Possibly the best thing about our nation’s current festival of pecuniary insolvency — other than getting to watch elected officials sweat through their suit jackets as they try to explain why we may soon need to offer corporate naming rights to national parks and, eventually, individual constitutional amendments — is that all of the big chain restaurants are trying their damnedest to keep us all coming back for more servings of beef tallow and corn syrup. Mostly, they’re doing this by plying our mailboxes with coupons.
Sadly, I’ve given the bastards exactly what they want. I have used these coupons, in bulk. In the past few weeks, I have eaten at Denny’s, El Pollo Loco, and Arby’s, and I’m seriously considering an inaugural trip to Ono Hawaiian Barbecue. If Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen were a big pile of semidigested stomach contents, it would be mine. It’s disgusting.
I’d like to say that I’ll try harder not to be taken in by such deals in the future, but of course I will. And I use the word “deals” with the most athletic of eye-rolls, since I know I’ll be paying an even greater price for these meals ten or twenty years from now, when I shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars to my neighborhood bypass surgeon or oncologist, who very likely won’t offer coupons. I mean, those guys have boat payments to make!
Anyway, the coupons have their hold on me. I’ll let you know when my heart explodes.
I guess you could say I’m pretty much in love. My significant other and I text each other frequent reminders of our affection, leave love notes in strategic spots around the apartment, and employ amusing pet names such as “Stinky” and “Stinky Pudd’n.” What we have yet failed to do, however, is commemorate our more-than-just-friends-ness by applying padlocks to the fence that blocks the under-street passageway crossing Hollywood Boulevard just east of its intersection with Vermont.
Walking east into Los Feliz Village on Hollywood, it’s hard to miss this particular bit of artistic commons. Even harder is figuring out just what in the world is going on. Is it a forgotten art installation? A weirdly cryptic ad for the locksmith around the corner? No, no: It’s love. Sweet, sweet love. Hey, it’s cheaper than a ring.
Apparently love padlocks, as they’re called, have their start in the waning days of Eastern Bloc communisim, where young Hungarian couples in the city of Pecs would scratch their consonant-heavy names onto padlocks, then clamp them onto a fence in the city square. When the fence filled up — by which time the city’s locksmiths were presumably puzzled at their sudden good fortune — lovers began attaching padlocks to other public structures: Fences, statues, lampposts, what-have-you. The practice spread across eastern Europe and into Italy, then across the sea to cities like Toronto and LA.
Because of the practice’s eastern European origins, the fact that LA’s seemingly most heavily-padlocked fence is smack dab in the middle of one of the most Armenian parts of town may not be a coincidence. But then, it just might. Has anyone else seen this sort of thing elsewhere in town?
True confession: I find Twitter to be kind of a pain in th’ butt sometimes. Particularly when it comes to getting news from specific sources that update with relative infrequency — like food trucks. See, all the best food trucks advertise their schedules via Twitter, but for those of us with demanding stomachs and hefty tweet-feeds, it’s been hard to keep up. But now there’s an easier way for us to plan out those times during the week when we’ll throw dietetic caution to the wind and scarf down cheesesteaks, pancakes and kimchi tacos en masse.
Check it: Find LA Food Trucks allows the discerning consumer of mobile comestibles to learn, from a single page, where all his favorite food trucks will be at a given time. All the trucks’ Twitter feeds are updated here, from perennial favorite Kogi BBQ to my hometown representatives on the South Philly Experience to the relative newcomer Buttermilk Truck. No more scrolling through feeds! No more multiple tabs hanging open! There’s even a contact form so you can suggest a truck whose tweets aren’t represented. So get eating. Now you have no excuse.
Hi, I’m Kevin Ott, the proprietor of Hi Fi Parasol, a central clearinghouse for all of my work as a writer, filmmaker and educator.