A Good Time for Insomnia

On the other side of midnight--3 a.m. to be exact--25 sightseers who give new meaning to the term night people pile into a minibus for a journey into the more curious night life of Los Angeles.

The Insomniac’s Tour includes a descent into downtown’s empty streets as well as the boisterous flower and produce markets, a visit to the eerily empty Union Station and a climb to the top of the TransAmerica Building where a spectacular sunrise splatters off mirrored skyscrapers.

The brainchild of tour director Marlene Gordon, a merchant of dreams who conducts a wacky series of tours called “In Search of the Real L. A.,” the 3 a.m.-9:30 a.m. insomniac special is a surreal plunge into the city.

Gordon is a cozy tour director with an inviting, squeaky voice who has been running tours--citywide, statewide and countrywide--since 1978 under her one-woman traveling circus called The Next Stage.

Since a successful group tour is equally dependent on the sights and the camaraderie, Gordon’s friendliness is the key that makes people who are strangers at 3 a.m. feel like a family by 9 a.m.

Gordon also knows so many of the early-morning owls who work the stops on her route that downtown Los Angeles in the wee hours begins to feel like a small town where everybody knows everybody else.

Here’s the naked city, insomniac style:

3 a.m.--Beverly Hills. People start to yawn but others are more chipper because they were smart enough to have gone to bed earlier. We lumber aboard the bus for a ride to downtown and 800 N. Alameda. Already some are wondering what we’re doing here when we could be home asleep. Henry Salazar, a veteran of 22 years of tour bus driving, hits the dark streets.

3:30 a.m.--Union Station. Gordon has the keys to the main lobby, and sets up a doughnut, bagel, cream cheese and coffee bar at the station’s information counter. The station, built during the Depression, looks like a marbled tomb for a Pharaoh. For an older member of the tour, it recalls memories of soldiers lined up for roll call in the grand, leathery waiting room before they climbed aboard a train en route to World War II battlefronts.

4 a.m.--El Pueblo. We roll through the city’s birthplace, past Olvera Street and no one, not even a scavenger, is in sight. On Main Street near near Macy, Gordon picks up her microphone from the front of the bus and says, “See that parking lot--it was the city’s first cemetery.” We stare blankly at the little parking lot of the long dead.

4:15 a.m.--Flower Mart. It’s Monday morning, the day growers bring their flowers to the market (between 7th and 8th streets on Wall Street). This is the largest flower market in the world outside of Holland, and the first sensation is a heady rush of wild fragrances in a huge fairyland of a building. Flowers of all kinds are piled high on tables for retailers. Some are for sale to the public at incredibly low prices. One elderly flower seller, Paul Fukishima, tends a mountain of freshly cut geraniums. Gordon introduces him to the group. “How long you been working here?” one of the group asks. He responds, “50 years.” Many in the tour load up on flowers and the sweet smell fills the bus.

5:30 a.m.--The Old Produce Market. Now the city really starts to hum. Different languages, Spanish predominating, fill the air. Forklifts and dollies careen around this historic Seventh Street Market, which was built at 7th and Central in 1917. We walk the length of the 12-acre market, bundled against the cold, in the company of Operations Manager Claudio A. Testi. The scene suggests the Bowery in New York, not L.A. The fruits and vegetables are for sale to the public at inviting wholesale prices, but not by the pound. You have to buy by the crate. A great location for shooting a movie.

6 a.m.--New Produce Market. Built in 1986 on 29 acres at 8th and Alameda, this is a Rolls-Royce operation compared to the raucous, grimy Old Produce Market. You wouldn’t shoot a movie here--it’s too streamlined--but you might network with a produce dealer in Singapore or Munich from one of the hundreds of telephones upstairs above the vegetable bays. The fresh produce here will grace salad plates later in the day at Morton’s and Spago and Denny’s. When the city sleeps, produce moves. Like the Flower Market and the Old Produce Market, the action here is hottest between 2 and 6 a.m. By 10 in the morning, the workday is over.

7:10 a.m.--The Outdoor Observation Deck of the Transamerica Building, 30th floor. This is the piece de resistance for the tour members. The morning is coolly sharp to the skin and clear enough to see to the ocean. The rising sun casts vivid pinks and lavenders that splash off the windows and surfaces of the surrounding skyscrapers, giving L. A.’s soaring new architecture the look of a fantasy land. The dark reflective glass facades of office buildings crinkle into a rainbow of colors as the light grows brighter.

We walk around the perimeter of the tower, looking east, west, north and south as camera shutters click. The First Interstate Building, with its huge coppery I , dwarfs the other structures. Few cars are on the streets below. This panorama is a privilege--the Transamerica, on South Olive between 11th and 12 streets, can only be accessed by permission.

8 a.m.--The Market Place Restaurant. The last stop. Famished, the insomniacs are led to an out-of-the-way ‘50s-styled breakfast diner (1102 Lawrence St., off 8th Street near Alameda), which we might never have found without a guide. The room is alive with the chat of produce market workers. Melrose Bell, a Los Angeles native and retired teacher, scoops up a platter of fresh papaya and says she’s been going on Gordon’s tours for years. Darlene Duncan, a psychologist, said this outing was her first tour. “I don’t know why I took it,” she said. “I just wanted to do something different.”

Meanwhile, the restaurant’s hearty husband-and-wife entrepreneurs, Tony and Peggy Van, make the rounds of the customers, chatting like an aunt and uncle. The lone waitress whips around the tables, keeping mugs of coffee brimming.

9:30 a.m.--Back at the pickup site in Beverly Hills. Gordon hands out roses to one and all. The daytime world is upon us.

Name: The Next Stage, 6016 Whitworth Drive, Los Angeles 90016. (213) 939-2688.

Cost: $45 per person covers all, including food and coffee, lots of coffee.

Coming Up: The next Insomniac’s Tour is set for March 28.