Talking Philosophy With a Billionaire Over the Combo Plate
East we travel in chauffeur-driven BMW luxury, our chariot gliding under Beverly Hills palms that stand as erect as palace soldiers.
Eli Broad, the baron of Los Angeles, is in the front passenger seat; I’m in the back.
We are going to Los Tacos for lunch.
A column under my name suggested that Broad had violated the spirit of election law by pushing $100,000 through a back door and into the campaign of mayoral candidate Antonio Villaraigosa. I said in passing that unless Broad dines at Los Tacos on Santa Monica Boulevard just west of Fairfax, we probably would never break bread.
A good sport, he. Broad responded with a letter inviting me to lunch at you know where.
Why Los Tacos? you ask.
Because eight years ago, I knew a young lady who lived nearby. While courting, I got hooked on both the No. 3 combination platter and the young lady, not necessarily in that order, and even though I kept taking her there for dinner, she said yes when I asked her to marry me.
Ever since, when I’m trying to impress someone, back to this shack I go. Broad is an art collector, and I haven’t even told him yet that he is about to see the finest on-velvet art collection in the Western Hemisphere.
Los Tacos sits snugly between a 7-Eleven and a Laundromat. As James our driver spins us into the lot, it seems a safe bet that Broad will be the first billionaire to peruse the $4-$7 offerings (rice and beans included).
The retired philanthropist, who made his fortune building homes and managing retirement accounts, is natty in a navy suit, gold silk handkerchief triangulating up from his breast pocket.
He is gabbing endlessly about his passionate interest in public education, biomedical research and the reinvention of downtown L.A. All of which I may write about one day.
But this is “A Tale of Two Cities.” It’s Howard Hughes walking into a chapter of “Tortilla Flats.” Do you want to hear about school district governance, or do you want to know how a billionaire eats his beans?
As we walk toward the restaurant, a solitary man eyeballs us as if we were landed aliens. He is in denim and leather and looks like someone you’d want on your side in a knife fight. I notice only the briefest hesitation in Broad’s gait.
On my recommendation, we go with the No. 3--the cheese enchilada platter. I offer to pay, because that’s the polite thing to do, even though he invited me to lunch and is worth $4 billion.
And what does he do?
He lets me pay.
I know exactly what my father would say.
“That’s why he’s a billionaire.”
So here we are with our enchiladas, and Broad, a trim white-haired gent with a tan the hue of Kiwi polish, says he wants a diet soda.
In so many words, I remind him this isn’t spa food, so why bother? In for a dime, in for a dollar.
“Should we go with something exotic?” he asks.
We sit now with our No. 3 platters and our Jarrito strawberry sodas the color of nothing natural. Laborers are in here, speaking in Spanish about the guy in the suit. Gays and hipsters quiz us silently, me and this billionaire drinking his strawberry soda and dreaming up a new world for all of them.
The tableau is rich and crazy and as vibrant as the painting that hangs on the wall over our table. A waterfall scene in colors the same as the Jarrito sodas.
Broad once bought a $2.5-million Lichtenstein with an American Express card so he could earn interest until the bill came due, and also so he could get 2.5 million frequent flier miles. To which my father would say, again:
“That’s why he’s a billionaire.”
I ask Broad the collector and connoisseur what he thinks of this painting and the others, and he says:
“You won’t see them in any respectable museum.”
He eats around the enchiladas. Rice first, then beans, ixnay on the salsa, and then he works on the enchiladas, lobbying the whole time in his disarmingly candid way.
He pushed that money to Villaraigosa because he thought Tony was a better proposition than Jim Hahn, and if the campaign laws are a mess, it’s not his fault.
He helped invent sprawl with all those tract houses he built, but the zoning commissioners allowed it and people made lives in those homes, and he has neither apology nor regret.
Remaking Grand Avenue into a pedestrian attraction is not penance, he says. It’s just his next project.
I start to debate the logic. No downtown is real without people living there, so why doesn’t the king of residential development get to work on that?
But you can’t knock Eli Broad off stride. He’s a Lithuanian Ross Perot, and all you can do is admire that someone 68 years old, who could disappear to a perfect place, has ego and money enough to think he can fix this broken one.
“I’m a maniac,” he says, Los Tacos enchilada cheese doing a bungee jump off his chin. “I’m a workaholic.”
I get the point.
But next time, he buys.
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Steve Lopez’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. You can reach him at steve.lopez@latimes.com.
