Just Monking Around

Let’s say you’re a visitor to Los Angeles and, of course, you’ve brought your firearms. Crime rates are down, sure, but you don’t want to take any chances. Now, where exactly do you go with your weaponry?

If you looked in most so-called travel guides, you wouldn’t have a clue. You might even end up in Frontierland at Disneyland. But if you checked out “The Mad Monks’ Guide to California” (Macmillan, 2000; $19.95), you’d know to go to the L.A. Gun Club.

Here’s the Monk take on the shoot-’em-up club: “A profound transformation happened at the L.A. Gun Club. I discovered I was a pacifist. . . . Naturally, Mike [the other Monk] took to the firearms instruction at the L.A. Gun Club like a pig in a poke.”

You get the idea.

These Monk fellows--James Crotty and Michael Lane--aren’t your usual travel guide authors. As one newspaper aptly described them, the rambling pair are “an unshaven version of Travel & Leisure.”

Don’t be fooled by the name “Mad Monks.” They are in fact neither, despite the gun references. The Monks, whose motto is “simple, mobile and true,” picked up their name years ago, during their San Francisco days, when friends remarked they lived like monks.

“The name stuck,” said Crotty, who, with Lane, used Los Angeles as a base to put together the California guidebook--one of six travel guides they’ve published. “We kept the name because it fit us.”

As it turns out, the Monks are defenders of the L.A. faith. Nearly 200 pages of their 500-page guide is about the City of Angels, and most of it is complimentary.

Within those pages lies--no doubt--one of the best defenses of Los Angeles ever published in a travel guide. In a list local schoolchildren should be forced to memorize, the Monks issue their 33 reasons to love L.A., which include: Parking is not a problem; non-urban recreation is close by; and the incontrovertible “L.A. is not New York.”

“L.A. is the demon city in the collective myth,” said Crotty. “From volcanoes to celebrity disconfiguration, it’s where everybody goes to hell.”

“But,” he adds, “it’s not that bad.”

The guide is filled with reasons to applaud the decentralized, mallified (their word) melting pot of a megalopolis that Angelenos call home. They revel in everything from celebrities who dote excessively on their pets to the praiseworthy architecture of “The Donut Hole” in La Puente.

Of course, the Monks include the staples of any travel book as well. Restaurants, coffee shops, where to stay and where to recreate are all represented with detail and wit. They even throw in a fresh batch of points-of-interest, including the location of the Bat Cave (from the “Batman” TV series) and the best Gelson’s Market for celebrity sightings (Pacific Palisades).

It’s not all boosterism though. The Monks get their knocks in when they feel it’s appropriate. The Jewish Sports Hall of Fame (West Side Jewish Community Center, 5870 West Olympic Blvd.,) drew a drubbing for shortchanging their honorees.

“Unfortunately, this exhibit is just a wall of names,” wrote the Monks.

Their biggest tsk-tsk for L.A. is reserved for the automobile. The Monks believe there is something wrong with a city where you have to drive everywhere.

“The automobile assumption is the indirect cause of all the social evils here,” they write. “L.A. can never become a Monk town, can never get close to the depth and aliveness of cities like New York, or even Portland, unless this issue is tackled in a very direct way.”

The Mad Monks can be visited at https://www.monk.com.