Sweet Culver Blues

My wife knew there was a problem when I came home in a catatonic state and slumped in a chair without mixing a vodka martini first.

It was a Friday evening, and while I abstain the rest of the week, Friday is my day to celebrate the fact that I have managed to hoodwink the world for yet another five days.

“What’s the matter,” she said lightly, “lose your green card?”

I shook my head no.

“You get a threatening fortune cookie at Anne’s Chinese Deli?”

I shook my head again.

“This is serious,” she said, sitting next to me. “We’re not out of vodka, are we?”

Another shake.

“Then what’s with the hound dog face and the Nancy Reagan eyes?”

I reached into my soul and with great effort began to drag out the answer. “I think. . . . “

“Yes?”

“I think I’m . . . “

“Go ahead.”

“I’m think I’m beginning to . . . “

“Spit it out, boy!”

“I-think-I’m-beginning-to-like-Culver-City!”

“Oh my God.”

It’s this way.

Culver City has always been known more for comestibles that are finger-lickin’ good than for anything served at Le Dome or the Bistro Garden.

This is a community of people who live in little yellow houses with plastic ducks on the lawn. Their idea of foreign food is a side of french-fried potatoes. As such, they exist in a pleasant if not spectacular epicurean arena of barbecued entrees garnished with flavor-enhancing sauces, such as catsup.

Culver City is known as a blue-collar town, and I do not say that with disdain. I, too, was raised in a blue-collar environment and recall with pleasure those days spent chatting with gorgeous Lilly outside the cannery where she worked, on Oakland’s San Leandro Boulevard.

She was known simply as “Cans” in those days, both for her job and for her physical attributes, and it was whispered that she was as hot as a smoking pistol.

It was a rumor, however, I was forced to accept at face value, having barely achieved puberty at the time and hardly capable of living up to the expectations of a woman described as a smoking pistol.

My point is, when I wrote about Culver City it was from the perspective of a man who understood what it was like to celebrate special occasions with a family-sized pepperoni pizza.

But then a few months ago the town decided to upgrade its image by enticing world-class restaurants to an open piece of land near the Fox Hills Mall.

The owners of 3,000 restaurants were contacted, but only the Sizzler, which is where you go for lunch when everything else is crowded, said yes. Places like Lawry’s and the trendy Chronicle indicated they were unwilling to locate in a “secondary market.”

It was the kind of situation that makes a satirist drool. I could hardly wait to contact two of the Culver City principals involved in the restaurant effort, namely Mayor Paul Jacobs and Redevelopment Agency Chairwoman Jozelle Smith.

My thinking was, you see, that they despised the ground I wrote on because of past columns and would come up with pompous, self-serving comments on their secondary status that I could subsequently puncture with iniquitous joy. Nothing personal. That’s my job.

I found them instead, drat the luck, to be intelligent, good-humored people who enjoyed my columns on Culver City and who accepted with good grace their evaluation as a second-class market.

They were, God help me, sweet.

“I guess we felt hurt that restaurants didn’t flock to us,” Smith said with a note of sadness in her voice. “It didn’t have to be a Spago. A Velvet Turtle would have done just fine.”

She paused then added, “My head understands we’re a secondary market, but my heart. . . . “ She ended the sentence with a sigh.

“We’ll just keep on looking,” Mayor Jacobs said. “I guess it’s a question of economics. We’re a mid-level community and probably don’t have as high an income as Santa Monica or Beverly Hills.

“But, you know, we want to maintain that small town identity. Our people in government have listed telephone numbers, and our council meetings are like Town Hall sessions. Everyone gets a chance to be heard.”

“We don’t want to be a community of high-rises,” Smith said. “We don’t want to be Century City. We just want to be . . . well . . . Culver City.”

Their comments were so disarming that I found myself outraged at the rating that gave them secondary-market status.

If anyone was going to bash Culver City, it was going to be me, and I was in no mood to bash anything so damned sweet.

Eager now to help the town boost its image, I dug up some 1987 Census Bureau estimates that show Culver City’s median household income to be almost $8,000 higher than Santa Monica’s and only about $5,000 lower than Beverly Hills’.

That sure ought to earn some reconsideration from a good restaurant. I expect to see the people of Culver City enjoying dinner at their own L’Escoffier by autumn, though I hope no one demands steak sauce for the tranche de boeuf , or they’ll be back to the Sizzler by January.DR