WCS 23 My life at Sunset & Vine

They said, ‘Californ-y is the place you ought to be!’

Quick reminder that my special Sojourn project is getting a step closer to publication each day. If I were a lesser person, I’d blame it for all of the tardiness you’ve been seeing from me lately.

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After nearly a week of burning trees outside the gate of my friends’ suburban Las Vegas development—and wondering if I had lowered the property values—I landed once again in Hollywood.

Shohei Ohtani mural, downtown Los Angeles

This trip begins in Historic South Central Los Angeles, the most recent LA neighborhood that I’ve come to love. I needed to get out of the house and out of my head, so I bought a $10 bottle of Jack Daniels Honey and caught public transit toward Hollywood.

Off and on since November of 1994, this part of LA is where I’ve done the nuts and bolts of my life. Elvira was my first landlord. I still catch the train across from The Jimmy Kimmel Show sometimes, it must sound weird to hear. But here is where much of my life is, and I actually do care about this town.

On the Santa Monica Boulevard bus I drank to “Pyramids” and mused on Las Vegas, the one I didn’t see. Holding so much of these cities in my head is a bit intoxicating. But you don’t want to do too much; it’s funny how I find myself looking down on the unhoused, while nothing has ever stopped me from drinking on public transportation.

At Sunset Junction, I reminisced on seeing Brian Jonestown Massacre at The Garage. It was at the end of my marriage and I made out with a stranger at the bar.

Something in my brain clicked as I walked up Vine, and I was finally able to put my finger on this thing that’s been bugging me. Someone has probably pointed out that Netflix is literally adjacent to LA’s wounded town square: Sunset Boulevard’s ArcLight Cinemas courtyard. And its parking lot.

This place is familiar to me because my gym is upstairs, I don’t think LA’s the same without The ArcLight. Since the high-end theater closed in 2020, the opportunities for randos to run into each other and exchange slap-dash opinions dropped precipitously. The courtyard was one of the few places made me feel the way Manhattan did.

AND Jack Black says the parking garage’s rooftop is the best place in LA to smoke weed. Here is where Richard Linklater asked Black to take the title role in the underrated comedy Bernie.

Of course, I was only drinking. Which maybe proves you don’t have to smoke weed to have fun.

Netflix helped kill The ArcLight, and now the behemoth looms over its corpse. Where this crazy world of ours is headed I can’t begin to know. But when it’s all said and done, I don’t actually believe that property values are going to be a thing.

Here are 10 stories that stayed with me.

10 Dig! only grows stronger over time

Fourteen years ago in Park City, Utah, I had a hot tub with director Ondi Timoner. She and I and my production partner on the Dock Ellis story were in the middle of Sundance Film Festival. Timoner was showing us the figurative ropes, based on her experience bringing a promising documentary to the festival.

I had no idea that this woman directed Dig!, one of the greatest rock docs of all time. Now 20 years old, Timoner’s film is considered perhaps the greatest rock doc ever made.
SF Chronicle

• Over seven years of curated footage, viewers are treated to the initial kinship of Portland and LA bands The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre, followed quickly by a protracted band feud. The battle is fueled by BJM front man Anton Newcombe’s crazed drug abuse.

• Foo Fighters front man Dave Grohl has called The Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner “the greatest rock ‘n roll documentary of all time.”

Lil Hit

• The exquisite guitar playing of Wes Montgomery is on full display in a tonally opposite public television documentary.
  PBS

• Not a second too soon, Alex Cox has begun making a sequel to his 1984 cult classic Repo Man.
  Variety

“The papers that are still around have slashed their Washington bureaus. There are very, very few reporters. And that’s important because let’s say you’re from The Philadelphia Inquirer – which had once been a major regional paper – you are going to focus on issues in Washington that affect residents of Philadelphia or Pennsylvania. That’s gone, that’s not being done.”

9 With Steve Wilks firing, Niners maintain tradition of sacrificial Blacks

Niners defensive coordinator Steve Wilks didn’t make an ill-advised Super Bowl coin toss decision, yet it’s he who got fired and is taking the fall for the choices made by San Francisco coach Shanahan. Now, the runners-up are reeling from what some—and by some I mean me—are calling The Kaepernick Curse.
First and Pen/Deadspin