Lola at the Coffee House, Cafe 101

Jan's neat, and I can figure you'd quite like each other, or spit tacks.

I met her on a double date with myself and future husband and she and her actor lover, the cad, who was part of the theater company that sublet from myself and gallery partner back in 1902. (the cad's ok too, long story). I was then in the beginning throes of being a lab tech who took art classes.

She, on the other hand, had a great house with an absent co owner who was a curator, and had, in her dining room, a collection of banana paintings, can't remember if they were by her (what? I said to myself) and a couple of warhols. Don't remember what level of warhols that hers were. She was the first person who gave me any clue at all about contemporary art. But never mind that, her career has been in health care at a high level after a bunch of school, which she was going through when I first knew her. She's thoughtful, cool, hah, so unlike me. Longtime pal.

So, I'd be glad if you met, we just need to catch up first.

Spendy, you've lost none of your tradmark charm.

Funny how nobody ever says things like that about those calling my pub frumpy and provincial.

It's as if some people have already grovelled their defences up first. Bullying by mob. I'm the troll for answering back and your trip has you sold out and betraying English solidarity. Then I mention Isherwood and away they go using the troll's ideas to burnish their image. It's a laugh a minute.

I feel sorry for George. He knows the score but sits on his hands. He's been Gullivered with sweet talk. The leftie's ideal conservative poodle.

Great match last night eh?

I don't know about English solidarity. I'd have to be English first, for a start.

I'm a typical Scot, that is, an international socialist (of the palest pink variety), and of course one who believes "We're a' Jock Tamson's bairns".

No, I think your recent ad-hominems were not a fair riposte to earlier objections. I think you got your retaliation in first, and very rudely too.

Anyway, to change the subject, it's nice to think of the website's two old silverbacks meeting in Albq. I'd like to be a fly on the wall then, if I could hear anything, which I can't.

I didn't see the match last night, but at 4-4 I hope I can see the highlights later.
I feel a bit sorry for Liverpool.

My brother gave me copies of Isherwood's two "Berlin" books some time ago. They were second-hand (he's Scottish too). I didn't know that Isherwood later went to America. Wonderful, the things you learn on A2K.

It was Rustic Canyon -- thanks for jogging my memory. I just remember it looked like a serious fire hazard, perched on a slope off the road surround by trees and brush.

He was a headbanger Mac. You would be best binning them. All his type have no sense of humour. They can't do bloomers and toilet jokes or so my spiritual advisor tells me.

Nor wit like that.

La Valencia redecorated the Sky Room -- at the street level of the hotel looking down onto the cove -- I should have a nickle for every time I've had a bloody mary or Bombay martini at the hotel lobby bar waiting for guests. Best nicoise salad anywhere (with seared rare Ahi), or the Cobb for that matter. We've got a tentative three now? I don't know other members in the area except Robert (Craven) -- I was going to meet him there years ago but had to cancel the art buying trip.

I'd forgotten where you live, CJ. I knew I had an older picture of lunching out on, I think, the old terrace that dissapeared in their major remodel -- I think the swimming pool went also in favor of cottage suites. This is maybe around 1999 on an art selling trip this time and I'm the photographer, so this is a friend of mine in the area:

I remember sipping a drink in that hotel lobby, but I can't remember if I was walking around La Jolla on a visit by myself years after I had lived there.. or what. I had lived in La Jolla in 1964, and don't think it was then. I had a boyfriend who lived in Ocean Beach in the early seventies, so it might have been on a trip to visit him. Funny about memory, I can see the lobby in my mind but not pinpoint the situation. Maybe I was waiting for him for lunch, or, more years later, waiting for the friend Jan.

Oh yeah Lightwizard, I've been sitting there too at the La Valencia balcony.
I prefer the terrace though - less windy there. The skyroom is truly the best,
haven't been there since the remodel though.

Wow!! Veblen would have loved that. Coronation Street posh.

Personally, I find the colour scheme quite tasteless. And no brown sauce bottle is unthinkable in the better circles. Lower-middle-brow at best.

Question-- which is the best sauce.

Answer--the one the human race selected in on Darwinian principles.

Anybody who thinks otherwise is no capitalist.

No, life clearly teaches us that hunger is the best sauce.

I haven't decided whether I liked the old Sky Room or the new -- they still have the patio outside on the street level but it's noisy. I found no pics of the lobby entrance bar -- just remember you had to navigate one or two steps down across from the entrance to the Sky Room. Their lunch prices are still pretty reasonable.

The La Valencia is the closest thing to a seaside European hotel -- the only other one I can think of, or have visited (of course) is the Hotel Laguna:

I vaguely remember liking the Hotel Laguna, must have eaten there in... the sixties. Will go check out more photos.

This is Southern California -- one has to ask for a "brown sauce bottle," unless it's a steak house chain, but I think the chef at the Sky Room would come out and bonk one over the head with it if you asked. I have an idea Pope Spendius XXX would be told where he could put that brown sauce bottle. I don't know how current the photo is, but I remember my initial reaction was that I preferred the old room over the new room, except for the larger picture windows.

Besides, we all know what "sauce" PSXXX is really into.

That's vintage 20's or 30's local art, I imagine -- can't tell by the long shot of the automobiles.

More recent:

That's true. Socrates agreed. But who's hungry in that world George? The problem with having everything is that there's no highs. One gets jaded and novelty of decor starts eating away at the brain cells.

You see!! That's really really lower-middle-brow. It's not as bad as two for the price of one but it's not so far off. The whole spiritual dimension is lost when sordid and filthy lucre appears on the scene.