Almost dead in L.A.

3:15 A.M. I am lost just south of downtown Los Angeles in an industrial area of abandoned cars and buildings with broken windows.

The few people I have seen on the street look like they should be featured in a movie titled “L.A. 2048 after the fallout effects!” I realize with fear in my heart, I am lost in an area that hasn’t seen an American-born “non-frequent-visitor” to the L.A. county jail, system in years. A horn blares behind me. I hadn’t even seen another car for blocks and I am startled. I quickly turn left to get out of his way only to realize too
late, I am now heading down a street that looks like it dead-ends into a recycling area. A kaleidoscope of late night horror movies and sensational news story’s of “people being in the wrong place at the wrong time” flash through my mind. There are gang themed graffiti everywhere with 12th street frequently repeated. Then I remember “12th” street is one of the worst gangs in the country! I am in an barrio that even Tony Soprano wouldn’t drive through during the day!

How did a old white guy from San Diego in a beautiful motor-home with twenty-five hundred dollars in cash in his pocket get himself into a situation like this?

It started about a week ago with a poker trip in the RV from my home in San Diego. One of the nice things about an RV is no need for reservations, filthy gas station bathrooms, or rude waitresses with over-priced food unfit for human consumption. I am totally self-contained. I eat when I want. Sleep where I want. Go any direction I choose when I arise in the morning. I am “Easy rider” 40 years later!

I have two weeks before any obligation, and a terrific wife who supports my obsession with becoming a poker professional. So “pokey the little dog” and I pack a bag of clothes for me, and food for him, and soon we are driving to our first casino.

Two days later, we are driving to our third casino just 50 miles down the road. We spent the first two days less then 20 miles from our home at a local casino in San Diego. I logged 20 hours of poker and camped out two nights in the R.V. (More accurately, I should say 2 days, because nights were mainly spent in the poker room.)

The original plan was to make it to Vegas and back to L.A. to meet my wife in two weeks at a friend’s home. Three of us long-term couple friends get together for fun every few months.

A week later finds me only 100 miles from home. After visiting 4 more casinos I have just barely made it over the county line. I am now at the Morongo Casino near Palm Springs for a Friday night tournament. It is a $150 buy-in tournament for about 190 players with first place paying $6,000. Five hours later I went out just 2 places from the money. I played well, but just didn’t get lucky at the end, when I badly needed to.

I have decided that I am not going to make it to Las Vegas on this trip. I talked to my son on the phone right before the tournament. He told me he is driving up to L.A. to visit a friend over the weekend. So we make plans to meet in L.A., Saturday night at the Crystal Casino poker room in Compton another “wonderful” area of L.A.

He was the main reason I decided to head for L.A. earlier then planned, but there is also another “poker-related” reason. I was up in the foothills of Highland, at San Manuel casino, camping in the RV parking lot. I was sitting outside next to my RV in a lawn-chair, shirtless in the warm afternoon sun, smoking a cigar, and looking like the poster-boy for “white trash”. I was actually listening to “The Circuit“.

“The Circuit” is an Internet podcast. I download it to my Ipod and listen to it while driving or at the poker tables. Christy Gates was talking about her recent successes and was describing how the best place in the world to play poker is L.A.. She explained why it is much better then Vegas for poker. Her reasoning seemed sound, and fit my experience.

L.A. has less pros playing. There is more money thrown around by newer recreational players. The action is good. There are a lot of loose players. So with gas being over three dollars a gallon, I decide seeing my son in L.A. and playing the Commerce, Bike, Hollywood Park and three or four other poker rooms can keep me busy for a week. I would rather “play the money” then spend it on gas driving to Vegas.

Whenever I go through L.A, I always try to do it in the middle of the night to avoid traffic. So Friday night at midnight finds me pulling out of the Morongo Casino parking lot, where I had planned to spend the night after the tournament. I point my RV east to drive the 81 miles to the Commerce Club. I need to stop to get groceries, so I locate a 24 hour Super Walmart and find myself in very large nearly empty store at a time, it is being stocked and frequented by only a few insomniacs.

You would know just from reading my grocery receipt, that this is a cheap guy and his dog camping a week in the RV.

Here are just few items and their prices.
A box of Crunch & Munch .88
12 Little Debbies cakes .97
Case of Diet Vanilla Pepsi $6.00
Dozen Eggs $1.50
Can of Spam $1.65
Instant Quick Grits .98
2 cans of Tuna .64 each
3 frozen burritos .33 each
4 frozen pot pies .50 each
And what I am most proud of, in the clearance bin I found:
4 large boxes of chocolate covered raisins was 1.94 now .33
Can of Chili was $1.25 now .35 in the dented can.
24oz can of Coors was 1.50 now .50
And thinking of my wife, two large canisters of Clorox handi-wipes $6 now $3

After putting away my groceries, I consider spending the rest of the night in the Wal-Mart parking lot. Instead, I decide to drive to the rest of the way to the Commerce Club. I want to avoid the hassle of dealing with the weekend traffic through Riverside and L.A on a Saturday.

I didn’t realize that 60 west doesn’t have a southbound ramp to Interstate 5, which is how I ended up just south of downtown in an alien, gang-infested barrio of L.A. in the middle of the night.

I don’t think I had ever seen the Vernon District of L.A. before! Well, maybe on an episode of “Cops, the L.A. edition”.

I crisscross the dry L.A. river bed 3 times, where some of the “Terminator” was filmed. I am desperately looking for a freeway. If I break down in this area, the morning sun will find an empty burned out shell of a camper. Pictures of “Pokey the dog” and my face will end up on milk cartons. Or we could be featured in an episode of “Unsolved Mysteries”.

Finally the name of a street I recognize appears in my headlights.

Twenty minutes later I am following a security van at the Commerce Casino. He is leading me to a parking lot next to an old warehouse across the street from the Commerce where I can park my RV for the night. Great, this area looks like the area I just got out of! After pulling the curtains shut and double checking all the locks. I step out and walk toward the poker room to play a little poker.

I fondly look back over my shoulder to get one more glance at my RV and “Pokey the dog” at the window. I wonder, after I cross this empty warehouse lot, and play a little poker if “Pokey and the RV” will still be there when the sun comes up?

After two hours of “wild poker”, also known as, “any two will do, this is no-fold-em hold-em”, where the pot was capped every other hand, I know I am right where I belong.

After dawn “Pokey the dog” RV are still there as I crawl into my bed to sleep the day after another typical day & night of playing poker on a road trip.