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sponsored by Camels Cigarettes
Saturday, October 23 1999
It's been stressful for the past few days just managing the numerous new things I suddenly find myself having to do. But still, last night when Kim found out that Cyclefly was playing in Los Angeles tonight and immediately decided we had to go, I found myself agreeing. I tried to cancel those plans today, and for awhile I thought I had, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
At the Zen Bakery this morning Sophie desperately wanted to sniff the butt of a certain frisky young female chocolate lab whose Schteveish owners had, like us, come to the bakery for Saturday morning brunch. But it wasn't to be. Even when we encountered the couple on two occasions on the way to Dog Beach, the guy walking the dog wouldn't permit his dog to approach ours. It's always something of a freak book photo to think of the terribly unjust stewardships under which some dogs must live. We never did make it Dog Beach.
Kim loaned me her car for a few hours and I drove to work to do some things that I realized needed to be done today. It turned out that the largest of those things had been canceled, so I was free to focus on lesser, more interesting problems.
By now I'd somehow agreed to go to Los Angeles if Kim could find a way to get off work. By hook, crook or little black book, she pulled it off, though she still had to work a few hours.
I picked her up at her workplace at nearly 7:00pm and we headed north up the 8 to the City Where the Blemishes of Beauties are Obscured by the Smog-Softened Light.
Before long I was stoned and full of inspired ignorance. I caught one sentence as I said it and I actually had presence of mind sufficient to comprehend how ridiculous it was. "Los Angeles is the largest affluent city in the world!" I proclaimed. What I meant was that it was the largest city based entirely on the automobile, with smog, gridlock and freeways to prove it.
ZZ Top was on the radio for a song and I re-realized how cool those guys were back when Eliminator came out. Up until that album, no one had ever played a blues progression with such ruthlessly mechanical matter-of-factness.
My thoughts moved on to beauty and attractiveness as it manifests in various forms. It occurred to me that beauty and ugliness, of a sort, are manifest in the writing one finds in email. This sort of beauty or ugliness has no relationship whatsoever to physical beauty or ugliness, yet to someone like me who spends a lot of time in this environment, it's of similar importance.
[REDACTED]
Near Los Angeles, the traffic flows started becoming sporadically congested. I was impressed to witness the spectacle of Los Angeles being such a vast city that it couldn't even support the transportation needs of its night life.
I'd read somewhere once that cars in traffic behave very similarly to the way molecules behave in liquid water. From a macroscopic view, it's easy to see why: from far away, cars don't even have the apparent intelligence of ants. They just look like moving particles being propelled by some unknown force into and out of cities. The intentions, destinations, or life stories of the individual drivers doesn't matter. What matters is that there is something, a force, causing those cars to move into the city, and there is something else, rules keeping those cars a certain distance from one another and within their lanes. The force is (of course) coming from the burning of gasoline, but that's really just a source of energy. The real force is the average urgency of the drivers to get to where they're going; gasoline provides considerably more options than the limited range of safe ones. Depending on the circumstances, that urgency can rise or fall dramatically, bending the rules considerably. Two hours before the big game, the people going to the stadium will be content to drive slowly or even be stuck in traffic. One minute before being scheduled to arrive at a job interview, on the other hand, a person would be under considerably greater pressure. Obviously, not every person on any particular freeway has the exact same destination or urgency. It's all about averages. The averages affect the way the "fluid" of traffic moves, especially as the freeway reaches its maximum carrying capacity.
The overall rules governing car motion in the fluid of gridlock are that cars must not hit each other and that cars must travel in designated lanes. These rules, though imposed by governmental bodies and insurance realities, correspond nicely with laws of repulsion in molecular physics. Indeed, car repulsion may even obey the inverse-square law. Under some "high pressure" situations, especially for those with an elevated motivation to move fast, people in cars are willing to approach other cars much more closely than usual. This is precisely what happens to liquid under high pressure. Tonight as we entered Los Angeles proper, we found ourselves stuck in a frightening species of gridlock in which the traffic suddenly lurched forward, raced at 50 mph for a quarter mile or so and then screeched to a halt, where we waited a few seconds, only to repeat the charge and stop cycle again and again. I don't know what sort of fluid moves like this, but I'm sure there's one that does. It was terrifying.
The directions which Kim had taken were flawless except for one crucial intersection where she left the direction ambiguous. I guessed a right and soon enough we found ourselves heading into obvious wrong territory. Kim started freaking out, but I kept my cool and worked to untie the knot we'd made of our trajectory. I had us backtrack to the dubious intersection, we tried the other direction, and sure enough it worked. The day was saved! Cyclefly hadn't even started playing yet when we arrived.
The club was a new place called Vynyl. It was located on Schrader Street, a street so obscure you can't even find it on Mapquest. Admission was only $5 each at the door. Drinks were expensive, but we didn't intend on spending much money that way; we'd come equipped with what was purportedly pure Ecstacy.
The Cyclefly show was excellent as always. I'm extremely familiar with their full-length album, and to my ear they didn't miss a beat. There seemed to be a strong media interest in Cyclefly tonight, as though every one is just counting the days until they make the big time. There was this one frantically-industrious androgynous Japanese photographer whom I would have mistaken for a man had she not been severely constrained by her awkward ankle-length skirt. Unfortunately, the crowd (which consisted of a mix of punk rockers, emo college radio kids, raver geeks and trendy blond Los Angeles wenches) weren't too pumped up, prompting Declan (the singer) to threaten at one point that his next song would be called "Deader than You." Still, Cyclefly came out to do the obligatory encore when the time came to do such things. The band might be great at the songs they do, but they're still limited by the small number of songs in their catalogue. They have trouble filling out a full show; Kim thinks it's doubtful they'll be more than an opening band until they release another full-length album.
After the show the guys from Cyclefly hung around the bar socializing with various blond groupie girls, aging black-skirted would-be groupie girls, Los Angeles personalities, and others. Declan could even be seen doing a little dancing to the DJ music that followed his band's performance. When he walked by me at one point, we clinked glasses.
The turnout peaked for a time during the Cyclefly show and then deteriorated for awhile, peaking at a lower level composed of an entirely different demographic some time during the DJ show. I had the feeling that there were people in the crowd who had been paid to be there to give the impression that Club Vynyl is hip and happening. After all, it's hard for a new bar to define itself as cool and attract a loyal crowd. There was this one extremely attractive couple out in the middle of the floor dancing exquisitely for awhile, but I quickly concluded that they were paid plants. I witnessed Declan the Cyclefly singer deliberately brush against the plant girl just to get the chance to say "excuse me."
Out in front of the bar was a pleasant lounge area complete with little tables, romantic nooks, and an overall pleasant vibe. It looked like the sort of place where someone would hang out and smoke cigarettes, except that no one can actually smoke cigarettes in California restaurants. There were these two people hanging out in the lounge area equipped with clip boards. One was an attractive young man and the other was an attractive, though somewhat washed-up woman dressed in sexy semi-see-through layers of lace. The woman asked me if I'd fill out a survey in exchange for a free pack of cigarettes. I said sure, why not. Kim said no thank you. So I handed the woman my ID and she meticulously copied it into her records, then handed me a survey to fill out. The survey included a question about what cigarettes I preferred, etc. Lightly stenciled on the survey, but still very obvious, was the Camels logo. I said "Camels" and got a free pack of Camels Regular. After that I wondered if this survey thing was to gauge consumer sentiments about Camels. Obviously, someone who hates Camels and Phillip Morris will see the Camels logo and respond with something anti-Camel. But later I realized the entire restaurant was actually a huge Camels advertisement. For example, the light show that played throughout the Cyclefly concert and the DJ show was nothing more than a huge psychedelic Camels screen saver. But beyond that, the fonts used on everything from the "Men's Room" to the exit door light was precisely the same as that used in the "Camels" logo. The interiour colors and even the lamps seemed to have been lifted directly from a Joe Camel ad. And the only cigarettes featured at the bar (and they were featured prominently) were Camels. Gradually I came to see all of Club Vynyl as a subtle provocation to smoke.
The kicker came just as Kim and I were preparing to leave. We'd been aware of a special little room where only the hippest, trendiest people seemed to be hanging out. The room seemed all the more alluring simply from the fact that there was no obvious way to get to it; it sat on a slightly-raised ledge, cut off from the "rest of us" by a low, thick protective wall and an almost unseen access ramp. As Kim and I sat beneath it in a romantic corner of the front lounge area, I could smell just a hint of cigarette smoke. There was no actual atmospheric barrier between where we were sitting and the people in the trendy room above us. As we Kim and I were leaving Club Vynyl, we actually went into this room as part of a quest for more Ecstasy. That's when I learned the secret. People in this room, in the holiest of holies of Club Vynyl, were allowed to smoke. A powerful ventilation system kept the smoke from traveling far, but I have no idea how this arrangement could possibly be in keeping with California State Law, especially considering the fact that a waitress from Club Vynyl was tending customers in this room.
Kim stretched out for awhile on a set of boxy chairs lined up as a couch, attracting considerable attention. Several guys approached her and began macking on her. None of these guys seemed to care one way or the other that I was her boyfriend. That was just fine with me; I knew Kim would find us some way to a more interesting situation.
One of the guys who macked on Kim was on Ecstacy too, but he was kind of bored with the experience and was looking for yet another dose of Ecstacy. His story: he was visiting from Stanford and he was bored. We all went out to the car and smoked some pot senior prom style.
We'd been watching a little Japanese guy out on the floor dancing to the music. He was moving his hands above his head in fluid sinuous patterns, an action that gave him away, Kim said, as an "experienced raver." It turned out that he was a friend of the bored Stanford lad. They were all about to head to an after-hours late-night rave some fifteen minutes away. Crash Worship would be playing. Somehow we ended up joining them, traveling follow-the-leader caravan style.
We ended up in a run-down depopulated warehouse quarter of Los Angeles northeast of downtown. From what I could see, no one live in this area at all. The only evidence of non-work-related life was snarls of graffiti covering the most accessible surfaces. We parked in the unexpectedly crowded parking lot of an especially seedy-looking Goodwill and walked from there.
Things looked promising as we saw punk rockers and ravers filing to and from what we quickly decided must be our destination.
There were a couple groovy hippie types guarding the front gate of the event. As groovy as these guys were, however, the price of admission was decidedly ungroovy. Kim and I had spaced out on even bringing our money, and this necessitated a walk back to our car. The little Japanese guy asked if I wanted him to come along with me and, recalling the frighteningly scarred semi-ruins we'd walked through, I said sure. Unlike myself, he was obviously pretty well buzzed on Ecstacy and he seemed to have a genuine altruistic concern for the well-being of a fellow traveler. He even offered to pay our admission tickets if we were low on funds. When we got to talking I learned he was an "Imagineer" working at Disney. "Imagineers," he said, "are Engineers of the imagination." He said this without a trace of either cynicism or arrogance. It was just a matter-of-fact declaration of what he did.
After we'd paid our tickets, the next gauntlet consisted of a couple of equally-obese African-American security personnel guarding the front door of the warehouse in which the rave was actually happening. I stepped out of line when I saw them patting people down; I had some marijuana paraphernalia in my pocket at the time. Kim thought I was being overly neurotic, but she came with me when I went to hide the stuff. Still, they made me check my unopened Camels cigarette pack and Bourbon Street lighter at the door.
After we were inside, we passed through a number of well-lit rooms where people milled around, sat, or lay on their backs in various other-mindly states. The place had something of the feel of a highschool hallway, complete with paid security guards barking "excuse me!" whenever someone like me bumbled into the wrong room.
The music wasn't loud outside the building or even within the warehouse, but as we entered rooms closer to the music, the din became deafening.
The medium-sized room where the rave itself was happening was completely jammed with people. They were writhing and waving their arms like sand-sprinkled sea anemones. The colourful sparkles were coming from a mix of maple syrup and glitter that the band periodically sprayed out over the crowd, along with bright yellow mustard and other gooky stuff. The band itself seemed to consist of several gutterpunk hippie types, the sort you'd see producing a Nomadic Festival. They played several drum sets and an electronic noise machine. It was all very monotonous & dissonant, the absolute victory of the raver emphasis on rhythm over melody. (Sara Poiron once obsessed about Crash Worship for a day back in the summer of 1996, when she was still under the influence of the Nomads.) On stage in front of the band several cute girls were dancing completely topless. After awhile one of the girls shed all her clothes. She was a ghostly primitive late-90s spirit as her dancing was broken up by the freeze frames of the strobe light. I wondered if naked girls looked like this as they danced in the firelight back in the cave man days.
A long-haired dude invited Kim to get up on stage if only she'd take off her top, but she declined.
My mind and body weren't with these people; evidently the Ecstacy I'd taken was considerably weaker than it had been advertised. All it was providing me was a weak body buzz, considerably weaker than a good tussin trip and more similar to a booze buzz than anything else. Kim wasn't too surprised. "It's hard to find good X," she observed. Especially in San Diego when your dealer is a non-raving street-level-dealing friend.
Despite the weird tribal, Burning-Manesque nature of the festivites, I was, like our new friend from Stanford, actually feeling rather bored by this stage of the evening. Something about the social congestion, the weakening of an already weak Ecstacy buzz and the demands of keeping a girlfriend happy contributed to an overall malaise. The only thing I found really interesting was when the lights came up and I got to see some grotesquely overweight shirtless women. Their breasts were no larger than a normal-sized woman's, but their torsos were as vast as Kansas wheat fields. "Turn the lights back off!" they giggled.
On the drive to our hotel, despite being fucked up, I performed a Herculean mental feat: reversing one set of directions and mentally attaching them to another set of unreversed directions along with a patch of unknown map I had to infer. Our room at the Beverly Terrace Hotel was small and cozy, with a commanding view of a nearby video store and its parking lot.
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