Miller Time

UNITED STATES—Well, I had an English student named Berta in a class I was substituting. She had a motto that she got from her grandfather: Live and learn. Well Berta was talking about how she already had her five minutes of fame. Somebody with a camera had followed her around for a month in her job and life and made...

HOLLYWOOD—On a Friday in the spring 2016, after being away for several days, I encountered a group gathered around the bar, glummer than usual. “Did you hear the news?” motorcycle John asked. And I knew. I’d been laying odds for a long time. Would the couple who’d bought the cafe five years earlier stick to their plan of going...

UNITED STATES—The baristas gave their all and infused the place with their own personalities, actresses, dancers, mystics, animal trainers and even a 15-year-old from the hood, who later came back after college for another stint. Yevgen was the first manager, 18 years old, and future trader in classic sports cars. One of the baristas, Amy, besides being a dancer...

UNITED STATES—Part of the mystique of Cafe Om was for people to gather at this hole in the wall and know people by face and remain ignorant of their resume. Which goes contrary to what is usually so up front here when it comes to small talk: what project are you doing? What is your goal? There’s something nice about...

UNITED STATES—The cafe next to the laundromat celebrated the first year of new ownership last month on Fountain Avenue, triggering a festival of remembrance. I heartily took part, since I am reputed to be a person who goes back to the beginning, before the beginning. I have been there for a lot of it. Often when asked for my business...

UNITED STATES—"First he said he was going to the library and now he's not answering my texts," says Sasha. The edge in her voice conveys a perfect trifecta of horrors, drugs, sex, lies. The ex-husband is worried about their son, very worried. "He sounded so sleepy over the phone," Jared exclaims. "I could have sworn he was here in bed...

UNITED STATES—Raising a child between two addresses, located halfway across town, is no bed of roses. Jared Hill knows. He takes his son Kyle to school bright and early on Monday for that stinking 7 a.m. AP class. What! Are the people running the school sick? This self-evident reaction is concealed for Kyle’s sake: rebelling against school policy would...

UNITED STATES—The end of April, the city was in flames. Incredibly my new city, a week before had suffered an eight-mile explosion when a sewer full of gasoline exploded and left a permanent scar in Guadalajara, April 22. Then Los Angeles was in flames. A lot of people had seen it coming. "The Day of the Locust," Nathaniel West had...

UNITED STATES—February 10, 1992, I said goodbye to Los Angeles. “The Strawberry Butterfly,” the screenplay that had grown from the chrysalis of “The Persecuted,” had not sold, but I had faith in it and Everett Lewis’ belief in it. Three years had come full circle. It was surely time for me to move on, and just as surely, when...

UNITED STATES—It was a Monday of the New Year, the same foggy day that the sheriffs and also Jim Wylie’s muscle came (in case of trouble) to evict the diminutive postal carrier at Manhattan Place who had fallen under the spell of crack. Having the muscle there was overkill. The man, his eyes now dulled, still not without a...