#2 Amoeba Music

#30 Hollywood Walk of Fame
#29 Yamashiro
#28 Hollywood Billiards
#27 Genghis Cohen
#26 Piano Bar
#25 Shmutzville
# 24 Loteria
# 23 The Griddle
# 22 Proximity
# 21 Hollywood Freeway
#20 Kitchen 24
# 19 The People
# 18 Sushi Eyaki
#17 Raymond Chandler
# 16 Jumbo's Clown Room
#15 Skooby's
#14 The Arclight
# 13 The Well
#12 Runyon Canyon
# 11 Canter's
#10 Hotel Café
#9 Body Factory
#8 The Troubadour
#7 Barney's Beanery (The Real One)
#6 Thai Food
#5 The Jukebox at Café 101
#4 The Lights
#3 Village Pizzeria

#2 Amoeba Music

I am a cynical person. (really???) I tend to distrust authority and tradition unconditionally, and I rarely see the best in things or people until they give me good reason to do so. Contrary to what Conan O'Brien said in his final Tonight Show Speech, I think this is a good thing. If we all blindly trusted authority and went along believing that everyone was true and honest in their words, we would still be living in an anti-science slave economy. We need to question things.

What does this have to do with a records store? Well, if there is one place on Earth I feel that all facets of this country come together and do good together, it's Amoeba. I know this sounds silly, but on the corner of Sunset and Cahuenga, art, business, life, vitality, and love all come together under one giant roof, creating my favorite indoor place in the country. Amoeba is heaven.

Amoeba is the size of three football fields. It is laid out with used cds on the west side, new on the east. Vinyl is in the front, jazz and blues the back, and the DVDs are upstairs. From a music fan's perspective, it is the best place I can think about shopping for music. There are other great stores in this great city—Fingerprints in Long Beach comes to mind—but when I'm looging for something, I know Amoeba has it. And for eight bucks.

But it's not merely the insane selection and prices that I love about Amoeba, it's everything else. The staff is insane. Case in point: about a year ago, I go in there looging for the solo work of Tim O'Reagan, the drummer for the Jayhawks. Unable to find it in either J or O, I ask a staffer behind the info desk. "Bargain CDs under O, should be 3rd aisle on your right." WHAT??? Seriously? I don't know if he's a fan or not, but not only did he know who I was talking about, but that it was in stock and where? Are you nuts?

Or the "Music we Like" catalog that comes out every now and again. In it, staffers from all three Amoeba's (older smaller stores are in San Francisco and Berkeley) offer suggestions around things they dig. So if you find a staffer whose tastes fit yours, you can find new music in brand new ways. And because Amoeba is the greatest place on Earth, there is no better source to acquire new music than from the people inside.

Everything about Amoeba is my favorite thing the world. The free live shows that are there like every night, the music they play while you shop, the layout, the prices, the cheap-ass box sets, the crazy selection of amazing DVDs, the people inside, the FREE FUCKING PARKING, the hours (record stores open til 11 are awesome), the back room, the fact that I once found "Cleveland Browns Greatest Games" there, and then months later found "History of the Cleveland Browns," the walk from my house, the yellow paper bags they give you, the branding, and everything they represent about how great this country can be.

Most stores become terrible in a directly proportional arc with how big they get. Things become homogenized, prices soar, branding becomes intolerable, and the staff becomes robots—Amoeba is the exact opposite. It needs to be big to be great, and it thrives. Prices remain, not only fair, but also the best; the staff is always cool, nothing is homogenized, and they seriously, and genuinely love music. Call me a fucking sheep, but I trust them so much as to say, their mission is not about cutting profits (which I'm sure they do at a remarkable pace) but about loving music. I really believe that.

I have spent close to two grand there in the last two years. As soon as the move and my trips are behind me and I have money again, I will continue to spend it there. I love Amoeba, and despite it being a few red-line stops away, I will be dying that I can't walk there. Amoeba is the greatest thing about LA.

#3 Village Pizzeria

#30 Hollywood Walk of Fame
#29 Yamashiro
#28 Hollywood Billiards
#27 Genghis Cohen
#26 Piano Bar
#25 Shmutzville
# 24 Loteria
# 23 The Griddle
# 22 Proximity
# 21 Hollywood Freeway
#20 Kitchen 24
# 19 The People
# 18 Sushi Eyaki
#17 Raymond Chandler
# 16 Jumbo's Clown Room
#15 Skooby's
#14 The Arclight
# 13 The Well
#12 Runyon Canyon
# 11 Canter's
#10 Hotel Café
#9 Body Factory
#8 The Troubadour
#7 Barney's Beanery (The Real One)
#6 Thai Food
#5 The Jukebox at Café 101
#4 The Lights

#3 Village Pizzeria

"There's no good pizza in LA." Seriously, everyone that lives here will say this. In case you were wondering, there's also no good Chinese food. I have a hard time believing this. I have a hard time believing that with all of the people here, we cannot get pizza as good as New York. Traditionally the response is that the water in New York is so much more accommodating to pizza than the water in LA. Excuse me if I have a hard time believing that. It seems like this is one of those things like "Macs don't get viruses and PCs do" that one person said and then everyone started believing. (I had PCs for 15 years and never had a virus, my mac has worked on and off for three years with the consistency of an epileptic drunk) Water DOES play a role in the texture of the dough. In the beer world, water plays a role in the texture of the beer as well. Beer and dough have several similar qualities, and like every ingredient that goes into making a beer or a pizza, difference in water plays a role. However, despite Germany and California having very different water, they both manage to make very good beer. Somehow, despite differences in the texture of the water—I assume much more drastic than that between New York and LA—both regions make great—albeit different—beer

So I cannot buy the water is different hence good pizza is an absolute impossibility card. I just can't. I think a lot of it has to do with the main goals of restaurants in both cities. By-the-slice places in New York are fucking amazing, but they also have four billion people walking by every day. LA by-the-slice places have 1/50th what New York has, so the best pizza chefs see no reason to put money into a corner pizza place when they could make fifty times more money harnessing their skills in a nicer environment. New York will always have better street food, and it doesn't end with pizza. Why are New York's falafel, hot dogs, and pretzels better than LA's? It's NOT the water.

Which leads me to Village Pizza. The original Village is on Larchmont, and I personally think it's better. No, I don't think it's a different recipe, I just think more time and care goes into things over there. The second Village is on Yucca right by our place. It is the best New York style pizza in LA. It is. No, it is not as good as the places on every single NYC street, not even close, but it has nothing to do with the water. As far as LA greasy pizza goes, I'm yet to find a subtitute.

Despite the fact that I swear the other location makes better pie, we have spent a shit ton of money at the closer one. We get delivery almost once a week, and until I started working the twelve-hour shift on Fridays, I ate lunch there every week. I adore pizza. I live for it. My next tattoo is a pizza. And Village has been my pizza place for two solid years.

I'm hoping that downtown offers some sort of pizza solace. Yelp! lists 176 places with pizza within walking distance, and I will attempt to plow through all of them. But I just have a hard time believing that one will somehow eclipse Village. Despite not having New York's water system, they manage to make a damn fine pizza, and I will miss it.

#4 The Lights

#30 Hollywood Walk of Fame
#29 Yamashiro
#28 Hollywood Billiards
#27 Genghis Cohen
#26 Piano Bar
#25 Shmutzville
# 24 Loteria
# 23 The Griddle
# 22 Proximity
# 21 Hollywood Freeway
#20 Kitchen 24
# 19 The People
# 18 Sushi Eyaki
#17 Raymond Chandler
# 16 Jumbo's Clown Room
#15 Skooby's
#14 The Arclight
# 13 The Well
#12 Runyon Canyon
# 11 Canter's
#10 Hotel Café
#9 Body Factory
#8 The Troubadour
#7 Barney's Beanery (The Real One)
#6 Thai Food
#5 The Jukebox at Café 101

#4 The Lights

I've never really lived in a city. I've always wanted to, but since I graduated college I've lived in an isolated little town in Western Washington, I've lived in a suburb of Cleveland, I've lived in Long Beach—which is the closest to big city I've been in—and I've been in Silver Lake. The Silver Lake place is interesting because from our front porch, over some trees and up a hill, you could see a flickering of life. Nightly, as the sun went down, the western sky would start to light up about five miles away. It was like Oz. Whatever was going on down that road looked important.

We had no clue that our next apartment would not just be closer to those lights, but actually a part of those lights. Our apartment is in the center of life in Hollywood—a pain in the ass for sure, but life was bursting all around us. Coming into Hollywood on the 101, you feel as though you are showing up at Disneyland.

That's really how I'll remember Hollywood. Coming north on the 101;, the Capitol Building, the city lit up like Times Square, it just felt like you were entering something important. And coming in the other way, from the Valley, when you round that corner and pass the "Hollywood – Next 8 exits" sign mentioned earlier, it really is a special experience. There is the Capitol Building, and all the other 1940s era "highrises" lit up and flaunting their oversized billboards to oncoming traffic. There are huge swaying spotlights spinning from the El Capitan that can be seen for miles, there's the Patron billboard on top of a building that flashes and turns from one message to another, it's fucking breathtaking.

And off the freeway, the lights don't stop. Driving down the strip you are inundated with giant billboards lit up as though they were LCD televisions. Giant advertisements draping the bigger buildings reminding you to watch the new season of True Blood, the upcoming Academy Awards, or anything that might be new. It's both dangerous and moderately offensive in spirit, but in essence, it's a one-of-kind sight that reminds every commuter that they're not back home. There's something special about it, I insist.

And there are other lights that dominate Hollywood. From almost anywhere below Sunset, the natural compass of the Hollywood Hills directs you north. And those hills are lit up like a starry sky. Million-dollar homes dot the hills like a movie set model. From Melrose, and from Beverly, and Wilshire and 3rd, the lights of the hills guard the northern sky like a really, really expensive and gaudy sentry. They flicker, they remind you that you're not nearly wealthy enough to live up there, they implore you to enter the industry, but most of all, they dominate the northern skyline and constantly tell you that you are in Hollywood. The observatory is lit up like a castle and can be seen from all over the city. The bigger houses are like landmarks along the way. And somehow, all of these lights, these actors in nighttime urbanism work together to light up a city as unique as Hollywood.

My new neighborhood will have a new kind of lights. The downtown skyline will dominate our view, and provide a true urban experience. But what I've learned from living in Hollywood is that those lights that I pined for from my front porch in Silverlake don't just end with the tallish buildings, and aren't just patrons of capitalism. They are the life of the city and they are constantly changing and offering different perspectives. My new urban skyline is in every city in the world. Skyscrapers, theatres, and arenas aren't unique to LA. But the lights of Hollywood aren't found anywhere else in the world, and every time I make my way down the 101 into Hollywood, those lights—all of them—will remind me of how special a place this is.

#5 The Jukebox at Cafe 101

#30 Hollywood Walk of Fame
#29 Yamashiro
#28 Hollywood Billiards
#27 Genghis Cohen
#26 Piano Bar
#25 Shmutzville
# 24 Loteria
# 23 The Griddle
# 22 Proximity
# 21 Hollywood Freeway
#20 Kitchen 24
# 19 The People
# 18 Sushi Eyaki
#17 Raymond Chandler
# 16 Jumbo's Clown Room
#15 Skooby's
#14 The Arclight
# 13 The Well
#12 Runyon Canyon
# 11 Canter's
#10 Hotel Café
#9 Body Factory
#8 The Troubadour
#7 Barney's Beanery (The Real One)
#6 Thai Food

#5 The Jukebox at Café 101

This isn't really fair. It's not just the jukebox I will miss. I will miss the whole place. Everything about Café 101 other than the food. The food at Café 101 is about a step above Denny's and a marathon below Fred 62. It's not inedible, it's just not good, and I won't be missing it in the least bit. I will however be missing going into Café 101 late night and playing that juke box.

For those who are either not from LA or just LA stupid, Café 101 is a coffee house on Franklin just east of the 101. It is most famous for being the coffee shop in Swingers that they eat at four times. It's in a million other movies and TV shows, but it's Swingers that made it legendary. It's built inside of an old-timey Hollywood hotel. It's extremely close to my house, and outside of the food, it's perfect.

On the eastern exterior wall of the place, there is a giant mural with a cup of foamy coffee. The copy reads "Last cappuccino before the 101," as if the 101 represents the end of humanity and cappuccino represents a universal need before passing. Inside, the décor has changed a bit since Swingers but I think it's perfect. Combining googie elements with modern Hollywood, there are very few places in the city that say "welcome to Hollywood" the way this does. The walls are large rocks, the countertop is old-school kitsch, the servers are just cute enough to be in Hollywood, but still normal enough to be servers at a coffee shop. The booths have that tattered coffee shop feeling that makes you feel like you're sitting talking to George and Elaine, and the crowd is self-aware enough to make Swingers references without overdoing it and drunk enough to be up for some hijinks. Then, in the corner, is what has to be the best jukebox in LA.

The jukebox rotates, and this is not a music blog, so before I start naming all of my favorites on the jukebox, let me just say that there is enough on there for me to put in a fiver, and from the moment we sit down, to the moment we get up, the soundtrack is perfect. From old Pearl Jam, to James Brown, Funkadelic, and The Flaming Lips, the jukebox represents everything that is right about Hollywood. Let me try to explain this in better, snobbier, more cynical terms.

I have a theory that my generation is unique because while college attendance—and hence the amount of educated people—is at an all time high, we are in one of the worst job markets in the history of this country. So there is a surplus of over-educated, underpaid, kind of lost 26-33 year olds running around bartending, collecting useless graduate degrees, playing in bands, giving acting a really long shot, and refusing to grow up in the traditional sense. We don’t have real jobs, we can't afford families, so there's no reason to latch onto societies norms and start playing along. This is comforting to me because recession or no recession, I'm not working a bullshit job, so this just means more people for me. I have argued that this phenomenon is responsible for the popularity of seemingly inaccessible intellectual type music that has been a little too popular for traditional American music in the last several years. There's no reason that bands like the Arcade Fire, the Shins, Wilco, or the Flaming Lips should be as popular as they are now. Evidence to this is the fact that Wilco and the Flaming Lips put out their best stuff fifteen years ago, and no one noticed. Only now, with a surplus of neo-bohemians does this music work.

And to bring this back to Café 101; the reason that a jukebox, serving young, drunk, Hollywood-types is able to be so good, is because we're the ones eating the gross French dips and tuna melts. We're the jerk-offs coming in, being loud, acting like teenagers. And for us to be happy, we need some good 90s shit, some classic 70s shit, and some cool new shit to distract us from the rubbery eggs we're eating. Go hop over to Swingers in Santa Monica, tell me how many neo-bohemians you see there. The answer will be none. But in this corner of the city, we are the majority; actors, writers, bassists, and other assholes without real jobs, need real music to get us through shitty drunk meals. And so yes, I will miss all of Café 101, but it's the jukebox that represents everything I will miss about Hollywood.

The jukebox at Café 101, to me, is a big fuck you to the young professional set. I know you think I'm reading way too into the meaning of a jukebox, and perhaps in several years I will look back at this entry from my desk in some office with a boss looging over my shoulder, and I will laugh about this, but as a self-proclaimed native anthropologist, I insist that the jukebox at Café 101 is our New York Armory show (look it up), and that we, like the young professionals, need a place to eat late at night. Even if the food is garbage. So, in closing, yes, I will miss Café 101, a lot. Ok, fine I'll ask, excuse me, do you know where the high school girls hang out? Oh, I'm the asshole…right…I'm the asshole, you know I would never eat here anyways.

#6 Thai Food

#30 Hollywood Walk of Fame
#29 Yamashiro
#28 Hollywood Billiards
#27 Genghis Cohen
#26 Piano Bar
#25 Shmutzville
# 24 Loteria
# 23 The Griddle
# 22 Proximity
# 21 Hollywood Freeway
#20 Kitchen 24
# 19 The People
# 18 Sushi Eyaki
#17 Raymond Chandler
# 16 Jumbo's Clown Room
#15 Skooby's
#14 The Arclight
# 13 The Well
#12 Runyon Canyon
# 11 Canter's
#10 Hotel Café
#9 Body Factory
#8 The Troubadour
#7 Barney's Beanery (The Real One)

#6 Thai Food

This entry is not about any particular Thai restaurant. Nor is it merely about the several stops in Thai Town a short drive from my house. This is about the never-ending supply of incredible noodles, curries, and rice that has been showing up at my house far too frequently for the last year and a half.

My apartment is towards the eastern terminus of what you might call "Hollywood." As you cross over the 101 and go east, you'll pass through the relatively boring East Hollywood, and then come across a stretch of roads known as Thai Town. Furthermore, to the west, as Hollywood turns to West Hollywood and eventually Beverly Hills, the streets become chic, wealthy, and noticeably high end. Here, Thai restaurants are in high demand as well. In fact, Yelp! lists 495 Thai places within a five-mile drive from my house. Of these 495, we've probably eaten at about twenty of them. They're all insane. Fucking insane.

This is not a forum to discuss my favorite dishes from my favorite restaurants. If you've been following this entire countdown, you'll know it is about what all of these things mean to me. Because this entry is about an entire ethnic cuisine, it's hard to pinpoint exactly what it is that I will miss, but the easiest way of saying it is that close to once a week for the last couple years, we have ordered Thai delivery, or gone for Thai food so many times, that it has become an absolutely integral part of my life that will be impossible to replace. The standards: Sunset Thai and Pimai will be seeing noticeable dips in their revenue next month. Delivery drivers will be wondering why their tips seem for be five bucks a week lighter. And Olsen and I are going to have to work our way through a new checklist of Thai places without the access to Thai Town or any of the more chic Hollywood places.

Also, I'd be remised if I didn't mention Toi here. Shout out to one of the weirdest, most authentically awesome 7 out of 10 restaurants on Earth. Toi is open til 4 AM and after 1 is an absolute zoo. The food is pretty good, but the décor, the atmosphere, the weird ass movies, the crowd is fucking insane. I'm going to miss Toi.

But most of all, I'm going to miss being able to type in seven random numbers on my phone, and having a good chance of dialing a Thai delivery place that comes to my place. I won't lie, my indulgence is Thai cuisine has not been 100% natural, as I have indulged in PEDs so to say. Taking advantage of my cities loose greenery laws, I have realized that very few things in life satisfy my cravings as well as spicy garlic noodles, spicy bamboo shoots, or chicken prik king.

Living in Hollywood has been a god damn pleasure thanks to Thai food. This next statement is bold, but I think it's fair to say that, despite an upcoming entry being ranked higher, I will miss Hollywood Thai food—not just the food, but the accessibility—more than any other food. I seriously cannot imagine having better access to my favorite kind of food anywhere on Earth outside of Bangkok. 6615 is the nexus of the Hollywood Thai universe. I'm going to end this now before I get weepy. Goodnight LA Thai world.

#7 Barney's Beanery

#30 Hollywood Walk of Fame
#29 Yamashiro
#28 Hollywood Billiards
#27 Genghis Cohen
#26 Piano Bar
#25 Shmutzville
# 24 Loteria
# 23 The Griddle
# 22 Proximity
# 21 Hollywood Freeway
#20 Kitchen 24
# 19 The People
# 18 Sushi Eyaki
#17 Raymond Chandler
# 16 Jumbo's Clown Room
#15 Skooby's
#14 The Arclight
# 13 The Well
#12 Runyon Canyon
# 11 Canter's
#10 Hotel Café
#9 Body Factory
#8 The Troubadour

#7 Barney's Beanery (The Real One)

Before this one gets going let me set something straight. When I say Barney's Beanery, I don't mean all of the Barney's Beaneries. I have no problem with the one in Pasadena, I've never been to the one in Burbank, and despite my patronization of the one on the Third Street Promenade almost every Tuesday during the 2009-2010 Cavaliers season, I despise and loathe that location. I wish nothing but the worst for the staff, the clientele (except me), and the structure itself. As long as it can wait until a Tuesday Cavs game is over, I wish for bad things there. This entry is about the real Barney's Beanery: the legendary, mythical, historical Barney's Beanery on Holloway and La Cienega. (because I don't have footnote capability on blogger, let me explain why I even set foot in the last one: I work until roughly 3:00-3:30 PM on Tuesdays in Santa Monica, and then again from 6:00-1:00 AM. So from 3:30-6 I am free, and there are often Cavs games on at that time and Barney's on the promenade offers a cheap, REALITVELY unobtrusive viewing experience, as long as I can survive the meathead/retard beer conversations that go on at the bar, and the countless assaults on the last three-hundred years of social advancements that seem to occur during every encounter between the half-breeds that hang out on the Promenade. And I implore to you, that Barney's is the best of the worst.)

Anyways, (why do I feel like every entry starts with a paragraph of disclaimers that end in rambling digressions before the second paragraph, without fail, brings us back to focus) the real Beanery is a fucking special place. The food is juuuuust above average. The service is just below average. The clientele is as diverse as Hollywood can offer which can be both a blessing and a curse depending on who's sitting next to you, and who the Lakers are playing. The beer selection is a few steps above standard bars and a few large steps below new gastropubs. (my MS Word doesn't recognize the word "gastropub," probably because when I bought this computer in 2006, the latest version of Office available for Mac was MS Office 1964) On paper, Barney's doesn't really have a lot going for it, but it's the intangibles. It's like Barney's is the Tom Glavine of bars; 89 MPH fastball, four or five quality pitches but no "out pitch," nothing flashy or special, just comes to work every five days, hits its spots and gets people out. That's what Barney's does.

By saying Barney's excels at intangibles (a sports allegory with no clear-cut explanation) what I mean is that it's kind of hard to describe exactly what makes this place awesome. I'll try, but I think that my abilities as a writer are too limited to fully appreciate Barney's. It's historical, meaning it used to be a stop on the old Route 66. It's more recent history includes stars like Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin drinking there. They got an air hockey table, a pop-a-shot machine, and to quote Garth Algar, they got a pool table, too. The music is always played at a reasonable volume, the ceilings are adorned with license (single hardest word to spell without spell check, narrowly edging out "judgment" and "consciousness") plates from the past, there are TVs in every corner, and the bar is broken up into several rooms. The patio has two TVs and a plethora of people smoking cigarettes (cigarettes at a bar? My word!!) and watching the Hollywood traffic roll down Santa Monica and Holloway. Like I alluded to before, the crowd is pretty diverse, but the atmosphere, casualness of place, and accessibility lends itself to a pretty laid back group. People tend to get along there, not get in each other's way, and exist together unlike most places in Hollywood.

There's another element that makes Barney's special to me, and that's sports, and in particular NFL football. Anyone that knows me (or at least is facebook friends with me and hasn't already pressed ignore on me) knows the only thing I hate more than the NFL, is NFL fans. This is true for every corner of the world except for beneath the roof of Barney's Beanery. Here's what I love:

As alluded to earlier, Barney's is divided into separate rooms. Furthermore, the ceilings are abnormally low, creating an even cozier feeling to each corner of the pretty-large bar. No matter where you're sitting in the approximately 3500-4000 square-foot bar, you feel like you're in a small room. And because there are TVs in the strange, yet incredibly viewable places, you can watch your game from several different places. So on Sundays, small packs of five to fifteen fans of each team congregate somewhere inside the bar and watch their game. The result is a cacophony of cheers and groans immediately following every big play. A first down will be greeted by a shriek of cheers coming from one corner, while a chorus of groans will come from another. And because each part of the bar is so intimate, you can't really see all of these people, there's just an anonymous approval or disapproval of every major event in every major game from all corners of the bar. It's as if each fan's entire fan-base is spread sporadically through one bar, and those cheers represent the fortunes of an entire city. It's incredibly special, and something that only gets better as the playoffs begin. I don't generally like to watch sports at a bar but Barney's is my favorite place in LA to watch sports, hands down.

I'm going to miss this place. I'm going to miss mornings there, and lunches. I'm going to miss eating there, and drinking whiskey there. I'm going to miss one of the best crowds in Hollywood (or WeHo depending on if you work for Rand-McNally or not) and the most comfortable atmosphere at any bar I've been to since I left the Winking Lizard on Miles. I'll miss the drunkards hanging out on the patio on weekday afternoons, and the anonymous cheers after football team A does something they approve of. You can probably tell, this is a tough one for me; I really love this place. Via con Dios Barney.

#8 The Troubadour

#30 Hollywood Walk of Fame
#29 Yamashiro
#28 Hollywood Billiards
#27 Genghis Cohen
#26 Piano Bar
#25 Shmutzville
# 24 Loteria
# 23 The Griddle
# 22 Proximity
# 21 Hollywood Freeway
#20 Kitchen 24
# 19 The People
# 18 Sushi Eyaki
#17 Raymond Chandler
# 16 Jumbo's Clown Room
#15 Skooby's
#14 The Arclight
# 13 The Well
#12 Runyon Canyon
# 11 Canter's
#10 Hotel Café
#9 Body Factory

#8 The Troubadour

I just realized that this entry is kind of bullshit. Technically, I won't really be missing the Troubadour—it is the best music venue in LA and next time a band I like is playing, I will have the same desire to attend as I do living in Hollywood. Essentially, me moving will play little-to-no role in how often I visit the Troubadour. Furthermore, the geographers in the room will be quick to point out that not only is the Troubadour not in Hollywood (it's in West Hollywood), but it's not even in near West Hollywood, it's on the border of WeHo and Beverly Hills. These two very legitimate facts make the statement "The Troubadour is my eighth biggest sacrifice in Hollywood when I move downtown" utter bollocks. I apologize for these two elephants and now plan on moving on as though nothing is wrong and this paragraph—nor the contradictions to the spirit of this blog—exist. Thank you.

Anywho . . . The Troubadour is a fucking legendary venue on the corner of Santa Monica and Doheny. It's special for a million reasons. For one, it's the most intimate venue you'll ever visit. I don't mean coffee shop intimate. I mean rock and roll, loud sound system, grungy bar, a-list performers, right on top of the band intimate. I mean that I have seen Ben Kweller fucking destroy the place and recently saw Rhett Miller dominate an area the size of my apartment with 250 friends.

Secondly, it's been around since the dawn of rock and roll and has always featured some of the best acts in music. Upstairs there are pictures of Tom Waits and Carly Simon backstage. The Strokes played there. Metallica played there. Guns n Roses played on a stage that could be confused with someone's living room. This isn't your father's small venue . . . wait maybe it is—My mom fucking saw James Taylor there. JAMES TAYLOR! As far as legendary venues go, there's CBGB which is gone, and the Troubadour, which is not only still there, but hanging onto everything it was forty years ago.

And finally, it's just one of the most Hollywood experiences you can have. That stretch of Santa Monica features two of the most famous restaurants in town: The Palm and Dan Tana's; both of which are primo celebrity "they're just like us" places. The outside of the venue looks like what an artist would draw if you said to him, "do me a favor and draw me a picture of what you think an awesome concert club would look like in Hollywood." The ticket prices—usually around 15-25 dollars—means that the crowd is fans, not bullshitters with tickets, and the line outside is always a group of people just like you, which dealt with parking just to see the same band you like. And the inside is just as perfect. Exposed wood all over, a small balcony, the front bar, the back bar, the upstairs "backstage," the legendary photos all over, that combination of beer and sweat in the air that is a cloud of cigarette smoke away from being utterly perfect, the sound, the band, the people, the not-to-overpriced drinks, everything just comes together at the Troubadour.

Again, this is hard, because in reality, I won't be missing it. In fact, come March 4th, a mere two weeks after I have moved downtown, I will be going to see Mike Doughty at the Troubadour. Nothing will have changed except the commute, which, though significantly longer, will not really have an effect on the night. So instead of harping on how much I won't miss the Troub, I'll let you know that whenever I do leave LA, the Troubadour will always have a special place in my heart. It is one of a kind, and the greatest place on Earth to see a show.