Of all fruits, the pear is the one with the biggest ass

Cool stuff for a hot summer!

Summer is here. Not in the astronomical sense, but certainly in the meteorological one. Let’s find refuge from the heat in cool activities, cool books, cool drinks and great plates. Starting with:

People-watching in LA

Every time I go to LA I think: It is crazy that I don’t live here. And every time I return to New York I think: How could I live anywhere else. Some version of this occurs when I visit any city or town or hamlet in the USA—a pause where I wonder whether I might live there. But my heart always returns to the two magnificent coastal metropoles of our nation. What they lack in quality they often make up for in quantity, at least when it comes to my favorite hobbies of people-watching and eavesdropping.

The hotel room where I was billeted in LA last week was dated and dim, with rusty fixtures and a faded handprint on the ceiling above the bed. My first thought upon entering was: “This is a room where nonconsensual sex has occurred.” I raked aside the torn curtain. A single window looked onto layers of squalor and splendor: tents, palms, mattresses, hilltop manors, a billboard of Spencer Pratt For Mayor.

Then it was the next day. I had a few hours before work and decided to drive to the Silver Lake reservoir for a walk. The process of leaving the hotel was whatever the opposite of a “psychological thriller” is: first my door was jammed, then the elevator broken, then the light in the staircase was out, then the lobby closed for cleaning, etc.

🎶You can check out any time you like / But you can never leave 🎶

I broke free through a fire door and gassed the rental car reservoirward. I remembered the reservoir loop fondly from my brief spell of living in LA, even though the loop is not beautiful. (It is a dusty track around a concrete basin circled by a chainlink fence.) This time there were signs posted everywhere warning about a groper. The groper was described as tall, dark-haired, and bearing an Apple Watch—which narrowed it down to roughly 100,000 people. Hopefully they nab the bastard soon!