Up in Sky Boxes, How Can You Get Down and Funky?

This happened, oh, maybe two years ago on one of those hot October nights that always take Angelenos by such surprise. The sun was just setting, and the air smelled of warm concrete and eucalyptus. It was the sort of evening that makes people long for adventures and convertibles.

The car was only a humble station wagon, but it had a good sound system. Pulling out of downtown Los Angeles, stuck in traffic, I had this urge to blast some loud rock ‘n’ roll into the balmy dusk. So down came the windows, up went the volume, and as I sat, head back, alone at the wheel, grooving on the East L.A. interchange at about 2 mph, the most vivid thing happened: The woman in the next car, a civil servant type of middle age in a beat-up subcompact, caught the beat through her own open windows, smiled and nodded. And for the merest moment, the two of us, in unison, rocked out.

You don’t get many moments like that in this city. Maybe you used to, but not anymore. Life here gets more hermetically sealed by the minute: gated communities, drive-thru banking, nightclubs with VIP rooms within VIP rooms, hair salons with separate entrances for bad famous-hair days. The Cirque du Soleil has a special tent now where big spenders can sip champagne before slipping into their front row seats via their own flap in the big top. This holiday season is expected to be one of the biggest yet for Internet Christmas shopping. So much for the festive “city sidewalks, busy sidewalks” of “Silver Bells.”

So it has been this week that, as the throngs have poured into the new Staples Center to see Bruce Springsteen, an estimated 1,500 or so fans a night have been set apart in groups of 10 or 12, in sky boxes--160 VIP rooms in three glass-balconied tiers. Much has been made of the class separations, and the fact that the sky-box set has special parking, entrances, escalators, restaurants and even cigar smoking. But the flip side of these boxes is that they cut off their occupants from the only things that make a mass leisure event worth leaving home for: the unpredictable connection, the thrill of joining in with the masses, the vivid face of the stranger beside you, rocking out.

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It is said that the haves and have-nots here hate to mingle. Well, maybe they do and maybe they don’t. The fact is, so much of Southern California’s common ground has now been carved up along caste lines that whatever basis for comparison there ever was has all but evaporated. There are private schools, private parks, even--de facto--private beaches. For a while, there was Dodger Stadium, but that too is now trending private. Nostalgia aside, I hope the corporations bidding on the private suites that are part of its remodel think twice before spending the money. They just may find themselves hip deep in VIP seats that nobody wants because the VIPs have decided that the “in” seats are down with the crowd.

This is not to say that suites aren’t extremely pleasant. You pour a little wine, settle into a nice easy chair, nibble on popcorn and rosemary chicken and fresh fruit, gaze out the window or over the balcony, if there is one. Most suites have the size and comfort of mid-priced hotel rooms; some even have flush toilets and color TVs.

Also, to sit in the bleachers is to be reminded that the common man is, well, common, and you never know when he might just show up drunk. Years ago, some friends went to a Laker game and returned with amazing tales of the sports fans in front of them in the cheap seats, one of whom had the Three Stooges tattooed on his bald spot. There’s something to be said for avoiding beer-guzzling guys whose idea of coiffure is Moe, Larry and Curly. And yet--that head! And he kept passing around these Laker Girl pictures! Say what you will, that experience wasn’t choreographed.

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Suites and sky boxes do have a choreography: As the crowd below dances and punches the air, or, if it’s a sporting event, screams at the ref and stomps for the home team, the sky-box people face that most cringe-inducing of adult dilemmas--how to join in without looking like idiots. It is just about impossible to meaningfully shake one’s booty when one is in a room with a dozen people on their best behavior, nibbling rosemary chicken and sipping wine.

Thus, as Bruce rocked out, the VIPs were unable to truly rock with him--unable to truly share the abandon you only feel when the beat is coming up through your legs and erasing your inhibitions until you are neither common nor special, just one with the pulsing crowd. This is a rare communion, so rare now that--who knows?--maybe one day people will buy tickets just for a taste of “E Pluribus Unum.” It’s lonely at the top.

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