BOURGEOIS PIG

Today I talked to Randee.

It is 10am. I am driving home after an early meeting in Silver Lake and I badly need a coffee. I decide to park my car in Franklin Village, where a short street portion with bars and restaurants always looks animated. The sun has been hiding for four days now and the streets are still dark this morning. When I enter the Bourgeois Pig, one of the oldest coffeehouse in Los Angeles, it feels even darker. A bit like a warm disco cocoon. A few random red and blue lamps feebly shine on the washed-out walls. A disco ball slowly spins on Otis Redding songs. People are slumped on couches and chairs, reading on their laptops screens. At the bar, a man is telling jokes and the woman sitting next to him laughs at them. I might have stepped into another dimension. It is a late evening at the Bourgeois Pig.

Then, I see Randee. She is a petite energetic brunette. She is smiling, joking around with the customers, and bouncing from one spot to the other behind the bar while making coffees. She wears a x-large tank top held together with a safety pin and a loose "Nasty boys" t-shirt. A woman asks her how she makes her t-shirts look so darn cool. Randee's blue eyes shine. "I cut all my stuff. It's cool to cut straps in the back or tie it behind your neck. You can do so many things. I love it," she says. "I find my stuff at the Goodwill. And it's even better to have an oversize t-shirt and make it fit. You can do it, believe me!" Someone throws the idea that Randee should create a cutting t-shirt workshop and she likes it. Randee has a lotus flower tattooed on her arm with the word "Riot" written underneath. "That's my nickname. When I was living in New York, I was in the alternative scene and people called me Randee Riot," she says.

I go outside to take pictures but the light is pretty low. I meet David who is sitting there, smoking. We talk about photography and he shows me the pictures he took at the Huntington botanical garden. He loves it so much that he goes there at least once a month with his girlfriend. We are watching the pictures of beautiful cactuses, exotic flowers and trees on his computer, when his friend Christophe arrives. Christophe is a French actor and played a part in David's short film. He loves his life in L.A. He says that, even though he is not ambitious by nature, he has challenged himself to do something great here and is working on achieving it. I ask him if his accent can be an asset sometimes. "Not really. L.A. is the worst city to improve your English because no one speaks it well here. I used to hang out with Japanese friends. We could hardly understand each other," he says, and  laughs. Randee comes outside too so I can take a picture of her. She doesn't know how to pose, so David takes her in his arms and lifts her high.

Randee and I are back inside. I meet Andrew, the manager of the place, who stands behind the bar. He shows us his phone. "Look at that picture. I went for a hike in a creepy forest. We didn't see a single animal, not even a squirrel. It was like the Twilight Zone forest," he says. "That's the Yeti." I look closely at the photo: a man is sitting next to large trees trunks. Behind him, a big brown furry spot looks exactly like the Yeti. That is bizarre, but not so much. After all, I knew I had stepped in a parallel dimension when I entered the Bourgeois Pig today.  So why should I be surprised to see the Yeti on the manager's phone?