It was cold and damp, and we'd been tramping up and down for the better part of an hour, past houses, little restaurants, shops, and the Scientology Celebrity Center – twice – when we finally asked someone where the Hollywood Hills Café was. It was a mile back where we had come from, hidden in a nondescript Best Western by the freeway. The time was about nine on a March evening, we were idiotically underdressed, and our sole motivation for seeking out the professedly   downscale restaurant was its reputation – given by an article in the Globe and Mail – for being a celebrity hangout. When we finally got there, the only celebrities were in autographed photos on the wall; our closest brush with fame was the impressions left in the naugahyde booths by their vanished posteriors. And a twenty-minute walk back to our hotel awaited us. This was our Los Angeles. And it was good.

 

It was cold and damp, and we'd been tramping up and down for the better part of an hour, past houses, little restaurants, shops, and the Scientology Celebrity Center – twice – when we finally asked someone where the Hollywood Hills Café was. It was a mile back where we had come from, hidden in a nondescript Best Western by the freeway. The time was about nine on a March evening, we were idiotically underdressed, and our sole motivation for seeking out the professedly

 

downscale restaurant was its reputation – given by an article in the Globe and Mail – for being a celebrity hangout. When we finally got there, the only celebrities were in autographed photos on the wall; our closest brush with fame was the impressions left in the naugahyde booths by their vanished posteriors. And a twenty-minute walk back to our hotel awaited us. This was our Los Angeles. And it was good.

 

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