PopWars

The atmosphere and service at Joe Bean Roasters on University Avenue are laid back which is something I didn’t expect considering their product. They are artisan roasters and craft brewers. You can choose from about ten different preparations but we chose the single pour method and watched as our barista weighed the beans on a drug dealer’s scale, ground them and slipped the grounds into a single serving sized paper cone while the water boils on a burner in hands reach of the seats at the bar. The glass pots of fresh brew are placed, Japanese style, on a small board alongside a ceramic cup which we were able to fill three times while we chatted with Mike, the owner. The place feels a bit like the opium den Robert DeNiro visited in “Once Upon a Time in America.”

Tapas, Pinchos or Pintxos, Raciones or whatever you want to call the small portions of prepared food that are offered in every café/bar (cafés seamlessly meld into or double as bars) in Spain should have caught on here by now. I really don’t understand why the concept has not taken hold. Are there U.S. Heath Department rules against serving food this way or something? It seems like the very definition of civilization to walk into a place, say Hola, and order something from the glass cases on the counter. Sharing a small dish over conversation and a coffee or making a meal of three or four portions with a glass of wine or beer is a no-brainer, tried and true, money-making concept but I have yet to see anyone pull it off in the States. Octopus salad with black olives! Come on.

The great Antoni Gaudí picked up what they were putting down in Barcelona and transformed the city and architecture worldwide. Pablo Picasso painted here for twenty years. Juan Joan Miró was born here and spent most of his life here. Dali lived and worked nearby. Surrealism, Modernismo or Moderisime in Catalan, Novcentisme, new century movement (last century change, not this one), Manzana de la Discordia or just plain Psicodèlico, Barcelona wears it well.

There are public drinking fountains all over the old city of Barcelona. Most are dried up. Some still work but people don’t seem to use them anymore. I saw a dog drinking out of one yesterday. People buy their water in plastic jugs now. See “MX-80 – We’re So Civilized.”

I’ve started a collection of dumpster photos. The past is still here for hobby archeologists and the dumpsters are a record of our progress. Someone has got to catalog this stuff.

Everyone knows Herman and for good reason. He’s the perfect bartender and conversationalist. Formerly a Bug Jar fixture he’s got his own place now, called the “Skylark Lounge”, on Union Street, a drag show venue for many years that he and Bug Jar inventor, Casey, have retooled with swank. The location, on a one way street in the East End, is a bit forlorn but it’ll be the center of the universe when the city fills in the Inner Loop.

We stopped in after the Margaret Explosion gig and sat at the bar by the juke box. Hermie told us he was considering one that played 45s but it wouldn’t hold enough music so he settled on one that plays cds, his cds, mostly old school, VU, Stones, Curtis Mayfield, Donovan, JB, Stooges.

Forget about wifi, the Rolling Stones pinball machine in the corner is the main attraction until they get their entertainment license. I couldn’t tell if I was getting extra points for hitting Mick or what but he kept prancing across the middle of the game and was definitely in the way. I won a few bonus balls and then a free game. I was slamming the machine and never tilted it. I wish they wouldn’t release those extra balls when you get on a roll. In the old days and you could get a get a good run going by working the ball, one ball.

People used to identify themselves when they called you but they don’t do that anymore because everyone has cell phones and they know who’s calling before they say hello. In fact people don’t even say hello any more they just start talking. Well we don’t have a cellphone and I’m often completely thrown as to who I’m talking to. Someone will prattle on about something while I’m running through my mental rolladex trying to figure out who the voice is. Is it work related or a friendly? No big deal. I’m just saying.

The phone rang during dinner the other night and our nephew was laughing at the quaintness of the answering machine on our land line and that led to a discussion of the old full size cassette answering machine that we had and how we’d record over and over the tapes until they were layered bits and pieces of voices from the past. I set a few of them aside and went downstairs to check to see if I could put my hands on them. I found a cassette deck and put on a white label advance copy of Colorblind James’ “Why Should I Stand Up?” from 1991 that had been put into service.

Brad Fox called and started with a joke. “Why did the Siamese twins go to England?” No punchline. A snippet of Colorblinds’ “That’s Entertainment”, Deb calling from Massachusetts asking for help with her computer which was suddenly in a foreign language. Peggi’s mom letting us know she didn’t like the answering machine. A snippet of “Ride Board.” A wrong number where someone left a message for someone we’ve never heard of. Our nephew calling for help getting a stuck floppy out of an Mac SE. He’s majoring in artificial intelligence today. Another snippet of “Ride Board.” And plenty of people complaining about the quality of our outgoing message which as I remember had either James Brown or Miles Davis blasting in the background.

Sometimes the machine would record our part of a conversation if we failed to pick up the phone in time. So we heard Steve Black from Singapore answering a call from Steve Hoy while we were out somewhere. Directions to Jeff and Mary Kaye’s house for the first time! And then Peggi’s dad and Gary Bennet calling from beyond the grave. Are people saving their cellphone messages these days? This stuff is priceless.

Animal is one of LA’s hottest restaurants. Google it, they have great publicists. We first read about it in the New Yorker last year but we’ve known about it for a few years because our nephew works there. Someday he’ll have his own place. He’s an amazing chef. We had dinner with him at Animal last night and the five of us shared eleven plates. “Plates” includes appetizers, salads and entrees and they are typically shared as we did. They do “New American” cuisine, “maximum flavor from a minimalist kitchen.” Each dish from their daily menu is entirely distinctive and sensational.

Our nephew took us to the Beverly Hills farmer’s market this morning where he shopped for mushrooms, delicata squash, cilantro, a persimmon that he used in our arugula pecan salad tonight.

The Getty has organized a sixty venue overview of work by LA artists entitled “Pacific Standard Time”. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has a few of it’s galleries devoted to the show including “California Design – Living In A Modern Way” the first major study of California midcentury modern design. Although more style than art the style is so distinctive it still looks cutting edge or at least contemporary. On display are photos and plans for Neutra homes, Eames furniture, the first Barbie and these classic lp jackets. This gallery is where Duane Sherwood will spend eternity if he’s good.

Wandering in the hills west of LA without a star map you get a sense of the wide open design possibilities when money trumps steep slope ordinances. Swimming pools hang over cliffs. Architects have free reign to tear down and rebuild for the heck of it. Good taste crashes into bad. Mexican laborers transform the landscape. Houses are built in a Greco-Roman style or look like they were imported from Vermont, Switzerland, Turkey or Mexico. We saw one that looked like a castle from a Johnny Depp movie. Snow is not a concern, rain and cold hardly, roofs are flat, walls are made of glass. People here live in a modern way.

Splitting wood is a perfect Fall activity. I used to swing a sledgehammer at a maul but my elbows hurt for days afterward so now we borrow my neighbor’s wood splitter. It’s a Heathkit. He built it from a kit in the fifties. The chainsaw is technically borrowed too. Bill Jones had one of his trees fall over his neighbor’s driveway a few years ago and bought the saw to clean up the mess and then he loaned it to us. We use it all the time and even let Bill borrow it back to cut down his way overgrown arborvitae.