John Niven on how to steer clear of LA’s teetotal culture.
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Now, in LA you can’t do anything unless you drive.
And I can’t do anything unless I drink…’.
The fine words of John Self, the narrator of Martin Amis’ novel Money, and a sentiment I often find myself sympathetic to when I’m in Los Angeles.
It’s a town where there’s everything going on but nothing to do because everyone’s sober.
“What the hell am I doing, drinking in LA?”
Well, Bran Van 3000, you were probably about to get done for drink driving is the answer to that one.
But there’s good news for those of us who prefer having a bunch of drinks to having a bunch of car keys in our pockets all night.
Having just spent three weeks in LA on movie stuff (basically having lots of meetings where someone says, “Hold on a minute, I’ve got it, what if the husband is an alien? Maybe an alien paedo?”)
I’m happy to report back that the cab app company Uber has transformed LA back into a get-pissed-out-your-mind-every-night kind of town.
Pre-Uber there were six solutions to going out on the town in LA.
Here we go…
1. Drive And Stick To Water
Yeah, I hear you say, “Fuck that. Fuck that in the ear. Fuck it in the other ear,” as Maury from Goodfellas would have it.
2. Drink And Drive
Again this is a total no-no.
Because, well, death and killing innocent people and all that.
Although many used to give it a go.
I’m told back in the good old days (the ’70s and ’80s) when there were no breathalyzers the LA police drunk driving tests were basically, “Can you stand upright for four seconds without vomiting all over me or trying to get your cock out?”
You could drive a convertible down Sunset Strip waving a bottle of Jack around and doing coke off the dashboard with “I LOVE LA” blaring out the speakers and no-one would care.
Try that shit today.
Rodney King would be watching your CCTV footage and going, “Now that’s a fucking beating that dude is getting.”
3. Get A Cab
Yeah, good luck with that. In the pre-Uber Los Angeles the only way to get a cab was if you were born into a family of cab drivers and your cab-driving dad lived just around the corner from where you were and it wasn’t a weekend or a public holiday.
And you booked him a week in advance.
Even then, I wouldn’t have banked on it.
If you booked a cab to come and pick you up it was a miracle if it arrived within
two hours of the stated time at the right address.
Trying to hail one on the street?
You’ve got more chance of that alien paedo dad swooping down on his space ship and picking you up.
4. Book A Town Car To Take You Around For The Night
I have done this. In theory it’s a winner.
“Hang on,” you say. “It’s only seventy- five bucks an hour to have a chauffeur drive us around all night! That’s barely forty quid! There’s four of us going out, so a tenner each an hour, we’ll need him from 8pm until 1am, five hours… fifty quid each and we’re sorted!”
Unfortunately what happens is you get pissed and decide to go onto that party in the Hollywood Hills.
“We’ll just keep the car on for a bit,” you say. “We’ll be in and out.”
You emerge at four in the morning to find half your mates have buggered off and you’ve had the bastard car for eight hours.
Once they’ve added tax, service charge, the additional fee for having air in the tyres and an obligatory twenty per cent tip for the driver there are two of you standing on the pavement outside your hotel scratching your heads and looking at a bill for a thousand fucking dollars.
5. All Of This Stuff Is Now In The Past
“Shall we Uber?” your LA friend says.
A couple of taps on the app on their iPhone and 2.5 minutes later a spotlessly clean Prius pulls up outside with a grinning madman at the wheel.
You don’t even have to pay! It all goes on the credit card of the fool (sorry, LA friend) who booked it.
6. Web Of Freedom
The Internet has brought us many great things: the instant exchange of information, news and reports as they happen from war-torn countries, hot
and cold running pornography and George Lineker’s Twitter account.
But I really believe the freedom to get absolutely paralytic in a consequence-free environment in one of the greatest cities in the world has to rank right up there.
Tim Berners Lee, we salute you.
Again.