LA Woman
On the dresser is a small perfume bottle with a heavy brass lid with curves in all the right places. The glass is emblazoned with the words ‘LA Woman’, both my favourite book by Eve Babitz and a sentiment I wish to embody. It smells like smoke and California citrus and jasmine.
Eve knew the magic of Los Angeles because she grew up in its most golden years. I knew the magic of Los Angeles because I’d lived up in Northern California, tasting the good grapes of Mendocino whilst working on a family-run winery, and made my way down the 101 and then the 1, Big Sur heaving to my right, until I landed in the unlikeliest of places: high up in the Hollywood Hills.
But that was then, and this is now.
Years later, I find myself in a ground floor apartment between Thai Town and Los Feliz, trying on my friend’s perfume from her dresser and walking out into the hazy morning light to shake off the jet lag. I have her car, but driving here daunts me. So, I walk the 15 minutes up to Fern Dale Drive and keep ascending until I reach the Observatory. Up in the clouds. I clamber back down to ground level and do all the things I do in London but in LA, like making breakfast and sitting in the sun-drenched doorway with a book and walking to see friends until I get over my fear of driving and I cruise down Sunset with Maggie Rogers turned up and the windows rolled down.
Three weeks in LA looks like performing these daily rituals and habits but in better weather. Like walking down Hollywood to Obet & Del’s for a honeyed iced matcha. Then heading to Lazy Acres grocery store and grabbing corn tortillas and eggs and avocados that taste like cream and butter but green. Arriving home (home) and using the good pans to char tortillas and wrapping them in tea towels to keep them warm. The Trader Joe’s seasoning you can’t get in London. The way the avocados taste like something real. Eating them sat on the steps with a book (LA Woman) and figuring out the rest of the day.
My friend Sophia picks me up on my second night and takes me to Silver Lake, but not the part of Silver Lake I’ve been to, where we find oysters at Found Oyster. We eat mountains of seafood sat at the bar, drink California beers and talk about boys (not men) and the astrological alignment and how to become enlightened. Just LA shit.
Barnsdall Art Park becomes my safe haven, a spot close enough to walk; you can walk through Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House and lie in the grass at the top of the hill, where the Santa Ana winds shake the trees and provide some relief from the midday sun. Of course, it helps that Kismet Rotisserie is a five-minute walk away. Silky hummus and crunchy pickled veg sit next to fall-off-the-bone rotisserie chicken and fluffy pittas and a wedge of iceberg dressed with poppy seed vinaigrette and a chili oil that will blow your mind.
It also helps that my friend, whose apartment I’m staying in, is the co-owner of a wine bar in Thai Town. Tabula Rasa, with its brick-lined interiors and vinyl records and short but sweet wine list, is the second place I go when I arrive (the first is Kismet Rotisserie). They pour me a glass of mineral-y, volcanic white from Tenerife, and I watch first dates and friendships unfold whilst pretending to read my book, the window swung open, the sound cacophonous, the air tinged with wine-drunk sweetness.
I see Romy, a friend from London who has just moved to LA, for one of the best martinis of my life at The Dresden in Los Feliz. We meet at 8:00 pm when the sky is still light. I walk into mahogany-lined darkness—a sexy, expansive bar that feels like Old Hollywood and New York. She’s sat at the bar with a glass of Chardonnay; we haven’t seen each other in years, having met first in India and reunited in London. And now, LA. I ask for my vodka martini just the way I like it (very dry, very dirty), and the bartender obliges, placing a wide rimmed martini glass in front of me, the liquid almost iced, the taste salt-slicked and vengeful. Romy drives me in her beat-up Honda 4x4 up to Echo Park, to a taco truck next to a supermarket where we eat al pastor and birria with all the toppings for less than $9. We finish the night sipping margaritas at El Prado and I tell her I want to live here and she says, “Just do it.”
When Kyla arrives, an extension of me, without her daughter (for the first time; emotional), we spend three days together. Alone. Something we haven’t done since the last time we were in Los Angeles two years ago. This trip with her feels different, more easeful; although that might be because she isn’t pregnant (happily but unexpectedly) or turning 30, aggressively side-eyeing me every time I take a sip of wine. No, this trip is less about exploring and more about existing, together, so we get in the car, and I drive us to Venice so we can feel the sand under our feet.
“Just bothering to go someplace other than Santa Monica was incomprehensible when I could just wake up every morning at dawn, yank on my bathing suit still on the floor from the night before when I’d yanked it off, hurry down to Hollywood and Gower to catch the 91S bus down Hollywood Boulevard and then Santa Monica Boulevard to Beverly Hills and transfer to the 83 going straight out to the beach until finally there I’d be, at 8:00 A.M. or so, able to feel the cool sand get warm as the morning sun glazed over the tops of the palm trees up on the palisades while waves of the ocean crashed down day after day so anyone could throw himself into the tides and bodysurf throughout eternity.” - Eve Babitz, LA Woman
Mainly we go because of Open, the yoga studio where our former teacher used to work. The room looks like it’s straight out of Arizona, with an oval, space-like skylight and textured ceilings. We sit at the back of the room, sweating more than anyone else, giggling to one another and taking in the Angeleno energy that can only come from a room packed full of spiritual yogis. Just LA shit.
There’s Great White with its breakfast burrito and Rudy Jude where I want to buy every tiny outfit for Len, my goddaughter, whom I see a few days later in Palm Springs in the desert heat, on my 33rd birthday. Everyone is confused about our family dynamic. I like to pretend I’m L’s second mum as we eat burgers and drink martinis on a Monday lunch at The Heydey.
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I see Sophia again, but this time she’s driving us to Ojai, a town 90 minutes north of LA, where I imagine I lived in a past life. As we descend through the hills and into the familiar downtown, it feels like another homecoming. As much as I love LA, the quiet and the stillness of Ojai, its hippie energy and mom-and-pop stores, feels more natural, more effortless. We stop in at Rory’s Other Place, where we sit in the garden and eat a salad niçoise and drink a glass of orange wine and listen to two Ojai locals dressed in faded vintage Levis with a dog by their feet talk about life in a small town. “I want to be them,” I whisper to my friend Sophie. She says, “You are already.”
We stay at the Hummingbird Inn, but we sneak into the Capri because the pool is better and it’s not really sneaking in because a friend of Sophia’s happens to be staying there that evening for a wedding. We bask in the sun and drink Ghia on ice and talk some more about our next moves. Sophia tells me she’s falling back in love with LA, and I say, “How could you ever stop?”
We meet Sophia’s friend at Pinyon for a night of pizza, margaritas and more LA shit. We befriend the waitress and ask her where all the cute boys are, and I tell her I saw one at the vintage shop around the corner and she says, “Yep I know him, he’s married,” and we talk about how that just happens in small towns. Then we sigh and drink a few more sips.
I return to LA and a childhood friend is here for work, so I take her to Kismet (not Rotisserie), where we eat the most perfect meal of little gem heads studded with pistachios, the barbary bread from Bub & Grandmas dipped into silky tahini dips and little pastry parcels filled with herby chicken. We drink a glass of gamay at Hotel Covell next door, and I’m in love with seeing people from my other life in LA.
Barnsdall Art Park is the motif. New friends gather at sunset, with takeout from Kismet (Rotisserie) and a homemade frittata and a bottle of wine whose label was designed by one of the girls sitting next to me and another bottle of wine from another girl’s parents' winery. My skin is sun-kissed and the air is hazy and those Santa Ana winds are still blowing.
