A burger of hope

They say that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. If this is the case then I truly should have fallen in love with Los Angeles. Or at least one part of it - Big Irv’s.

It’s always been the goal of WISM to try the local and celebrate the differences in whatever forms they take, from food and drink to transport and hatwear.

With this in mind we couldn’t wait for the US, and Hollywood in particular. I anticipated pizza parlours and milkshakes, diners with glistening chrome counters and endless coffee refills.

But I didn’t expect Irv’s.

This may only be a burger stand but it is not any old burger stand.

In a world of the bland and the mediocre, the predictable and the corporate, Big Irv’s stands out like a beacon (or burger?) of hope.

We drove (no-one goes anywhere in LA without driving) over to Irv’s the night we arrived, the name almost shouting out at us from the list of bewildering food options our wonderful host, Austin, reeled off to us.

Austin is real food connoisseur, Hollywood-style. He’s put in many dedicated hours researching the various food emporia LA has to offer but somehow Irv’s sounded different. His eyes lit up when he mentioned the name, his lips started to glisten, and somewhere, deep down inside my belly started to rumble.

Before you could say “double cheeseburger, extra pickle” we were in West Hollywood, ‘Boy Town’ as it’s known locally, on account of the large gay population, parking up at the back in a special parking place (highly prized in LA) Austin seems to have negotiated with the owners.

We entered through the small, battered gate at the back and Austin, on first-name terms with the Korean owners, was welcomed like a member of the family. He set to work immediately, firing off suggestions to us from the board above the stand-up counter, whilst the owners effusively greeted their new English guests, fresh off the boat.

It’s an idiosyncratic place, a small, dilapidated joint crammed in amongst the drive-ins, the monstrous superstores and enormous liquor stores.

Mother, father and grandmother scurry about in a tiny kitchen facing onto the street, peering through small serving counters, surrounded by huge menus and photos of burgers, like an gastronomic art gallery.

A few stools line the counter, a few plastic chairs and tables sit under a low-slung roof. That’s it. No bright lights, no plush comfy chairs and definitely no wifi.

As we waited for our food I took in some of the many articles lining the walls, fading newspaper cuttings outlining Irv’s illustrious history.

Jim Morrison has eaten here, Hendrix chowed down, even Janis Joplin. It’s featured on album covers and hosted West Side Stories warring gangs the Jets and the Sharks (during breaks in filming).

And besides those that made it in Hollywood, it’s hosted thousands that are trying to, many of them finding a special place in their heart for this old place.

In an ocean of full of big sharks in the shape of the big chains, Irv’s is like a brave little penguin clinging tenaciously to a flimsy little iceberg, proud of its history and determined to remain.

Irv's is a real piece of Americana, that celebrated in film and fiction, a culture fast being lost to the monotonising march of modernity and the supremacy of the corporates.

It’s stood since 1946, knocking out tasty burgers and fries at affordable prices, scruffy, loveable and personal, one of the few remaining old stand-alone burger joints that used to serve the hard-pressed locals of LA.

As the times changed most of these have been swept up, bulldozed down to make way for another chain store.

Irv’s didn’t escape the developer’s attention and its owner decided to sell up, the site earmarked for a coffee shop chain.

Regulars and locals were horrified and launched a campaign to save it, sending hundreds of letters of protest to the city authorities, signing a petition in their thousands. A 'burger brigade' was formed and rallies held.

The campaign caught attention across the city and the entire country, the walls bearing testament to this with newspaper cuttings from far and wide. Even the Washington Post.

The campaign paid off and, eventually Irv’s was saved. The owners beam proudly when they told me of this success, of a community rallying together and saving a piece of their history, a continuing part of their culture.

It was time to sample this myself and I I buried my British sensibilities and dived on in: cheeseburger, chilli cheese fries (“you just HAVE to try these, maaaan”), drowned in sauce, seething with grease.

All served up on a paper plate illustrated with Mama Hong’s own personal message: “Just for you. Sugar Mommy’s one and only honey”, with a big pink love heart. Lara got one too: another love heart, a thumbs-up and the message: “Just for Miss England. US and England. Welcome to Hollywood!”

Every customer gets one of these, an enormous smile and maybe even a hug. The burgers aren’t bad, either.

Imagine a world without that.

Today a sign stands outside, put up by the city authorities: “Historic Building, 1946”. A burger joint, officially acknowledged and protected.

Only in America.

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The Industry

Los Angeles. The centre of the film and television industry, full of wanabees trying to make it big. Our couch surfing host Austin Blank, aspiring comedian (watch this space), picked us up in his car full of clown shoes, wizard hat and Father Christmas beard (fresh from Burning Man) and whisked us off to his Hollywood pad. Austin lives under the Hollywood sign in Elizabeth Taylor’s old house, the very place where Richard Burton popped the question. A most fortuitous couch surf indeed.

The Blank household is abuzz with Hollywood energy. Five guys, all busying around film studios, helping out enigmatic ‘bosses’, watching movies, partying and sharing the latest Hollywood gossip (would you believe, there is a shortage of fresh pinups). All working in menial to medium jobs in “the Industry” to pay their way and make the contacts they need to thrust their scripts/film/music ideas into the hands of the right person when their big moment arises. And it will. I’m sure at least one of these chaps will make it, and see the dreams of his personal project realised.

For us, it was a perfect insight into Los Angeles, for outside the Industry there is little else there. Aside from the famous streets and locations (Beverly Hills cop station, Rodeo Drive, Sunset Boulevard) LA is remarkably unattractive - one massive sprawl of bungalow. But the Industry is here, so people flock. Neither Austin nor his housemates particularly wants to live in LA, but the work is here and so are they, prepared for the eight year (on average) graft before they get their break.

Between the bungalows there are some exciting places: Irv's burger shack with the best chilli fries in town; Village Pizza with its chrome and neon and giant pizzas; Wang’s sports bar where well-endowed women serve pitchers of beer and bbq chicken wings while the clientele jump, whoop and high-five; and Jumbo’s Clown Bar, where it is hard to decide who the clowns are - the women in their underwear spinning around a pole or the punters throwing dollar bills at them.

We had our own taste of stardom and made our break as the studio audience of the Jimmy Kimmel Show. We were on national television on 10th December. When the camera turns from Adele to Jimmy you will see your World In Slow Motion hosts grinning inanely in the front row. The audience was not disappointing. They whooped, clapped and laughed much more enthusiastically than any British mob, so that the sign to prompt applause was rarely needed.

It seems that everyone in LA is involved in the Industry. Chatting to someone in Wang’s I enquired “So, what do you do?”. “I’m a business consultant,” she replied. I drew breathe in surprise. “For actors,” she continued. There is just no escaping it in LA and even during our short visit we got a taste of the pie. But it didn’t taste good enough to stick around.

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American dreams

“Woo-oooo, there’s trouble in America…”
- Razorlight

I’m very excited - we‘re heading for America! (Hence the all-too-predictable title).

The United States of America provokes in me a reaction like no other country on earth. It’s a mixture of amazement, excitement and envy with distain, disgust and just downright pity.

I last visited this incredible country in 2001, returning to Blighty a jumble of mixed feelings.
I was wowed by its cities (the buzz of New York; the buildings of Chicago; the harbour of San Francisco), enthralled by its natural beauty (the Great Plains of South Dakota, the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, the forests of the Pacific North West).

But while I was impressed at what the States had to offer I was also appalled at what people had to give. It seemed as if the whole country had been sacrificed to the pursuit of making money, that anything and everything was knocked down, the soul sucked out of it and given over to the corporations.

The result was an unthinking standardisation of everything, a mundane uniformity so that life was reduced to the lowest common denominator. Whether Washington or Milwaukee, Denver or Seattle it was likely you’d have a similar experience - the same shops, the same burger, the same same.

How could it be that this huge nation, with so much potential, such ability, so many aspirations - the ‘land of the free’ - had willingly surrendered its soul, all in the pursuit of a quick buck?

Did this help to explain all that made me recoil in America? The dominance of huge ugly shopping malls and junk food outlets, the fat lardy people, the crap public transport and the dominance of the car, the apathy and the helplessness of common folk versus the naked greed of the suits and the cynical venality of the Republican administration.

Perhaps, but it seemed to me a place which was had gone simply too far. It was tragic to witness the gross and obvious extremities screaming out across the land.

Flags festooned every front lawn yet many people I spoke to had little idea about the world outside their own state, let alone country; the rich pratted about in flashy gas guzzlers and barricaded themselves in palatial fortresses whilst the poor pushed all their worldly goods through the streets in shopping trolleys.

I’ll never forget the ghettoes, where you seemed to be left to rot with little help from the state.
America is a paradox. One of the richest countries on earth, where anyone can supposedly ‘make it‘, yet you can also lose it. Like nowhere else in the developed world.

Seven years on, after another seven years of Bush and Cheney, I fear what I might find.
But I also hold out hope. This is America, after all, the country towards whom the rest of the world still often turns.

Will Barrack make it better? I hope so, though I’m not naïve enough to expect it (I recall similar feelings of jubilation and relief back in 1997, with the ascendancy of a certain T. Blair).

But the past can be a deadweight: I’ll leave my memories at the border and enter with a clear mind. The good, the bad and the downright bizarre: bring them all on.

I expect to find them all, cheek-by-jowl in the first of our destinations, Los Angeles.

We’re staying with a chap with a crazy name who lives in Hollywood, describes himself as a comedian and communicates like Bill and Ted - “I’m, like, totally cool with you guys crashing”.
Can’t wait.

Los Angeles is our first starting point - home to Hollywood, Ram It and the worst of American excesses.

As LA marks the start of our trip, I’ve been inspired to follow in the best traditions of this city and set myself some good ol’ ‘attainment goals’ for my time in the USA.

My list so far reads:
Meet someone called Chuck or Randy (particularly if their name also includes the suffix ‘Jr’ )
Eat a Corndog
Visit a High School and look inside the students’ lockers
Go to a live recording of a chat show
Watch an Ice Hockey match
Visit a space centre
Get admired for my accent and asked if I'm from 'Scotsland' / Denmark etc
Persuade someone I am Prince William’s cousin
Collect bizarre questions about my home country, e.g: ’Do you still drive a horse and carriage?’
Hear some Mississippi blues, preferably on a rickety old porch, in the rain
Hear something referred to as ‘aloadabaloney’
Eat pizza in ‘Noo York Cidy’
Buy a ten gallon hat
Meet a stressed-out, coffee-guzzling cop like the fat one off ‘NYPD Blues’
Go to Mardi Gras in New Orleans

High-brow stuff indeed.

And I’m, like, totally looking forward to it.

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