On a recent Friday night, I sat alone under the string lights on a patio near a barn. The pack mules and the other guests on the patio listened to a midcentury cover band — the audience brayed louder than the mules as friends greeted friends. As I finished my asada burrito (with overpriced guacamole), I thought of the trails winding up into the canyon behind the barn and marveled I was only a 10 minute drive away from one of the largest metropolitan areas in not just the country, but the world.
If there’s something you seek, you really can find it in Los Angeles, but what exactly is “it” anyway?
My mind wandered and juxtaposed two works from Mike Davis and Ernest Hemingway. In City of Quartz, Davis chronicled the unlikely rise of the metropolis from its idealistic beginnings and boosterism to the corrupt agglomeration of today. When I read the book for the first time, I learned that the region that today encompasses one of the Air Force’s largest bases (and stalwart conservative political bastion) began as an utopian socialist commune before going bankrupt. I suppose being one mortgage or rent payment away from paradise lost has been an LA County tradition since incorporation.
Having recently returned from Europe, I thought about the well kept cafe from Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well Lit Place”. I pondered the dance between the senior and junior waiter as they tended to the needs of a drunken, lonely old man. It’s surprisingly hard to find safe, third spaces in an ocean of asphalt, but they exist in neighborhoods if one knows where to look. I stopped comparing the books and their characters as eau de donkey drifted from the barn.
For the evening I had found it: good food and good music. I had visited this place several times before to hike for years, but I never came in the evening for their Friday night festivities. Time to relax, turn off my mind, and listen to donkeys bray to the synthetic beat from the musician’s shruti box. To my amusement, the groovy vibes and country setting worked.
About a decade ago, I visited a friend in San Fransisco and discovered the best ice cream sandwich of my life during a revelrous night out: two oatmeal cookies sandwiching fresh ice cream, doused in chocolate. Perfection. The creators and century ago thought so, too, and aptly named the creation: “It’s-It!”
I enjoyed this dessert and stocked up on them regularly at Costco when I lived in NorCal. I forgot how much I missed them until I discovered them at a nearby Grocery Outlet in Los Angeles. I bought two boxes and my enthusiasm was only slightly dulled when I realized shrinkflation had reduced the number of sandwiches per box.
Despite the lack of the ideal ice cream sandwich, Los Angeles has always had some version of the “it” I had been seeking: a trail to hike, a neighborhood to explore, food to sample, a show to see, or people to meet.
After the band played their last song, I wandered away from the string lights hanging over the patio and back to my car. The now silent night enveloped me and I looked up towards the four stars brave enough to twinkle through the valley’s light pollution. Perhaps LA doesn’t have the best of everything, but a good enough mimicry of it.
I turned my key in the ignition and drove down the canyon with only one regret: I did not order the flan. I guess I’ll get it next time.