Side Story: The King's Inn - Sun City, AZ

On the post just below this one there is a link to an image of a postcard showing the sign of the San Gorgonio Inn in its prime. While I was perusing through the other postcards I saw one that was oddly familiar and I quickly figured out why.

My Grandfather, my Mom's Dad, used to take my Mom and I to all of these old places for lunch, many of which had lost their luster. To give a brief summary of the man he was once a millionaire oil and cattle man that gambled away all his money and long after this and some failed business attempts he would go business to business selling photos of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig (his father was friend's with them, these were candid pictures of the legends on my Great Grandfather's ranch in Sioux City, Iowa). My mother and I would have to drive him, after he no longer had a car, so he could continue selling these photos. He would always take us to old coffee shops in fairly squalid areas (He once took us to Brookshire's, and old coffee shop that is now closed and operating as a Mexican restaurant located east of The Phoenix Art Museum, when we groaned he said, "This is the best food in town, at night it's filled with nothing but hookers and pimps, but during the day it's the best place to get a bite to eat in town.") and every once in awhile great old standards like The Stockyards (strike that he took me to the barbershop there once, which i remember having Playboy's in the waiting area). Now in retrospect a lot of these places were neglected Mid-Centuries that if i were to see a photograph of them in their prime, I would probably fawn over today.

Once I saw this photo I was reminded of a journey we made all the way to Sun City to what I think was the King's Inn. A place which, supposedly, had the best chicken and dumplings in town (yeah?). The place, which looked like a Medieval Dungeon, was very quiet when we entered, almost seemed to be closed. We were brought to our table by a very morose hostess who was also our waitress. Throughout the duration of our meal, the staff began going behind curtains and emerging with tears in the eyes. We were the only ones in the restaurant which heightened our awareness to this as well as the uncomfortability (sic?). It wasn't long before we learned that the owner had died that day and in the middle of our meal our waitress left and went home.

This moment of my life was echoed in Luis Bunuel's Oscar winning The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, in which a group of people attempting to dine in a restaurant only to have the staff crying and constantly going behind curtains. In Bunuel's film the diners themselves look behind the curtain only to see an open casket funeral procession in progress.

I cannot kind any information on the King's Inn itself.

Fox Theater and the San Gorgonio Inn - Banning, CA

Banning, California is not the most exciting of towns. Located off the 10 near Palm Springs, it doesn't have much of a draw in itself, but every time I have made the drive on the 10 my curiosity grew for what looked to be a well preserved Fox Theater and a nice roadside sign for a restaurant called the, San Gorgonio Inn. My curiosity was confirmed and despite the town's lack of draw, yet it is great to see, whether it is circumstantial or not, a town having a sense of history. Although obviously not as extensive of a renovation as Tucson's Fox Theater it is still standing and showing films, unlike many Fox Theaters that where torn down here in Los Angeles as well as The Fox Phoenix, a Art Deco palace built by famed architect S. Charles Lee, which shared the fate of other doomed Phoenix classics like the Cine Capri and The Kachina (check out those pictures! A Conversation Lounge?! Rad!).

You can learn more about Banning's Fox Theater here at Cinema Treasures.

As for the San Gorgonio Inn, it has it's own Wikipedia entry. I also read an article that it is part of a redevelopment process, hopefully one with preservation in mind.

I also found a scan of an old postcard showing the same sign of the San Gorgonio Inn

Lankershim Theater and The Ritz Motel

When you live somewhere, it's very easy to neglect the things around you on your day to day life. I lived in Scottsdale, AZ until I was 19 but it wasn't until I came back to visit that I ever went to Taliesin West (let alone knew it existed) and to this day I have never been to the Grand Canyon, and I got around too. So now in my life I do a lot of exploring in the areas in which I live. That being said, North Hollywood (and not the new trendy NoHo Arts District) is an area that lacks, what I would say, appeal. It is next door to the suburb I live in, Valley Village (which is basically a 6 square block radius separating Studio City from scary North Hollywood(f.y.i. it is also where Sarah Silverman lives on her new TV show, Oooo)), but it is an area saturated with crime, car theft, and gang violence. Vanowen Street Loco's anyone?

I want to digress to share an embarrassing fact about myself; sometimes, at night, before I go to sleep and am flipping through channels, I watch the crime watch channel, showing all the scary dealings in the area. I sometimes get chills under my warm Ralph Lauren comforter at some of the police sketches, it's not a healthy activity but I frequently do this.

So when I heard there was an old theater down on Lankershim I became very curious. On my travel I ran into the Ritz Motel, which if maintained would have great character and it actually looks fairly neat at night. As for The Lankershim, which is now a church (a fate common in most old theaters), I wonder if the area was always run down as it is now, but in my readings it seems as though that is the case. It was hard to get a picture of it but the naked lady fighting a shrimp adds a nice touch I think.

You can can get some information and another picture at Cinema Tresures. Which is an amazing site that literally has information on every single movie theater ever built in the country. They also have a book out, aptly titled Cinema Treasures which you can get here.

Aztec Hotel - Monrovia, CA

This Roadside Hotel is located on the famous Route 66 in Monrovia (home of Trader Joe's) was built in 1925. You can find more information about the hotel and the restoration at the website below.

Aztec Hotel

Explosions in the Sky "All the Sudden, I Miss Everyone" and Updates about Updates

Nowadays, I am rarely excited about any new records. I have become extremely jaded after a string of profound disappointments (i.e. Flamings Lips "At War With the Mystics", everything by Mount Eerie, etc.) and found myself dreading the possibility that bands i love will soon be jumping the shark as opposed to creating their next best record. The last record I loved, and I mean unequivocally, was Broken Social Scene's S/T release. Although on immediate listen I was thrown into sense of confusion and uncertainty - I was able to acclimate to the muddles of sound and find the most consistent and innovative record I had heard in a long time. The album came out less than 2 years ago but since it came out, almost every album following in its wake has attempted to reinvent the production style to mixed results. There have been some other great albums of late, but they are few and far between; Final Fantasy's He Poos Clouds, Animal Collective's Feels, and Fennesz's Venice to name a few.

Explosions in the Sky's new record "All the Sudden, I Miss Everyone", was for me, at least something to look forward to, albeit, with a bit of trepidation. The "Post-Rock" movement is flat and mostly dead to me. Mogwai is boring sans a few songs - Godspeed, although the reining master of genre, hasn't put out an album since 2002 and that album was mediocre at best (that's being kind)- and I can't even hear Tortoise anymore because it sounds like being in an elevator. But Explosions in the Sky is an anomaly to me because they embody almost all of the negative and redundant traits of the genre while super ceding them with a sense of evocative and visceral power that is almost unique to them in their earnestness, but they also embody the teeth gritting power of the "rock moment". Suffice to say, I freely admit that their albums and songs are, too a degree, fairly interchangeable and although I see this as a fair criticism, I see their albums more as classical movements then as song based albums in which you skip around. But how many records can one hear before the soft/loud, build to the climax sincerity overstays its welcome?

The new album, more or less, is a subtle but definitive move in a new direction, without losing their "sound" or making any dramatic changes that would alienate their base. I must say that although I am not disappointed by any means, I am hardly blown away either. Where on the other albums I would listen through from beginning to end and then endlessly repeat for months on end - the album hardly ever leaving the player. The new record, despite the fact that it comes across more like one long song - tracks blending into one another - it also lacks a certain punch. This is because they are no longer interested in building to a moment (some might argue the whole album builds to the subtle climax at the end but in my humble opinion, eh) as much as they are beginning with a climatic moment, dropping it, coming back to new sound and moving on. Although the album is more interesting in concept, even implementing piano to an almost superfluous result, and is more dynamically produced, it is also missing some of that earnestness that made them so compelling in the first place. If anything, it's the most "post-rock" record they have recorded, seemingly less reliant on climax, you can now see the song writing as opposed to feeling it.

Yet this isn't a negative review by any means, it's one of the better records I have heard in awhile, but as I said above, that's not necessarily a bold achievement given the circumstances.

To digress, starting Monday I will be shooting a film for 5 days straight, working 12-16 hours days so I won't be able to post that week and I have some upcoming plans that make the next couple of weeks look grim for those of you who casually and silently read this here blog thing. That being said, this weekend, I am going to bombard the site with post so that there is enough material to last you a couple a weeks, this includes, but is not limited to the long awaited Bowling Vernacular post, Frank Lloyd Wright in AZ, and a string of pictures representing different neighborhoods and areas of Southern California and beyond. I hope you enjoy.

Mr. Lucky's - Phoenix, AZ

I found this rather amazing roadside sign off of Grant and 37th Ave. by accident in the Phoenix area. Although it is one of the better signs I have seen, I don't necessarily recommend going down there to visit it. As I drove near it a couple of maniac gentlemen with stolen goods and frightening dispositions where attempting to hitch-hike right next to the place, so I took these pictures from the car. Attempting the find some information I found a "review" of the place, which is really a summary of what it was like being "one of [the] 25 cocktail waitresses to open [in] 1966". I will copy her experience here:

"I worked at Mr. Lucky's for over a year. This place was the most exciting night club that I had ever worked and I have worked a few. I was a customer on many occasions. We had country music upstairs, and rock downstairs with the best entertainment. I remember serving entertainers such as Waylon Jennings, Charlie Pride, Glen Campbell, Ray Price and many others. Our club had the best entertainers in town as far as I was concerned. I worked upstairs all of the time. I loved the country entertainment and enjoyed watching the guests having such a wonderful time, dancing or sitting at their table. Many were cowboys with their western hats jeans and boots. I loved to watch them dance. I worked the cocktail hrs. from about 4 til 6. At that time we had the GO GO dancers and theirs feathers and bikinis and pastees, (nudity was OUT then) We had a dancer, named, Halley. People came from all over to see her dance. In the afternoon, many times a group of young cowboys would come in with their big hats, dirty old jeans, (even their guns, checked in @ door), just off the range, to watch the entertainment. They would leave and come back later, in their best western and hats and dance the night away. I think that I am lucky to have those good memories of Mr. Lucky's and the people who worked there. I am sure that there have been many changes since I left, and I am sure for the best. Mr. Lucky's was The place to go for entertainment. I haven't been to Mr Lucky's for many years but if I ever get back to Phoenix, this is the first place I would like to visit."

Poor lady, I imagine the changes theret are fairly dramatic in comparison to when the likes of Glen Campbell used to play there.

Drive-In's

I am learning that I am a very nostalgic person. I am also a very realistic person so sometimes despite my earnest feelings towards things, I understand why they are the way they are. Case in point, Drive-In Movie Theaters. The past 100 years have been nothing but unrelenting progress. Progress has brought us every convenience we have today and with convenience and progress comes the fall of the things that preceded it. Early on movie theaters were built like grand opera houses. The Broadway Corridor in Downtown LA was the film equivalent to the playhouses of New York's famed Broadway. Now LA's Broadway is a blighted hell hole, the facades of the theatres remain fairly intact while churches or junk merchants now occupy where these great theatres used to operate. How does this happen? Progress. During this period of the great movie palaces the theatres were owned by the studios that distributed them, so Warner Bros. films were shown at Warner Bros. Theaters. These monopolies where eventually broken up and theatres were run independently of studios. As time went on the advent of the single run theater become obsolete as the multiplexes took over. People moved from the cites in droves to the suburbs eventually taking the business for the single run theaters in the Downtown area with them, many of which became adult theaters.

Drive-In's became popular as the car became an affordable, accessible commodity, and people wanted to do everything in their car. This included seeing movies, yet as cars became a part of everyday life, the Drive-In's became more obsolete, reverting to Grindhouse and B movies until many closed. I grew up in Scottsdale, AZ and had quite a few experiences at the Drive-In (which is still operating as far as I know), none of which I remember concentrating on the movie very much, and not for the reasons you would think. These are mainly childhood memories, I think I found it distracting, we were eating food, there are 6 other screens some playing R-rated movies I was trying to sneak a peak at - more interested in although I vaguely remember watching Fletch Lives. The last Drive-In experience I had was driving out of Vanilla Sky after about 30 minutes of that abortive remake of the vastly superior Open Your Eyes.

Yet when I see the signs like these I become nostalgic for that culture, which is not very distant from today yet mostly forgotten. We move on much too soon to the next thing before we truly absorb what is there now. Without much thought or care people move on to the next thing. I think what has happened in the Broadway Corridor in Downtown LA is a tragedy despite the circumstances and a revitalization is a huge necessary step. On the other hand I think what has happened to Drive-In's is an inevitability of progress and well, land usage. That being said I think the main draw to something like a Drive-In theater, nostalgia, is being ignored by the ones that are still operating today and if they did revivals (why are old car shows at a McDonald's parking lots as opposed to a Drive-In's playing American Graffiti?) Either way as a Drive-In goes under it's easy to develop the land as it is nothing but an empty plot and some screens, hence they are generally torn down without much of after thought. The ones that are here in LA County now operate as swap meets but still have the classic signage that represent what was then progress but what is now history.

I must say it is very unfortunate that I missed out on the Pyromania Tribute (giggle) to Def Leppard, I could only imagine the crowd at that thing.

Listen: Do Make Say Think "The Universe" MP3

Do Make Say Think has always been just okay to me. But each record they have made has one or two stand out tracks that I wish they would try to capitalize more on over the course of an album. That being said (my new phrase of choice) this new songs is a welcome and exciting new direction (maybe because it sounds a lot closer to my love band Broken Social Scene which two of DMST members are a part of), and although I am guessing this is one of those great stand outs and maybe the rest isn't all that exciting, it wets my appetite until it is confirmed or denied, or until a new Broken Social Scene record comes out.

The Universe

Complaints and Reasons

I got two complaints, which are enough for me to address the tardiness of my latest post. I have just been fucking busy as all hell, and between finishing my script (yeah i do that stuff) and over saturating myself with things and information, I very easily loose track of expounding to others on adventures or information. It was sort of a resolution, if you will, that I would post more than I did before, broader with more detail and information, but I have neglected the site mainly because of my hectic schedule, but more because of when I have free time I am trying to fit in all kinds of things that I am no longer able to enjoy leisurely. Like books... right now I am reading 4 fucking books. Why four?

Reason #1. Don't start Proust's In Search of Lost Time.
I am currently 160 pages into a Swann's Way. One fact I omitted there was that I am also 3 months into the book. It's not that it's bad, or even hard to read, I would say the book is written rather beautifully, and although I should be used to an excessive use of commas and tangents, stringing various moments together, forgetting the point altogether, you find yourself 20 pages later brought back to an original thought, as in A Fan's Note, my all time favorite book ever, did. But so far all I have read about is Combray and some good night kisses and it's hard to get excited over. Yet it is supposed to be the one of the single greatest achievements in literature, I do recognize it's lyrical qualities but that doesn't mean it's an exciting book, at least not as of yet. The advent of reading six more of these books (I plan on reading one a year) is daunting to say the least.

Reason # 2 I keep leaving books in cabs.
Roughly a year ago, in the middle of reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, I left it in a cab after some sort of trip I took. I left Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates in Tucson when I was visiting Kate. Recently over the Holiday's I left The Studio by John Gregory Dunne, a book that I started reading during my period of malaise over A Swann's Way, which is about Paramount Studios in the late 1960's.

Reason #3 Try reading 775 pages of short stories.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, has to be one of my favorite writers, and I say this based on only two books that I have read by him. The obvious The Great Gatsby, which is truly deserving of it's reputation, and the stunning, nearly experimental Tender is the Night, which is such a strangely poignant book. I decided to pick up The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald and I am attempting to read a short story a day, which cuts into a lot of other reading I should be doing. I am reading short stories, namely his as he is probably in the most technical sense one of the more perfect writers to have lived, for adaptive reasons. See, short stories are great material. If juggling around 6 or so feature ideas and being nowhere near done with my second draft wasn't enough for me, I am looking for short stories to adapt, great Phil, keep your eye on the fucking ball for Christ sake. I also have a prejudice against short stories, finding them never as strong as their feature counter part (this goes for film too). Yet once I notice a bias, I then must explore if I have actual solid facts to back them up and this quote from the story "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" alone proves to me that I was wrong and that everything is worth exploring "At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide." I have actually done more highlighting in this short story book than I have done in any of my prior reading combined, so.

Reason # 4. Interesting Books without a narrative are easy to put down.
By far one of the most fascinating and interesting books I have read in awhile is An Underground Education by Richard Zacks. A book which explores the realities of many myths we are sold in our history books it is fascinating to no end. But there in no thread so I lose nothing by putting it down and coming back to later. Also each pages or so is a complete set of new information. If I take in so much at once, I am consuming without retaining which defeats the purpose for me.

Why the fuck am I bringing this up? Is this an excuse or reason? do I need to explain this to the two people who bother to ask where I have been? Maybe I didn't post out of a sick need to know that people cared enough to read what was on here, which might be subconsciously true, but truth be told, it was lack of time that was the factor. This doesn't mean there has been a lack of adventures, shucks no. Among them my constant carless struggles, my mini greyhound (oh i mean Crucero) bus ride to palm springs to meet my lady, The Parker, The Bear Pit BBQ (de lish us), Santa Anita Horse Track (best place ever by the way), First Friday's at The Natural History Museum (where you basically walk around drinking booze while looking at dinosaur bones and really dated aquatic dioramas), Bahooka Rib's and Grog (CRAZY Tiki "Family" Restaurant with about 200 aquariums and was a location for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), etc. etc. etc.

So I do have some post, I keep bringing up this 'Bowling Vernacular' post I have all the pics - I guess my issue is trying find to words to fit how I feel about it other than just save history as it runs a bit deeper and I am struggling to find a context to really get my point across so keep waiting for that. I also visited (drove by and took a picture of) every Frank Lloyd Wright house in Phoenix so I will post that a little later as I already have a lot of FLW stuff on here, let's see, I got tons of signs and architecture stuff still so that will never run out really. I also mentioned that I have some short stories which I am getting the balls to put on here soon enough, okay, I hope that clears some stuff up.