The Tackiest Place on Earth

Here You Leave Today and Enter the World of Yesterday, Tomorrow and Fantasy

--Plaque at the Disneyland gate

Outside Disneyland, beyond the blooming oleanders that hide the barbed-wire fence that delineates the Happiest Place on Earth, you can find what might be called, in Disney-ese, Realityland. It is a land of neon and kitsch, a cottage industry of knock-off entrepreneurs that Walt Disney in a sense created and that Walt Disney, it’s said, loathed.

Outside is where you find motels like the Ivanhoe and Rip Van Winkle, the Peter Pan and the Pink Flamingo, stucco jobs with kiddie-land decors and marquees flashing cut-rate prices: $35 singles/$5 for Xtra bed or person. Outside is where you find the Mouse House sundries shop and Mickey’s Donuts, and where you can encounter panhandlers and hustlers and women in too-tight shorts, mouthing suggestions to motorists that would ban them from Fantasyland for life.

It is one of the tackiest places on Earth and, on its own terms, as entertaining as anything Disney’s Imagineers ever imagined. I mean, anyone can shake hands with Mickey Mouse any day, but only outside the gate can you meet a character like Angelo Zaby.

He is seated behind the front desk of the Rip Van Winkle, half a block from Disneyland. He is 75 years old, bald and tired, his hulking frame covered in blue floral cotton and polyester. He says all he knows is what he reads in the paper, and then he spends the next hour telling you everything there is to know about Anaheim, Disneyland, the motel business, people.

First, though, there are customers at the desk. He pushes aside a stack of bills and stands up. Two young men want a room for themselves and maybe “a couple of friends.” Zaby has loads of rooms, but working televisions are another matter.

“Uh,” he says offhandedly, after accepting payment in cash, “you don’t want a television, do you? I mean, you’ll be going out, right?”

It turns out they do want a television. In fact, they insist on one. And so, with a sigh, Zaby submits to the vagaries of modern commerce and grabs another key.

*

There are something like 14 Zabys, the sons and daughters of Sicilian immigrants who came here in 1901. Judging from the three I encountered, the Zabys tend to run large, loud and profane, with a rare talent for cussing in a way that makes it seem more colorful than crude. They were in the grocery business in South Los Angeles until 1965, when Watts convinced Angelo a change of scenery might be nice. At the time he bought the first of three motels, Disneyland was but a decade old and devoid of any competition, drawing vacationers from all over the country.

“I used to be king of the road,” he says, remembering. “I was here in the good times.”

Those good times belong to yesterday. Disney has big plans for its Anaheim operation--an expanse of amusements and hotels and restaurants that will dwarf Disneyland. The Westcot Theme Park will reorder streets and gobble up whole blocks of cheap motels. Politicians, eager to claim credit for helping create 28,000 jobs, seemingly are engaged in a competition to see who can throw Disney the most taxpayer dollars and regulatory concessions the fastest. And so while some homeowners have protested, and a few commercial landowners have sued, most old-timers like Zaby know the score. Better to keep quiet and hope the Disney people come calling with their checkbooks. Beats the eminent domain process any day.

“What Disney wants,” Zaby says, “Disney is gonna get. And that’s as it should be. I mean, they ought to call Anaheim ‘Walt Disney Disneyland.’ Without him this s---house of a town wouldn’t be worth a damn anyway.”

For Angelo, the future’s been clear for years. His generation of motel owners did fine for a time. Then the big chains started moving in, one by one. You can see them from his lobby window--Hilton, Holiday, all of them. “We can’t give the people what they want anymore,” he says. “They want, what do you call it, amenities.”

Like televisions?

“Yeah, and coffee and doughnuts. Amenities.” Speaking of which, a dusty van pulls up. A man and his son hop out. Do you have baby beds? the man asks. No, Angelo says firmly, and points to the door. “Last time I had a baby bed,” he grumbles, “some kid fell out and I got my ass sued. No baby beds. I’m too old for this. . . .”

Anyway, he goes on, it’s over. Even those who survive Westcot’s land gobble won’t be able to compete with the finished product. Zaby points across the street, to a strip of motels just like his. All faded. All pretty much empty.

“We’re all old and ready to die,” he says. “It will be a blessing if Disney gives us a few bucks and lets us go. Just don’t kick me in the ass on the way out, that’s all I ask.”