L.A. Woman

She was a rockin' little lady/in the City of Light…”

Jim won't be there but Ray and Robbie will be. Manzarek and Krieger, of the Doors. Jim won't be and neither will drummer John Densmore.

I sided with John Densmore — his lawsuit against Ray and Robbie: no, you cannot use the name Doors, not without Jim's permission. We agreed. John Densmore wouldn't let them and they finally had to give in on appeal to the tune of, well, we will leave that to them.

To the tune of “LA Woman” on the dash CD, I'm heading south from Sacramento to finally bend, to finally see Ray and Robbie. To hear them live. I never have. It's the 40th anniversary of LA woman. One of America's classics, and not just in rock 'n roll.

Got to go. Who knows? Pacific amphitheater, Costa Mesa, California.

Having never seen them, even having grown up with them, but one night on VH1 without Jim I finally heard them, John Densmore still on drums. Holy fuckin' shit! I had no fuckin' idea how great they were. I've written at length. To sum up here, I made it out to the Badlands of Dakota to listen, to make sure. I recently met John Densmore in LA after his world jazz group performed in a small club on Sunset.

Down there to LA is 99 South again. And not during LA's Carmageddon (which of course never happened, like Y2K).

“Driving down your freeways/midnight alleys roam…”

It's August, everything sunburned to a brown crisp. At least there can be everything on 99. I-5 South is Lawrence of Dullrabia.

Expecting to stop in Keene. Cesar Chavez is buried there. And agriculture is to the Central Valley as theatre is to Manhattan. A rather scathing article about Chavez by a Catalin Flanagan in the Atlantic, a first, got my attention. For some reason now I need to stop.

“Cops in cars/the topless bars…”

99 South is local bars, used cars, take out and local clubs, cows, railyards, funeral homes, vegetables, crop dusters, dust, trestles, silos, water towers. If 99 was 66. If six was nine — as Jimi Hendrix said.

“I see your hair is burning/hills are filled with fire/if they say I never loved you/you know they are a liar…”

Can't say America loves 99 the way it does 66, but the north-south fix of six hours works some magic.

A few hours in, coming up on Livingston, California. Headquarters of Foster's Farms chicken. Hot and dry, time for breakfast. A close friend from Livingston, her family, but just now just the off-ramp to a sparkling clean McDonald's. Sausage and egg biscuit breakfast. Hustle down the road breakfast, reserved just for the hustling. And what, Salinas and Steinbeck, do you know, an art gallery to the athletic Wolves of Livingston High School, hung on the walls of the McDonald's like family portraits, young and immaculate, ladies and gentlemen, golf, baseball and cheering, football, etc.

It's all very touching, touching me where it counts, in small town America amounts, Salinas and Steinbeck.

99 South amounts to patience and sports talk radio and Rush Limbaugh — Comedy Central.

South past Wasco where once again, once every trip, Route 46 takes James Dean to legendary death. Like magic.

Three hours in and about three hours left.

Stopping for road lunch (did you know that it's legal to eat roadkill in West Virginia?) At the base of the “Grapevine” at a gourmet Jack in the Box. I forgot Cesar Chavez. Must have been Rush Limbaugh.

Ultimate cheeseburgers and flotilla coke. Just on the road, mind you. “Not that there's anything wrong with that.”

El Tejon Pass,where you can look back on the green brown desert, orange air pollution and the dust of long-haul bedouins on I-5.

These hills are alive with the 40th reunion of Buffalo Springfield. They're wonderful, Stephen and Richie and Neil, even though they sound a bit 45 rpm when it should be 78.

Burnt brown all around. We cut through the hills and mountains, no problem. Nothing can stand its ground against us.

The spines of towers and roller coasters like stranded bones of dinosaurs. Six Flags over California. Why, when there is a beach at Santa Monica?

405 South to Santa Monica is fine, always partially bumper-to-bumper, with no remnants of carmageddon.

Turning off above the Getty Center for the Skirball Museum. A Wal-Mart daughter, worth about $29 billion, is building a new Museum of American Art, the Bridges Museum, in Bentonville, Arkansas, home of Wal-Mart and Senator Thomas Hart Benton of a past America that the New Yorker says takes something from the Skirball.

The Skirball is too much concrete in a dappled setting. That said, in and out of the parking lot and onto Santa Monica.

Santa Monica Blvd leads to the ocean, all the way from the beaches of Long Island, my homestead.

I've actually found a parking meter to feed for two hours.

It's a summer Thursday so the beach is populated but not crowded, the world's least expensive shrink.

Sounds from the jaunty peer, lifeguard whistles, and the cold surf, the couch in the shrink's.

Riding the waves, hot, dusty inland doesn't seem possible, stretched out in the Brian Wilson sun, even a slight tan for this Celtic visitor seems possible.

Just a day at the beach before the remnant of The Doors tomorrow. My usual motel in the Fairfax district, Jewish being the vibe like life around New York City's now former Ratner's?

Canter's Jewish Deli here still very much in business, chicken soup for the soul, corned beef, pastrami on rye, mustard splattered. I'm from Long Island so I'm technically Jewish. You know what Lenny Bruce says: “If you're from the five boroughs and you are not Jewish, you are. But if you are from Utica and you are Jewish, you're not.”

Ahh, contented. Now to ruin the evening. Cowboys and Aliens, but at the Arclight on Hollywood and Vine. Fifteen bucks with validated parking. A Disney ride for the 10 minutes the movie was worth it. Then all garbage. Keep 'em coming, I guess. Pay for the independent banquet.

Sleep, sunburn and sand and surf, Kramer's fragrance taking over.

The sun never sets in California. In the morning a short jaunt down 405 somewhat almost near the coast, past Anaheim, after Howard Hughes and so forth, Jennifer Aniston, almost totally naked, on a giant billboard for $10 water. Somebody help me! With the recent sale of her $45 million homestead.

Glimpses of the Ocean, about 90 degrees in the later morning.

South to 55 South to Costa Mesa/Newport, California.

Can't check in at the Motel 6 — $100 until 2pm. So let's see, the beach at Newport Beach, California. Sunburn browning in so, of course, let's go down through the stores and shops, sort of a surfing Cape Cod, California.

Hoping for a ham and egger near the beach and sure enough (I can't remember the name) tables with omelettes and scrambled outside along the sidewalk, sort of Carmely nearby, but the breakfast and a sensuous servers were, “dude, awesome.”

It's real quiet compared to Santa Monica, smaller, with a short pier, just as cold in the surf, the waves far out, got to swim out to reach them.

Nothing to do but soak up the environment. Palos Verdes cliffs, I guess, down the sand like bookends to a SoCal journal.

Sun and soak, my freckles like a freckle army — armada.

What to do for a few hours? I've got it. Why not try the US Open surfing championship in Huntington Beach, California?

Correctamundo. Wrongamundo, taking the PCH (Pacific Coast Highway for those of you who don't watch Two and a Half Men). Bumper to Mercedes, to Land Rover, to VW van in a crawl, the wide open expanse of Huntington's beaches, preserved wetland marshes, red lights and honking horns, asking two young girls crawling along beside me if I'm headed to the US Open surfing championship. Without looking up from their texting, they answer in the affirmative. “Main Street,” they tell me.

Slowly, slowly, always surf alongside, when slowly but surely the light beer banners, bleachers and murals of the pro-surfers appear. There's no way I'm going in. Traffic, crowds, traffic, as the beach bathing beauties start to appear in the dozens, the hundreds, and at the Main Street crossing in the thousands.

I can't breathe. I can't breathe. The sun tan beauty so overwhelming, high schools and colleges are emptied. Bless the two-piece anatomy.

I have never seen a rodeo of such luscious, gorgeous, so out of reach proportions. I can't stop. I can't get out. I have to roll along slowly and absorb it. You can't imagine. It's like Gidget on Steroids. Girls Gone Wild with some of their clothes on. I am forever overwhelmed by such a gathering of so much beauty in one location. Woodstock of the Surf, I guess. But really there is nothing to compare it to.

Finally an illegal U-turn with about 12 other cars, traffic at ease on the other side heading back to Newport Beach and Costa Mesa.

Running the gauntlet of statutory hands-off-ness, but good God almighty girls. This is America in recession? Not too shabby.

Okay, I've made it back to find the fairgrounds, the Pacific amphitheater for the remains of the band originally from Venice Beach, California.

Got some time for a little Costa Mesa Public Library, checking a roadmap. I'm thinking about doing Death Valley on the way back from San Diego.

Back at the 6, nappy time, with some home-grown that made even Cowboys and Aliens.

Ferris wheel permanent fairgrounds, vast parking. Now remember where you parked with a toke of the homey bowl full.

Folks strolling up, Jim's famous face in evidence on t-shirts, handbags and other vestments.

I'm in for $45. Nothing special, a sloping outdoor theater with a lawn up above, stage below, ageless rock 'n roll.

I'm ready to not care at all. Just give me Ray and Robbie solos.

Crowd flies in, young and mostly older, young Chicano/Latinos in the seats in front of me.

Some local legend DJ, skinny, black jacket, leather, thinning orange-tinged hair thrown over his head in Tom Wolfe's “George McGovern alpine rope throw.” Who cares?

On with the show! Uh-oh! A Christ image appears on a back screen. I'm ready to leave. The image remains as the band comes on stage in the concert darkness.

It begins with Ray Manzarek asking Orange County, “Are you ready to rock 'n roll?” I'm ready to leave. “Republican base camp, are you ready to rock 'n roll?”

I think they start in with “Back Door Man,” the singer, John Brock? Doing a real good not-Jim, almost looking the part, hair and dark clothes, no leather pants, moving in a Mo Jo.

That Christ image finally disappears. Everyone stands up. Not me. So I'm peeking in between bodies to get my first, yes, live look at Robby Krieger.

He's effortless on guitar, the sounds of The Doors from days gone by. With his gray hair and skinny little body he looks a bit like John McEnroe. Doesn't Johnny Mac wish?

I'd stand up if Jim was here.

Ray's got the glasses. He is again yelling, “Orange County are you ready?” Agent Orange County maybe. I'm ready to leave again but the songs from the great LA Woman begin.

They do “Hyasenth House” from LA woman. It's so rare a song Jim's almost not missing.

And on it goes, in and out of LA and the songbook, the original group so American, so us, so able to go off where they wanted to, needed to, all this so what, with moments to cherish, almost.

Almost worth it as the encore, of course, is Ray and Robbie and their solos on “Light My Fire.”

So I can close the book and introduce my one-man show: Jim — get him out of Paris and bring him on home.

Home to the 6, after not being able to find my car until I realized it wasn't where I was searching. “Before you slipped into unconsciousness.”

It's sunny and 80 degrees again in the morning and now a stretch on old US 1, Dana Point and Doheny, the Coastliner train swooshing by, the Pacific stretching out to China.

Stopping at Mission San Juan Capistrano, just to circle the swallows, the miniature downtown around the Spanish and brick and adobe like a stagecoach stop from One-Eyed Jacks.

Back on I-5 to zoom into San Diego, Pendleton, Oceanside, Torrey Pines, La Jolla, brown hills awaiting vacaros, compact skyline, old town San Diego, the ocean, the ocean, Myrtle Avenue stop.

Big brunch at the Big Kitchen, one of the great ham and eggers, well worn in, earthy and authentic.

Cocktails on Nancy's back porch, San Diego in silence.

Brew pub in an old Wonder Bread brick downtown building near the baseball stadium, San Diego, the patron saint of cities beside an ocean.

Big burgers at Ho-Dad's inland from their ocean beach location, comrades, former New Yorkers, wisecracks and laughter in extra large proportions.

Sleep like an air mattress afloat on the calm sea.

Breakfast in a local, again, well used, simple yet stylish, out at a sidewalk table, the San Diego so few will ever visit.

On to the Mission Beach Boardwalk without any boards, cement, roller coaster, corn dog on a stick, sun, surf, sand — but we wanted that wooden walk.

And the highlights of a Sunday in Balboa Park, Spanish art, Dali to El Greco, and the overwhelming surprise of Spaniard Sorello. Who the hell was he, letting in all that light? So unlike his famous predecessors.

Up and around the golf course and it's well rubbed in clubhouse and restaurant with the course and the park and the city beyond basked in its one and only glow.

Then in the evening a crab shack bar against the beach, Ocean Beach, California, cold beer and dep fried shrimp in a seaside town that is “Hair,” still, if you could afford a production of such on your own.

All in all, just might be paradise on earth but surely not the long haul home, minus Death Valley but a 99 north of sorts.