Out-of-towners want L.A. glitz, not local flare

The fun thing about having out-of-town visitors stay with me is
they give me an excuse to go out and enjoy L.A. nightlife. Sure,
lately my life has consisted of lounging around my apartment in
sweats, eating cereal for dinner, and going to bed by 10:30 p.m.,
but I can’t let my guests ““ especially ones from the
East Coast ““ think that’s the best the city has to
offer.

When my sister, who turned 21 last month, came to visit me
recently, I was excited by the prospect of being able to take her
out in Los Angeles. Anyone who’s been following what Jake
Tracer calls my “627 columns straight about alcohol”
knows that the suburb I grew up in, where my sister still lives,
doesn’t have a whole lot to offer when it comes to going
out.

As someone who prefers not to spend a lot of my time at trendy
and pretentious Sunset clubs or super-touristy bars (the neon
lights and out-of-state crowd at City Walk are the equivalent of
the ninth circle of hell to me), I usually take my guests to bars I
think are fun and casual.

Unfortunately, I’ve discovered that what’s
“fun and casual” to me is usually awkward and not so
fun for someone who neither goes to UCLA nor knows anyone
there.

With many of my out-of-town visitors, like my sister, I
typically start off their visit by taking them to that favorite
UCLA bar, Maloney’s. They’re usually horrified by the
dark interior and mass of hammered undergraduate students.
I’m also pretty sure my guests tend to drink more than they
should to have a good time among people who go to a different
school than they do, which usually results in a less than ideal
night out.

When I asked my sister where she wanted to go the next night,
she informed me, “Anywhere but Maloney’s.” And
when Allison, a friend from Northwestern, took her first trip to
California to visit me a few months ago, we were left so
debilitated the next day that we couldn’t do more than sit on
my couch and moan about how we felt as we watched a “The
Girls Next Door” marathon on MTV. So much for being able to
show people the city in the daytime.

For my sister’s second night, I decided to take her to
Q’s, which I assured her was way better than Maloney’s.
When our cab pulled up, I realized that while I’ve gone to
Q’s a lot, I’d never gone on a Saturday night before. I
then learned that you actually had to wait in line halfway down the
block to get in. Q’s is fun, but not that fun.

My sister suggested that if we were going to wait in line, we
should at least go to a club instead of a sports bar on Sunset.
That ultimately would have been the better decision, especially
since we only had an hour left by the time we got inside, I
didn’t recognize anyone there, and people kept asking me with
shocked expressions, “You took her to Q’s for her last
night in Los Angeles?”

When Allison was here I made the similar mistake of taking her
to Temple Bar, another place I like, without actually checking the
schedule to see what the entertainment was for the evening. When I
had gone there in the past, there had been a DJ playing hip-hop
music and a salsa band, both of which I enjoyed. I banked on the
bar to have a similar type of DJ or band, but after we each paid
our $12 cover, we walked in to see the nerdiest band I’ve
ever seen in my life on stage ““ half of them were wearing
glasses and looked like they came straight from chem lab ““
and the crowd was full of their fellow classmates and friends
““ from USC. The band was OK, but it wasn’t exactly the
night of dancing my friend was hoping for.

When people come to Los Angeles, they expect to experience some
of the glitz and glamour that gives the city its name. Plus, local
bars are really only fun when you’re a local. So the next
time you host an out-of-town guest, it’s worth heading out to
the Sunset Strip, as pretentious and inconvenient as you may know
it is. And if they hate it, well, lucky you; you can bring them to
Maloney’s the next night.

While Rodgers thinks going out on Sunset is fun once in a
while, City Walk is never OK, even with guests from the East Coast.
E-mail her at [email protected].