Topic: Light and Shadow
A Simple Wall
Sunset Plaza on the Sunset Strip at Sunset - July 3rd - long light on a French-looking façade - across the street from Mel's Drive-In -
See L'Étranger in a Strange Land
Michel Houellebecq's Weekend in L.A.
Brendan Bernhard, LA Weekly, issue of June 23, 2005
Bernhard interviews the notorious French writer Houellebecq, on Houellebecq's first visit to Los Angeles, while the author is "smoking a cigarette at a sidewalk table at Mel's Diner on Sunset Boulevard." We learn he's trying the Santa Fe Chicken Salad, but gives up on it and opts instead for a quadruple espresso. How French. Mel's is a faux "American Graffiti" kind of tourist trap, with bad food and no carhops at all (they have valet parking, of course). This is what he saw across the street. Was he homesick?