I had brought a folding chair with me in order to have recourse to a sitting spell when the effort of solicitation had become too taxing, or when the intimacies of first-person democracy had become repulsive. I had the sense before I left Cindy’s for my second day at Ralph’s in North Hollywood to take my reading material of the moment with me to the grocery store. It turned out that I became so engrossed, even in what was only a re-reading of an old favorite, that I failed to beg for signatures for half-hour stretches at a time. I would pull my head up and remember the steady flow of customers marching in and out, its continuation verified by a quick glance. Each such spell resulted in my losing out on the opportunity to accost forty or fifty shoppers at least, and the potential forty or fifty dollars to be transferred into my bank account due to their civic participation. Naturally, concern for my own possible losses was secondary to my concern for the loss of forty or fifty potential allies for the unionized lumberyard workers of California.
The culprit behind my inattentiveness was the Bulgarian writer Elias Canneti, whose book “Crowds and Power” had called to me from a pile on the table back at the Essex, that this was an opportune time for yet another reading. One thing that made the book so sticky when it came to adhesion to its pages, was the way your mind shifted from Canneti into your own recollections of comparable situations. Every few paragraphs Canneti related an interpretation of, or the dynamics of an incident for which you immediately found a congruent incident with similar dynamics in your own experience. While many theoretical explorations slowly dragged on your wakefulness the way a mule might pull the plow you were behind through a field of mud, this one created its own narrative fascination with a continuous splitting of theoretical hairs into finer and finer strands.
Cocooned in my chair at Ralph’s rapt with Canneti, the daily business of grocery shopping retreated further and further. My distraction turned into irresponsible non-observance of the per capita dollar bills that were shuffling by, in the persons of those passing in and out the doors…in full possession of their signatory capacity. My mind had been hijacked by the question of whether there could be many among us who had never found themselves drawn to, then trance-like, standing in front of the fire, one with the crowd, separately and together suffused with sensations of incendiary or incandescent power. Any man or woman of the world, especially one who now, or had ever inhabited a large city, surely could say to him or her self, “I’ve seen some real fire-breathing, subsuming organisms pull in the crowds in my day.”
Of course, Canneti wasn’t the only distraction from the work at hand. There also was the crusade to spread the word of Bob, to tell the world about the new allure, and the new cachet of the home of the big one out in Burbank; not to mention, giving a word to the hip about the virulently infectious growth of its crowds. Still, the primary mission was compiling as many John Hancocks as humanly possible on pieces of paper. Like many a reasonably mentally functional person, my reaction had always been to flinch at the approach of any petitioner. Now with the clipboard in the other hand (mine), I initially was extremely unambitious in pursuit of signers for the cause, and for personal profit. Once however, I was on my toes, and thinking about my duty, I began to sidle up to any and every ambulatory creature making their appearance, at least for thirty or forty minutes at a time. After the first day on the beat I was able to discern some things about the process and to quantify them with statistics; or, in lieu of actual statistical research approximations of statistics. About twenty percent of those approached signed without more than a cursory explanation of the proposition, because, from what I could tell, doing so produced a feeling of momentary mitigation of their sense of futility. Another twenty percent signed, it appeared to me, because they enjoyed being in the position of being asked, of exercising the authority to please, or to displease by saying yes or no; and in that vein enjoyed a conversation with the petitioner. Within this group the willingness of some to sign, appeared hinged on a hunch that getting in on action of some, or any kind had to be a positive thing. Perhaps five percent signed because they understood the issue and agreed with the proposition’s purpose. Five percent explained why they were refusing to sign, the explanation being that the proposition and its agenda were part of a tall and wide heap of manure. The remaining fifty percent regarded me as I would have regarded myself, had I been them, as a nuisance, and an obstacle to the already odious chore of shopping, veering away as if evading a disabling and grotesquely disfiguring contagion.
The referendum, which admittedly I had given little thought to since I’d agreed to pitch it, and since I had been rattling off its intentions and specifics by rote, I continued to regard, if unthinkingly so, as an innocuously favorable contribution to the grand scheme of things. At a point when I had haphazardly lapsed into reflection during my tenure at one of numerous groceries, pharmacies and Target stores, out in front of which I plied my carny feats for the eastern San Fernando Valley, my mind inadvertently wrapped itself around the substance of the proposition. Gradually, I immersed myself with real commitment into considering its merits. What I concluded was that I didn’t like the idea of the proposition at all.
I was pretty sure I had a bead on the ramifications of this proposed law. Ten percent of whatever wood was used in the manufacture of any surfboard produced in California must originate from a California lumberyard. Naturally, if a surfboard manufacturer could import wood from another state or even from another country at a cost cheaper than that of wood from California, most manufacturers would do so, resulting in surfboards sold for generally lower prices. Of course, this practice necessarily would result in lower sales of wood from California lumberyards, cutting, and significantly so perhaps, into the lumberyard’s profits, resulting in diminishing of wages, and loss of jobs for workers in the lumberyards. Therefore, in an effort to protect its rank and file the unionized workers of California’s lumberyards had mobilized.
The problem was this: good as it sounded for California workers, the good, or the not so good likely to befall these Californians as the result of the proposed law, depended upon which worker’s lot exactly was being measured. It was true that the law would directly help the members of the lumberyard workers’ union. It was true also that it would not be terribly detrimental to surfing members of other unions, or to well-paid surfing Californians of any kind. And likewise, it was true that non-union surfing workers, and not so well-paid surfing Californians not only would not benefit, but would see a rise in the cost of their surfboards in order to guarantee higher wages for fortunate members of the lumberyard workers union, surfing, or non-surfing. It seemed unfair that the result for those unfortunate surfers at the lower end of the income spectrum whose workplace, if they had one, paid poorly, or had not, or could not be unionized, would be a rise in the price of their boards…a result of Proposition 909, upon close inspection, the defective product I was currently peddling. What this indicated to me was a clear and present danger of surfing becoming a pastime only for the privileged in California, meaning my position was in fact the truly compassionate one, regarding the least fortunate of the state’s surfers.
Initially, after this re-evaluation of the consequences of what I was gainfully employed to hawk, I chose to merely read, rather than to approach people at all. Given that I was only paid for valid signatures, this was not an avenue that could by any stretch be considered a fast track to wealth and riches. It did however guarantee a considerable amount of open-air reading. In this vein, to the degree the reading was carried out in sunshine, unfiltered sunlight being an excellent source of vitamin D, mine was a healthy endeavor at least. Later, I began approaching shoppers again, telling them why the proposition was such a big mistake, but asking them to sign the petition anyway so that I could get my buck. In the end, I became a force for undiluted goodness actively dissuading people from supporting Proposition 909 at all.
I didn’t
mention my conversion to the “nay side” of the issue during a mid-week meeting with my Supervisor of Petitions so to speak, at Bob’s. I didn’t mention it to Lila, either. Lila and I had become fixtures at Bob’s: in the house at “our table” every single night; though the table wasn’t really a table, but instead a booth; and it moved from night to night. As for the proposition, it was like anything else that on the surface looked good for “the people,” but was bad news for the majority of them. Sadly, it is commonly understood how easily so many left of the centerline are cowed by fear of public repudiation of their liberal cards, due to a position on a given issue. This reflexiveness, sometimes sincere, sometimes not, can betray the interests of the people progressives traditionally attempt to help, whose true well-being should be the paramount concern. The lesson may be, to paraphrase, as well as to butcher Mencken, no one ever failed to get laid overestimating the magnitude of liberal vanity.
I reverted to making my case to my Supervisor of Petitions, whose name, really, was Tucker, for the increasing cachet of Bob’s. In my opinion, it was there before your eyes to see. I pointed out one of those Culkin kids who was seated at a table on the patio out front. Tucker looked, said he thought the guy resembled a Culkin, though Tucker claimed he wasn’t convinced the guy on the patio was an actual Culkin.
“Either way,” I told him, “Bob’s is going on. You have to admit you see a transformation. I could smell it the first time we were here, and Lila and I’ve seen it all the nights every night since. In fact we’ve talked about it with other people here. Some of them said they’d noticed us.”
“You think people are coming here because you’re here? And by the way I think that’s onion rings you were smelling Donovan.”
After taking a conspicuous whiff of batter sizzling on the griddle, I said, “I know we definitely have our foot in the door of a trend. People could come to see Lila you know. Not me. I’ll give you that one. But she looks like she could be somebody.”
“You’re somebody too,” she said, mocking me, and everything else.
“What about me?” Tucker wanted to know.
“Look,” I said, preempting an answer by singling out a table of Doc Marten-footed, and thick-framed glasses-wearing youthful men and women, “those guys are temporary émigrés from Los Feliz, or one of those other groovy burgs in town.“
“Who the hell knows?” he said.
Later, unduly influenced by the aromas around us, we commandeered a hefty plate of onion rings to accompany the continuing succession of beers. At a point when all three of us had our hands in the plate swabbing ketchup up with onion rings, I drew Tucker’s attention toward a man who had just sat down with a female a few booths down.
“Isn’t that Jay Mohr?” I asked with a certain air of vindication.
“Might be,” was all that Tucker would concede.
“He’s a solid B level celebrity.”
“Yeah, he is. But I saw him at Trader Joe’s last month buying beer, so I don’t know if this sighting is all that important. He’s probably been coming in here for years. It’s the nature of the neighborhood, the nature of the town.”
“The word is out,” I said. “People are willing to tunnel their way with salad forks and credit cards through the Santa Monica Mountains into The Valley in order to mix it up in the scene at Bob’s.”
“You’re delusional,” he said.
Lila told him, “I think he’s right that the place is catching on with a different group of people. I see that potential same as he does. I’ll agree with you he was over-the-top on the last one.”
“Bob’s is trending trendward, as we downtown Hollywood folks like to say,” I told them.
Lila and I stayed about a half-hour past Tucker’s departure, before we picked the check up off the table, and made our way to the register, where in fact, and no surprise to me (which I would have told Tucker had he still been there to hear it) there was a somewhat long line. While we were standing waiting Lila asked, “Do you still go down to Joseph’s?”
“Not since we moved from Bob’s…our Bob’s.”
“Why not? You’re not that far away from it where you are now.”
“I don’t feel like going through the whole explanation of the autumn unpleasantness, which is what I’ll have to do if I show up there. I want to just go into a place and start to drink. Where I am now all I have to do is go downstairs, and next-door. It’s easy. I still tell somebody there every so often that I go to Joseph’s.”
“Why?”
“Well, I used to. Same thing.”
“On your unique metaphysical plane I guess it probably is.”
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