A visit backstage

There's a bar about a quarter mile from my house. It's up the street at the corner of Culver Blvd. and Motor Ave. If you're having trouble reading the neon sign, it's called the Backstage. Or perhaps it's the Cocktails Backstage.

It's been there for close to an eternity. Why would they give a bar that name, you might be asking. Well, what you can't tell from the picture is the bar's amazing proximity to one of the world's largest movie studios -- Sony Pictures.

To see that, let's stop looking at the front of the Backstage and look more closely at the back of the Backstage.

There, in the background is the arched Motor Ave. entrance to what is now Sony Pictures. In days of yore, the studio was home to MGM. And every movie star you can name has driven those heavily guarded gates. I once ran into Seth Rogen at the Shell station on the right.

Moreover, many of those actors, actresses, directors and producers -- notice I didn't mention writers because writers never get any credit or recognition, just Google the joke about the Polish actress -- who played their wares at the old MGM studio, often finished a long day of shooting with a long night of drinking at the Backstage.

It's said that Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster were regulars here.

When I do picture them tossing a few back after 100 some odd takes on a scene that would eventually never make it past the cutting room floor, I imagine them chain smoking cigarettes at the seedy bar. Seated on leather seats that were ripped and duct taped for posterity. And knocking back shots of blended whiskey, none of that fancy single malt crap. And chasing it with flat beer that made up in sheer coldness, what it lacked in carbonation.

I see them bitching, arguing and fighting with some uncouth fan from Iowa who had the temerity to interrupt their hard drinking.

"Get outtttta my house," I picture Bogart slurring, adding, "before I introduce your fat skull to the curb."

That romantic era of Hollywood is long gone now. And the bar is home to millennials and Gen Z'ers, who prefer to entertain themselves with karaoke and open mic Talent Nights. You can be sure they no longer serve Pike's, the ale the won for Yale.

At least, that's what they were doing before the President dropped the meat in the dirt and led us into this pandemic clusterfuck.

The bar is closed now. Hopefully, they'll re-open soon.

Maybe after living next door to them for close to thirty years, I should stop in for a drink?