Day 23: Pomona, CA
Nau mai
Yesterday we played in at the Fox Theatre in Pomona, California.
If you were in central or downtown Los Angeles it would take you about an hour to get to Pamona by car, perhaps ninety minutes if the traffic was really bad. You would hop in your air conditioned Bugatti Veyron and drive it onto the I-10 motorway, switching your Sirius XM satellite radio onto channel 41, SiriusXM Turbo, the 90s/2000s hard rock station, and enjoy the crunch of the guitars, the smash of the drums and the viscosity of the swearing.
You would head east, crawling along with the other thousands of cars filling up the dozen lanes of this freeway, and enjoying views of the San Gabriel Mountains out your left window just visible above the concrete acoustic barriers. You would pass mega malls, schools, parks, and the great LA River on this journey across the eastern reaches of Los Angeles County.
Finally you would exit at Garey Avene and drive south, enjoying the distinctly suburban feel of this part of town. In only a few minutes you would arrive at downtown Pomona and spot the great spire of the Fox Theatre, parking right across the street from the venue, thankful for the positive car culture in this respectful neighbourhood.
Alternatively you could take the 707 bus, the Silver Streak, which would get you there in 95 minutes with its route along the El Monte Busway.
I didn’t go far in Pamona yesterday. There was a Peruvian restaurant fifty metres from the bus that I visited to for breakfast and that was the extent of my southern exploration. El Chato had a good lunch special though, a beef and vegetable soup, salsa criolla, and seco de res which was rice and beans with a hearty piece of slow-cooked beef.
This was the northern extent of my exploration, having crossed 3rd Street to get this shot. The exterior facade of the theatre was handsome and featured rectangles with many different aspect ratios. There are many Fox Theatres in the United States, and most of them are descended from William Fox’s chain of 1920s/30s movie palaces. This particular example was opened in 1931, right at the peak of Art Deco, the absolute pinaccle of rectangle cohesion.
There is a backstage balcony that provides a great viewing experience but a terrible listening experience as our carefully crafted waves of sound are reflected around the devious surfaces of the stage wings and fly loft, forever trapped behind the proscenium.
I am at the point in my career now where I don’t remember our shows past the final downbeat. The set usually goes well, I think, and I’ve learned to be satisfied with that. The only detail I can dredge from the opaque sludge of last night’s memories is that the good people of Pomona were hitting on Jonathan using a message displayed on the screen of a phone, and they were doing it ineffectively because the text was too small to read. Perhaps they feared Liz’s wrath, and if so they were right to do so.
There was only one point scored yesterday and it happened because we were kicked out of the venue before I had a chance to complete my ablutions.
