Architect Frank Lloyd Wright said, “Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.” In its brief history, Los Angeles has absorbed a lot of multicultural loose change, and much of it has fallen through the cracks into that mystifying vortex between the cushions, never to be seen again. The sheer scope of the city ““ and the rapidity with which things change, or altogether disappear here ““ makes it impossible to define. The only thing you can say with conviction is that it’s really damn weird.
In this issue of prime, we’ve attempted to show you some of the best things about the city, but what about the weirdest?
To get some answers, I spoke with experts of Los Angeles’ oddities, Matt Maranian and Tony Lovett, who authored “L.A. Bizarro.” The book, which was re-released as an updated, second edition last year, covers cultish, kitschy and crusty places in Los Angeles ranging from bars and restaurants, to specialty stores and historical, sexual, magical points of interest. These are things you would never read about in any other city guidebook, and it hilariously captures the bizarreness of this disjointed city.
“Los Angeles has this inherent quality that makes it impossible for you to take it seriously,” Maranian said. “It’s the absurdity and the ridiculousness of Los Angeles that I relish.”
Part of what makes Los Angeles so absurd is that there’s both truth and fiction to the many stereotypes outsiders bestow upon it: Sure, there are a lot of fake breasts, but it’s also home to Charles Bukowski and, you know, some sculptures at the Getty. Rather than defensively attempt to dispel the myths, the book shows that the combination of truths and fictions ups its bizarro factor.
“Is it really an ugly city? Yes. Can you find genuine beauty there? Yes. Is it a city that’s empty and hollow and soulless? Absolutely. But can you find substance there? Of course you can,” Maranian said. “It’s just an enigma, and there’s a ridiculous playfulness to the city too.”
Maranian and Lovett got together and wrote the first edition of the book in 1997. They’d lived their lives in Los Angeles as “tourists in (their) own city,” and compiled information about the arcane, off-the-beaten path places they both liked so much. Such a book had yet to be written until then, maybe because the task of writing and thinking about Los Angeles is so unbelievably complex.
For Maranian, the bulk of his urban exploration came during his early 20s, spurred by a youthful desire to discover what he called the colorful cracks and crevices of Los Angeles. There were no websites like Yelp or LAist to offer recommendations and reviews, so the act of venturing around the city was truly spontaneous and doubly gratifying when a real gem was discovered.
“L.A. was just this vast playland of weird treasure and arcane adventure,” Maranian said.
It was a weird, arcane playland then, and it is now, but both Maranian and Lovett emphasized the rapidity with which these treasures can disappear. It’s why you’ve got to explore it while you still can; unlike other cities, it won’t necessarily always be there for you to come back to. As Maranian said, “The L.A. you explore now, I guarantee will not exist in 10 years.”
Despite Los Angeles’ tendency to violently hurtle forward into the future (for better or for worse), people will always be drawn to the past and the bizarre relics that have survived the ride with minimal whiplash. Or at least, that’s how I’ve been justifying my history major.
“Los Angeles has changed more in 20 years than Rome has changed in 2000,” Maranian said. “The barely old is replaced with the brand-spanking new so fast. But that’s part of what I love about Los Angeles, it’s part of what makes the city what it is. Everything is contemporary and it’s all about image and upgrades and facelifts … literally and figuratively.”
I recently visited a couple of the entries in the book myself, including Toi, a Thai restaurant in Hollywood that’s decorated to look like a punk kid’s high school bedroom, and Tiki Ti, a hole-in-the-wall bar that exclusively serves ridiculous and amazing tropical cocktails.
These are just two of the more exposed places mentioned in the book, but they’re definitely still bizarre and definitely still awesome because they’re funny and different. But if you want weirder ““ and trust me, there is weirder ““ the book specializes in that.
Jack Kerouac famously derided Los Angeles as an ugly, lonely hell in “On the Road” ““ a comment that seems to contradict his famous avowal that “the only people for me are the mad ones.” For Los Angeles is nothing if not madness, and I think that’s why I like it so much.
Los Angeles is a drug overdose in a poolside bungalow; it’s “Bladerunner,” a Dr. Dre block party, smog, sprawl, the most beautiful sunsets and it’s the city that we live in. But knowing that we hardly know it, and knowing that it’s likely that we never will, what can we do but embrace the absurd?