Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Ver Klimt



Five paintings. One show. About 45 minutes.
There was a surprise in the amazing depth of the Beech Woods. And to see one of his gold pieces in person was great. But it was over in less time than it took to understand the tangled legal process it took to wrest the pieces from the Austrian government. But a friend of mine who I think may know everything said: "That, I figure, is what love looks like if you got the talent to show it." That thought changes the whole show for me. The show at LACMA - free after 5 p.m. - ends June 30.

Friday, May 26, 2006

Facing the final curtain


That may be the way Johnny Recine would have put it, in the vocal stylings of Frank Sinatra.

But Recine no longer - that we know of - has a venue for his show of shows now that San Gennaro in Culver City has closed after a 12 year run.

The sometimes very good Italian restaurant with less than good service was a place that harkened back to another tiime where you could get a bottle of wine, two meals and dessert - plus an hour of song - for about $40.

Once we came in for a Seinfeld dinner at around 4 p.m. Johnny arrived shortly after, popped in a CD and started singing. He did three songs, having to retake one from the top, and we were the only people in the restaurant.

In a black suit and white shirt, he headed over to our table. He apologized for his voice and for bothering us. He said it was scratchy and he had a headache. This guy oozed Rat Pack and we were a little awed. He needed to practice for the dinner crowd having just driven in from Palm Springs - how Sinatra is that.

Well maybe Frank would have bought us one of San Genarro's famous $12 bottles of wine.

It's unclear what's going in to the space, two doors down from Ford's Filling Station. But it looked like someone ripped up all the seats and '80s decor inside the restaurant.

According to the City of Culver City's Website:
The Hull Building in 1925 to be the first hospital in Culver City. The architecture is recognized as Neo-Classical in style, with construction materials of tan and rose colored brick.

Although the uses have changed numerous times over the years, the Hull Building retains most of its original character. Its many occupants have included Freeman Furniture, the Sunset Drug, Ed Tinger's Culver City Flowers, Al Simon's Sada's Flowers, Kamin's Shoes, a boarding house on the second floor, the Bank of Orange County, and Italian restaurants-Riccardo's Restaurant, Bella Pasta and San Gennaro.

It was named after its first owner and builder, Dr. Foster Hull, Culver City's second City Health Officer. The Hull Building was recognized by the Culver City Historical Society as Historic Site Number Two. Stu Freeman of Freeman Property Management now owns the building.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Addicted to Jazz


Jazz legend began at South Bay landmark

Chet Baker, who started at the Lighthouse, lived in the area during his historic career.

By Eddie North-Hager
DAILY BREEZE
Dec 07, 2003

In the late 1940s and the '50s, the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach was the jazz mecca of the West Coast. It drew top acts from all over, many choosing to stay for a while in sunny Southern California.

It was the perfect environment for a natural trumpet player who had almost no formal training to get a chance at stardom.

It was here that Chet Baker grew into a legend and was packaged as the James Dean of jazz. And it was here that Baker first delved into the addictions that would define him after his death in May 1988 at age 58, as much as his music did during his life.

The romanticism of Baker's lifelong and open drug addiction was always tied to his 200 records and acclaimed talents. But it seems to hamper his embrace by the public even 15 years after he fell from an Amsterdam hotel window.

"People don't want to be connected with someone who was a notorious drug addict," said Gil Galbreath, a retired computer technician.

The 71-year-old is the unofficial historian of area jazz musicians. He first caught Baker playing with Gerry Mulligan at The Hague in Los Angeles in 1952.

"That was the hot ticket in those days," Galbreath said. "He was just a natural musician. And in some ways a real genius."

Baker, an Oklahoma native, moved to Glendale in 1940, according to his memoirs, Chet Baker: As Though I Had Wings. His father, a guitar player, first bought him a trombone, but quickly replaced it with a trumpet. His mother worked for the discount department store W.T. Grant in Inglewood.

"The schools in California were so much easier they let me skip a half-grade," Baker wrote in his memoirs.

The family moved to north Redondo Beach about 1942 where he quickly lost interest in school while attending Redondo Union High School. He joined the band but couldn't read music.

Baker skipped most days to hang out and work on old cars.

"I became disenchanted with school during my junior year at Redondo High," Baker wrote. "I cut lots of classes and spent every day on the beach or along the cliffs of Palos Verdes diving for abalone."

So, at 16 he joined the Army and eventually the Army band.

When he returned to the South Bay two years later, his family had bought a house on 16th Street in Hermosa Beach overlooking Pacific Coast Highway.

The home is still there, but was remodeled in the 1980s and now has two stories.

Current owner Lee Grant said he heard a rumor that Baker once lived there, but wasn't too interested.

"I couldn't hum a tune (by Baker) but I know he was an icon in the jazz world," Grant said.

In 1949 Baker enrolled at El Camino College with a major in music and minor in English.

While playing at the High Seas in Hermosa Beach, he first started smoking marijuana, he wrote. But he also learned his style.

"It seems to me that most people are impressed with just three things: How fast you can play, how high you can play and how loud you can play," Baker said in his memoirs. "I find this a little exasperating, but I'm a lot more experienced now, and understand that less than 2 percent of the public can really hear. When I say hear, I mean follow a horn player through his ideas."

A year later he dropped out of El Camino after a teacher told him he'd never make it as a musician.

Drummer Bobby White remembers going to the house of Baker's girlfriend in Lynwood for a jam session.

"He hadn't worked with anybody yet and I was working with Vido Musso at the York Club," White said. "They liked him so much they hired him right there. "We became good friends. We would drive around in his car, go to the high school and flirt with girls."

That gig led to Baker teaming with Stan Getz. They often played together at Baker's home. He was then living in a servant's quarter on The Esplanade in Redondo Beach, according to Baker's memoirs.

And Baker's first recording, "Out of Nowhere" with Getz in March 1952, is little more than a jam session, said William Ruhlman of All Music, a Web site.

"He had such an ear for music," White said. "He could sit down and just sing a complicated arrangement like nothing. It just came natural."

And, of course, Baker played at the Lighthouse. White still plays there every Sunday afternoon.

"Hermosa Beach in the summer of '50 was jumping with hundreds of beautiful young things lying all over the place," Baker said in his memoirs. "But inside the Lighthouse on Sundays was the best, with the beautiful people coming in the swimsuits."

Baker got anointed by saxophonist Charlie "Bird" Parker in 1952. In one of the great moments of jazz, Bird called Baker out of a crowd after listening to several trumpeters try out for a spot in his band. Baker played a few songs and the auditions were over. Their collaborations were captured on "Live at the Trade Winds," an Inglewood club.

Baker and Bird would drive to the Palos Verdes Peninsula and San Pedro and watch the waves, Baker said in his memoirs. Bird tried to protect Baker from the vices that hounded many jazz players.

Still Baker was soon arrested for marijuana possession and moved on to harder stuff.

He was at the peak of his success at the time, recording his signature hit "My Funny Valentine" with sax player Gerry Mulligan in 1953.

White was there, playing on "This Time the Dream's on Me," "Made in Mexico" and others.

By 1957, Baker was hooked. He was arrested again and became a fugitive before going to jail for a time. He went to Europe where his addictions included prescription drugs. He served 15 months in jail for drugs, became a tabloid darling and starred in some films.

He returned to New York in 1963 and came back home to the South Bay in 1965.

But it wasn't a happy homecoming.

The Daily Breeze's only articles on file, besides an obituary, cover his arrests on charges of forging two narcotic prescriptions while living at the La Pacifica Apartments in north Redondo Beach. He was on his way to a gig at Shelly's Mannhole in Hollywood and had been appearing at several Hermosa Beach clubs. Two weeks later he was arrested at a Culver City pharmacy on the same charge. He was convicted in October 1966.

He was in San Francisco later that year. And this was probably White's last meeting with Baker.

"The last time I saw him he was at the Fairmont Hotel with Don Cunningham," White said. "He was playing a club Sunday afternoon and I walked in and I couldn't believe what he looked like. He looked like a skull. He came over and sat with me during intermission."

About this time his career nearly came to an end. His front teeth were knocked out, almost certain death for a trumpet career.

"He was coming back from a situation in the San Francisco area where he ran into some bad guys," said pianist Frank "Strazz" Strazzeri. "It had to do with money and they ended up knocking his teeth out of his mouth. He started painting houses to make a living.

"He came back here and I started working with him ever since, until he died."

Strazzeri, now 70 and playing three times a week in Toluca Lake's Chez Nous, was an up-and-coming jazz pianist who moved to Los Angeles in 1960. While living in Las Vegas, he met Baker, who came to Strazzeri's door looking for drugs.

Baker was out of commission for a few years because of his teeth. But Strazzeri was there for Baker's comeback concert at the Melody Room, now the Viper Room, in Hollywood. His official comeback album was "She Was Good to Me," released in 1974.

"He would sing mostly at the beginning because his chops weren't good," Strazzeri said. "He had one tooth in his mouth and would play off one tooth and gums."

Baker recorded constantly and spent most of the next two decades in Europe.

Strazzeri was the uncredited music supervisor for "Let's Get Lost," the movie about and starring Baker. It was released the year Baker died. And it portrayed Baker as a trumpet player who was unapologetic about his need for cocaine and heroin.

"He was always into drugs," Strazzeri said. "He never shook it. He never felt nothing wrong about that. People would say, 'Why are doing that? Why don't you stop?' And he would say, 'Because I like it.' "

But Strazzeri also remembers Baker as a great musician.

"He had great ears. He could hear things," Strazzeri said. "He could play something immediately. Others might take awhile to learn a tune. When he was young, before he started on the dope and was with (pianist) Russ Freeman, man . . . but when he was traveling somewhere along the line he started taking dope. I think that ended his trumpet playing days of like Dizzy Gillespie-power-trumpet playing."

Cheeky Gourmet


It's something not seen in Culver City since John Wayne owned the Culver Hotel. A hip, young crowd gathered at a hip, new bar/restaurant called Ford's Filling Station. The small, crowded hang out offered us a table on the patio, but we chose to eat at the bar. Ford's is eponymously named after Harrison Ford's son, the chef and owner. The menu is big on beef, organic and Kobe. Which makes sense since the first Ford's Filling Station opened in Tulsa. My dining companion said he heard the organic beef hamburgers were fantastic. I thought that was what he ordered. I then ordered the flattened chicken.
I asked the bartender, how's the beef!?
Best thing on the menu.
Make it two, then.
But what we ordered wasn't the $14 hamburger but the $24 Kobe beef cheeks, the most expensive item on the menu as well. No turning back now, but I had to know which cheeks. I'm not sure which part of the anatomy would be more palatable.
The beef was like butter, falling away from itself like a soft string post roast a little bigger than a filet mignon.
Try the Kobe beef cheeks. Taste it for yourself and then decide if you'd like to know where it came from, or if you'd like to splurge on one of the best slices of meat you've ever had.

Monday, May 22, 2006

A Platter of Lies


It was something we all wanted to believe. The man had come over and introduced himself as a member of The Platters, the legendary '50s group that gave us "Only You," "The Great Pretender" and "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." He sang and we believed. Believed because it was sad that this man once on top of the world was now singing to a an empty room in a hotel in Culver City. And he had The Jacket. A white suit coat with red letters that read "The Platters."

But it was soothing that a man near death found peace in singing his music for himself, if not for the crowds that were no longer there.

Even after a short conversation where he addmitted playing for the world championship Chicago Bulls, beating Bruce Lee four times and getting hit in the head with shrapnel in Vietnam, my companions still believed he was in The Platters and made the rest up.

Turns out there was a "Duke" in The Platters. But he sang none of the songs you remember.

-- The Platters Information site says "Since the early 1950s, hundreds upon hundreds of men and women have been associated, in some way, in a performing capacity with The Platters. As The Platters lineage continues to expand, tracking the all-time roster of The Platters proves to be a difficult, but a very interesting, task.

It should be noted that as original and other 'legitimate' members (those who replaced earlier members) of The Platters left the core group, many would start their own "Platters" group. As that group added and replaced members, those members suddenly have a tie to The Platters.

This sub-section of The Platters Information Site will attempt to trace the family tree of The Platters, throughout the various incarnations of the group. We hope to have complete details not only including names, but also the particular Platters "group" or "groups" they were with, as well as years of participation."

*****1969 Sonny Turner, John Rodgers, Bruce Caesar, Ron Austin, John Barnes, Duke Richardson, Herb Reed, Sandra Dawn, Ylona Austin, Elizabeth Davis, Sharon Robinson

Monday, May 15, 2006

The Siren Call of the Mermaid


Past the charred remnants of Sharkeez, the billiard tables in Shark’s Cove and the revelers along Pier Ave. in HB is The Mermaid, a swanky dive right on the beach. It’s complete with a piano, horseshoe bar and two surly bartenders, who don’t take credit cards on busy Friday night. And it’s not 2-for-1 drinks either, contrary to some beliefs. Still highly recommended for drinks. There's room at the bar or in the gangster booths. At right is a photo of Ryan Abrahams' Crazy Hat Bar Crawl in HB that included the legendary Mermaid. Hat's off to ya, Ryan.

Some other reviews:
**************
Trip Advisor:

Traveler rating: 1 of 5 stars
Hermosa Beach: Mermaid Restaurant: "The bartender had a problem with my black friends"
Jan 18, 2006: A TripAdvisor Member, Los Angeles

Yes, this place has been around a long time. I dug the atmosphere - until we ordered drinks.

My friend offered his credit card to pay for the round. "I'm sorry, but this is a cash only bar". Okay, he goes off to find an ATM.

Meanwhile, we sat down in a booth behind a bar - and what did we see? A credit card machine. I think, “Interesting, perhaps it doesn't work.” I was wrong. The bartender (older gentleman) came around and proceeded to ring up two orders on credit cards.

So I ask, “Do you accept credit cards here?” He looks around and sees who I am with and replied, "Only when it's not busy".

Right. The place was pretty empty - there were no more than 20 people in the bar.

So no, I do not recommend frequenting this establishment.
*************
Trip Avisor:
Traveler rating: 4 of 5 stars
Hermosa Beach: Mermaid Restaurant: "Historic mainstay of Hermosa"
Jan 21, 2005: A TripAdvisor Member, Hermosa Beach, Ca

The Mermaid is a landmark of Hermosa Beach with a traditional 50's ish menu. Walking through the door tells you they've been there for a long time and have had no reason to change a thing! From the real piano bar, with stools all around to the red vinyl booths, it is just how it must have been when my parents ate there 30 years ago. The menu is basic and cheap with great selections. I usually get the prime rib for around $14. I've had better, but not for $14 or anywhere near. Several other choice items on the menu, lot's of great seafood and a fabulous variety of "comfort food", like meatloaf, turkey dinner, (to die for) as wells as good appetizers and desserts. You can't go wrong with the Mermaid in Hermosa! There is a full bar too.
*************
CitySearch:
It's the "Regal Beagle"
Posted by redmosquito on 06/16/2002

This place has a total "Regal Beagle" (from Three's Compnany) type atmosphere. It's a really fun bar to hang out with friends. You'll mostly find a lot of the locals hanging out there.

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Where was LifeBoy?

Baja Sharkeez Burns In Hermosa Beach
Firefighters From Four Departments Respond

The fire at Baja Sharkeez restaurant was reported at about 4:30 a.m. Firefighters from El Segundo, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach and Torrance responded, according to NBC4's Robert Kovacik. Because of the intensity of the fire, firefighters were forced to work on it from outside the building.

Fire walls between Baja Sharkeez and surrounding restaurants kept the fire contained to just one structure. Most of the roof of Baja Sharkeez collapsed by the time the fire was contained a couple of hours after it started.

Fire officials said the fire may have been smouldering overnight, and arson investigators were at the scene to determine the cause.

No injuries were reported.

-- via NBC4.TV

Monday, May 08, 2006

To Sir, with love:

Derived his stage name from his grandfather's nickname "Clove King". His grandfather was a spice trader in Zanzibar.

Is of half Indian and half English descent. His father, Rahimtulla Harji Bhanji, was a Kenyan-born physician of Indian descent while his mother, Anna Lyna Mary Bhanji, was an English-born fashion model of Jewish-European extraction.

His paternal family was from the Indian state of Gujarat, the same state Mahatma Gandhi was from.