Escape from LA

My trip to LA began and ended in near-stationary traffic. In the middle, it was characterized by slow moving cars, jammed freeways and vehicular snarl ups. Los Angeles, they say, is the US city that is most defined by the car. And in the end, it almost snatched mine away from me for good

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Actually, I’m quite relieved to be out of the place.

My first port of call, the Marriott Residence, Beverly Hills sounded like a good place to begin. But after an hour spent crawling along in 20mph traffic I was still no nearer finding the location. The reason, it turned out, is because Marriott Residence, Beverly Hills isn’t in Beverly Hills. It’s located in a nearby Jewish neighborhood – a dismal place on a Saturday with no shops open, no bars at all, and a distinct lack of movie stars. Shabat effing Shalom, I thought.

Opting to drive further afield in a hunt for food and booze, I immediately became snarled up in the traffic again, and lost the hotel for a second time. I arrived back an hour later with a new respect for the LA traffic and hungry enough to eat at the hotel bar.

We all have an image of Hollywood. The palm trees, the sign, the hills, the boulevards, the stars and the glamour. But it is also a place of tragedy, scandal and loss – which is what drew me to the Museum of Death the following day.

Unfortunately, cameras are banned inside. So you’ll have to take my word that the world’s largest collection of serial killer art was highly impressive. Mass murderers are a talented bunch, it seems. The crime scene and autopsy photos were as stomach-churningly graphic as promised. So was the embalming instruction video and the cinema of death, where real-life fatalities occur on celluloid to a death metal soundtrack. Visitors regularly vomit, the friendly proprietor told me at the exit, before congratulating me on my strong stomach and urging me to “have a nice life”.

Across the road, and even more terrifying, is the “Psychiatry – An Industry of Death” museum. Run by the believers in Xenu, Tyrant Ruler of the Galactic Confederacy. (AKA Scientologists), this expensively arranged exhibition attempts to blame much of the world’s ills – gun rampages, the Holocaust, 9/11, paedophilia, to name a few – on psychiatrists.

The idea that humankind may simply be a higher form of animal life, the museum states in it’s initial denouncement of psychiatry, is obviously false because “animals don’t produce major works of art or write great symphonies”.

The logic employed here was beyond me, especially since L Ron Hubbard was apparently a big admirer of Freud. Feeling slightly weird, I exited the place and took a stroll down Sunset Boulevard.

It wasn’t just the Scientologists, I decided. The entire place was kooky.

I drove up into the hills, high up on Mulholland Drive to check out some of the most famous real estate in the world. However, if you’re hoping for a glimpse of Jack Nicholson scooping dog poop, Tom Cruise pruning the roses or Drew Barrymore out jogging, you’re in for a disappointment. The stars hide firmly behind their thick hedges and fences, and closest you get to them is the numerous vantage points where their rooftops are visible. So you’ll have to make do with more car pics and the Hollywood Bowl instead.

My final stop of the day was the public lavatories in a Beverly Hills park where George Michael’s infamous ‘Wank Me Off Before You Go-Go” arrest took place. The bog itself bore no evidence of the former “Wham” star’s indiscretion – though I’m not quite sure what I was hoping to find.

Apart from the traffic, things seemed to be going pretty well in LA until I made the fateful decision to leave the car on a city center meter. Priceline had decided that my final night would be spent at the Marriott Downtown, and I’d parked on the street in an attempt to avoid the $33 overnight valet fee. Parking was supposedly free until 9am but when I showed up early Monday morning it was nowhere to be seen. Initially I thought it had been stolen, but a few phone calls determined that it had indeed been towed, and was now the legal property of a company called Viertel’s Central Towing.

According to the hotel receptionist, the company was located at 500 Central Avenue, which turned out to be on the far side of LA’s Skid Row. I spent the next hour wandering through block after block of homeless, sick and mentally ill people. Skid Row doesn’t have shops, cafes or bars. It’s made up almost exclusively of missions, doss houses, and police stations.

Having seen the T-shirts bearing the motto “LAPD: We’ll treat you like a King” I was a bit dubious about contacting the police. However, after admitting that I was hopelessly lost, I saw no option but to ask directions of the local plod. A friendly cop traced a “safe” route for me on the map. It was Center Street I needed, he said, just a little deeper into the city’s South Central district.

I dutifully stuck to the safe route and 45 minutes later found the car pound, which from the outside looked like a maximum-security prison. Ominously, a large sign advertised “car auctions every Monday”

The guy behind the bulletproof glass confirmed that they had removed my car because parking was not allowed between 7am and 9am. When I protested that there was no sign on the block saying this, he bluntly told me “there don’t need to be”. Any problems, he said, I should “take it up with the city”

It would cost a total of $326 to get my car back today, he explained, and if I could not get hold of the cash right away it would cost $426 tomorrow, and $526 the next day. I handed over my credit card. “Just gimme the car” I said through gritted teeth.

But it wasn’t as easy as that. The company would not accept my driving license, insurance card and passport as proof of ID. It would only accept the original car title, the guy said. If I didn’t have it, I couldn’t have my car back. Ever.

Luckily, I had the original document at the hotel. If I’d had to wait a week for a replacement from the DMV the bill would be over $1000. I can only wonder how many Angelinos have lost their means of transport in this manner, and the ill feeling it has caused.

So I walked back through Skid Row to the hotel, grabbed the title and returned via the Angel’s Flight railway, which was familiar to me through the Michael Connolly novel of the same name. Ads for Connolly’s latest work adorn the two cars that take passengers the short distance to the top of Bunker Hill

Then, after producing the document, my car was then finally released.

It had taken me most of the day and cost me a large slice of my weekly budget to get my car back, but as I was sitting in the snarled up traffic crawling away out of LA I couldn’t get too angry. At least I had a car, and could look forward to a warm bed that evening. Unlike the poor, crazy, hungry homeless people of Skid Row, who, in this economy, have little hope of rejoining mainstream society.

I’m currently at my sister’s place, who lives with her partner and their dog and cat in the hills north of LA. I’m planning on relaxing here until Friday, when Fed Ex is scheduled to deliver my computer. Next update – presuming the Acer repair shop hasn’t wiped my data – could be the lost blog from the Badlands.