Snarkastic

The (stolen) Friday Not-So-Random Ten + 5 (+1) waves bye-bye to La-La.

Format stolen with all affection from this guy. Thx, boo.

I'm packing up my L.A. life today, picking up 'Box at LAX tonight, and popping down to Casey's for one last drink. Tomorrow morning we're loading up a truck and hauling ass to Arizona. Texas the day after, Arkansas the day after that, and home by Tuesday night. I'm ready and happy to be leaving, and I'll see all my friends here about as often as I do already, but there's a handful of places here that make me wish I could bend space, fold buildings into a suitcase, and toss in the backseat:

(The aforementioned) Casey's. I found this place completely by accident right after I moved to town, and after six months I actually ended up living next door, but what stays with me is that first fall, and how I stumbled upon L.A.'s only cache of Colts fans in the gloomy basement bar. A lot of stumbling took place there, actually -- I'd drag my ass in at 10 on a Sunday morning, bleary from a late-night Hawaii game, and before I could even collapse into a booth, there would be one of the surly-adorable morning barmaids with a mug of spiked coffee. The best friends I have in this town, I made there. (And some of them also happen to make bitchin' music, so if you're ever wandering down West 6th on a Friday night, go on down.)

Auntie Em's. If you've ever been, um, privileged enough to hear me whooping and hollering over my vegetable box on Tuesday afternoons, this place is why. I was on the waiting list for months to get added to the service area, and since last December I've pretty much lived on Auntie Em's farmers' market boxes alone.

I had to skip a week earlier this summer thanks to getting back from a trip on a Wednesday, and I went to the grocery store, and found I'd become institution-paralyzed, like that bird in Shawshank Redemption. I'd gotten so used to the challenge of finding recipes that used up everything in the box and nothing more that I had no idea how to grocery shop anymore.

The Association. Behind an unmarked door further down 6th is a bar on the other end of the spectrum entirely.

The cocktails are impeccable and expensive, the lighting pitch-ass dark, the atmosphere reliably douchebag-free, but the thing that made me fall in love with this place was...the place. It's like they knocked down a wall and found this abandoned bar that's been sitting untouched for thirty years. You half-expect Melanie Griffith to slink by in a gold chain mail dress just any second.

Wax. Respecting my reader demographics, I won't go into gory details, but let me just say that I cried actual tears when I found out my waxer was moving to San Diego. The trial-and-error process of finding someone new can be, shall we say, excruciating. Thank merciful Sutekh for TSW, who told me where to find this place, and for new waxer Kim, who is a got-damn magician and worth every penny, all 6500 of them.

The Cinerama Dome. This is the greatest movie theater in the country.

That's not me talking. That's science.

BONUS LIGHTNING ROUND: Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room. It's technically in Anaheim, but big ups to ODB Walt for ingesting enough opium to convince himself a thatched hut full of robotic talking birds was a good idea:

(Also remains upgrade-free, unlike Disney World's knockoff version that's polluted with the vocal stylings of Gilbert Gottfried. Get bent, Iago.)

And because this is apparently how these things are supposed to work, the beginnings of tomorrow's road playlist:

1. The cast of Glee - Don't Stop Believin'
2. The Mountain Goats - Up The Wolves
3. The Clash - Hitsville U.K.
4. GlaDOS & Jonathan Coulton - Still Alive
5. The Elected - Did Me Good
6. The Moody Blues - Your Wildest Dreams
7. Tom Waits - Shiver Me Timbers
8. Nico - I'll Keep It With Mine (Pocketknife's Odd Beauty Remix)
9. The Pogues - Body Of An American
10. Culture Cruncher - Sloop Dee J

Happy trails.

Posted by Nastinchka at August 28, 2009 10:59 AM