jerry Seinfeld. Larry David. Eddie Murphy. In the patio area a couple of people were hanging around and it turned out they were performing tonight in a bill with fifteen comics doing 15 minutes each, with no intervals. This would mean people just getting up to the bar or the toilet half way through your set... Awful arrangement. I think the American circuit is far tougher than in the UK. But then perhaps the prizes are greater. Look at the names I just mentioned, they all did okay.

I didn't watch the show, presuming it to be horrible, but I felt maybe I should have done for homework purposes. The truth is though, I don't like watching comedy! Never have done!

I returned to The Sky Bar briefly and had a meal in a restaurant along the road called Cravings. I was sat outside on the street watching the world go by, or the pimped up cars and gangs of motor cyclists go by, and noticed a busker come along with a Labrador holding a plastic tray in it's mouth. You gave a dog a dollar if you liked the man playing the guitar and it was hard not to. If you gave the dog money it would wag it's tail and offer it's paw to shake hands. This guy was cleaning up. He must be on two or three hundred dollars a night. Maybe the dog takes 10%, he should do. Is that a good life, making $1000 a week just walking around with your dog? I suppose it is - and I very much doubt it amongst the stranger ways to earn a crust in this dazzling place. It's really grown on me today, I think I might be starting to understand it's pace and it's attitude. I could live here, no matter how crazy that sounds. So long as it's at The Beverly Hills Hotel, I wouldn't want to live the life most people live here. I wouldn't want to struggle, and I'm sure most do. There are probably more dreams broken or trampled on here than anywhere else in the world, but for those it works for, it works very nicely indeed.

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