Languages in LA

Someone actually said this in my hearing the other day, and without the slightest trace of irony or playfulness. She just said it like a normal person would say “Great!”

 
It was at the Coffee Bean on Robertson, where I had been hanging out like a seal on a rock because their internet was free. I was standing in line, having just ordered my mocha latte, and to my left was a young woman not of this world. She had apparently just stepped off of a billboard, and was still all shiny from the finishing touches of the hairdresser, make-up artist, and artificial suntan spray-on technician who hover just off camera.

 She was wearing black spandex leggings, because she could, having the butt and legs of a 12 year old boy. Said leggings and legs were tucked into black suede boots with heels so pointed and high they looked like spikes. Under her perfectly tanned skin, her breasts sat on her ribs like two plastic bowls on a xylophone.

 
Her hair was bouncy at the crown,  fluffy at the forehead, tendrilly at the neck, a cascade down her back, thick as a horse’s tail and blonde as some lisping clothesrack in a salon could make it. Her lips were pouty and her sunglasses were expensive.

 
The Coffee Bean barrister, obviously recognizing her, cooed, “How have you BEEEEEN???”

 
“Fantabulous!” She replied, her perfect white teeth flashing, her perfect French manicure touching the counter.  “I was at a party last night, and I had SO much fun…”

 
So that’s what fantabulous looks like, I thought, walking away. No wonder I just say “Fine.”

I found out where the homeless of West Hollywood hang out. But first, some background. Having finished decorating my new apartment, I sat down to assess my expenditures and nearly fainted. I decided, as an act of contrition for my Visa abuse, that I would declare today the “Don’t Spend a Penny Day.”

 I vowed I would not spend a single cent today. Not even a dollar cheeseburger from the McDonald’s drive-thru. Not even a bottle of tonic water to go with my gin. Nothing.

 By 1pm I was going through withdrawal, so I decided to do what I would have done 20 years ago: go to the public library.

 
Here I found them: the most motley collection of discarded people ever to fall asleep at a table. This is the West Hollywood library, people! A block from Robertson! Across from the Pacific Design Center!

The doors were smudged black with fingerprints, the tables too… a wan looking speciman of a man was on one of the computers. He typed for a moment, picked his nose, and then typed again. I decided I didn’t need to use the computer.

 I picked out a book on the Roman Empire and sat gingerly down. Not wanting to touch the table, I turned the pages with a daintiness utterly foreign to my character. After 20 minutes, I’d had enough. As I left, I saw a filthy plastic bin with a sign that read DONATIONS held on with aged, peeling tape.

This is where the unwanted go: unwanted books, and unwanted people. Those with money are over at Starbucks with their laptops. I’ve seen med students there. Didn’t it used to be, long ago, that the homeless hung out in diners and the scholarly went to the library?

Every once in a while, I see something that just puts a smile on my face. It’s rare that I see something like that, however, at the intersection of Hollywood and Virgil. That’s a rather rundown part of LA, the seedier part of Los Feliz, and that particular intersection is a monster. Three major streets come together, and if you are not in the lane you want to be in, you are not going where you want to go. The people you see shuffling along the sidewalk in this area usually either move you to pity or to check that your door is locked.

I mean, it’s not hell, but it’s not pretty.

Today, however, I sat at the stoplight and stared up at the long, long, long red light, only to see that there was a weird black shape in the red of the light. It seemed at first that the light was perhaps cracked, or somehow damaged, because only part of the red shone through.

Then the black shape moved and I realized that a bird had settled down into the metal frame around the red light and was contentedly surveying the intersection from its cozy perch. I had to smile. No way could that bird realize he was in the one place that every eye was fixed, that he was not just in a stoplight, he was in the spotlight. He was the focus of our undivided attention.

And if he had known, would it have stroked his little birdie ego to know we were all smiling up at him? I bet it would. He’d be like the guy in the airport sitting under the clock. He doesn’t know why all the women keep glancing his way, but he knows they’re looking.

West Hollywood is so sunny and well-bred that occasionally I am overcome with the urge to do something barbaric just to rattle the natives. Nothing appalling, mind you, like failing to smile at dogs and small children. Nothing that will give me a lifelong reputation, like snarling at those damn Salvation Army bell-ringers.

No, just something unexpected and peculiar enough to set them back on their well-heeled heels, their French manicures fluttering in consternation. Something that will bring a whiff of The Other into the breezeless, blue-skied days.

I hit on the perfect act of rebellion, something that violates boundaries but with perfect moral authority, something that suggests a self-sufficiency combined with a disregard for appearances that, in a woman, raises red flags all over: when I buy a cord of firewood, I grab the whole thing and haul it right into the store and up to the cashier.

This is fun. The accepted method is simply to tell the cashier that you are buying firewood and then you take it on your way out. Or better yet, if you are female, you let a store employee pick it up for you, so you won’t muss yourself.

Muss, hell, I pick that baby up and stomp into the store. The security guard jumps out of my way, utterly baffled. Skeletal matrons with plump lips stare through their sunglasses as I stagger past them. Cashiers’ smiles die on their faces and they shrink perceptably as the ragged wood comes toward them.

My grandfather used to cut wood out back with an ax. Here, people mince up to the cashier delicately extending their Visa cards. Somewhere between the ax and the Visa is me.

Oh my, I have arrived. I feel so posh: I just got my first West Hollywood West Residents’ Association (WHWRA) Newsletter, thus certifying that I am indeed a denizen of West Hollywood West. Yes, they say west twice. I guess it’s because I’m at the western-most cusp. I’m so close to Beverly Hills I could throw a stone and hit it, but of course I would never, because they have their own stones over there and probably don’t want ours mingling in.

Anyway. It’s a very nice newsletter, printed in full color on stiff, smooth white paper. The president of WHWRA is Steven Golightly. Yes, really. I thought that was a made-up name when Holly Golightly appeared in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, but apparently it’s a real live name! There’s a cut-out section if I want to join the Resident’s Association and pay dues.

I just might do it. I usually bridle at the very word “dues” because … well… it usually isn’t due. I don’t, for instance, feel I owe anything to the faculty association at my school, that irritating bunch who try to squeeze $25 out of me every year so they can buy flowers for every teacher who has a baby. If it were going to provide birth control instead, I might be tempted.
 

But for the WHWRA, I just might cough it up, if only for the chance to someday meet a man I can call President Golightly. My God, that’s priceless. And look! On page 2 it says that the WHWRA will soon have full-fledged 501©(3) tax status, so the dues will be tax deductible! Could it be? Have I found a little Galt’s Gulch of fiscal conservatives in West Hollywood? Shivers are running down my spine. I wonder if they’ll accept a personal check.

I had another “what is that language doing here” moment today. I went to the 99 cent store near Western because let’s face it, I can barely afford my new apartment. But I’ll live on Ramen noodle soup if that’s what it takes to stay near Doheny, so off I went to the 99 cent store to shop for cheap stuff.

I entered the store and behind me, I heard the unmistakable sounds of French. I studied French for 5 years, which means I can understand words like jamais and toujours, and little else because the French speak too fast for me.

I turned to see three sleek, well-dressed tourists entering the store. Now what on earth were French people doing in the dollar store? I am not accustomed to hearing French in the dollar store. It comes to me, yet again, that in LA I am accustomed to hearing many languages… but they tend to crop up in certain places.

At the discount stores, I hear Spanish, Armenian, and Chinese. At the expensive restaurants, I hear British, Australian, French, and German. As for Russian, well, you never know where that’ll crop up. But hearing French in the dollar store penetrated the static that foreign languages have become.

It was as startling as hearing Chinese spoken at Chin-Chins. I have never heard Chinese spoken at an upscale Chinese restaurants. It’s the one place I can usually count on hearing nothing but English. Apparently, if Asians get a craving for Asian food, they just go home and wok it up.

But anyway, I’m still trying to figure out what French tourists were doing in the dollar store. They most have gotten lost on the way to Chateau Marmont.

I love the Coffee Bean on Robertson and Beverly. This is the juiciest part of West Hollywood. To get there, I stroll from my apartment down to Robertson and window shop for three blocks till I get to the corner. It’s sort of a foreplay activity before my coffee.

I pass the interior décor boutiques, lush with satins and brass, or clean and spare with white leather and chrome. All have shocking prices. An embroidered pillow for $100. A tiny oil painting for $495. The plate glass windows are smeared with my drool.

 
At the Coffee Bean, I perch on a stool, sip my vanilla latte and surf the internet. Normally. But yesterday, as I was surfing I glanced out the window and lo, there was an attractive young man dressed only in a plush taupe housecoat and flipflops standing out by one of the tables.

 
This was odd. I sat up straighter and looked around, finding a pretty blonde girl near him, also in taupe housecoat. After a moment, I realized there were about six people out there, all young and pretty, all in plush taupe housecoats.

 
I was not the only patron staring out in bemusement. Finally, when the blonde came in, we asked her if she was in a cult. She smiled and said no, that they were promoting the opening of some new condos nearby. She offered a napkin printed with www.therobclark.com and a brief description of the “swanky” new condos for sale.

 
I have not seen the word swanky used without irony since 1975. But then, anyone who would pay people to stand around in bathrobes outside Coffee Bean in Weho is probably not terribly sensitive to irony.

While driving down Sunset Blvd today, I encountered a massive ad on the side of a building. It was a huge, shiny black SUV (don’t ask me what kind, cars all look alike to me) and the slogan above it was Bye Bye Black Sheep.

 
Now, obviously this is Baa Baa Black Sheep and Bye Bye Blackbird put together. But I’m wondering if the average American recognizes either phrase anymore. I mean, I know them because I was raised by my grandparents. My cultural influences span the entire 20^th century. My Grandpa used to actually shuffle around the house singing negro spirituals to himself, despite the fact that he was white, and racist as Archie Bunker. Whenever Grandma called him to dinner. He’d sing, “I’m coming… my head is bending low….” I think that was a rather sarcastic commentary on Grandma being the obvious power source of the house, but nevertheless. My grandmother sang Bye Bye Blackbird to me, and Mom recited the nursery rhyme Baa Baa Black Sheep.

But I tend to assume that what is true for me is probably not true for most people. Heck, even the neighbors thought we were weird. How can something that is so familiar to my dirt-road Michigan upbringing crop up on the side of a skyscraper in Hollywood?

Are these things really part of the American collective unconscious? Does anyone under 50 besides me recognize these references? Or is this a very expensive car, probably being marketed for wealthy 50 year olds, and it wouldn’t matter if every 20 year old in LA glanced up and thought, “Whoa, is that a racial remark?”

I wish I knew what drives ad executives.

One can’t live in Hollywood and ignore the writers’ strike. When I was working as an extra, the shuttle bus carried me every morning from the massive parking garage off the Avenue of the Stars deep into the land of Fox Studios, and past pockets of picketing penmen. (Sorry, couldn’t resist the urge to try to wring one more word out of that alliteration opportunity.)

They are wearing red, mostly, and carrying signs. A crew member on the set of The Journeyman commented that some of those writers are earning up to $12,000 per weekly episode, and it seemed to him that with a little judicious budgeting, one could live on that pretty well even in Beverly Hills. But many people, such as Michael Cieply of The New York Times, sympathize with the writers,  noting that the bulk of the money tends to go to top actors, directors, and producers.

“It all begins with a script,” is the phrase I’ve heard often here in Hollywood as I, too, try to get doors to open. Such phrases are lip service, however. Jokes are more revealing. One common joke is that of a starlet telling her friend that she’s sure to land the lead in such-n-such film because “I’m sleeping with the writer!” (Insert guffaw here, because when the process actually begins, the writer is apparently only one notch above the girl who makes the coffee.)

 
It’s hard for me to pick a side. I am a writer myself. But I’ve seen what passes for writing on some of these TV shows and I have to say, $12,000 seems a little steep for exchanges that require a laughtrack.

My welcome to the city letter arrived today, sternly letting me know that here in West Hollywood, we do not set unwanted bulky items on the curb. Being that I’m moving in, not out, I have done no such thing, but I think everyone got this letter as it is addressed Dear Resident.

 
According to Municipal Codes 9.04.050 and 15.35.060, one can be fined $250 for having any mess in front of their house that could be described as “offensive, unsightly, unsafe, or hazardous.” (Time to call the Department of Redundancy Department). Nevertheless, I am glad I got the memo, letting everyone know that if they decide to jettison a chair, they can just put it in the neighbor’s yard and let them pay the $250. 

But wait, we don’t have to do that either, because — the letter goes on to inform us — if we need something picked up, just call Athens Services. Here is where it gets a little linguistically amusing. Athens is Greek, yes? Well, they enclosed a little refrigerator magnet shaped like a sofa and printed with some information and phone numbers. Like everything in California, it was in English and in one other language. But no, not Spanish. Russian.

 
So I’m looking at Athens, the Greek-named Russian-speaking trash service, and wondering why Russian? Is West Hollywood teaming with Russians? I haven’t met any of them yet, although there is an Armenian gentleman on the other side of the Cuban lady next to me. But if I were to suggest that Armenians are “close enough” to Russians for my purposes, he’d undoubtedly bristle like a Canadian who’s just been mistaken for an American. Hm. I’ll just have to keep a sharp eye out. Obviously, the Russians are coming!