Beso might be the last man standing when the economy finally recovers. If so, it won't be because it's that great of a restaurant. It won't be because the food is great. The food is just good enough. It won't be because it's reasonable priced. It's not. It's just not as overpriced as some of the places that strive for the same clientele. (And most of those places have failed. People aren't tolerating the fifty-dollar steak like they used to.) It won't be because, as one bartender aggressively told me, "Dude, we are so much nicer than bartenders at other bars. We are so much nicer than we have to be!" He was almost spitting as he told me this, but more on that later. If Beso weathers the current economic storm, and all evidence says that it will, it will be because Beso does just enough right to not piss you off to the point of never returning.

The bartender's bizarre, telling comment came one night when I was waiting at the bar for my friends to arrive for dinner. I asked what beers they served on tap.

"Nothing", he replied. As a beer drinker, I'm especially sensitive to places that disrespect the suds.

"No love for the beer drinkers, huh?" I asked.

"We're bottles only. It makes our job so much easier."

Okay, red flag! Red flag! It's not about your convenience, pal, it's about mine! I'm the customer. But I just filed that one away. As it turns out, Beso stocks a decent selection of bottled beers. I ordered a Negra Modelo. He ripped off the bottle cap and smacked the bottle down in front of me.

"We normally serve it with a nice slice of jalapeño in the bottle. It's really good."

He might as well have been speaking Klingon. Jalapeño? Really? I'll applaud the effort. Somebody took the time to figure out a little bit of personalized flair for something as mundane as cracking a beer. And I'm sure the result is quite invigorating, but you'll understand if I pass. (He seemed to pout a little when I demurred.)

"No," I said, "But I'll take a glass." Come on, don't make me ask. Too much work for you again? But I will give them credit for not cramming a lime wedge that I didn't ask for into the bottle. Can the bartenders of the world stop with that, please?

I asked how the place was doing. He looked at me confidently. "Good. Real Good...Other places are having trouble but we're not. Later tonight, it'll be blowing up in here." I sipped my beer. He continued, "I mean, I can only speak for the bar, but one reason, I mean, dude, we're so much nicer than bartenders at other bars. We are so much nicer than we have to be!"

Translation: "As big of an asshole as I'm being right now, I could be so much worse." Noted.

Certainly rampant assholery is a favorite target of this website, and when customers are paying a couple of hundred bucks a head for the privilege of being treated like shit, I'm usually all over it. But to have the existence of such behavior acknowledged openly, well, I was stunned. Thank God my friends showed up about then. I left the recovered asshole to his jalapeños.

I've been seated at three or four different places in the dining room and they're all about the same. The banquets along one wall are best and filled with beautiful people. Beso really manages to promote an air of superiority to diners by simply taking away their armrests. Astonishing. The only seating that really doesn't work are the absurd arrangements in the bar area. Uninviting ottomans serve as chairs at tables that are uncomfortably low for eating (which of course, the unfortunates who don't make into the proper dining room must do. Oh, the shame.)

The menu has some steady choices and some missteps. A conversation starter for sure is the "Tomahawk Chop", a brontosaurus sized portion of bone-in beef ($64) that my friend Alan has ordered three times but has yet to finish once. He usually slices me off a pound or two. I'll admit it's tasty. The outer layer is perfectly charred to crispness while the interior stays pink and juicy, as ordered. The grilling station is separate from the main kitchen and adjoins the dining room like a sort of meat-based observation booth. Perhaps the proximity to the customers (or more specifically the fact that the customers can see their faces) inspires the grill cooks to amp up the effort. The results seem to work.

Overall the wisely smallish menu gives a very slight nod to celebrity owner Eva Longoria's Mexican-American heritage without being disingenuous or precious about it. There's a dish called Eva's avocado guacamole with crispy tortilla chips, which my friends seem to like more than I do. The "avocado" in the above item might seem redundant until you see the next item on the menu, Todd's artichoke guacamole with za'taar pita chips. I've no idea who Todd is, but I assume I'm supposed to*. I'm underwhelmed by this dish, but my friends seem to like it, so it sits half eaten on our table every time until the entrees arrive and table space becomes a premium. The other eponymous dish, Eva's tortilla soup, sounds perfectly rustic but would be better suited for a writer who doesn't hate tortilla soup. Otherwise, the addition of Manchego cheese, chorizo, salsa verde and pico de gallo to a few dishes upholds enough cultural identity to give the menu some personality without making the claim to be authentically Mexican. Perhaps, as I've written about many times in this column, this because is high-end Mexican restaurants don't survive in LA.

A friend and I both went for the salmon steak one night. Although the waiter cautioned us that "it isn't a filet," we were still unprepared the pervasiveness of the tiny bones. For $34, how about making it a fillet, huh? Avoid it unless you like your meal coupled with busy work. Since then, I've stuck to the pork chop or the grilled striped bass and have been much happier. I've never been in love with the sides or the preparations at Beso, but I've also never left hungry. The deserts are lovely, but at a table full of guys eager to keep their shirts off all summer, grudgingly overlooked. The exception was the one time we had to wait in the bar longer than usual for our table. On that occasion the manager brought a complimentary assortment of sweets after our meal regardless. In was a classy touch, one that in other restaurants would be considered "way more nicer" than was necessary.

* "Todd" is restaurateur Todd English, Longoria's partner in Beso. But seriously, are you supposed to know that?

Beso: Hollywood Boulevard. Located near the Vine St. Red Line station, which is a good alternative to the valets' $7 fuck-you fee. Good bottle beer selection for a place that hopes you never order a beer. Acknowledge the niceness or don't come back, fucker. (photo by Aaron Black)

There are two types of restaurants: those that will transfer your bar tab to your table and those that will not. Those in the former category send a confident signal that they have their stuff together. Those in the latter are admitting defeat before you even see a menu. I have never understood the rationale behind requiring a customer to settle up at the bar before moving to a table. It invariably hints at deeper, systemic problems within the restaurant's chain of command and always seems a tad distrustful.

This happened to me last night at Magnolia, and it was not only annoying, but socially awkward. My date was already at the bar when I arrived. She had just ordered a drink, a drink I would've happily paid for had I been next to her. But at the exact moment I entered, the hostess walked to up to escort us to our table. She informed us we would need to settle our bar tab before being seated. After entirely more conversation than was needed, and after the uncomfortable moment of deciding if I should pay for her drink, even though to do so when I didn't order one just seems plain weird, we managed to cancel the drink before the bartender had made it (like that should matter) and opted for a bottle of wine at the table.

It was roughly around the second glass of reasonable Pinot Noir that my date informed me that she couldn't sleep with me that night because she had a "houseguest" in from out of town--a guy. A straight guy. A tall straight guy--who's sleeping not in her guest room, but in her bed.

"Then why in the world are you out with me?" I asked. A better question, where the hell is he tonight? Did he have a date too? Mind you, I didn't ask to have sex with her, nor was I expecting to. It was just rather obvious, because, well, that's what she and I usually do with each other.

I was mortally offended, not that I wouldn't be getting laid, but at her reason--and that she decided to tell me in the first place. And that she hadn't cancelled, which would've been fine. And that she hadn't come up with a better excuse than the truth. A wave of anger started to rumble deep within me. How glad I was that I hadn't paid for that damn drink.

The drink. The bar tab. What were we talking about? Ah, yes--a restaurant that makes you settle up at the bar before being seated.

I can think of no legitimate reason why this should ever happen.

Are drinks slipping through without being paid for? If so, find the crack and fix it. If there's a dishonest server or bartender in the mix, fire him. If there's some glitch in the computer software or tracking process that won't allow this type of transfer, then chuck the outdated, ineffectual system and get an upgrade. If the problem arises from infighting among the staff over whose tips are being taken or not taken, stop the bickering and grow up. Gratuity distribution should never, under any circumstances, be the customers' problem.

And this customer was having his own problem. The woman across the table from me saw the look on my face. She heard the tone in my voice. I'm a progressive guy. My bed sees its share of boys and girls and, when it comes to sex, I'm about as judgmental as tooth decay. But this was just too 21st Century, post-gay, all-four-girls- from-Sex-and-the-City-morning-after-gabfest for me.

She'd screwed up and she knew it. She apologized. But the idea of picking up the check, which I was about to do out of some long-standing but in this moment completely irrelevant social construct, just made me feel like the biggest sucker on the planet. That's when she grabbed my hand.

"I'll get this," she said. "Please, it's the least I can do."

And so I let her, wishing I had ordered a drink at the bar, preferably a nice 16- year Lagavulin with a large Chimay Grand Reserve as a chaser. She had a half-ass restaurant to thank that I hadn't.

As we left, I started to feel bad. I'd let her have a good half hour of "how could you treat me like this" punishment. My self-pity was red-lining. I suggested we hit the bar next door for a drink. My treat. Besides, a nightcap would make her even later for her hook-up with the tall, non-gay asshole.

We drank together at the bar and laughed, remembering how much we like each other, but that we aren't really cut out for a relationship. Just for fun I asked the bartender if we could move to a table and still keep our tab open. He looked at me like I'd fallen out of a tree.

"Yeah, of course." He shrugged.

My pretend-date and I went back to my car and made out for ten minutes before saying our goodbyes. All seemed right with the world. I'll bet her houseguest is back in New York by now.

I should really give her a call.

Magnolia - One of God-knows-how-many-restaurants that charges A.O.C. prices for Applebee's-like service. Located near Vine on either Sunset or Hollywood Boulevard, I can never remember which. Expect to be treated with as much trust as at a check-cashing place.

Valet parking is one of those eye-rolling Los Angeles institutions that is probably here to stay, much like the inexplicable line of customers outside Pink's hotdogs. Compulsory valet service is annoying and pricey for residents and a source of great derision among visiting LA bashers (to Hell with them anyway), but in a pinch, or when weather, time constraints, or serious shortage of parking arise, it's a necessary evil.

Don´t even THINK of parking here

Let's say I'm running late to dinner, and my friends are already at the restaurant waiting for me. Then I'm obliged to valet park. No fair trolling the streets for a free spot when I'm already keeping people waiting. I look at it as penance for being late. Maybe that $8 will get me out the house ten minutes earlier next time.

The most irritating instance of valet parking, however, isn't the chic nightclubs and restaurants that charge top dollar to park your car. It's the more casual spots, the nickel-and-dimers who charge a few bucks when they have no business offering valets in the first place. At no time do I ever drive away from a valet stand feeling like I got a deal, unless it's at big talent agency or production company in Century City that provides the service for free. But those times I'm usually too busy stewing about the pitch meeting I just tanked to care about the ten bucks I saved.

In parts of town where parking is scarce, like Hollywood, then valet parking is useful. In trendier parts of the city, like Hollywood, it's also obnoxiously expensive. Shelling out $10 to roll up to Hyde is part the glitterati game you buy into when you go to such places--as is the $12 martini. (Bottle service, however, is ridiculous under any circumstances. Three hundred dollars for a bottle of Skyy and some mixers? Suck me.)

At least the valet operations at those trendy haunts serve a purpose--finding a parking spot for cars in areas with little or no parking, and most important, allowing beautiful, underdressed women in six-inch heels and impossibly tight skirts to simply "be beautiful" without the indignity of having to baby-step a couple of long city blocks at the risk of twisting an ankle, freezing to death or being accosted by the corner meth dealer with leering eyes, a rude mouth and too much time on his hands.

According to Los Angeles's traffic officials, a great deal of congestion in crowded areas comes from drivers circling the streets in search of free or metered parking. Valets, to a degree, cut down on such congestion. But in areas of the city where the parking situation is a little more forgiving, or in some places ample, then valets become unnecessary. And at restaurants that have their own parking lots, the presence of a valet is not only useless, but offensive. It's nothing but a clumsy and inflammatory attempt to bilk a few extra dollars from customers.

For some reason, towns like Studio City, Sherman Oaks and Encino seem especially prone what I call the "Fuck-you valet" - compulsory, useless and more of a hindrance than a help.

Take Casa Vega , that license-to-print-money, dark cave of a cantina in Sherman Oaks that has an hour wait seven nights a week, despite mediocre fare and airport-quality margaritas. My own Baptist grandmother in South Carolina makes better nachos and she's about as Mexican as a hockey game. Casa Vega has it's own large, easily accessible parking lot a stone's toss from the front door. You're just not allowed to use it. You'd think a place that should be thanking it's customers for 40 years of robust patronage would be happy with the profits garnered by its overpriced menu, but no. They want to round out the raping with a little post meal shake-down at the valet stand.

What is the point, really, of having valets at a restaurant that has it's own large parking lot? The lot easily accommodates the restaurant at full capacity and street parking isn't that bad around there anyway. Having a little more space for things like parking is one of the reasons people move to the valley in the first place. What's worse, bordering on the criminal, is when you drop your car at the valet, then go inside to find that the wait is, say, a breezy ninety minutes. You decide you'd rather go elsewhere. You return to the valet, sometimes before your car has even been parked, only to find that they still want to charge you. Granted, sometimes they'll let you go free (or with a tip) but it's not a given. I've seen it happen.

I'm never one to throw compliments in the direction of Jerry's Deli, but at least the one in Studio City, which has a smaller parking lot than Casa Vega on a stretch of Ventura that has fewer metered spots, still doesn't charge for parking. Then again, where else can you pair a candy-appletini with chicken piccata and a side of kreplach and not cause the waiter to bat an eye. That place has a menu from Mars.

There are a few places along the boulevard that warrant their valet service. Cafe Bizou sits on one of the tighter stretches for parking and yet their valet is only a couple of bucks. And despite their dining chairs, which seem to have been stolen from the breakfast room at the nearest Raddison, the $2 corkage fee is a surefire crowd pleaser. Talk about knowing your clientele.

Getting in and out of Senor Fred is also helped by the presence of valets, but the attitude there is a little more mercantile. Like Firefly in Studio City, Senor Fred wears its over-pricedness like a badge of honor (as a tip of the hat to their desire to turn Ventura Boulevard into Sunset Boulevard of the north---a quest that never seems to take hold) and is reflected not just in their menu pricing, but at the valet stand as well.

Moving farther down Ventura into Encino, however, we find the two most egregious offenders of the fuck-you valet. And both of them are chains. Islands restaurant, a burger and taco enterprise that for years has remained appealing to value-minded customers offers "endless mugs'' of soft drinks, enormous portions, and, in a recent development, free fries with all burgers and sandwiches--all served with friendly, south-of-the-border flair--or is it Polynesian? I can never tell, with their Mexican hamburgers and Hawaiian tacos. The Islands in Encino has perhaps the most spacious parking lot on the boulevard, and yet, even on a dull Wednesday afternoon recently, I was stopped at the entrance by a bored young man eager to park my car--for the required $2.

It would be so nice to park ones car in that spacious lot, stroll into the restaurant to gorge myself on Baja tacos and bottomless cold beer (alcohol refills aren't free; I just pretend they are.) Then that fifty yard journey back to my car would serve as a digestive after-meal walk. I'd really feel like I was getting a deal. Instead, thanks to all those delicious frosty-glassed Coronas, I forget to have my ticket validated from Skip at the hostess stand and have to trudge back inside to get stamped just so I can pay three bucks for the privilege of having a complete stranger adjust my perfectly positioned car seat for his four second drive to the front door.

Honestly, what is the point?

And then there's Encino branch of Buco di Beppo, a faux Italian eatery that stole it's entire concept and family-style menu from Carmine's in Times Square, right down to the menu board font and quaint Italianate photographs on the wall. Again, we find a restaurant that has it's own convenient parking lot and forces customers to use the valet. I refuse. I park on the street no matter how far the walk, but I could sniff out a free parking spot in a cobweb of crosswalks, fire zones and emergency room drop-off lanes. But that's me.

Here's a perfectly reasonable solution. How about making valet in these places optional instead of mandatory? Plenty of elderly folks and lazy fatties with four pounds of alfredo sauce in their to-go tubs would still happily pay a few dollars for the convenience of curbside valet. As for the rest of us, get out of our way. We're trying to park.

Ventura Boulevard: defending Los Angeles from the San Fernando Valley with a gauntlet of Ralphs supermarkets, coffee shops and cheap sushi. If you need an auto parts store, you're screwed. Valet prices may vary.

Photo by Aaron Black.

When you're hungry, you want to eat. When you're tired, you want to sit. Neither was happening.

The evening was gearing up to be everything a restaurant experience shouldn't be: stressful, annoying and carried out on the restaurant's terms, not those of the paying customer. We had a reservation at Anchor & Hope, the new offering in SOMA from the guys who brought you Town Hall and Salt House. (That's how they bill themselves on the Anchor & Hope website.) But for Anchor & Hope, our table was booked a week in advance and still the best we could get was 8:45. That's a perfectly reasonable hour in most cases, but on this night, I was with folks who worked real jobs and started their day with the roosters--not to mention two of our party had a $15-an-hour babysitter at home. By 5:30 that afternoon, were already starving and exhausted, so we called the restaurant to see about sneaking in a little earlier.

The young woman working the phones was about as accommodating as if we'd asked to take the china home with us. "There's really no way I can get you in before the time you were given," she told my friend. So when we countered by asking if we just showed up maybe twenty minutes early, would they see what they could do for us? The hostess replied. "You can come in a little early, but it's still going to be 8:45 before we can seat you."

Fair enough, it was a Friday night in a big restaurant town. And reservations are just that, reservations. Still, I was picking up some heavy attitude. This place had better be great to warrant this level of ego. (Is it ever warranted, really?) Anchor & Hope's pedigree is worthy enough. Expanding on the brand created by local darlings Town Hall and Salt House can only be expected and doesn't seem to have been done in an overly rushed manner. Town Hall, while a bit full of itself, is consistently good and proved reasonably accommodating to last minute reservations when I was living in San Francisco.

We arrived at 8:30 and checked in with the hostess, who reiterated what she had told us over the phone before motioning us to the bar area. Having a drink at the bar before a meal is a wonderful way to unwind, provided there is room for you at the bar, which of course there wasn't. What resulted was forty minutes of constantly feeling like we were in the way. At one point my friend and I were trying to hold a conversation with an enormous basket of baguettes standing between us like some golden-crusted sea urchin (more on those spiny creatures later). It was a dramatic piece of decoration. But I hoped for everyone's sake it wasn't functional. One sudden wet sneeze and the whole evening's bread supply would be speckled with a phlegmy dose of head-cold. As fate would have it, a server slipped between us a few minutes later and plucked out several loaves destined for consumption. We wouldn't be having bread that night, we decided silently. (Let's hope the management rethinks this little misguided storage decision.)

Despite our enduring the restless shuffling and the hostess's unnecessary coolness, everyone else on staff seemed ever so courteous and professional. We couldn't even get up to the 35-foot long zinc bar to order because of the crowd, so the bartender made a point to recognize us and then walked around to our side to ask what we'd like to drink. It turns out there's a great selection of interesting beers behind that long, beautiful bar that we couldn't get close enough to touch.

It was a rainy, cold night. The only table that looked close to paying its bill was an inhospitable little outpost erected by the front door like a cruel afterthought. The four miserable people seated there clutched their coffee cups a little tighter every time the door opened and a bracing San Francisco breeze ripped through their bodies. The risk was too great. Aware that it could delay our meal even further, I approached the hostess perched imperiously behind her podium.

"I know you're doing everything you can," I lied, "But could we request that we not be seated at that table?"

The hostess nodded knowingly. "I understand," she said. It was the first glimpse of humanity she'd let escape.

Mercifully, a few minutes later a better table opened up and we took our seats. Our waiter, Brady, turned out to be the general manager. And with his appearance, Anchor & Hope began to redeem itself. He apologized immediately, but more impressive, knew exactly what he was apologizing for. "Hi there. I know you folks were hungry and tried to get seated a little early, and here we are not seating you until twenty minutes past your reservation time. I'm really sorry about that. It's been an unusually busy night, but that's no excuse."

Ok, so you had me at, "Hi there." A heart-felt apology goes a long way in the customer service world, and Brady's was no exception. All at once the stress of the last hour melted away. We had a great table. More fun beers were on the way. And some earnest words from the manager made us feel appreciated.

But Brady wasn't done. Five minutes later he appeared with one of their signature appetizers for the table, compliments of the kitchen. But sea urchin, in any form, excites me about as much as putting on wet clothes. It's the thought that counts, right? I folded my hands politely while my three friends dutifully and gratefully picked at the freebie.

Thanks anyway. (photo by Marcia Gagliardi, tablehopper.com)

Heavily tilted toward fish and oysters, the menu offered little that I could get excited about. Perhaps I was so hungry that seafood didn't seem substantial enough, or perhaps the memory of the urchin had pointed me away from the ocean entirely. I opted for the pork, which was good, but nothing to blog about.

As we finished our main courses, a man came up to our table and identified himself as Dough Washington, one of the owners. He apologized for not getting to us sooner, citing a extremely busy night not only here at Anchor & Hope, but over at Salt House from where he had just come. He then apologized for the fact that we had tried to get seated early and ended being seated after our scheduled time. Brady had well briefed him; it was a nice touch. Then he offered to buy us a round of drinks. but our Midwestern Protestant upbringing waved him off. They'd done enough for us, I heard myself think. Fortunately, my Californian never-say-no-to-free-booze lushiness caught him before he walked away.

"You know, I think I'll take you up on that." I said. My friends didn't need much prodding after that. Mr. Washington quickly returned with two glasses of champagne and two good local beers.

So at this point, we were content. The food was good, not great. But we had been well cared for after an initial annoyance and felt like all was right. So happy with the new restaurant were we that we even ordered dessert, something I'm genetically incapable of doing when a place has pissed me off. I just can't.

And that's when Brady hit the ball out of Pac Bell or AT&T or whatever-the-hell-it's-now-called Park and plunked it into McCovey Cove.

"I know you folks were kept waiting tonight, sorry again. We brought you some appetizers. I hoped you enjoyed them, but I got the sense it wasn't your favorite. And two of you ordered the pork, but you just didn't seem too blown away by it. And we want you to be. So tonight, we just like to make you our guest."

Pause. Did he just say he's comping the whole check?

"You don't have to do that." Four adults said in perfect unison. But Brady was adamant. We hadn't enjoyed our meals enough to please him and that was that. And he'd been watching.

So for watching, and for paying attention, and for trying to make things right, he earned himself a few customers for life--customers who will tell their friends about it, just like I'm doing now.

Anchor & Hope. 83 Minna St., San Francisco. Great beers. Avoid the bread, unless you're already sick. Suggested dish: Order the pork, then act slightly, but not overly displeased. Good things might happen. Note: free stuff cannot be guaranteed.

This dispatch from San Francisco is part of an ongoing mission of the Wreckoning to explore the best and worst of other cities around the world. Coming soon...New York City.

Hope and Anchor photo by Joseph Lubushkin

It is our most precious resource, the lifeblood of civilization. In bottle form, it is a $12 billion industry. In its natural state--falling from the sky or melting from snow-covered mountains--it has become the stuff of myth. The piddling amounts we have in reservoirs remind us that, here in Los Angeles, we live in a desert. What we don't bring to town in trucks, ships and cargo planes, we hijack from the Colorado River. We dedicate some of our best and brightest minds to figuring out new ways to harness it, whether through desalination or treating sewage (okay, gross). And still, with all the attention lavished upon drinking water, we can't seem to figure out how to serve it in a restaurant.

Here comes trouble.

Lately it seems restaurants have eased off the hard-sell of pricey bottled water, but there are still plenty of places that offer up the annoying, "Flat or sparkling," option and force the customer to guiltily confess, "No, regular water is fine," as if we'd just agreed to bury a loved one in a pine box instead of a $12,000 silk-lined, pewter torpedo. The push toward all things green has made us conscious of those plastic bottles filling up our landfills, and removed the stigma from good old municipal (albeit filtered) water. Indeed, tap water is cool again, and that's as it should be. As long as it doesn't taste like rusty pipes, or the swimming pool at the local Y, I'm happy.

But there is a right way and a wrong way to serve iced water. Simply put, a water glass should be lifted off the table and refilled over the floor, not over the table. I can only begin to describe my annoyance when a server sticks a wet, dripping pitcher in front of my face and fills up my glass wherever it may sit on the table. Invariably, there is splashing, whether on my body or, more egregious, on my food. I'm completely baffled by the thinking here. As best I can figure, the sentiment must be that customers don't want a glass they are using touched by an employee during a meal. Fair enough, but I'm not suggesting a server stick her thumb in it. No, a glass is picked up at the base, or if it's a wine glass, from the bottom of the stem. As for coffee mugs, there's a handle there. Best to use it.

I was a busboy for years, much longer than I was a waiter. Those hard-working men (they tend to be male) are my brothers. Yet when it comes to refilling water, they are simple doing what they've been told to do. The way a server handles or doesn't handle a water glass is a decision made by management, not buy the people who do the pouring. Either a restaurant opts for the slightly more time-consuming, infinitely preferable method of picking a glass up off the table, or it goes for the splashy-splash method of whisking a cold, wet pitcher past your ear like a spawning salmon. It's one way or the other, never both.

The worst offenders are the guys I call the Two-fisted Charlies, the guys with a pitcher in each hand, usually one for iced tea and one for water. With no free hand to pick up your glass, you can almost bank on a face-full of pitcher. These guys are all about speed--two hands, two pitchers, twice as efficient. And twice as messy. By the time they're gone, the table is wetter than the tile floor beneath a stadium urinal.

Trying to counteract this from the customer side is something I've never successfully managed. When a particularly inaccurate pourer approaches my glass, I try to beat him to the punch by picking up the glass and handing it to him. Usually this act is met with confusion, as they often think I'm asking them to take it away. Or sometimes we end up doing this awkward bit of physical comedy as I hold the glass for him while he pours, which is something neither of us are comfortable with, and the splash results are worse than if I'd just taken my licks and let him do it his way.

Trying to explain what I want gets me no where. My Spanish sucks, and when I say it in English I sound like an assshole who's giving an employee a hard time for doing his job. But on those few occasions when I effectively explain that I would like the gentlemen to please fill my glass away from the table and then replace it, he looks at me with a disbelieving stare that says, "Why on Earth would you want that?" It's as if they've been conditioned to think they should never touch anything.

For those diners who agree with the prevailing idea that a busser shouldn't touch one's water glass during a meal for hygienic reasons, I've got news for you. Employees have already touched every single item near you: your plates, your silverware, and even your food, all with their bare hands. In fact, cooks touch your food all the time. And you're still alive. So get over it. Those hands you think are riddled with Ebola viruses and staph infections are the same hands that have refolded your napkin when you were in the john. Anybody pouting over that one? No.

Once or twice, there's has been enough water dribbled onto my food that I've asked to have it remade. Sorry, but a $40 New York steak, perfectly garnished with garlic butter, doesn't need a bracing splash of cold tap water to top it off.

The other problem with filling glasses this way is that it's pretty damn difficult to do it in a controlled manner. The varying weight of the pitcher with its fluctuating center of gravity, the cagey positioning of the glasses around the table--I've been know to obscure mine behind the floral arrangement just to get my passive-aggressive point across--and clunking mass of ice in the pitcher that just seems to throw off everything all conspire to make pouring water right onto the table a disaster waiting to happen. And let's not even discuss the dangers of filling up coffee cups this way. If a restaurant is going out of its way to use a long-spouted pitcher, then ok. But those glass carafes like the ones homeboy is holding in the picture above are not meant for precision pouring.

Some restaurants get cutesy by wrapping the pitchers in an elaborate origami of linen napkins to minimize the drips from condensation. Great, now the spawning salmon is wearing a topcoat. It's a band-aid, not a solution.

The real solution--start picking the glasses up by hand, refilling them off the table and setting them back down hygienically and unobtrusively--is not only doable, but far easier. The sooner restaurants start conditioning themselves to do this, the sooner they'll learn that the backlash they thought they'd get from costumers is a bigger myth than an August thundershower in Hollywood.

Photo courtesy of the Continental Restaurant, Buffalo Grove, Il, where, to be fair, no one has ever splashed water on me.

The Los Angeles Times gets it right in calling out a restaurant that gets just about everything wrong. The fact that Gladstone's, the seafood institution on PCH in Malibu, will still be licensed to print money despite a scathing review, greedy and ambivalent owners and across-the-board bad food is exactly the kind of screw-you to the public that the Wreckoning simply can't ignore.

There's a special delight I take when a restaurant critic lambastes a terrible restaurant for being terrible. The big papers don't do it often enough, always finding something positive to say in the wake of a dismal meal much like a dutiful mother offering words of encouragement moments after watching her child face-plant off a balance beam or kick a soccer ball into his own goal to lose a match. Perhaps this is because newspapers aren't technically in the business of putting people out of business (even though theater critics do it all the time). But here in the blog world I feel no such pressure to be diplomatic. Professional? Certainly. Funny? Professionally. But kind? Not when you have the audacity to charge $75 for an iced seafood tower featuring flaccid, off-tasting shrimp floating carelessly in melted ice water, smoked salmon (huh?) that has browned and dried at the edges and poached mussels drowning in what is obviously bottled Italian dressing.

Should I pull punches? Not when your restaurant seats between 1500 and 3000 people a day, had a revenue of $14.5 million last year and still you serve Alaskan king crab legs (at $46.95 for a pound and a half) that have the taste and texture of rope. Am I being unfair? Not when your restaurant, located on prime beachfront property, serves breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week and still you feel the need to renovate and expand to pack in more people. Your patio is lined with tables and not one gets an umbrella--in Los Angeles, the anvil of the sun. Do you care even the slightest bit about your customers? Shame on you Gladstone's.

Shame on any restaurant that is known more for its doggy bags (intricately wrapped foil creations in the shapes of swans, mermaids and other swimmy things) than for what's inside of them. As Leslie Brenner's excellent, spleening review points out, it's because of what's inside those bags that the need to put an artful spin on the mass exodus of uneaten food arose in the first place. And what exactly are so many people carting away from this barnacled bastion of greed? Side dishes, most likely. Huge clumps of mashed potatoes and cole slaw that get thumped clumsily down on plates to satisfy appetites that the overpriced, ill-conceived and frankly, scary seafood dishes couldn't satisfy. I'm sure a lot of the seafood gets taken home as well; we Americans like to feel we're getting our money's worth (even when we know we're not), but something tells me that a lot of the Parmesan salmon and overly-breaded crabcakes get tossed into the kitchen trash back at home, their foil mermaids still in tact. We Americans might value a buck in these difficult times, but we value our health even more.

"And for the gentleman, I think the bunny..."

The flair and precision with which these take-home item are wrapped up says plenty about the staff, as does Brenner's waiter steering the patrons away from the most abominable dishes. "Frankly, they're the worst crabcakes I've had, anywhere," he whispered to the critic's husband so as not to be overheard. Clearly, the servers know how bad the food is. It stands to obvious reason that complaints from customers, the glimmering flocks of swans and mermaids that leave the premises nightly and the mounds of food that goes back to the kitchen half-eaten or barely picked at by customers who had no interest in bringing terrible food back to their cars (and perhaps, God forbid, forgetting it until morning, as I've done countless times) would have all trickled back up the ladder to management and then the owners. But these crystal-clear signs that the food is bad have fallen on blind, or worse, indifferent, eyes.

Of course it's quite a show watching 27-year veteran Miguel Carillo whip up a mermaid. That little bit of artistry is just about the only thing he or any of his fellow staffers have any direct control over. They know the food blows. There's just nothing they can do about it, except warn you ahead of time and dress it up pretty when you take it home. The swans are pure distraction, nothing more.

In ordering the Gladstone's clambake, Ms Brenner encountered a crab leg afflicted with freezer burn, which not only confirms the management's cost-cutting laziness in depending on frozen food for a seafood restaurant, but is testament to sub-standard work on the part of the kitchen staff. Freezer burn is tough to miss and easy to avoid. That dismal clambake, by the way, costs $95, but you're only told that if you ask. Surprise!

It's a curious thing: when people visit the water's edge, whether lake, river or ocean, there's an expectation that seafood is the only logical dining option. When they get there, inevitably, there's a seafood restaurant waiting for them, almost always a terrible one. I've never understood this. Sure, you're looking out at the waves, thinking about all the sea creatures lurking out there in the blue, but so what? Do people really believe that better seafood can be found in Malibu or Hermosa Beach than, say, Monterey Park or Beverly Hills? Does the food court at the zoo serve panda or roasted cheetah? Here's a newsflash: the tiger prawns and yellowtail on the specials board were not rolled off the docks outside the kitchen (if there even is a dock) and dropped into the sauté pan. Chances are, your lobster dinner came from one of two places: the fish market downtown, or a distribution warehouse near the airport. In fact, you're more likely to find fresh seafood at a restaurant near those places than at one that trucks it all the way out to the Boo.

I've blissfully gotten my friends to let go of the pipedream that Gladstone's is anything but a dingy tourist trap serving cafeteria-level food at three-star prices. Ms Brenner paid over $500 before tip for herself and four guests. I did my time there, in my 20s, before something in me snapped and I said, "no more." The last time I ate there was Sunday brunch two years ago, at the urging of a friend who lives in Santa Monica. Because it was his birthday, I didn't protest. Turns out I didn't have to. The food did the talking. A leopard shark never changes its spots. And, Gladstone's, amazingly, is still packing them in.

Gladstone's Malibu. Located on Pacific Coast Highway. Just keep driving until you're blinded by the glare of two dozen gold-foiled mermaids flapping about the valet stand. Best Dish: any bottled beer. Worst dish: Gladstone's original seafood molcajete, an inexplicable cauldron of scallops, shrimp, lobster tail, panela cheese, bell peppers, onions, cactus, ranchero sauce and I have to stop because just writing this makes me want to hurl.

The kids are back to playing restaurant over at STK, and there doesn't seem to be a competent adult in sight.

In an attempt to branch out from our familiar haunts, our Thursday Night Dinner Gang (not to be confused with the on-hiatus Wednesday Night Supper Club) decided to venture into the often dicey world of newly-opened restaurants. Los Angeles has no shortage of new arrivals--which is part of the problem. In an industry where barely half of the newcomers survive to their sophomore year, LA's particular track record with restaurant openings is that a troubling number of them don't seem to mind that their run will be short and their closure imminent. In truth, it's hard to open a good restaurant. But keeping a good restaurant running for any significant period requires skill, dedication and a hell of a lot of hard work. So what's a glib, cynical short-sighted owner to do? Sell short, babe. Many restaurant partners (to call them restaurateurs is to give them way too much credit) are perfectly happy to open with a splash, fill the sidewalk with paparazzi and charge the Hiltonistas exorbitant prices for Kobe beef sliders and truffle French fries. Many of the city's fresh-faced restaurants are little more than "smash-and-grab" jobs, designed to rake in profits with substandard product for a very short time, then fold as quickly as they came, only to reopen elsewhere (or even in the same spot) spruced up in a different little black dress, speaking with a new accent and spinning a reshuffled playlist on the iPod.

The STK staff.

I've been to STK and the adjoining bar, the awfully-named Coco De Ville (sounds like a drag queen), twice. Both times, the scene was as sceney as it gets: burly, clipboarded doormen, patrons four-deep at the bar, music too loud for conversation, and enough stiletto heels to aerate a soccer pitch clicking past. Our dinner reservation, made two weeks in advance, was for 9 o'clock. All eight of our party had arrived by 8:50 and were greeted by a quartet of young, head-set wearing host-persons positioned behind a bank of computer touch-screens at the host station. I felt like I was checking in at the W. At 9:15, a lovely young woman with a stressed fake smile stapled to her face informed us that our table would be ready "soon."

Alan, who made the reservation and was springing for dinner, asked, "How soon?"

"We've got some people finishing up, so not much longer."

Tired of the hectic scrum around the bar, we reconvened on the patio, longing for the days when a reservation meant something. At 9:30 Alan went back to the host stand and asked about our table. A different woman--it was very hard to figure out who was in charge--told him quite clearly, that our table, "Would be ready in five minutes."

Five minutes is a tolerable wait, unless, of course, the wait is considerably longer. At 9:45, Alan, normally unflappable, found a man who seemed to be a manager, at least that's how he identified himself when asked.

"We've been waiting for 45 minutes for a table that I reserved two weeks ago. Your hostess told me fifteen minutes ago that our table would be ready in five minutes--"

"Five minutes?!" The manager, a guy in his mid-twenties, seemed genuinely shocked. "Who said that? She never should've said that. I didn't tell her to say that."

In his mind, the issue became absolving himself of responsibility, which is ironic, considering he called himself the manager, when the issue should've been appeasing eight, hungry, tired and normally spend-happy guests. But at this point, we were spitefully not drinking. Here would've been the perfect opportunity to buy us a round of drinks, or to apologize for the uncharacteristically long delay. Any gesture would've been welcomed over his defensively deflecting blame like a truculent teenager.

The conversation ended with not much resolution; the guy just walked off, perhaps to get back to his Xbox. A few minutes later, yet a third hostess walked up with a stack of menus to tell us our table was ready.

She led us to a center booth with eight place settings crammed around a table meant for no more than six. "Is there anything bigger, you know, that could hold our entire party?" Alan asked.

She informed us there was not, without ever losing he sense of smugness that she was doing us a favor by seating us in the first place. Delirious with hunger, eight grown men crammed ourselves into the booth. Adding a chair to the open end of the table, it seemed, would've been too accommodating.

I had a jacket with me, and rather than drape it over the banquette into the lap of the couple eating behind me, or scrunching it up into a tiny, wrinkled knot of corduroy and wedging into the scarce few inches around me, I flagged one of the hostesses and asked if she wouldn't mind taking it for me.

She seemed cheerful enough at the question, but also confused by it, as if no one had ever made such a bizarre, eccentric request. She cautiously agreed and took the coat from my hands, but before she walked away I had the good sense to get her name. I had a sudden feeling that if I did not go to her specifically after my meal to claim said jacket, I would never see it again. Kind of like that stupid, annoying rule in crowded bars where you have to go only to the bartender who you initially gave your credit card to in order to buy more drinks or to close out.

As we studied our menus ("Hurry up and choose. I'm starving.") I noticed a huge table--the best and largest in the restaurant--sitting unoccupied in the corner. A few minutes later, hostess number four ushered a bored troll of a man and his leggy pair of blonde, boobtacular escorts a third of his age to the big table, where the man sat, along with Trixie and Desiree, as I had named them, slurping oysters and sipping Champagne for the rest of the evening. I didn't know who this man was, what or whom he owned, or how much of a vig he was steering out of the STK partners, but it was clear that his name inspired fear and the most obsequious service from the staff that most of the patrons would've been better off bussing their own tables than waiting endlessly for recognition from an employee.

Out table was no different. At no point did the "manager" (still makes me giggle) or anyone else drop by our table to apologize for the inexcusable delay or to even check on us. Rather, our server showed up, steered our attention to the most expensive items on the menu and seemed truly disappointed if we ordered anything other than the bone-in filet ($44) or the New York Strip ($42).

The food, when it arrived, was perfectly fine, which is one reason patrons might tolerate the preposterous service for maybe, oh, say, a month longer than they should before this whole glittering enterprise that is STK disappears into the ether and resurfaces elsewhere with a new one-word name, faux-something upholstery, and a new menu focused on sixty dollar tequila rather than sixty dollar Cognac. No matter what bit of costumery a restaurant like this wraps itself in, without the human touch and a little accountability, children's hour will continue. And adults, sadly, will keep coughing up the allowance.

STK. 755 N. La Cienega, located in the asshole portion of Restaurant Row (not to be confused with the stodgy, out-of-touch section further down the street). Phone number withheld because reservations don't seem to matter. Bring a sleeping bag.

To read Part 1, click here. The read part 2, click here.

If the Westside is the forsaken domain of rail service (although there are plenty of buses), then the wasteland south of Ventura Boulevard, between Studio City and Encino, is the place that buses forgot.

There are bus lines that cruise down the Cahuenga Pass into Hollywood and a few that link the Westside to the Valley through the Sepulveda Pass, but in the vast expanse between these two passes, there is one, and only one, bus line that dares to slink through the mountains. That's right, mountains. Nothing makes the geological formations we affectionately call "The Hills" seem more like what they really are, the eastern tail of the Santa Monica Mountain Range, than trying to cross them without using your car. That lone bus line is the 218, but its official and hilarious word title, as designated by its final destination, is "Cedars Sinai."

The author, at the intersection of Mullholland Drive and
Beverly Glen.

Relying on this infrequent bus to get into town on a Saturday night is tough enough, but to count on it to get to the city's marquee hospital is to give up on living. For one thing, it stops running at 8 P.M. Apparently people don't need hospitals after dark. Second, as the day progresses, the schedule of the runs shrinks to once every fifty minutes--hardly a frequency worth planning a trip around.

Normally, I drive my car or take the Rapid Bus down Ventura Blvd. to the Universal City Red Line Station, exit the train at Hollywood and Highland, and walk twenty minutes to Santa Monica Blvd, where the Rapid Buses roll more often than they do on Sunset. It's a bit of a hassle, but walking briskly allows me to justify it as my workout. If I'm lazy, I just drive to Universal, park my car in the free lot (One of Metro's best features. Let's see how long it lasts), but that means I still have a short drive waiting for me at the end of the night or, if I'm really hammered, cabbing home and taking the bus back to get my car in the morning. This onerous task has got to be the eco-friendly, 21st Century version of the Walk of Shame.

In all my daring bus and rail adventures of late, a journey on the 218 is one I had been finding every excuse to avoid. In truth, it is the most direct Metro route between Sherman Oaks, where I live, and West Hollywood, where I've been told I drink. Something just told me that a bus and a winding canyon road was a bad combination. And a look at the arrival times at the Metro website confirmed that it was not a speedy journey--about an hour from Studio City to the end of the line at Cedars. But one night I bit the bullet, mainly for the purposes of being thorough for this story. Jumping off a perfectly good Rapid Bus at Laurel Canyon in order to sit on a bench outside the Walgreens to catch the day's last 218 was like giving up a guaranteed seat on an airline flight for the chance to ride stand-by on a plane that gets me home an hour sooner--it could work out splendidly or all go horribly wrong. The result was somewhere in between.

As I stood on the corner, anxiously peering into the encroaching night for the familiar orange and grey paint job, I was hit with a realization. In all my years in Los Angeles, though countless car rides over that particular hill as a delivery driver, out-of-work actor, seething screenwriter and semi-comatose passenger, I could not once recall ever seeing one of LA's lumbering buses negotiating the turns and sudden stops of Laurel Canyon Boulevard's twisting mountain stretch. When a vehicle with the familiar MTA paint job and the numbers 218 illuminated about the driver's window make a jerky left off of Ventura and stopped in front of me, I understood why. It's not a bus at all. It's a van--the large, people-moving kind that an airport Sheraton might've used to haul hardened business travelers to and from LAX for a decade until the squealing brakes, rattling windows and worn out seat cushions dictated that it was time to sell the thing for scrap metal, or dump it off the Redondo Beach Pier, or better yet, sell it to the MTA.

I took a seat in the row along the back. My two fellow riders plopped down on the seats running along the side windows. Turns out they knew more than I did, because four feet in front of me, with nothing like a seat belt, a handstrap to hang onto, or the slightest bit of padding to protect me, was a pair of chrome bars which encaged the spot where a wheelchair would be anchored. One bar ran floor to roof. The other was horizontal, about three feet off the ground. As we twisted up the canyon and started our descent into West Hollywood, I fought off visions every time the driver touched the brake of my flying forward and the horizontal bar catching my teeth so perfectly as to knock them out cleanly and permanently. Meanwhile the vertical bar seemed to be perfectly placed to catch me squarely in the balls. I finally changed seats somewhere near the Country Market, about two miles after I should have.

I haven't been back on the 218 since. But the Red Line and I are still friends, in fact something romantic has even developed. Standing on the platform at Universal City, there's a moment, about a minute before the lights of the approaching train peek from around the bend, when the train announces her arrival in a whisper of wind. The whisper is quickly a warm embrace and then blasting kiss over every inch of your body. The shot of air is the train telling you she's almost there. If you're on the stairs still coming into the station, and the wind is bellowing up from the platform, then you'd better hurry. She's almost there and she won't wait for long.

For part 1, click here.

I returned to Los Angeles determined to continue my zealous use of public transportation that evolved during my two-month stint in San Francisco. But after falling in love with the Bay Area's trusty, efficient system, coming home to LA felt like entering into an arranged marriage with someone I had never met but had only heard about through vague, disturbing rumors. The standard was high, my expectations low, and the reputation of the bus system I was about to investigate was worrisome, to say the least.

There's been much written lately about the cost advantages of public transportation over skyrocketing fuel costs at the pump. The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and NPR have all done stories in the last few weeks about the influx of riders on various metropolitan bus and rail systems around the country. Indeed, gasoline costs, snarled traffic jams, extortionate parking and a general desire to green-ify one's existence contribute to the push toward going Metro. Financially speaking, the difference is noticeable, but only by a few dollars. Taking the bus, and then the Red Line, to Hollywood for dinner costs me $2.50 one way, involves a one mile walk from my house, and takes about thirty minutes if I time it perfectly (which is possible, but not easy). And then there's the $40 cab ride home, because no fucking way am I standing on a street corner at two in the morning, waiting for a slow-ass bus to take me almost home. I'm not insane, people. Conversely, driving costs me $4.00 in gas and approximately $10 for parking (unless I find some ninja street spot, which is getting harder and harder in resurgent Hollywood). This is a difference of about $30. But there is one other economic factor that throws any cost-risk analysis so heavily toward taking Metro that even a five year-old would arrive at the unavoidable conclusion of "Duh." It is that a DUI, when you consider fines, penalties and legal fees, costs anywhere from ten to fifteen thousand dollars. Monthly bus pass, anyone?

MTA Chief Executive Officer, Roger Snobel.My penchant for taking the Metro leaves most of my friends scratching their heads--"You lost your license, didn't you?"--or at the least, mildly amused. "Well, aren't you all green and shit." I'll admit, it's been more of a game than anything else, a game most people I know think I'm an idiot for playing. If I were truly dependent on Metro, living where I do and having to get to the places I need to get to, relying entirely on Metro, I would step into the path of a Rapid Bus after the first week.

I am not a typical Metro user: I'm not a forty-something Latina, I work at home (on the couch, if you must know), I have two perfectly good cars with paid-up insurance sitting in my driveway, and I use the Metro system only at night. It is this last distinction that sets me most apart from those to whom the system is geared. It is also the thing that screws me the most. If you want to use Metro to avoid nightspot parking fees, enjoy worry-free drinking and the convenience of never having to remember where you left your car, the Metro system is not designed for you. But it should be.

Imagine the ad campaign: a handful of beautiful hipsters laughing and smiling their perfect American-Idol-white teeth as the Red Line hustles them into Hollywood for a night of drinking and being fabulous (not to mention economical, green and relatively un-hazardous to the health of others). Endless possibilities for ad slogans come to mind: Take a ride on the wild side, or Forget the valet line, try the Red Line, or my favorite, METROsexual has a whole new meaning. Indeed, with a little effort and a slight re-imagining of its target audience, The Metropolitan Transit Authority could make night-riding cool for the cool kids, or at least a diverting novelty for the Hiltonistas.

The end of the ad would show the alternative to taking Metro: One of our unsuspecting hipsters blowing a .12 into the Breathalyzer of one of LA's or CHP's finest, then spending the night downtown with the big boys at the County drunk tank before separate criminal and DMV costs and fines gobble up rent for the next year and a half. The ensuing suspended license would kill any chance of employment and make taking the Metro for twelve months an unavoidable certainly, instead of an occasional choice.

Unfortunately, taking the Metro requires more of a gamble than it should. There have been times when the decision absolutely left me high and dry--like the time I let 12:30 A.M. come and go (the last Red Line) and decided to hit up a friend's after-party. By 3 o'clock we were all ready to go home. I was looking at a $50 cab ride and a wait of God knows how long for the cab to get to me. (Apparently I'm not the only one needing a ride at this hour.) We were in Hollywood and a friend offered to give me a lift, but only part of the way--he was reasonably sober, we agreed (very scientifically), but would certainly not pass a field sobriety test if pulled over. We compromised on his dropping me at the Barham freeway exit, where I could wait for the cab I was already calling and he could slink down the back of the hill into Burbank, where he lives. We got to Barham so quickly that I wasn't even through being on hold with the taxi dispatcher before I found myself dumped unceremoniously in front of the flower stand at the top of Barham. Granted, my call was slowed by the fact that I could not understand why the first operator I called could not send a cab right away.

"Because I'm the 411 operator, sir. Would you like the number for a cab company?"

But in a true stroke of luck, a cab magically appeared while I was still holding. Even more amazing, the driver saw me and agreed to stop. I climbed in. The man turned around to look at my face. It was 3:30 A.M. on a Friday morning. He had found me standing on a corner at the top of a mountain without so much as a streetlight to deliver me from the darkness.

"What the hell happened to you?" he said.

"I got dropped," I said.

"I'll say."

The third and final installment of this story will appear in few days.

Public transportation, mystified.

While working on a film earlier this year, I spent two months living in downtown San Francisco. With my car sitting dormant back in Los Angeles, a paltry per diem of $60 and a nightly penchant for getting blindingly drunk with my coworkers, I quickly became a user, and before long a fully-green, civic-minded, tree-hugging advocate, of public transportation. San Francisco's BART/Muni system has its problems, but it is relatively cheap (and a downright bargain compared to shelling out for cabs or parking), gets you where you need to be with a healthy, but not onerous, amount of walking and proves you can survive in a West Coast city without your own wheels.

Yet its efficiency is marred by a glaring, under-reported fact: San Francisco's mass transit system, like that of Los Angeles, London and many other cities, is not aimed at visitors. It is for the locals. And that means navigating an often obtusely difficult and unwelcoming puzzle of regulations, ticket vending machines, city geography and coin hoarding in order to use the system effectively. It isn't just that it's difficult to learn the ins and outs, it's that the difficulties are intentional. One gets the unavoidable feeling that the designers of the system are, as the English say, taking the piss.

Welcome!

My very first ride on the Muni subway brought down the hammer of bureaucracy and showcased publicly funded customer service in all of its odiferous splendor. Trying to get from Union Square to Civic Center Station, only two short stops away, I accidentally put a BART ticket into the Muni turnstile. As the ticket disappeared awkwardly and irretrievably into the slot, a middle-aged dragon lady arose from within the glass booth thirty feet away and bellowed at me through her squawk hole.

"Did you just put a BART ticket in there?!" Her contempt was so deep, so palpable her rage, it was as though I had launched a specific assault on her person with venal and malicious intent. I had no choice but to instantly fall into apologetic, plaintive culpability.

"Ma'am, I believe that I must've done just that."

"Here's a hint. If it says BART, it's for BART. If it says Muni, it's for Muni!" The fire from her throat nearly melted the defenseless microphone.

"I'm terribly sorry. It's my first time riding your system. I don't know the difference between the two." She glared at me, not because I was some stupid yahoo tourist, which I was, but because I wouldn't return even the slightest whiff of hostility--a phenomenon she clearly wasn't used to. She huffed a bit, looked down at her computer, then complained some more.

"Oh, and the BART ticket cost more. You've gone and wasted fifty cents. Oh! Just..Just go on through." She buzzed me through the gate without looking up. Score one for being nice.

I figured out the system relatively quickly, it is, after all, public transportation. But even after several rides there was always a groan that escaped my mouth at the most egregious junctures of ridiculousness. Here's how a ride on the Muni subway from my hotel at Union Square to points elsewhere would work.

Step 1. While still at hotel, in fact, at every restaurant, liquor store and cashpoint of any kind: collect quarters! You'll need six of them for subway or bus. On the subway, they don't give change and they don't take bills. If you have six quarters skip to step 5.

Step 2. Walk down the non-functioning escalator of the Powell St. station. Avoid countless individuals aggressively asking for spare change. Very few of them are able to break a twenty.

Step 3. Even though you are going to ride the Muni system, go directly to the BART ticket machine to get the required six quarters. There is no sign telling you to do this. You just have to know.

Step 4. Magically know that you have to hit Button "H", which says "make change". DO NOT put your two perfectly crisp, flat dollar bills (the only kind it will accept) in the machine BEFORE hitting Button H, as this will stop the whole transaction and cause deserved consternation from the line of antsy passengers already forming behind you.

Step 5. Take quarters from machine and proceed to the Muni side of station. Turnstiles await you. There is a slot for your quarters. Sometimes the slot is inexplicably sealed shut. If not, drop them in slowly, one at a time. Anything else brings a stalled transaction and wrath of said dragon lady.

Sound confusing? Try doing it after a round of Absinthe shooters with a bunch of twenty-two year-olds. Seriously, when did that paint thinner become legal again?

Others have tried to decipher the Muni system as well.

The whole quarter rigmarole can be avoided by purchasing a Fast Pass. This highly losable slip of paper costs $45 and is good for all public transportation within the city (no outlying areas), including the cable cars, but even the rules for buying this liberating little card are hindering and seemingly random. It is only good for that calendar month and can only be purchased from an official kiosk or Walgreens* starting the last five days of the previous month and up to the "first few days" (according to the website) of the month in which it is valid. Cash only. The pass itself is your receipt. Much like owning the Oyster card in London, however, nothing made me feel more like a knowing resident or saved more time than possessing one of those multi-colored bad boys.

Once you're downstairs in the windowless, disorienting boarding area. There are two sets of tracks. If you look closely, buried between the advertisements are two small signs, one on each side of the concourse, that say Outbound and Inbound. You will have to know which one applies to you. (Seriously, outbound of what?) I'm staring at a Muni "map" as I write this and still can't figure out the distinction. What is obvious to the local resident is inscrutable to the first-timer. That you understand that Muni trains end (or begin) at Embarcadero station and flow to the outer areas of the city is implicit, but far from obvious. Only when placed in the more accurate and to-scale map of the city do the terms outbound and inbound make sense in context of the peninsula that is San Francisco.

Once the train pulls up, you can't see the sign anymore. And don't look for help from the train itself. The train will be marked by a letter, and not a helpful one. "J" for instance is for Church. Okay, if you happen to know Church Street, that's easy enough. But how about "N" for the Judah line, or "L" for Taraval? Taraval isn't even the terminus of that train. The last stop is the San Francisco Zoo. How about calling it the "Z" line? Perhaps that would make it too comprehensible.

BART trains are even worse. There will be only one small identifying sign on the very front of the train near the driver. It will have only the name of a town such as Richmond, Millbrae, or Dublin/Pleasanton which is the terminus of that particular line. So if you don't know in which directions these towns lie, you don't know what train is meant for you. Thus, not only do you need to know which cardinal direction you want to go (reasonable enough), you have to know which little burg lies at the end of the line, even if you are only going a few stops to say, the Mission District.

But aside from that first-timer flummox, my riding history in San Francisco was reasonably quick. I even discovered one destination, the bank where I deposited my paychecks, that was best served by taking the cable car. More about spectacle and charm than convenience, the cable cars ARE for tourists, while the bus, street car and trains are for the locals. How can you tell? Price. One way on a cable car is a whopping $5 ($11 for all day), while other modes are less that $2.

And despite the little annoyances, I grew to love taking mass transit--so much so that when I returned to Los Angeles, I was determined to keep the habit alive--come hell or Hollywood Hills.

In the next installment of The Wreckoning, I leave the sportscar in the driveway, hop on the bus or Red Line and scoff drunkenly at the letters D - U - I.

* So the story goes. The concierge at my fancy hotel ensured me that a Fast Pass was easily purchased at "any" Walgreens. Yet when I went to my local Walgreens and asked the man behind the register for one, he looked at me like I was speaking Klingon. You can also buy a Fast Pass online via credit card and have it mailed to you, but only between the 10th and 22nd of the previous month. I kid you not.

To read Part I, click here. But just to fill you in, I'm at a Lakers game with my friend, Jacob, and we're both starving.

I have several friends who hold season tickets to the Lakers and every one of them now keeps only about ten games for himself, selling off the remaining thirty games at cost or, in the case of the Lakers being playoff-bound or facing a marquee opponent, for a tidy profit. When my friend Taylor used to take me to Lakers games, back in the Shaq glory days, we had a deal. In return for his extra floor seat, I would handle the driving and cover the food and drinks. Unfortunately for me, Taylor drinks like a soccer hooligan--one of the reasons we are friends, no doubt--so the bill for getting enough alcohol to get us both drunk and to wash down two orders of garlic fries would top out at around $100. I'm not sure how we arrived at this arrangement, but over time, the chance to go to a "free" Lakers game got too expensive. Once or twice, we stopped off at the liquor store on the way to the game and picked up a bottle of whiskey, but clandestinely spiking up our five-dollar Pepsis between our ankles amid the glare of the floor lights and the roving eye of the JumboTron proved more hassle than it was worth.

The only way to really motivate a Laker fan....free shit.

But on this night I smuggled in no outside treats. I was at the mercy of what the Staples Center had to offer. It was several minutes into the first quarter when Jacob emerged from his internal weed trance with an observation.

"There are a lot of strippers here," he said flatly.

"No, those are the Laker Girls."

At the first timeout or thereabouts, the lovely Laker Girls are sprung from their cages and flitter onto the court for the first of many high-energy routines carefully and lustfully crafted to keep us from having to stare at a staid clutch of very tall men in warm-ups huddled around another very tall man with a clipboard.

"Maybe they're more like biker chicks," Jacob said, amending his earlier observation. An aggressively unglamorous image of Dikes on Bikes from the Gay Pride Parade rumbled through my brain and mercifully exited. I gazed back at the court. In their shiny black short-shorts and matching, skin-tight tops, the sirens of the Staples Center were far hotter than any woman on the back of a motorcycle ever, but I saw his point. These ladies were exceptionally tarted up this evening. I looked around at my fellow Laker fans---affluent, apathetic and popping pieces of Staples-made California rolls into the mouths of their bored children and buxom second wives. These men were used to repressing the lower classes, not having sex with them. The Laker Girls represent the unattainable, the girls from the other side of the tracks, the dirty chicks you want to fuck backstage, but can't bring home for Thanksgiving.

At a Clippers game, however, the entire model is reversed. The same seats cost half as much. The fans are blue collar and used to losing, just like their team. But their version of the Laker Girls, the wanly-named Clippers Spirit, also dress in the unattainable archetype--not black jeans and rocker skin-tight T-shirts--those girls live in the trailer next door. At Clippers games, the cheerleaders hit the court in cute little field hockey skirts, knee socks and tied-off white oxfords. No less hot, in that private school sort of way--and equally out of reach to the poor kid pumping gas at the Chevron.

Curiously though, even hilariously, there is something currently taking place at Lakers games that makes these affluent, apathetic fans lose their fucking minds. It is a promotion. If the Lakers win the game, but manage to hold their opponents to less than 100 points, all fans in attendance get...are you ready?...two free tacos! Make that a coupon for two free tacos--Jack-in-the-Box tacos, no less, the ones that are smaller than a harmonica and taste like fried packets of steer gristle. When it gets towards the end of the fourth quarter and the stipulations for the giveaway look like a possibility, you'd think the Lakers were about to win the championship. LA fans, notorious for passivity, coming late and leaving early, go absolutely bonkers at the prospect of two crappy tacos dangled in their faces. Not since Derek Fisher's miracle three-pointer with .4 seconds to play have I heard rich people screaming with such enthusiasm.

Tacos, bitch!

The whole revelation depressed me and amused me at the same time. I looked at the game clock. Nearly four minutes remained in the first quarter of a tight game. My buzz was wearing off. I sucked down the last of my beer and let the foamy dregs slide back down the edge of the cup and thought about the food options available outside.

"I'm gonna get some food, what would you like?" I asked Jacob.

"I'll come with you."

We bounded down the aisle and were out at the concession stand before the horn sounded to resume the game. In the end, dinner was a couple of hot dogs.

"And maybe some peanuts," Jacob asked. The woman brought a throw pillow of unshelled peanuts to the register and Jacob shuttered. "Never mind," he said.

"What's wrong?"

"There's no where to put the shells."

"Throw'em on the floor."

Now you must understand, I have way too many Dodger games under my belt to even give a moment's pause at leaving a thick carpet of husked peanut carcasses in my wake after a game.

"If they didn't want you to throw them on the floor, they wouldn't sell them in shells," I continued.

Jacob just looked at me. He was trying his best to be one of the boys, but what I was suggesting was something straight out of a drunken pirates' den. He had to draw the line somewhere.

We sat glued in our seats for the remainder of the game, munching hot dogs and stuffing our discarded shells into the sludgy foam of an empty beer cup.

It turned out to be one of the best Laker games I've ever seen. And one of the tidiest.

I wasn't sure Jacob had enjoyed it that much, though. He cheered when everyone else did, but mostly just smiled and hunkered down in his seat, his knit ski cap pulled tightly down on his head. It wasn't until we were back at the car, having B-lined past the crowds who haven't yet learned how to negotiate their way around the new Nokia Center building next to Staples, that Jacob turned to me, true excitement in his eyes for the first time, and said, "So when are we coming back?"

The quandary is one we can all relate to: what to do about dinner when you're going to the Staples Center. It doesn't matter who's on the bill--Clippers, Kings, Streisand, Garth Brooks or women's tennis (Oh, wait, the WTA moved that tournament to Spain because no one went to see it in LA)--the show starts at 7:30. That means getting yourself downtown through traffic that is comically awful six nights a week. The only clear sailing on the freeways is on holidays and Sunday nights, but if your tickets are for a sporting event, then the Sunday start time is more likely 3 or 5 P.M., when, cruelly, weekend traffic can be at its worst.

Nothing whets the appetite like this color combination of iguana green and slaughterhouse red.

Last week I dragged my friend, Jacob, to his first Lakers game. I say "dragged" not because seeing the Lakers is an unpleasant affair (unless they're in one of their disjointed, sloppy-defense moods), but because, Jacob, like many of the folks your correspondent had dated since becoming single, isn't sure why watching grown men throwing any type of ball around for any reason is compelling entertainment. But having initiated many a non-believer to the grace and drama of sports through patience and expertly-scalped tickets, I had no doubt the combination of beer, Kobe and Jack Nicholson--"Oh my God, that's the back of his head!"--would make for a worthy spectacle.

Getting to the arena in time for, at best, the pre-game shoot-around, or, more realistically, just in time to snag a large Sierra Nevada from the beer kiosk as the national anthem starts and make it to my seats before the rockets red glare, means leaving the valley at 6:15. Because I am addicted to my iPhone and all its sleek, gleaming glory, I knew from Google Traffic (iPhone's most underrated feature) that the Hollywood freeway was a solid line of red all the way to downtown. That meant busting out my patented, uber-stealthy 134 to the 2 to Alvarado to the alley behind Jack in the Box to Olympic Boulevard shortcut. (And I've left out a few steps in case you're getting any ideas.)

We pulled into my top-secret, classified, I-refuse-to-pay-$10-ever free parking spot (again, don't ask) at exactly 7:19, which gave us eleven minutes to smoke a joint, make out, walk four blocks to the arena, negotiate security and get to our seats. My default walking speed is something akin to that of a tweaker with stolen goods in his pockets, so we made it to the main gate with three minutes to spare. The lines to get through security always look intimidating, but in truth, move quickly. This is because the obligatory metal detectors are set so forgivingly low that Robocop himself would barely earn a pat-down. My own cell phone didn't even set it off--and I was talking on it! From there it's a straight shot from getting your ticket zapped by the scanner brigade to the myriad food and beverage choices that skirt the lower level.

But we were pressed for time. It wasn't so much for my benefit; I wanted Jacob to have the full effect of Staples Center pageantry--from the darkened, strobe-lit introduction of, "Your Los Angeles Lakers," to standing ten men deep in the line for the urinal. Fortunately, the evening's Star Spangled Banner butcher was long-time LA Phantom and overwrought scenery-chewer Davis Gaines, who could, without breaking a sweat, unearth a staggering seven minutes out of "There once was a man from Nantucket..."

The seats I had bought from a friend were in the 200 level, which for the most part provides decent viewing of any sporting event and acceptable acoustics at concerts. The 300 level, so named because of its elevation above sea-level, sits high above three floors of skyboxes. Thus, viewing from up there is equivalent to watching a game from a seven-story window. Basketball and hockey are about as appealing as they would be watched on the screen of an iPod--well framed, but miniscule. For concerts, however, the upper section is a waste of money, unless hearing a muted version of a song that ended thirty seconds ago is your idea of a good time.

There is one and only advantage to the 300 level, the City View Grill. This outdoor patio concession area is the lone place in the building where you can purchase garlic fries--delicious, not too greasy, and when paired with a Jody Maroni sausage and a Red Hook beer, the best meal in the building. And that includes the "sumptuous spread" laid out in the suites, which I have also tried. Those buffets of chicken wings and macaroni salad manage to have that institutional feel, like you're eating in a rehab facility or a Delta Crown Room.

A seasoned Stapler knows exactly how soon to bail out of his seat before halftime in order to beat the rush, for me it is with about ninety seconds remaining in the second quarter. That's precisely enough time to catch the elevator (those giant, archaically slow escalators are strictly for the amateurs), order food and snag a choice table before the lines become impossible and the quest for seating becomes vulture-like. You also want to be done eating before the 87 remaining cigarette smokers in Los Angeles burst forth from the building and collectively exhale the purified air they've been forced to breathe for the last 24 minutes of court time. Technically outdoors, but walled on three sides, the patio gets smoky by the end of halftime, which is great news to those enjoying the other marvelous perk of the patio, the unofficial "stoners' corner", a poorly-lighted dead space wherein the medicinally-inclined can spark up a fatty, shielded behind a wall of cigarette smoke.

In Part II, I order something to eat and explain the biker chicks....Coming very soon.

You'd think the current strike by the Writers Guild of America against Hollywood's Eight Biggest Assholes would've allowed me the time to double, even triple, my postings on the Wreckoning, but here I am having gone over a month since my last post and nothing to show for it but several half-written stories and a spam-filled inbox tirelessly offering second mortgages and fake Viagra under the guise of readers' comments.

Out of the tremendous respect I hold for my hundreds of thousands of readers, I am compelled to offer an explanation. The reason for the absence is twofold. Two months ago, yours truly stood helplessly by as the cloud of domestic bliss that had hung thickly about the castle for the last five years blew away in the dry, deathly heat of the Santa Ana winds, leaving in its wake only the gutting, tear-stained revelation that love is, in fact, a chainsaw.

A broken heart and a dour Scotsman...A crippling combination.

A breakup is flawless in its ability to make the stupidest, sappiest love song elicit such a dam-break of tears that even the Ice Queen receptionist at the dentist's office was so moved as to get out of her chair, come out into the waiting area and deposit into my lap a billowing mound of pink tissues. That, and I was upsetting the children.

What a breakup is not good at, in my case, is getting me to eat, much less write about something as trifling as eating out. I still had Thursday Dinner with the Gays as my weekly restaurant outing, but as my ex has always been part of those dinners, they just served as painful reminders of what had been destroyed.

So I'd stay home, where, under happier skies, I am an excellent and enthusiastic cook. But on many nights over the last two months, when even frying a pork chop seemed too daunting, I'd find myself sprawled across the couch, shoving down handfuls of undressed, triple-washed Ready Pac field greens straight from the bag while weeping through repeat viewings of Tell Me You Love Me.

The tears come in times like these and you learn there's not a damn thing you can do to stop them, even when you or your friends are trying to do something to cheer you up. Enough weeks have passed since Aaron's Legendary Sobbing Round of Golf for it to rightly become the punch line it deserves to be among a certain circle of my friends, but at the time, it was truly life's nadir. "Wow, that guy's game must've really hit the shitter," came a voice from one passing foursome.

But over time, the storm clouds begin to part. The sun peeks out for longer and longer. My self-worth returned. I remembered I'm a rich, white American male and that's not such a bad thing to be. I get a glimpse of myself in the mirror and realize that I'm a catch and a half. I've lost ten pounds, eight from my recently wash-boarded middle and two more from my overworked tear ducts. The crying jags have become the exception rather than the norm these days, provided I don't see any film involving a wet, injured woman in war-torn Europe or hear even a snippet from any of eleven Snow Patrol songs.

The second reason for my absence is the writers' strike itself. Even a spend-happy mogul such as myself is keeping a tighter grip on the wallet in these uncertain times. I recently had to scale back my assistant's schedule from eighty-five hours a week to eighty hours a week. And I've forced myself, grudgingly, to switch from the 16-year-old Lagavulin to the 12-year-old Macallan as my go-to Scotch. We're all feeling the crunch, but we're in for the long haul.

In the meantime, I'm getting back out there. Now the Wreckoning becomes not only a place to sound off about the places where I eat and drink, but an examination of the children, train wrecks and emotionally-stunted monsters I bring along as my dates.

This should be fun. For you, at least. Thanks for not breaking up with me.

The Fox-ified American version of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares loses some of the soul of the original, but even the programming goons of Murdoch Inc. had enough good sense to preserve most of what was right about the show's winning formula. Predictably, the sincerity of the BBC series is sacrificed in the name of forced dramatic fireworks, glitzier production value and sneaky product placement in the American counterpart.

The Fox incarnation is sticking so much to its own narrow ideal of what works and what doesn't, that it's in danger of becoming repetitive. We're three episodes into the Fox series and have yet to get out of the state of New York. One of the dives, Dillons, is in midtown Manhattan while the other two, Peter's and The Mixing Bowl, struggle like dying fish out on Long Island.

More specific, it doesn't take Gordon (or anyone with half a brain forced to spend a week in these temples of dysfunction) long to suss out that the core and most debilitating problem with all three restaurants is a clueless, egotistical, emotionally stunted manager. Invariably, Ramsay discovers a manager who has little regard for the fact that his employer, the restaurant's owner, is about to lose the business to creditors

This man will ruin your restaurant.

These goombahs treat their bosses' restaurants like their own personal social clubs - glad-handing customers, giving away a crippling amount of free food and ensuring that their own appetites are sated before worrying about the needs of anyone else. They show up when they feel like it, take cash directly from the till or, even more offensively, from hard-working servers. The weepy manager of The Mixing Bowl, Mike, after deducting half of a server's tips to himself, has the audacity to tell her: "How much money would you be making if it weren't for me?" The answer: a hell of a lot more than she's making now, douche bag.

The reasons the restaurants were failing in the BBC version, while always having a few similar causes like over-ambitious menus and cuisine prepared too pretentiously for the locals, still showed a great deal of variation from one another. There was the one chef who was terrific until he starting drinking halfway through dinner service every night. There was the kitchen that couldn't function properly because the owner, a true pack-rat, couldn't bear to throw away any of his useless machinery or piles and piles of redundant tableware from his cluttered kitchen. Or there was Mamma Cherri, of Mamma Cherri's Soul Food Shack in Brighton, who so micromanaged her kitchen that her chef did little more than reheat food cooked by Mamma days earlier.

The American show hasn't found as many colors yet, perhaps because it is afraid to. The restaurants I've worked in over the years were seriously debilitated by things like cocaine in the stock room, employee theft and, in one case, a narcoleptic owner who was also a compulsive liar. Now that's some good TV!

For their part, the restaurant owners bear much responsibility for letting things get so bad. Consistently, they are unconfrontational, myopic and stuck in the past. Gordon tries to get them to cut the dead weight, find their balls and kick some ass. Helping those who have lost confidence in themselves has always been the real reason Kitchen Nightmares is such a great show. It's the Dr. Phil of dinner service.

There are two other unfortunate changes and one glaring omission in the American version that hurt the show noticeably. Almost always Gordon calls for a much needed face lift of the décor. In the British show, the entire staff--owners and managers on down to line cooks and busboys, closed the shop for the day, rolled up their sleeves and got busy with the paint brushes. There was something wonderfully Zen and democratic about the do-it-yourself nature of this. It was also the only way the cash-strapped BBC could make the remodeling happen. But for Fox, the staff goes home and overnight Gordon's "Design Team" (a.k.a. art department) comes in and does a whirlwind professional makeover. The results of course are that the show gets the emotional value of the staff coming in the next morning to see their place of work transformed. The tears flow like cheap champagne.

And then there are the new kitchens. If any equipment was upgraded or replaced on the BBC show, the owners paid for it...as they should. But in the American world of product placement, the gang comes into work to find a brand new, state of the art kitchen waiting for them. It's like Christmas morning forty minutes into every episode. The statement this makes about America can't be ignored. There is no sweat, no sacrifice, no agonizing penny-pinching. There is only entitlement.

The effectiveness of Gordon Ramsay's week in residence at the British restaurants is highlighted by his return a few weeks (or sometimes months) later to see if his improvements are still in play. Sometimes they are. Sometimes, the players have reverted to their former selves because people aren't always capable of change. Old habits die hard. This too is what makes the show great. The American show doesn't do this follow-up and it is a shame. Knowing that there's a good chance that all of Gordon's time, expertise and energy get slowly washed away adds an extra level of drama to the proceedings--a lot more drama than, say, the Fox solution of bringing in an angry "bill collector" (mobster) just before dinner rush to stir up problems (and incite a fist fight on the sidewalk) as the case at Peter's.

I will keep watching. The show has already been picked up for a second season. Let's hope the producers let the gloriously self-destructive act of running a restaurant implode on its own without too much meddling.

Kitchen Nightmares: Fox Network, Wednesdays at 9, or it could be 8--I'm not sure. I Tivo the fucker.

How Eating at The Water Grill Saved Me $800.

I recently received my first paycheck for writing this column, so as a result, haven't been able to eat out much. I thought it a fine time to dust off a few choice stories that twenty years of eating out in Los Angeles have produced. Here is one that holds up better than a Craftsman claw hammer.

A few years ago, a group of us--two couples and a single guy--decided to dress ourselves up and have a terribly civilized meal at a classy place none of us had tried. After some brief research, the winner was The Water Grill, chef David LeFevre's highly-regarded seafood restaurant located in the heart of downtown.

The Water Grill. (Lobster not to scale)

I made the reservation under my own name for a mid-week evening in late spring. When Peter and I arrived, I gave my name to the host, who directed us to the bar where two of our party, David and his wife, Monica, were half-way through their Chardonna