I like to hang out at Chango sometimes, because the salty old dude who works there always has something funny to say about annoying customers, and he never charges you full-price for anything. Sure that’s nice, but the real reason I like to go to Chango is because I can remain anonymous with my laptop and transcribe entire conversations without anyone noticing. They’re all so self-involved with conversations about bullshit that, really, people can only have at a place like Chango. If you supplanted these people and placed them in any other scene, they would be mocked and laughed at for their unflinching pretentiousness and complete lack of worldliness. Right now, for example, the Jew-y looking balding guy with the fuzzy hair to my left is rolling a joint and working on a screenplay. He was one of the guys who partook in this conversation back in January. To my right, two veteran scenesters are talking about canonical music and film. If I look up at the window into Chango, the guy holding my gaze looks like cokehead Rollie Fingers in a yellow v-neck wearing oversized tea-shades and a bandanna.
That’s why today’s top ten is devoted to overheard things at Chango.
By the way, right now, some guy just sat down next to me. He even asked if he could share the table. In all my days here, this is the first human contact I’ve had with anyone who isn’t Ilya. Now he’s asking if he knows me, or if I know him, or if I’ve spent any time in Washington State, because I look familiar to him.
TOP TEN (OR TWELVE) THINGS OVERHEARD AT CHANGO TODAY
• “I don’t know man, I hope they keep making money. I love what they’re doing. And Aaron, he’s just getting to the point where he’s starting to get recognized. I just think they’ve reached a plateau, you know? I don’t think they’re changing anymore.” – Two veteran scenesters talking about Wolf Eyes.
• “Really, I thought we were third for sure…Yeah…Yes…I’m telling people to come at, like, ten…Yes…Uh, yeah dude…So is Derek just going to call me when he’s ready? Or should I ju–okay. Well then I guess I’ll see you then…Yeah, if he doesn’t call me by, like, nine, I’ll call him…Okay…Aiight…See you tonight, man…Oh, really? (laugh)…Okay…Yeahyeahyeahyeah, I know…I will bring it. Okay. Bye.” – Some goofy hipster on a phone. Named Ilya.
• “It’s really intense, crazy, Psychic Powerless era shit, like with the brother-sister stand-up drumming, really abrasive, and Gibby’s playing guitar. I think it’s from, like, Detroit in nineteen-eighty-three. You know, because back then Touch & Go was actually in Detroit, before it moved to Chicago…” – Two veteran scenesters talking about a Butthole Surfers DVD
• Two people who don’t know anything about David Lynch’s oeuvre other than what he’s done in the last five years.
GUY 1: “What was that movie we watched by the guy who did Mullholland Drive? The really, really fucked up one?”
GUY 2: “Lost Highway?”
GUY 1: “Yeah, that was so insane, your friend said he’d seen it, like, six times.”
• Two fellows are writing either a screenplay or a comedy sketch, I can’t tell which. Anyway, this was there idea
GUY 1: “Have you ever seen that show, Strangers With Candy? It’s about a forty-year old woman who goes back to high school…
GUY 2: “Yeah…”
GUY 1: “What if we write about a fifty-year old guy who goes back to middle school?”
• “And, like, I took my sunglasses to Chanel to get fixed, and this bitchy girl gave me such a hard time, because she thought they were fake? And, like, when I go into (unintelligible), they never treat me like that.” – Two girls in gabbing noisily about nothing in particular.
• An otherwise harmless conversation turns serious with the addition of a new person. Things get a bit heavy, but then the hipsters remember where they are, and quickly change the conversation to something more lighthearted. Too much emotion isn’t cool.
GUY 1: “…tried to kill herself, she just went into rehab.”
GUY 2: “That girl I met at the clothing store?”
GUY 1: “Yeah.”
GUY 3: “Are you Jewish?”
GUY 1: “No. Why?”
GUY 3: “Was George Costanaza on Seinfeld Jewish?”
GUY 2: “That’s what we were discussing before you showed up.”
Five minutes later, they would be talking about girls and the vicious cycle of being dumped and then reeled back in. Of all the hip joints in all the hip neighborhoods, these hip losers had to wander into mine. And by mine, I mean the place that I go when I want to laugh at a pathetic hipsters.
• “Look at that, Jehovah’s witnesses!” … “Either that, or they’re in a mod revival band.” – Is there is big-time proselytizing occurring on in Echo Park, or simply more of the same?
• “Oh, my friends are in that whole Tim and Eric thing. You know, Tim and Eric’s Super whatever-time show. Yeah, they work on that. Well, they don’t actually work on that, but they, like, do things for them, and for people that they know on other shows.” – TV industry type.
• “People around here are so fucking smart, you know? Like, there is good quality vegan fast food and shit.” A female visitor shares her impressions of the east side.
• “This place is turning into little kid central.” – A sad young hipster, lamenting the death of Echo Park as a cool neighborhood.
