TOM AS UNITER: We know. We know all about the books and the jokes and the jibes that say Los Angeles and San Francisco are supposedly at odds. They're two giant, coastal siblings with variant interests and an unwillingness to see eye-to-eye on anything. Us? We don't go in for all that. We know darn well there's a fluid sort of simpatico going on that doesn't make the headlines, because simpatico doesn't sell papers (or, um, page views). And one thing LA and San Francisco can definitely strike up a warm conversation about is a shared affection for Mr. Tom Waits.
WAITS TIME: The Bard of After Hours was but a whippersnapper in LA-close Whittier, and he now makes his home in Marin County, so both Los Angeles and San Francisco can boast about their TW-based cred. (Boasting seems very unWaitsian to us, but boast if you must.) The SoCal side of the Tom Waits story is the focus of a Saturday, May 28 tour. Fans'll take a peek at the singer's rough-and-tumble starting-out days, the West Hollywood clubs he played, and the bars where mixing-it-up went down, or so says legend; the tour's handle, Crawling Down Cahuenga, says so much.
TICKETS: Now, please note this: This'll be a sold-out dealie, so you'll want to snag that ticket ahead of time. Price is $62.
