Hollywood Cake

AT THE Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard, you can order the "Hollywood Cake".  The cake, as presented above, is chocolate and comes with lines of powdered sugar, arranged to resemble lines of cocaine.  The cake is placed on a circular mirror and accompanied by a candied, edible dollar bill. What is trying to be said with this cake? It is simultaneously a celebration of and a playfully mocking critique on a favorite, deadly Hollywood habit.  It comments lightly on the subject of this drug as if it is something humorous, completely overlooking it's life-ruining qualities.  Ultimately, shockingly, the Hollywood Cake ACCEPTS cocaine, admits somewhat proudly to the Ziploc bags and tiny vials of powder hidden in wallets and pockets all around the room.  Think of the gradual melting of the frontal lobe, think of the cardiac arrest, the emaciated frames and corroded noses, the thin streams of blood that drip, the pale eyes that roll back... none of that is acknowledged in the Hollywood Cake.

 As everybody gathers around the cake, prodding hesitantly with forks, nobody is thinking about John Belushi who died of a drug overdose in one of the rooms upstairs, nobody is thinking about Lindsay Lohan who lives here now, scolded again and again for her use of this very drug.  Is it okay to celebrate Cocaine but not okay to snort it? What then are we celebrating? The high? The escape? Escape is the mantra of Los Angeles, the city whose name even nods at imaginary, idealized creatures.  What, here, are we trying to hard to escape from? Why is escape so valued in LA that it gets its own cake despite dark, destructive associations? The powdered lines become an escalator away from the mundane, away from the pain of being average.

Los Angeles feeds us a lie, an illusion that something heavenly, something divine lies just on the other side of the wall. That lie is sweet and seductive, that lie is toxic, that lie is Hollywood Cake.

In the bathroom, powder residue lingers on the sink. This is real: Cocaine isn't a dream or a nightmare, it is a reality that goes on enhancing brief, flickering moments while destroying lives. Cocaine is still a tool for the unhappy, condemning spirits to emptiness, sealing despair with despair.

As we can see by this cake, cocaine in Hollywood is looked upon with ease and humor, as if it were pixie dust, something airy and light we inhale simply to feel better.

-- Zahra Lipson

Photo: Zahra Lipson

Iconic LA: Chateau Marmont

THE WORDS "Chateau Marmont" are synonymous with old glamour and luxury. The name alone conjures up pictures of stony castle walls and a high, imposing tower rising above Sunset Boulevard, appearing as a beacon to celebrities. The words, written on a lightly faded brown sign in lightly faded white letters, rise above the foliage that surrounds the hotel and glow softly in the nighttime. This stands in stark contrast to the other sign nearby - the one that glows brightly and draws people in with the promise of one thing: Liquor. Though the hotel is modeled after a royal residence in France, the scenery surrounding it couldn’t be any further from that depiction. Across the street, a strip mall complete with a McDonald’s shines in the darkness. Head lights and tail lights rush past. Everyone has somewhere to be.

Go there and the probability of running into a celebrity is high. The probability of getting in to the restaurant, as I understand, is substantially lower unless a reservation has been made far in advance, or you enjoy a certain “status.” It is a miniature castle peering out over the palm trees and billboards. The hotel is surrounded by bushy vibrant shrubbery which partly obscure it and add a barrier to keep out the rest of the boulevard.

At night the driveway to valet for the bar is usually softly lit, but drive by after a big event and it will be punctuated by the flashing bulbs of the paparazzi clamoring to take the best picture of the most important celebrities in attendance.

Chateau Marmont is a promise of old glamour, different from the promises of newer, modern hotels like The Standard which feature sleek lines and colorful lights. The stony hallways of the Chateau are filled with stories; legends of celebrities who have lived there, who have died there, and who have partied there.

Every time I drive by, I want to go in. Every time, there is an excuse. What if it doesn’t live up to my expectations? Worse, what if it does and I only get a moment there? I am not going to be a regular there, but there is that clinging hope that that’s only temporary. That one day, at some point, I will be a part of the mystery. Not just an outsider trying to look in.

The Chateau remains elevated and imposing, enveloped in its own mythic splendor, and this is the very reason it stands out from the rest of the street. Even the nature is excessive. Where else on a busy Los Angeles street could so much foliage be found? The Chateau has managed to create its own little world; an escape protected by castle walls and hazy glamour.

--Allie Flinn
photo credit: Keturah Stickann via flickr creative commons

Iconic L.A.: "The Chateau"

 

THE SUNSET STRIP is an open wound, twinkling bacteria and brilliant billboards in shades of lime and tangerine and cherry litter the sidewalk. 

 The yellow train-car, rusted and repainted, a piece broken off from the forties, has been converted into a very narrow diner and complains lazily that LA has been written about and re-written about; seems to complain that everything in LA has been done. 

Beyond the train-diner are tufts of slender trees that play with the light and rise up into a microcosm of forest and a brief suggestion of wilderness.  Through the trees, a series of pale stone towers emerge, pointed and withered and majestic.  White cloth blows gently in the wind, stripped with tenuous gold. 


The grey shackled roof flickers light and dark swallowing up slits in increments, rows and rows of windows, no two the same size.  One tall, slender shrub juts up the front of the building, trying, unsuccessfully to penetrate.  Where the smooth, cream façade bends into an L, a light spray of bare, bony branches erupt over the outer wall.  They seem to shiver.  Palm trees and telephone wires collide amicably, making room for each other; they share rust, becoming one.  I am potently aware of my exclusion from their tight bond.

Directly in front of hotel stands a larger-than-life bottle-shaped advertisement for Absoulut Vodka, that can be recognized even from behind, a network of iron rails, also bottle-shaped.  Everything glows and blurs together as if I’ve consumed the entire bottle.

The Chateau Marmot on Sunset is a real place.  At sunset, when you have only heard the name in movies and internal monologue fantasy sequences, it doesn’t appear to be so.  It is more like a palace of mesh and lace, a mirage rising up from the burnt nothingness of Los Angeles terrain.  An apparition, most definitely, it has to be.  But it isn’t.  It is a real place (whatever that means), and real people eat and drink and smoke there.  Some of those people are even regulars.  But tonight may be my only night at the Chateau: the vodka mojitos we order are eighteen dollars each.  And it is things like this that expose it as a real place: the glossy red, white and black woven chairs, the charmingly uneven marble mosaic walls and tables, the touches of gleaming brass on knobs and handles, the cold and cruel smell of various liquors, mixing and chilling in the air like gaseous metal.  It is a real place that wants to be a fantastic mirage, most likely for business purposes, or something bigger, like our fear of being average pushes us to strive for the whimsical.  I am calmed, then excited, by the dream that I could vanish here behind these fantastic, phantasmagoric walls, never to face the outside world again.

The Chateau Marmot is built on an incline, into the base of the Hollywood hills.  It is modeled after a French-Normandy villa, intentionally crumbled and covered entirely in ivy, made to look delicate as table doilies.  Everything is tinged with nostalgia for the 1920s with classic art deco designs woven into the makeup of the building.  The elevator we ride up to the exposed courtyard is plated in gold leaf with intentionally scuffed up patches that give the narrow box a soft, cinematic glow.

-- Zahra Lipson

(image: robertjasoncross via flickr creative commons)