We weren’t staying at the Chateau Marmont or the Beverly Hills Hotel — not so much because we didn’t want to, but rather because we couldn’t. Both were solidly booked. We instead had to settle for the Hotel Amarano in Burbank.
The last time I helped an actress move in Hollywood, I had an entirely different agenda. This time, it was my daughter, and I just wanted to get it over with.
“We have you booked for the king pool-view room,” said the person at the front desk.
I looked at my daughter, and she looked at me.
“Is that just one bed?” my daughter asked.
“Yes,” replied the clerk, neither noting our age difference nor our familial resemblance.
“No, it is supposed to be a double-bed room,” my daughter said.
I, meanwhile, was busy looking at the “Best Bartender” plaque hanging in the lobby.
The conversation at the front desk went on for some time: talk of third-party vendors, talk of triple-checking, all resulting in an “upgrade” from the hotel and a bit of an insincere apology.
“We have a king balcony room,” my daughter said.
“Just one bed?” I asked.
“Yes, and a rollaway bed,” she said.
“That doesn’t sound like an upgrade,” I said.
“It’s the best I could do. They will move us into a double-bed room tomorrow,” she said.
We spent that “tomorrow” wandering around West Hollywood. If I have to do some work, there are going to be some considerations. So, I decided to visit some Jim Morrison sites that I had missed on previous trips. About 15 years ago, I was commissioned to write a book called “What Happened Here? Los Angeles.” The premise was a guide to actual locations in Los Angeles where famous events happened: the site of Bobby Kennedy’s murder, the post office where Charles Bukowski worked and the site of Jim Morrison’s widow’s overdose.
This time, we were right around the corner from where Los Angeles’ “Lizard King” had once lived and worked. In the interest of all aspiring poets and wannabe rock stars, I had to check it out. My plan was to wander around La Cienega Boulevard and end up at Barney’s Beanery, a famous L.A. bar.
They say you should never meet your idols because they almost always disappoint. Maybe that goes for visiting their haunts, too. I had found it to be a disappointing experience to drink at Harry’s Bar in Paris — or even at Harry’s Bar in Venice — because they really aren’t what they were originally. Is there anyone who believes that Hemingway would hang out at either El Floridita or La Bodeguita in Cuba now? And I bet Dorothy Parker would not set foot in today’s Algonquin Hotel.
So it was with some sadness that I looked through the fenced gate of the closed hot dog stand that now occupies the site of the fabled Doors Workshop on Santa Monica Boulevard, where the “King of Orgasmic Rock” recorded his last album with his band. That album, “L.A. Woman,” was as much a lament for lost love as it was for a lost city.
“Can we go now?” asked my modern-day actress, which coincidentally sounded a lot like that past one, too.
A drink at the bar in the Hotel Amarano would have to suffice — no “Mr. Mojo Risin” here.
“I see you, sir,” said the bartender from across the room.
At first, I wasn’t sure who he was talking to.
“Just scan the QR code, order and I will bring your drinks over,” he said.
The room was big, and the people were spread out.
The bartender was everywhere at once. The drink orders came in, and he delivered them. The food orders were delivered on trays and he picked them up and ran them out. It was the most efficient operation that I have ever seen. And he was just one person. A lot of it had to do with the fact that he never took one order personally. The customers punched them in on their phones and that was it.
The bartender in me wondered just how that worked out for him. So, I asked him — in a much softer way than “How much do you make?”
“How long have you been here?” I asked.
“Fifteen years,” he replied.
That more than answered my question. No one as capable as he obviously was would stay that long at a place unless they treated him incredibly well — or it was busy enough to offset that.
“You must like it here,” I said.
“It’s very busy,” he replied.
“Probably because they have the ‘best bartender’ in town,” I said.
“That’s the other guy,” he said. “He’s been here 25 years.”
Leaving me with these thoughts:
• Los Angeles is still Los Angeles — just not at the spots that you might expect.
• Being voted the “best” is great, but being No. 2 in a large metropolitan area ain’t so bad either.
• There was a sign over my king-size bed’s headboard that read “Watch your head.”
• I ended up marrying a singer, not an actress. Go figure.
• Living in Los Angeles certainly beats dying there.
• Customer service isn’t saying you are sorry. It is doing something about it.
Jeff Burkhart is the author of “Twenty Years Behind Bars: The Spirited Adventures of a Real Bartender, Vol. I and II,” the host of the Barfly Podcast on iTunes (as seen in the NY Times) and an award-winning bartender at a local restaurant. Follow him at jeffburkhart.net and contact him at jeffbarflyIJ@outlook.com
