Checked out of the Penny Sleeper. The three nights cost us £146
We’ve arrived in Hollywood, it’s around 11 am and we’re making for a motel just off Hollywood Boulevard. We found it with remarkable ease and it has underground valet parking. This means that the car park attendant or valet as he laughingly likes to be known WILL park your car whether you like it or not. I drove down the ramp into the car park and stopped by an entrance to the lifts that would take us up to reception. We’d just finished unloading the car and with suitcases and bags on the floor all around me this man came up and took the car keys out of my hand. I snatched them back. He snatched them from me again. I snatched them back. He grabbed for them again while I held them above my head jumping up and down and shouting at everyone to run inside and call the police.
“Don’t be stupid,” Pauline said.
I reluctantly handed over the car keys. The man got inside our car and drove off with it. “That’s the last we’ll see of that, mark my words,” I mumbled at Pauline.
But blow me, he only drove about twelve feet, stopped the car, got out and started to walk away. He’d just parked it for us. I don’t believe this. I could, at a stretch, reach out and touch the bloody car, it was that close!
“Give him a dollar,” whispered Pauline.
“What for?” I said.
“For parking the car,” she said.
“But, bloody hell, he’s only just driven – “
“Give him a dollar,” Pauline whispered again.
“OK, thank you very much,” I said to the va-leh, “Thank you very much for relieving me of all that driving and hassle of looking for a parking bay in an almost completely empty car park. Thank you so much.”
And it was the same the following morning. We’d gone down to the car park to get the car, there was a different va-leh there, I was standing twelve feet away from the bloody car, the keys were in the ignition and I was just waiting for the va-leh to look the other way so I could make a dash for the car when he walked up.
“What make of car is it sir?” he said
Damn, he’s seen me, I thought to myself. “Mmm now let me see,” I said, “ with all this empty space in the car park you’re going to have trouble finding the only MPV parked right next to your bloody foot aren’t you? Would you like the registration?”
“OK, MPV…….” he said and jumped in the car, reversed it and drove it twelve feet towards me. He didn’t even make it look difficult by driving it around the car park a few times. There goes another dollar.
Well here we are, actually walking down Hollywood Boulevard, street of the stars, and I can’t tell you how disappointing it all is. Hollywood Boulevard is a very long street and seems to consist mainly of tacky souvenir shops, coffee shops, tourist attractions like ‘Guinness World of Records Museum’, sex shops, gaudy neon-lit tattoo and piercing shops and empty building plots. There’s no glamour and there’s no atmosphere. The sidewalks (see that? Only four days and I’ve got the hang of the language already), the sidewalks on both sides of the street have the famous Hollywood stars embedded in them all along their length and you find yourself bumping into lamp posts, waste bins and people as you walk along looking at your feet all the time. Known as the Walk of Fame it really needs a good clean.
They don’t have the actual Hollywood stars embedded in the pavement, I mean, not the embalmed bodies of the likes of Bing Crosby, Errol Flynn, Mary Pickford etc encased in a clear plastic resin set in the concrete and grinning up at you as you walk all over them. When I said Hollywood stars I just meant the star-shaped plaques. For one thing I shouldn’t think anyone would give their permission for their loved ones to be encased in the pavement (unless they were hard up and couldn’t afford a funeral) and for another it would be too expensive for Hollywood to implement I should imagine. Of course then what would you do with the Hollywood stars who were still alive? They’re commemorated too. It wouldn’t work would it? No, much better and cheaper to have concrete star shapes on the ground. So all credit to Hollywood Borough Council for making the right decision I say.
We’d walked from our motel down towards Mann’s Chinese Theatre where all the tour operators hang out and we’re hoping to book ourselves on to a tour of the “Homes of the Stars” and a tour of Hollywood landmarks. It’s outside Mann’s Chinese Theatre that they have the famous area of hand and foot prints set in concrete but once again it’s not as impressive as we thought and wanted it to be. It’s set back from the main pavement and forms an area spreading across the front of the theatre entrance. It’s not as large as we imagined it to be and it’s here that they also have all the ticket booths for the Hollywood tours so the overall impression is of a rather dirty, busy, down-at-heel place crowded with tourists.
Emma and Sophia had a good time standing in the various foot prints and comparing their hands to those of the stars, most of which had really small feet and hands but that’s not surprising since most of these stars were usually small and short anyway. The whole length of Hollywood Boulevard had this air of decay about it, as if no one really cared anymore but anyway it’s all the myths and legends and movies that really bring it alive and that’s what we’re here for after all isn’t it?
We stood on the corner of Hollywood and Vine and drove down Sunset Boulevard. We saw one of Rod Stewart’s houses, remarkably quite tasteful, no sign of tartan anywhere, saw Mel Gibson’s house, Aaron Spelling’s mansion - the size of a small housing estate, we saw one of Prince’s houses and another belonging to Madonna. We passed the Highland Hotel where Janis Joplin overdosed, saw the Beverley Hills Hotel, Eddie Murphy’s house and one that belonged to Michael Douglas. (In his driveway there were about a dozen top of the range cars – Porsches, BMWs, Rolls).
We drove down Rodeo Drive past the shops used in the film ‘Pretty Woman’, cruised down Sunset Strip past The Roxy, Whiskey-A-Go-Go, The Viper Room, Dan Akroyd’s “The House Of Blues” and the Comedy Store. We saw Kelsey Grammar in the street and we went for a look around the Hollywood Bowl. We saw Paramount Studios, the Capitol Records building and of course the Hollywood sign. We saw the dismal and run-down car park behind Blockbusters where Hugh Grant was arrested, we drove down the residential street that Jamie Lee Curtis ran down when being chased by Michael Myers in “Halloween”, we saw Al Pacino’s home and where Judy Garland used to live.
We drove around Beverley Hills where homes allegedly cost 20 million dollars plus and found the place spotless. Beverley Hills has its own water supply, totally separate from the rest of LA, so that the rich and famous don’t have to use the same water as ordinary people. Carefully manicured lawns and shrubbery, clean pavements, sparkling fire hydrants, shimmering lampposts and we didn’t see a single human being walking about all the time we were there. The streets were deserted apart from huge expensive cars with blacked out windows purring along at a sedate 20 - 30 mph.
It was all the stuff of dreams and we wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
When we got back to downtown Hollywood we were all feeling hungry and as we were walking back towards our motel we noticed, just down a side street, a small Chinese restaurant with a big sign that said “Oldest Chinese Restaurant In Hollywood”. Intrigued, we wandered down to it to check out the menu and prices but when we got there nothing was posted outside and the restaurant windows were heavily tinted so we couldn’t even peer inside to see what the place looked like either. As we stood outside with me saying things like, “No prices? Bound to be expensive. Tinted windows? Must be exclusive and even more expensive,” the door suddenly burst open frightening the life out of me and a tiny Chinese woman popped her head round the door.
“You come in. You come in. Goo’ foo’. Goo’ foo’,” she said all excitedly, and before we knew it we were all inside the place.
The woman said, “Here menoo, here menoo, goo’ foo’, goo’ foo’, all cahm rahce, all cahm rahce,” and with that she ushered us over to a table. We had no idea what the prices were like and we’d just been hustled and bustled into the place without really realising it.
We sat down. It was quite big inside, quite shabby and with low lighting to hide the grime. No surprises there then. The woman came over, looked at me and said, “You wan beer? Chinee or Buh?” I was staring at her like a lunatic trying to work out what she’d said when she said it again, this time quite impatiently, “Chinee or Buh? Chinee or Buh? Wha you wan?” Benny Hill had nothing on this woman. I checked the menoo. Ah here they are, beers, Chinese or Budweiser.
“I’ll have Chinese please,” I said.
“OK OK Chinee Chinee,” she said and disappeared so quickly I didn’t see the going of her.
We ordered, it wasn’t cheap but it wasn’t ridiculously expensive and she brought up the foo. “All cahm rahce, all cahm rahce,” she kept on saying and plonked down a massive bowl of boiled rice. I noticed rather reassuringly that there were a few other customers in the place, not busy but then it was very early in the evening. I relaxed a bit and looked around the place more carefully.
The place looked like it could have come straight out of one of those old Fu Man Chu films set in the wharves and docklands of old East London in the Thirties. Swirling fog, boat sirens in the background, men with one eye and one arm sitting around on Hessian sacks of something or other, drinking and smoking funny stuff while shifty looking people carried boxes in and out of warehouses.
“Where’s the toilet?” I asked the Chinee lady.
“Upstair, upstair,” she said.
As I reached the top of the stairs I crossed an imaginary line where all the paraphernalia and furnishings of the public face of the restaurant stopped. From there on it was poverty row. Bare, stained walls and floorboards – it looked like blood to me – and lots of doors and doorways.
In the toilet was a sign that said
‘Do Not Put Paper In Toilet Use Bin.
Do Not Flush Toilet In Case Of Floods’
Just don’t ask, it’s not worth thinking about is it? Was there any point in having a toilet at all?
In one doorway was a wizened old man with a funny sort of tea cosy on his head, bootlace moustache hanging down to his waist and what looked like a dressing gown over his trousers.
“You wan’ smokee pipey?” he said.
“Pardon?” I said.
“You wan’ smokee pipey?” he said.
“No thanks,” I said, “Why do all you Chinee always speakee like thatty?
“Like whatty?” he said.
Don’t know why he was speaking like that at all. He was only an American who’d come up to use the toilet.
In the middle of all this I began to hear a sort of dreamy voice saying, “Are you ready or are you going to sit there all night?” Pauline, Sophia and Emma were standing by the door. They’d paid the bill and were waiting to go.
As I got up and left all I could hear behind me was “Cahm rahce, all cahm rahce, goo’ foo’, goo’ foo’.”
Oh and I forgot, when the bill did arrive apart from some squiggly numbers the whole itemised bill was written in Chinese.
We’ve booked to see the Broadway touring version of “The Lion King” tomorrow night. Emma and Sophia are really looking forward to it.
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