Month: June 2021

Sunset Marquis
$$$ Hotels
1200 Alta Loma Rd
West Hollywood, CA 90069

Forty years ago – back when it was a divey Sunset Marquis with a dirty astroturf-surrounded pool, people took pictures of their hedonistic rock star friends passed out on their plastic patio furniture.

Sometime in the recent past, the folks who brought you heavily manicured gated apartment complexes purchased this hotel and gave it a kind of Floridian lawn in the jungle kind of vibe. IT IS REALLY FITTING FOR THE AREA! I mean – jesus – even with the lush green and secluded tropical plant-lined paths, you cannot really forget you are in drought-stricken Los Angeles. Look upwards into the sky and you’ll find high-rises under construction voraciously towering the nearby area. Maybe if everything withers away when the water runs out, and the two pools dry out, you’ll find the aura, a semblance, of the cool rock star hotel that the books found in each of the hotel rooms and the art gallery in front is trying to push about this dump.

When I was staying in the hotel with a friend, it was so air-conditioned and the grey cubicle kind of rooms that exude the near colorless gradient of the innards of an empty seashell gave me a kind of sobering headache. My friend kept pushing me to look at the book – look at the book! The heavy table book contained pictures of Joe Strummer, Joan Jett and Bob Marley in the 70s, back when this place seemed to hold a kind of edgy vibrance about it. It’s strange in a way because what’s cool about this place can only be found in ‘the book’ and in their art gallery. Everything else is now clean, hidden, pool and $6 toasted bagels at their breakfast place.

Useful: 10  Funny: 7  Cool: 6

8/26/2015

Turo (Formerly RelayRides)
Car Rental, Car Share Services
Los Angeles, CA 90046

Relay Rides is great if you’re looking for a long-term car rental. But beware! They’re less enthusiastic about short-term car rentals.

I live a half-mile radius (Hollywood/Western) of 15 cars that require at least 5 days for car rentals and there is no way to filter this annoyance out through the app. Basically I live near a couple of douchey people who make a living by offering ‘their’ fleet of Priuses for a minimum of 5 to 7 days. Once again, there is absolutely NO way to filter these asshats out through the search function on the app. So if you want to connect to renters who offer only day rentals, like going to Laguna from Los Angeles for a day excursion, happy weeding.

I emailed RelayRides about it and their customer support person Wendy writes back to me a confusing sentence with grammatical and spelling errors after an automated “Thank you for contacting RelayRides!”:

“many of the vehicles listed the owner’s do not have a minimum time that you would need to rent the vehicle.”

So great, I take the time to write to customer support and they basically dismiss my message in broken English and tell me that no there are many short-term options. Not helpful. I doubt they forwarded this message I sent to management after I asked them to, so I’ll use Yelp and write it in caps lock:

PLEASE CREATE A FILTER FOR FINDING SHORT-TERM RENTALS ON THE APP! There is an option for finding long-term car rentals. Why not short-term car rentals?

Useful: 11  Funny: 5  Cool: 2

6/25/2015

Sweeney Todd’s Barber Shop
$$ Barbers
4639 Hollywood Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90027

I got a haircut here over a year ago. The experience here still sort of pinches my memory.

First, the idea of a half-century old barber shop is so cute. Big old-fashioned chairs and tables and men with conservative short brown haircuts line this store. If men with short brown haircuts are having homosexual sex with each other here, it is behind the backdoor where the door is kept closed and never spoken about or mentioned again. Aw, 1950s.

That’s where it ends. It took me almost an hour to get my haircut. Not because it was particularly busy, but because the guy who chose to do my hair decided to take a long break after seating me in the chair. After telling me to get up on the chair, he went outside to take a call on his cell phone. It took him five minutes to do this. He came back inside and saw that the garbage needed to be taken out, so he did this and was gone again, for almost another ten minutes. Maybe he WAS having homosexual sex. Before he even came back, a guy who was seated in another barber chair after me was already finished with his haircut by another guy who took him and left.

I felt like I was having a sit-in without being black. I was almost about to get up from the chair and leave when he finally came in. Okay, yeah, I should NOT ask for point-cutting or razor cutting in a 1940s/1950s-style barber shop so I didn’t. I described to him what I wanted as if I was role-playing being Jack Kerouac at a barber shop or something. But it felt more lame than cool.

He said, “I’m gonna give you some jags.”

“Jags” seemed to describe exactly what I wanted without saying something gay and modern like point-cutting. He took the scissors, swooped them upwards into my bangs, four or five times. He cut my hair efficiently fast. I was done in no time, certainly in less time than having waited in the big barber chair.

All in all, I’m glad I had the experience of coming here than the experience in itself. I believe the 1950s is best left in the 1950s. It is a very niche barber shop for the conservative-haired man!

Useful: 11  Funny: 8  Cool: 0

4/19/2013

Los Angeles LGBT Center
Community Service/Non-Profit
1625 Schrader Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90028

The LGBT Center is exploding with bureaucracy. They seem to hire people just to further cloud up the gray-areas between departments. If I can give one helpful tip, it is to know your doctor’s email address. It will be the letter of their first name followed by their last name @lalgbtcenter.org. It will save you from A LOT of bureaucratic nonsense from reception.

I once had to get a signature from my doctor who knew I was coming back from the prior day. I went to reception who said it was impossible to get since I didn’t have an appointment and they can’t accept documents or put them into the doctor’s mailbox. But “I can set you up with a social worker next Tuesday.” WTF. I went online to find out what my doctor’s email address was and they got back to me within ten minutes. I had to go around reception and hand it off.

If you don’t email but need to get in contact without an appointment, good luck. You’ve got to deal with a reception staff who will be as helpful as bouncers at a busy Hollywood nightclub. It seems that the LGBT Center management encourages them to practice a kind of TSA-style fascism and treat everyone as if they’re broke junkies who change home addresses by the night and are looking for free drugs from the benevolent LGBT Center. If you can’t wait for a doctor’s appointment in two months, you can get an appointment with a social worker in one week! Yay. The line is slow because they are required to ask for your full address, name, and date of birth every time you see one of them. Every appointment takes a month to few months to get. If you have an appointment that requires a follow-up, you will be asked the same questions before and after that appointment.

Just last week I was here trying to check in at 9am. I had to wait for the receptionist to finish with a patient’s long request to check me in. About ten minutes into it, the transwoman who sits all the way to the left comes in. She stands up from her desk and looks at me, so I walk over.

Transwoman: OH MY GOD I DID NOT CALL YOU. I AM NOT OPEN YET!

(Another five minutes later. Line literally grew from just me to 20 people while she just sat there.)

Dude with a desk: (Opens door and walks out of adjacent office.) Follow me.

Me: Hi, I just want to check in.

Dude with a desk: SIT DOWN. What is your address?

Me: 5217 Hollywood Blvd. I just want to check in.

Dude with a desk: (Ignores request.) What is your last name? Is this your first time here?

My sister worked as a receptionist for a medical center and once told me that reception marks your chart indicating if the patient is a troublemaker. I probably have a ton of marks on my damn chart because I have the misfortune of having trouble on every floor with TSA-like reception and staff. I can’t help it. I mentioned Floor 3’s reception. Ground Level – A pharmacy receptionist, an older hispanic woman, just in this past week rejected my signature because my signature “looks too much like a line” after the credit card machine prompted me if I want any help. No. Just in case if I changed my mind, she yells, “PHARMACIST!” “Hi, do you have any questions?” No. Floor 4 – A year ago, a receptionist flipped out because I knocked on the window after she looked at me waiting to check in, only to physically turn around to finish her conversation about what she was going to have for lunch with her coworker.

My partner’s appointment was cancelled because the LGBT Center had a power failure in their building and he was scheduled for a financial screening. While management sits with their hands on their butt, reception staff have no other protocol than to act as if it was his fault and he cancelled that appointment. Reception told him that his only option was to come in the morning and be on call, otherwise rescheduling will take months.

The departments don’t have access to each others’ files so you have to fill out all your info separately for each department. Rather than centralizing information, like with iPads, everything runs through 1990s Filemaker-like programs. Each department has their own server and only have access to their own set of files. Nobody from any department has any idea what the other department is up to so they yoyo you back to reception. If you need a job, management loves hiring new people to take care of what they don’t know. This place is too big for its own good and it would run way more efficiently with self check-in iPads and a centralized database.

All in all:

1. RECEPTION SUCKS HERE! LGBT Center needs an easier way for people checking in, scheduling appointments and updating personal info. Once again get iPads instead of more staff and create a centralized database. Concentrate on those who need help getting in contact with their doctors instead of interrogating everyone before they check in.
2. Need departments to communicate with each other.
3. Need to take responsibility for canceling appointments.
4. Fucking transparency and less bureaucracy.

Useful: 12  Funny: 4  Cool: 3

4/21/2016

Daily Donuts
$ Donuts
1908 Hillhurst Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90027

For anyone referencing vegan donuts in LA – the donuts here are not vegan and never were vegan!

When I did a search for vegan donuts, this place kept appearing because ‘A T.’ wrote a review in 2011 claiming that the glaze donuts are vegan because they don’t use egg in them. Apparently that is untrue – one of the workers flatly told me this week that the mix they use for all of the donuts is the same and already has egg in them.

I would have loved giving myself an excuse for biking up that hill to get here but they’re not just sugar and oil! I am not sure why s/he didn’t get sick from eating donuts with dairy in them, but don’t use that as a litmus test for judging the ingredients!

The place itself is low-key, kind of attractive yet grimy greasy spoon quality about it.

Read my lips:
No
Vegan
Donuts

Useful: 19 Funny: 2 Cool: 2

8/13/2015