Page 218 - Flaunt 171 - Summer of Our Discontent - St-John

building. The building was the hub of LA’s Red Car network—in its heyday the largest electric public transportation system in the world.”
Coles has been around forever. The rumor that Los Angeles has no history is false. There’s the matter of the Tongva and the Pobladores—almost all of African, indigenous and mestizo de- scent. And once the Red Cars were the largest electricity-based public transportation system in the world. (Though the real estate interests of course made big bank where the railway ex- panded.) Until it was ripped from its womb, the womb of hun- dreds of miles of pavement, by the combined lobbies of the oil industry and the growing power of automobile manufacturers. Freeways were built where the tracks once laid. 1951 was a big year for cars, freeways and trucks. Tom Waits and “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” hallelujah. Leonard Cohen, too.
Back in the day, Red Car operators and passengers drank a pint or two and ate roast beef sandwiches at wooden tables made from discarded trolley parts. Coles and Phillips’s—a few miles north, on the outskirts of Chinatown—continue to dis- pute who truly originated the French Dip.
In 2007, a hip group of entertainment impresarios bought Coles. To their credit, they changed very little about the place. Yet, of course, it’s not the same place.
Some of the old crowd still drinks there—residents of the remaining SROs, the ones that have not been converted to lofts.
Gary Davis drives the bus between Los Feliz and down- town LA. Back and forth. His last stop at City Hall leaves him in
quick walking distance to Coles happy hour.
Like his predecessors 60 years ago, Gary orders a boiler-
maker. He eats a French Dip sandwich at the Red Car wooden bar. The bathrooms have been refurbished. The bathrooms smell better than before. Gary notices that the Bathrooms have been cleaned up. As a bus driver, Gary needs bathrooms that are clean. He cannot stop to go to the bathroom while he drives. Coles is a welcome place. He does not comprehend the changes. For Gary It is the same place.
Gary lives upstairs, in the single room apartments above the bar.
Meanwhile, across the street, the same “hospitality com- pany” has opened a rum bar and a tequila bar. Gary does not patronize either place. Those places are the places where the new and young hipster residents of downtown LA go to drink. Gary is not one of them.
A bit further east is Camper’s Corner, the last true home- less bar downtown. It’s also a check cashing joint. You cash your check there and you spend it on beer. Hipsters tried to conquer it a few years ago but they were repelled like Cortes’s first invasion before the Spaniards spread smallpox. In the case of Campers Corner, it was the threat of Hep C and rage. One would expect more rage.
At the bar, and in general. Worldwide. More rage.
Rum and tequila are much in demand.
More booze, more rage.
Change is both swift and slow, but things will never be the
same again.
THE SOCIAL MEDIA STAR
When Every Day is a Chance to Make a Difference
“What’s his name? Or is it a she?” “They call him Zoo.”
“Zoo?”
“Yeah. @zoomonkey95.” “@zoomonkey95? What’s the 95?” “When he was born.”
“Pretty young?”
“ Yeah.”
“Where are we going?” “His house.”
The car rolls. Out of Hollywood and into the valley. On our way to meet Zoo.
My friend is taking me there. My friend grew up with Zoo. Zoo’s real name is Josh Weintraub. My friend went to high school with Josh Weintraub, “He used to be really fat and he started mak- ing these videos on this now defunct App of him eating donuts while crying. The videos went viral and he got like 6 million fol- lowers. When the App disappeared he transferred all his followers over to Instagram. He’s skinny now. He lost all the weight. But he still makes weird videos. And still has 6 million followers.”
I nod my head. We’re going to meet Zoo because I just self-published a book. My friend suggested we go meet Zoo and I give him a book in exchange for a shout out on his Instagram page.
I didn’t tell my friend, but I wasn’t really into it. I didn’t ex- actly need a banal Instagram celebrity talking about my book, but, also, why not? Who gives a fuck? I was in the early habit of giving books away for free quite often anyway. It was more or less a little drive with my friend, with the underlying bubbling of some kind of business transaction. After all, 6 million followers is a lot right? Maybe I could boost sales.
“Does Zoo make a lot of money off Instagram?” I ask my friend as we start driving deeper and deeper into the valley, slowly
crawling into darker parts of Van Nuys; surrounding us are decay- ing grey auto-shops and crumbling buildings that look like they must be low-key marijuana grow houses.
“I mean. Yeah. He makes money. He’ll do a Chik-Fil-A commercial and make ten-grand on the spot. Right off the top. He posts a 30 second video. Some skit. Eating a chicken wing or something and he gets 10 Gs.”
“Jesus,” I say, surveying, then thinking to myself: Zoo must live in some warehouse that he’s totally tricked out and turned into an uber-cool loft with purple funky lights and lots of plants hanging from the ceiling. The kind of fantasy apartment you would see in a vintage Tumblr blog.
We park the car. “There it is,” my friend says, pointing. “Where?”
“That building.”
“What the fuck are you pointing at? The Scientology build-
ing?”
“No. No. Over there. Next to it.”
There is a giant Scientology building there. Kind of looks like
a mini-Costco. Whisper quiet. No people. Just big white walls and black fences and hot yellow lights glowing up out of fake spider plants and one or two jet black mini-vans.
Next to it is Zoo’s building. I am confused. This is the building of the social media star? He obviously owns a part of the building or something, I think, six million followers and ten Gs off eating chicken wings for thirty seconds must get you something more than an apartment in that hunk of pre-fab shit.
The streets are breathing softly, very little noise. I’m not sure why but my friend and I wait there for a moment. A couple people walk on the sidewalks. The neighborhood is dicey, can feel it. I
can hear light mariachi music floating in through the car window. Steam rises up out of an all-night diner on the corner that looks like a place nobody would ever really walk into, like an Armenian
Written by August Britton
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