barcade, our first super-secret adventure

so laura is like this boy magnet. it's ridic. she walks into a place and they get all retarded. especially this one guy from lebanon. and australia. he wanted to tell her secrets but was so fucked up by her lauraness that he was awkwardly shouting while I was awkwardly trying to have an awkward conversation with his pasadena/lebanese cousin. it was not like parker posey in party girl.

anyway, one night we went out with this aussie/lebanese guy and his cousin (not the awkward one). and just so you know, the one who liked laura was really good looking. I mean really. like his uncle gave him this awkward leather blazer and he sweetly wore it to make his uncle happy, but he still managed to look good. really. like he had these amazing white shoes that are really hard to pull off. anyway...


l.a. is so fucking ridiculously secretive. I mean, c'mon people, what do you think is going to happen? the hoi polloi will find out about your secret spot and gawk at you? whatever. anyway, the point is, after 6 months in NY I knew where I wanted to live/work/go out/etc. But nothing about L.A. is intuitive. Everything is in a strip mall and unless you have someone to tell you that this strip mall is better than the one down the street, well, you'll just have to figure it out for yourself.

so, obviously I was super-psyched to hear about the super-secret bar/arcade, barcade.

and it's absurd. and it's so much harder to find that you think it will be. it's on second, just west of western, but the monkey everyone tells you to look for is not so noticeable as you would think it would be. but it's there. and once you get past the strange bouncer you enter into a world of dorkiness beyond your dorkiest dreams. for serious. I mean these people have fucking joust. do you have joust?. No, you most certainly do not.

and they have a fierce pinball machine. (actually, they have three, but two suck.)

look, if you need a reason to go, they have jameson on the rocks for $3. three dollars. and that, my friend, is hard to beat.