A week or so ago I hit my 20th year as a Los Angeles resident.
Clearly, veiled threats in my early twenties to move back to San Diego were emptier than an unlocked car parked in the Tenderloin.
Twenty years is enough to cause some reflection though, so I couldn't help but think back tonight to the weeks before I made my move up to the corner of National & Sepulveda, two cross streets nestled squarely at the heart of Westwood Adjacent - a bullshit term that I'd later learn, from laughing employees, was actually Palms.
I was wrapping up my final days in SD as a proud associate of Eddie Bauer. I was not terribly excited to be dressed like a middle-aged man at work and showed fairly little enthusiasm for telling guys what color polo shirts go well with khaki ("How about Navy Blue, dummy?"), asking for charitable donations at the register or providing any sort of fashion guidance. I especially didn't like checking the inside of someone's waste band to inform them of what size pant they wore.
In any event, those days were about to be over. RPA had offered me a job as an Account Group Assistant and at 23, I was certain of one thing: I needed to buy a new shirt for Los Angeles.
That's right, a new shirt.
After all, Los Angeles wasn't San Diego. It was a fast-paced city. And a 23 year-old soon-to-be faxing, coffee brewing, stocking the work kitchens and shippin' beta dubs to legal-for-clearance-machine was going to have to look good for after hours. Because ALL UP IN THE CLUB was where I was going to meet L.A. ladies and perhaps a crew of my new friends.
As I finished my Togo's avocado/bacon/turkey sandwich above the UTC skating rink, I did instinctively what I knew I had to do: I walked across the mall to Nordstroms.
Surely, Nordstroms would have the shirt that would blow the roof off of any L.A. bar that I'd step into. Something dangerous, something stylish, something....
Synthetic and stretchy?
Goddamn right.
There is it was. Navy blue. Buttoned. Synthetic. Polo. Stretchy. I think it even shimmered when the light hit it right.
I laid down two week's pay and soon, the bad boy was mine. Together, we'd conquer L.A. armed with a Westwood Adjacent home base and a $20K entry- level salary that my father so eloquently described as"poverty level."
Turns out the old man was right.
I digress.
The shirt and I traveled up the 405. Visions of all night parties raced through my head. "Do I want to dance, Angelina Jolie? Maybe after I finish my drink. Say, how do you like my shirt?".
Bound for glory, I exited from the 405 onto National and hung a left onto Sepulveda.
I unpacked and settled into my new abode.
And do you know what happened next?
I pretty much sat in a shitty apartment without any friends for about a year.
The blinds were kept closed because my neighbor was three feet away and when I wasn't watching a 13 inch television on a wicker coffee table or eating at Baja Fresh on Sundays (special treat!), I was playing the same Pennywise and Social Distortion songs on an acoustic guitar - yet never got better at any of them.
Turned out, I wasn't a club guy. Or a re-born L.A. ladies man. Or terribly good at making friends, quickly.
But, I did have my shirt.
And a great job at RPA working on Honda.
And eventually, I made a friend (Kim Mok!), then a few more friends, and a few more after that....
My brother moved to town.
More friends joined the fold.
And I even met a young lady who turned out to be the best friend of them all.
And so, twenty years later, I guess I just want to say thank you to all the great people I've met here along the way and all the friends in San Diego who never left. To the friends from Flagstaff, that made trips out here and that I still see today. Y’all have made the past 20 truly wonderful.
As for the shirt, I'm not sure where it is. Secretly, I hope someone just moved up here, found it at a thrift shop and is having a beer in it, as pictured above.
$1,000 says Joe Min is passionately dropping a factoid in this picture that has very little practical application for everyday life.