Phillippe the Original

 

 

Fresh Coffee!

It’s 2025, and four bits isn’t really a lot of money. But $0.46 is enough to get you a cup of coffee from one of the oldest restaurants in Los Angeles. Phillippe the Original is the best place to go for a French Dip, invented here 100 years ago. The atmosphere of the place is timeless, and the food preparation is still handled the same way it was when I was a small boy, which is the same way it was done when my father was a small boy, too. There are still wooden phone booths lining the wall and sawdust on the floor.

The prices, though are not the same, and have gone up proportionally over the years. Don’t get me wrong, I still think it’s a great value for the money, but it doesn’t cost what it used to-except for the coffee.

Grant it, my first memories of coffee at Phillippe’s was a nickel, the price it remained until 1977, when

Everyone seems to look at the phone booths

 

it jumped up to a dime. The dime held until 2012, when the price more than quadrupled to the current price of $0.46.

How is the coffee?

Actually, not too bad. It’s Gaviña, which is a brand that shows up in many restaurants, as well as Don Francisco and Cafe La Llave. It’s strong, with a smokey flavor and no bitter after taste. Certainly worth $0.46.

The coffee is a great value, but not the reason that people come to Phillippe’s. They come for the French dip. For the uninitiated, a French dip is a roast beef sandwich on a French roll that has been sliced and had the open face dipped in au jus. You can add cheese, and there’s house made spicy mustard at the table. That’s it. The roast beef is always lean and fresh, and still is prepared right in front of you by women who look like they’ve been there since Phillippe’s moved to this location in 1951. Phillippe’s will also make you a similar sandwich from pork, lamb, pastrami, turkey and ham, all dipped in their appropriate au jus. I’ve had the roast beef, pork and lamb, and they’ve all been good. (Interestingly, though I love pastrami, I don’t think I’ve had the pastrami here-I’m going to need to try it the next time I’m in the area).        

My usual.

Phillippe the Original is one of two places in Los Angeles that claim the creation of the French Dip, the other being Cole’s. Both have a great sandwich and claim to have created it in the same year, but I give the edge to Phillippe the Original. I like Phillippe’s Cole slaw and pickles, and my wife enjoys their potato salad. They also have a good cheesecake and carrot cake. Plus, it’s cheaper. Cole’s does have pretty good French fries, and a speakeasy in the back.

My family has been going to Phillippe’s for at least three generations (four if you include my children), and much has been written about it. It’s a great stop before or after Dodger games, or if you happen to be in Union Station.

 

Dog Poop Karma

 

Lovey

Growing up, I had a dog, Lovey, a chihuahua mix that my aunt gave me when my Mom nixed the idea of a German Shepard mix. My mother did not like pets particularly, though after a few years she would consent to rubbing Lovey’s belly with her foot.

I was probably around 7 or 8-Lovey lived until I was 21. She was a smart dog and queen of her backyard, stalking and bringing down birds, gophers and toads. She’d eat the toads by turning them over and going for their soft bellies, surprising my high school biology teacher, who said in class that dogs don’t eat toads or frogs because the poison sacks on their backs would make a dog sick.

My Dad trained Lovey to walk without a leash, and so we’d walk my Bell and later Downey neighborhoods every Sunday evening, and many other evenings as well. Lovey would walk to a corner and wait until I got there to cross the street. Her golden years were spent in the backyard (though my Mom did grow more fond of the dog, she was still never allowed inside), moving around the concrete and laying in the warmth of the sun. We’d walk in the evenings, and I must confess that the idea of picking up her poop on walks was completely foreign to me.

She passed when I was home for my first Winter break. We figure she was about 14. She was a great dog.

Part of my wife’s dowry was her dog Abby, a medium sized dog with German Shepard markings. Abby and I got along well, and I walked her regularly. My wife impressed the importance of picking up her poop on me, which (since I now had my own yard to take care of) I did. As Abby grew older, she did not get along well with small children-especially since my older daughter tried to ride her like a pony, and nipping at the children was not going to happen. We sent Abby to live out her last few years with my father and his wife, a situation that benefited all concerned, and we were dog-less for a few years.

Abby liked to run, and when Abby and I first lived together I was training for a marathon. I took her out for some three milers, and she was fine. Four miles was tough, and then I took her out for a five mile run. It was kind of hot, and at the four mile mark she laid down and refused to get back up again. I carried her back home. From that point on, whenever she saw me in running clothes she would hide. She was okay for walks, and apparently knew the difference in how I was dressed.

We got my son a dog, Shadow, which lived here in the backyard. He was a few years old when we

Shadow

adopted him, and he was king of the backyard, keeping away the field mice, raccoons, opossums and other things that now visit my yard regularly. He was an explorer, very interested in the goings on of the neighborhood at large, and would get out every few months. He was chipped and we’d get a call from someone somewhere here in town to come and get him. Shadow had things to see and do. When my son went off to college, I said that I’d walk Shadow every night except Fridays and Sundays. However Shadow couldn’t read a calendar, so every night at about 8, he would start knocking on the back door, especially if he saw me. I’d have to sneak around if I didn’t want to walk the dog. Shadow would generally lead our walks, though he was accommodating enough if there was something that I wanted to go see. It was the two of us out walking the night of the Thomas fire, and we hung in the backyard together while watching the hillside burn. My wife got another dog at about that time, a prissy indoor dog, and the two would play together in the mornings and afternoons.

When Shadow got older, he would still attempt an escape, but it was more for show. He'd go out in the front yard and look for me, waiting until I saw him. Then he'd look at me as if to say, "Hey Rick, I'm running now-why don't you come over here and catch me, and then we can both go back to the house for a biscuit." I'd walk toward him, and he'd make a show about running a few hundred feet and then wait for me. Then we'd walk home.

When we put Shadow down due his declining health, (we think he was about 14), I was totally happy without a dog, but my wife and daughters felt that I needed one, and got me Benji, a Springer Spaniel mix. I got Benji about a year before COVID, and during the shutdown, we walked all over Ventura, covering pretty much every street and alleyway within a five mile radius of my house. With Benji, I discovered that walking a mile and a half to the beach was hardly a walk, and we've tried every coffee house in town-I'll write about them all this summer, though I've mentioned a few (Copper Coffee Pot, Tatiana's, Simone's) already.

Benji

When Benji arrived, I felt that I needed to win back some karma points. As an adult, I’ve always cleaned up after my dogs, but with Benji, if he poops near some other dog poop, I just go ahead and pick it all up. It’s small in the scheme of things, and I’m not going around cleaning everyone’s yards. Most likely whatever lawn has the excess poop doesn’t know it’s even there, but somewhere I am balancing the scales of karmic dog poop-ness, and I feel a little better knowing that someone will not have to wake up to poop on their lawn.

Oasis-What's the Story Morning Glory?

Oasis-What’s the Story Morning Glory?

 

 

I really like Definitely Maybe, too, and went back and forth on which one to put here. The first two Oasis albums are a great 1-2 punch for Brit-Pop, and a couple of my favorite 90s albums.

In the mid-90s I was living in a small apartment in Pasadena, and I’d finally started making a little money. I decided that it was time to actually learn to play guitar, and so I went to Guitar Center and bought a Epiphone PR-5 cutaway from Korea, which I found to be bright and very playable. Then I headed to a small guitar shop, and hooked up with a teacher, who’d show me some basic blues riffs and scales, which I still use to warm up, and then I’d play a tape of a song that I wanted to play. He’d break it down for me and then write up the tabs, which I would then go home and practice.

I actually got fairly competent, and I could play from sheet music and follow along with other players.

It was the early days of the internet, and America Online had guitar chord forums, and from that I pulled Wonderwall. It’s a simple chord progression, capo on the second fret starting with an Em7, which sounds fancy until you finger the rest of the progression. I was playing it once in a guitar store, and a pretty girl came up and asked what it was, which was really nice. It meant that I was playing something that sounded like a song!

There are many things that I would like to say to you,
but I don’t know how,
except maybe
are you gonna be the one that saves me
and after all,
you’re my Wonderwall

Is something that I would have liked to have written, and the woman I might have written it to then just passed away last week. The video was visually interesting, too, shot in black and white (except for a colored guitar) with Liam singing in a dentist chair placed inside a warehouse and Noel holding a megaphone, singing the chorus in Liam’s ear.

But there are other songs that I really liked, too. Hello starts the album with phased/fuzzed power chords over a bed of acoustic guitars, She’s Electric (from a family full of eccentrics) shows the fighting Gallagher brothers had a sense of humor, and the epic power-ballad Champaign Supernova (where were you while we were getting high?), closes out the album with a touch on melancholy.

Actually, as I listen to the album playing now, melancholy seems to run through many of the songs, like Don’t Look Back in Anger or Cast No Shadow.

Back in the 90s, in spite of the dense sound filling my apartment, I felt like I could play every song on the album. I still feel that way now, making the whole thing relatable.

In  2014, a three disc reissue of the album was released, with remastered sounds, b-sides that I had collected back in the day, and some live performances. I picked it up on eMusic (in the early 00s eMu was a good place to find odds and ends. Not so much anymore) for the price of one disc, and it’s very good.