Missing Heaven & HelL.A.

A cracked crystal ball of a city; I'd give anything to be back out west.

On a walk today, I was cranking some songs from Velvet Revolver’s 2004 debut album Contraband. The project is the work of Guns N’ Roses-minus-Rose and Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland, but it sounds like a 454 Chevy and a quartet of stripper poles entered a recording studio. This sleazy slice of guilty pleasure (emphasis on “guilty”) hard rockin’ makes me realize how much I miss Los Angeles.

Photo I took beneath the Hollywood sign in 2021

There are so many easy jokes to make about the City of Angels, and I have made them all. The people: check. The “human terrarium” quality of the weather: check. The laws, the regulations, et cetera: check. Not being able to swing a cat without hitting five aspiring DJs and clothing designers, none of whom will return your texts: I did mention “the people,” right? Yeah, one of the biggest cities in America is not without fault. No place is.

I ended up in L.A. because my first choice of college, Illinois’ Ivy-in-all-but-name Northwestern, told me no. The crushing blow arrived on the heels of a drawn-out waiting period, during which I was shortlisted for acceptance. After coming to terms with the rejection, I realized fate had aligned like a Led Zeppelin classic: I was “Going to California.”

I knew zero about L.A. None of my family or friends lived in the state of California, let alone the city. The one thing I could tell you was that “all the bitchin’ car and music shit is out there.”

I remember the week or two before I went out for sophomore year. I got drunk for the first time, and I discovered Contraband. This one-two punch became the definitive prelude for my fresh start, which involved getting a tattoo, experimenting with substances, y’know, becoming some semblance of free from my now-continent-away parents.

First tat, first semester on campus, 2021

Not all of this decadence echoed into the other two years, but Velvet Revolver’s debut aired in the background for all three of my LMU beginnings (not four…thanks a lot, COVID). Every time my new dorm room was complete, I would take a walk — sometimes to the gym, if I was particularly pumped up — while ol’ reliable shot through my headphones. I’d bask in Weiland’s down-the-middle, far-from-sober belting and the Guns behind him (plus rhythm guitarist Dave Kushner) playing like their Jack Daniel’s and groupies depended on it.

Okay, I’m getting sidetracked. I wish I was back out west right now. It’s the thought that made me speed-walk home in order to start writing this piece. I don’t care that my ‘78 Porsche 928 dragged me down in L.A.’s unpleasant traffic with a sledgehammer manual and no A/C.

In the parking lot of Neptune’s Net, a Malibu seafood place featured in the Fast & Furious series, with the LMU Auto Club

I don’t care that I fell flat on my face romantically five or six times, therefore foiling the one thing I was hoping to get right after five years “out of the game.” I don’t care that I avoided joining a frat. I shed some skin and began to figure out who the hell I was.

No one is able to see the future, but I began to envision myself threading stories through a writer’s needle sharpened in Los Angeles. I still can.

The people I did become close to during my time out there were, and are, paragons of the iconoclastic crowd you’ll only meet at the end of the western world. The young men: outstanding outsiders, old at soul. One guy I met, the wonderful Alex Kydoniefs, took pictures of me in the desert which are so crispy, I won’t need a new profile photo until the 2030s.

Thanks Alex! (He took this in 10/2023)

The young women, a few of whom stole my heart before tossing it to another gal: most of them compelled me to look at myself from the inside out. With every self-sabotage in the half-flirt-half-friend tightrope walk, I steadied myself further.

Need I mention the networking? See this article.

I got to spend time in more than one full-size toy box of full-size classic cars, including Jay Leno’s. I met one of the best drummers on the planet, and I met him multiple times.

With Danny Carey of Tool, October 2021

This would all not have been possible without L.A.

I miss those humans and places which remind you that life is a gift, those humans and places that nowhere else can gift you. Even when I was alone (and God damn, was I ever a loner during certain stretches), I would often walk to In-N-Out for lunch while avoiding decapitation by passenger plane. Come the hell on!

There were no riots, no massive de-evolutions in society, none of the crap which the news might have you believe. L.A. was far from perfect, but it was the dirty mirror I needed to fix my hair and floss my teeth in front of.

You know what I mean? It wasn’t the pretty utopia that Instagramologists promote. Los Angeles served as a gritty, proper reflection of my maturing self, and as a cracked crystal ball that muttered the future in my ear — that is, when I wasn’t turning up the volume on Contraband.