L.A.

Thursday was Los Angeles. I have a love hate relationship with this city. When I was a baby in the fifties in San Diego we would pile in to the family car and take the never ending trek to Culver City to see my grandfather Israel, who had a furniture shop. This was before the freeway and the trip took seemingly forever. This early grind probably cemented my life long aversion.

A trip to my grandparents did mean silver dollars for me. Which I always spent on candy. Probably threw away a fortune.

My grandmother would make her coveted seven layer rum cake and serve us strong russian tea with lemon and milk. Grandpa was a strong, wiry man, he spoke eight languages fluently and had escaped the russians in World War I. I would watch him in his white undershirt, cutting green gage plums into his mouth with a small paring knife. They both came from Poland, he from Sierpc and she from Wyzkov.

Anyway L.A. was the grandparents, the cousins and the Farmers Market. And great deli. Most people of my persuasion will have their favorite delicatessan. My grandfather liked The Bagel, a place now long gone that once stood across the street from Canter's. Grandpa lived on Fairfax and Whitworth. My Dad liked Langers. Best Rye Bread in town but now gone to seed.

When I was a hipster the place was Canter's, especially in the wee hours, when I eventually yuppified it became Nate and Al's. Zookies was good, especially late. Art's was pretty good in the valley. Jerry's was pretentious, overpriced and you couldn't even get a paper at the Orange County joint. Mom liked Factors or Chasens. Chasens is also now history. Say what you want about the city, Los Angeles does deli very well, on par with Stage and Carnegie, with more of a schmooze and less of a kvetch.

San Diego born, I grew up with Blumer's Delicatessen on 54th and El Cajon and it was heaven on earth. Best salt sticks, kaisers, crescents, bagels, bialys, pickles, whitefish, in the great days it was the pinnacle for me. When Saul left for Fed Mart it was the end of the joint but in its heyday it had no peer.

Yesterday I had a delivery to the Modernism Show in Santa Monica that is being held this weekend. Excellent dealers and merchandise if you are in the area. It is at Barker Hanger. We stopped at the Whole Foods in West Hollywood, populated by some very different creatures and both saw a syringe in the bathroom propped up behind the sink. Scary.

Stopped over at George Stern Fine Arts, the best dealer of my kind of paintings in Los Angeles. Had a gorgeous and gigantic Lorser Feitelson in the window. A class act. After a quick hello Leslie and I went over to the old Diamond Bakery. A block south of Canters on Fairfax, they have been making great breads and pastries for as long as I have been alive at least. We went in for a rye, rugelach and cookies, the same sprinkly ones I ate as a child. Bought a little strudel. Their rugelach are so much better than the commercial stuff you find regularly.

We then went to Canter's, Leslie's favorite and a bastion of yidness for over 80 years. I went for the hot corned beef, Leslie did the reuben. I once had a girlfriend actually dump me because I wouldn't talk to her in the morning(after) at Canters and insisted on reading the paper in front of her. It was her or the paper and the choice was pretty easy. Canters is a little schmutzig and beyond threadbare but the food is still pretty damn good.


I sort of dread Los Angeles. The people are a bit slyer and slicker than I am. Well, hipper and better groomed anyway. Yesterday was older women in too short sundresses and too much makeup with major alterations trying to cheat death. I can remember really feeling like a hayseed when my hippie clan went to the Rainbow Room at the Roxy and stood out like the Jethro Bodine family on their summer vacation. 


Perhaps it's that old enmity of small differences thing again. I know some lovely people in the area and I don't know why I have to demonize them so. What did Woody Allen say, Los Angeles, where turning right on a red light was a cultural event. It's not the angelenos fault that they have so much smog and traffic. And they do have great deli. I just never learned to groove there the same way I do in S.F. or New York. And we San Diegans have always had a chip on our shoulder regarding our larger northern neighbor. The people who don't even include us in their geographic equation when they say SoCal. The people who brought Frank McCourt to the West Coast.


In the final analysis, L.A. is probably no better or worse than any other big city. Has all types, just all a bit more compressed. I am reminded of the great Ron Cobb cartoon of the guy in the car that can go 200mph but is caught in the bumper to bumper traffic jam. As Mike Tyson once so nobly said, "You can win the rat race but you're still a f*cking rat."


I worked for a Beverly Hills outfit once and really never fit in. Very cynical, superficial bunch who were always plotting to do each other in. They decided to fire me at the Christmas party, with a big smile on their collective faces, but I got serious comeuppance a few years down the road... And that my friends is another story.