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----- Original Message -----
From: "Gary" <garyrumor2@yahoo.com>
To: <Politics_CurrentEvents_Group@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2010 9:18 PM
Subject: [Politics_CurrentEvents_Group] Crappy LA Traffic And Dubious
Restaurants
> Crappy LA Traffic And Dubious Restaurants
> October 28th, 2010
>
> I went out last night with my girlfriend to dinner in the Los Feliz
> neighborhood of Los Angeles. We started in Torrance at about 6:15 and what
> should have been a 45 minute drive turned into a 2 1/2 hour fiasco.
> Traffic was stop and go all the way to Hollywood from the end of the
> express lane on the 110, through downtown and up onto the 101. I got off
> at Vermont and found traffic there was worse than the freeway. It seems
> there was a street fair and Vermont was blocked off, crazy on a week
> night! So I took Melrose Ave to West Hollywood and we were about to settle
> for Barny's Beanery, but there was no disabled parking and the only
> parking was valet, I will be damned if I will pay someone to park my car,
> so we went down Fountain which was empty most of the way until we got past
> La Brea where stop signs slow down traffic. We went over to Sunset, jammed
> even at 8pm, but drivable. We finally got to Vermont and turned left into
> Los Feliz and parked in a handicapped spot behind Skylight books because
> the spots at the post office were taken.
>
> If you are an Angeleno or have spent any time driving in LA and I have
> spent years commuting in the worst traffic in the world, except crossing
> the Oakland Bay Bridge which is a torture I would not wish on anyone.
> Needless to say I was in a bad mood when I got out of the car. My back was
> sore and I was really looking forward to something decent to eat since we
> had come so far. My girlfriend is pretty picky, she doesn't like Indian
> food or Mexican food, two of my favorites. She likes American fare and
> Chinese, we had originally decided to go to Mao's Kitchen, a very good
> Chinese food restaurant on Melrose, but she wasn't in the mood. When we
> got to Vermont between Hollywood and Franklin, the little restaurant row
> up there, I was ready to eat.
>
> For some reason she wanted to go to the House of Pies. She didn't like
> pies, and when we had gone there on Halloween a couple years before she
> didn't like it. SO I decided we had to find some other compromise, besides
> we could have gone to Marie Callendars in Torrance and saved the drive. I
> wanted something quality. After walking past the French place Figaro,
> walking in and out of the Dresden, looking like it was a bomb shelter left
> over from WW2, we settled on the Italian place "il Capriccio". It looked
> unpretentious and bohemian. That was the hook. It was anything but. The
> people sitting next to us on the patio were `industry types', that should
> have warned me right off the bat. My pretension meter was not working.
>
> First off we were ignored by the waiters one of whom committed the faux
> pas of ignoring us while entertaining industry types at the table next to
> us and the other waitress went and took the order of people who came it
> long after us within two tables from us. Being already hungry and not
> having even a menu yet to peruse or bread to munch, I blew my lid and
> yelled at the passing waitress that we had been there for quite a while
> and nobody had paid us any attention. Then both waiter and waitress came
> and made soothing noises and proceeded to ignore us again after depositing
> the bread and menus.
>
> There was a decent green olive oil dressing for the bread. This was semi
> classy I thought and was ready to forgive them. But the service was awful
> and the food when it came was lackluster. We had a homemade pizza for the
> appetizer which was bland with very little cheese, or sauce and a decent
> crust. It was fresh and had the taste of ingredients that had been freshly
> thrown together. The dinner came eventually and was an Italian fish,
> frozen and then heated with a weak Mariana sauce diluted with one claim,
> one muscle, two tiny shrimps and a fish that was overcooked and tasted
> like it had been in a ship for a month or more. This was no fresh flown in
> from the harbor stuff that I had been accustomed to when I worked in a
> fancy Provincal-Northern Italian Restaurant. But then that was in Boulder,
> CO, obviously a higher class town that the semi-elite districts of Los
> Angeles. My girlfriend was satisfied with her frozen Atlantic salmon,
> something I would never have, being an advocate of wild caught fresh
> salmon. Why I chose a frozen Italian fish is beyond me. There were no
> fresh fish on the menu and I was sick of chicken and pork and still can't
> bring myself to eat dead cow.
>
> The only advantage was the dessert, it was on the house. I had an apple
> tort and she had Strawberry Cheesecake. They both had fresh fruit and even
> though they were out of ice cream, and the tort wasn't exactly warm, it
> was well made and tasted better than anything else in the meal except the
> angel hair pasta in olive oil, and the mixed vegetables which were al
> dente. We got out of there spending $75 including tip. I had a decent
> Italian dark beer and she had a seven up, they didn't have her preferred
> sprite or mixed drinks. Other than that this place was no better than
> Olive Garden, although it had the boho accoutrements that attract the
> local industry types.
>
> The restaurant seemed to be the kind of place for people who want lots of
> time to talk, like the industry types and the gay group who got to order
> before us. But we were there to eat. My girlfriend is a typical LA person
> who doesn't like to talk about a subject unless it relates to sex or
> shopping. She is one of the illiterati who sings along with the latest hip
> hop hit and can explain to me the meaning of lyrics that are obscure or
> unintelligible for my elder ears. She likes to be looked at. A classic
> function of youthful LA persons and when she did talk it was about how she
> cleans her glasses with windex to get them perfectly clean. I tried to
> talk about my recent studies in Latin but didn't get anywhere. She seemed
> a bit intimidated by the casual displays of wealth around us. It made me
> aware of the pretension of the moneyed classes who had taken over this
> formerly bohemian neighborhood where struggling artists hung out at the
> local cafes where cheap coffee and pastries were to be found at the Onyx
> Cafe and Anarchist literature could be found at Skylight Books before
> Anarchism had become trendy.
>
> It appalls me to see a neighborhood with faux bohemians, wealthy industry
> types who don't have to wear suits. I could say I was jealous if I wasn't
> remembering how nice the neighborhood had been when I lived there and when
> you could get a decent meal for $30 for two at the local Spaghetti joint.
> Now even a pretentious dive like il Capriccio can get away with charging
> prices that a serious restaurant used to charge. I would hate to see what
> a decent place around there charged. I think from now on I will stick to
> the House of Pies, even though they have a valet now, if I ever go back up
> there to eat. They still have the only bookstore with serious political
> literature, and for that reason alone, to go to Skylight Books, I will
> return from time to time to Los Feliz. It turns out there was a major
> accident on the 405 and everyone was taking surface streets or the 110-101
> to get out of the West side and South bay. Bad timing on my part. Next
> time I take the train from Long Beach! But my girlfriend won't come with
> me if I don't drive until they make the train seats more comfortable.
>
> That is my blog for the day, on with the revolution and lets hope there is
> decent food after the fall of capitalism!
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
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