Planet Sideshow Opens in Santa Monica

The audience was, interestingly, not that rapt. Only a handful of rubberneckers showed up. Theoretically, the grand opening--”produced like a TV show,” the owner boasted--should have been prime locust bait. All the requisite elements--food, booze, celebrities and buxom women--were involved.

Maybe the celebrities weren’t famous enough. “Hey, Lou,” a newsie droned desultorily as the most familiar face--the guy who used to play the Incredible Hulk--waved. Here and there, a Playboy playmate showed up on somebody’s arm, but, with their shirts on, their particular celebrity was hard to place.

Or maybe they weren’t the right playmates. Maybe the locusts required more famous playmates. Maybe playmates were overexposed, what with Dennis Rodman’s ex-playmate wife having spent that very morning preening gaily for the cameras while her husband continued to psychologically disintegrate.

Nevermind. Locusts or no locusts, the waitresses in the low-cut tank tops and high-cut shorts had their instructions, which were: Cheer like a nut for every warm body that crosses that threshold. Cheer for that little bald guy in the tweed jacket! Cheer for that blond with the surgically enhanced lips! Cheer for the cook! And work that Wonderbra!

For this was the requisite angle. The guy who created “Baywatch” was opening (what else?) a Hooters restaurant in progressive, upscale Santa Monica, where it was theoretically giving the city fits. Problem was, the fits, like the rubberneckers, weren’t following the cue cards. There were no picketing feminists, no photo op standoffs between the Hooters Girls and Gloria Allred. The only protester was Jerry Rubin, the local leftie who protests all sorts of things on pretty much a daily basis. Slim pickings for the TV cameras, but the restaurant made the most of it, sending their Hootie the Owl mascot to pose next to the “Boycott” sign in Rubin’s arms.

“We don’t like the place much either,” a girl with a spiked dog collar and orange hair offered helpfully, but her complaint didn’t involve the restaurant’s objectification of women or the fact that, D cup or no D cup, the waitresses at Hooters get paid like waitresses--minimum wage plus tips. Turned out she was a ticked-off cosmetology student at the Vidal Sassoon academy next door; incessant Hooter Girl cheers had been disrupting her classes for days.

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The circus moves on but sideshows are forever. This has been the West Coast way. Trials of the century come and go, but in between, the rabble gets these Hollywood demimonde dust-ups, so predictable and formulaic that they can be manufactured by the numbers--a “picket” here, a “celebrity” there, some “outrageous” behavior--as the man said, just like TV.

The dust-ups serve a purpose. In a world full of half-lived lives yearning for something authentic, they create a distraction, a welcome noise. If not connection, they offer the faux comfort of titillation; if not passion, then adrenaline.

But a strange thing seems to be happening, here on Planet Sideshow: The desperate lives seem less desperate of late. Maybe it’s the economy, maybe we’ve evolved, maybe we’re just gorged for now on trials and circuses and sideshows, but the rabble seems clearer-eyed here, more reality-based.

Is there anyone who doesn’t, deep down, feel more concern than amusement at the “antics” of Rodman, or wonder when the people who purport to care about him will get him some help? Was it anything but sad when that guy bought O.J.’s Heisman to impress a girlfriend? Does Monica Lewinsky evoke anything more than your mother’s warnings not to mess with married men? Is there anyone left who doesn’t see a place like Hooters for what it is: a meat market where weak men are manipulated by women who don’t think enough of themselves?

Not at this moment. And too bad for Hooters, because the owners probably could use a good dust-up; Santa Monica’s jammed with eateries, and theme restaurants are dying like flies. But even with all the attention--including this column--the betting this week was that Hooters would be unlikely to draw anybody but tourists with Baywatch fixations. And that prediction came from one of the owners’ friends.

This was the wrong place, the friend said; Santa Monica might be home to half the entertainment industry, but that doesn’t mean they want some down-market jiggle show coming to life around the corner from their Third Street Promenade. What he didn’t add was that it’s the wrong time, too, at least in this down-market opinion. Even locusts know when to call it a day.

Shawn Hubler’s column appears Mondays and Thursdays. Her e-mail address is shawn.hubler@latimes.com.