Gomorrah Café Concert: ★★★★★

It’s Saturday Night in America, soldier, you know the score. There’s a bunch of shitty bands who’ve Trojan horsed their way into ruining what coulda been a perfectly decent house party, please Venmo [REDACTED] on the door and fuck you let’s blow past it, here we are in Frogtown which I still need convincing’s a real neighborhood and whatever, we’ve assembled the troops and once the bands’re done the night demands forward motion so we descend past the leftovers and out into the street and hey look y’know what’s walking distance?: Yeah let’s go. Look, we gotta have some context if I’m to give a fair review here, take it or leave it and what was I saying.


We march over, this huge mass of us, me, the gang, and some hangers-on who saw us real movers and shakers making a break for it, and I don’t know say nine minutes later we tighten ranks and form a neat little cue outside Gomorrah Café Concert, both our objective and the object of this review. Now, I know what you’re thinking, you’re gonna tell me Gomorrah’s washed, it’s cooked, Sweetgreen’s empty and the normies’re here, the old heads and so on. And I say pull the stick outta your ass whyncha, night’s only as fun as you can make it so maybe you oughta look inward, and if y’can’t unwash Gomorrah with your people it’s hardly Gomorrah’s fault, it’s just there. And have sympathy for those who’re cooked, for they too were once raw and damn if it won’t catch up with you too one day.


So, security guard, more’n one of them, and they don’t have to say jack shit because this ain’t your first rodeo, you know the drill. You produce an acceptable form of identification, and here this’s gotta be the world’s laziest fascist, barely going through the motions of the job, he turns on the flashlight and waits for you to fuck off ‘cause I watch him and see, yep, there’s the black light shit on my driver’s license and what’s this guy doing he’s scrolling through a conversation on Facebook Messenger so I pocket my ID, carry on and nobody stops me, we’re in like Flint.


And then Natalie wants water but also’s gotta piss and Devin’s going to the ladies’ now so I say go piss girl, I’ll get you a water and we’ll rally outside. And our bizarrely large group of restless partygoers’s slowly re-materializing on the patio, snowballed to a point where I gotta rub elbows with some strangers but then there’s enough of us to scare some civilians into giving us their table and I’m talking to Joey and waiting for Natalie when I suddenly remember what this moment calls for: a cigarette.


Gomorrah earns the first of its stars here ‘cause we can smoke cigarettes on the patio, smoke ‘em if you got ‘em and so on, they won’t stop us. Some bars y’can’t do this these days, despite beautiful patio furniture in a patio-type setting, outdoors even, just begging you to light one up but then the bastards’ll kick you out. Screw them, I say, Gomorrah’s got our backs here. This’s a weird night though, nobody looks to be smoking and I gotta squint and scan the horizon, finally I see something that looks enough like cigarette smoke, green light and I go crazy. The icing on the cake’s that nary a bum tries to bum one all night long but that’s just me getting lucky this time.


Me and Joey find our friends and they wanna go dance and fuck yeah’s what I say and here’s your water Natalie. We shove and burrow indoors and there we are, four on the floor, oonts oonts oonts oonts and there’s dancing which certainly merits another star for Gomorrah. You know, there’re nights where all I want’s dancing and when there’s no party anyone can point to I’ll bet my bottom goddamn dollar we can turn up at Gomorrah and find ourselves some dancing. Of course we’d like a house party as a general rule but hey, y’can’t win ‘em all.


And we’re on the dance floor and I always forget about this part but there’re the goddamn balloons. Every time I’ve been some madman fires in here with a pack of fully-inflated balloons and just lets ‘em rip, and you see those fuckers in the air and you know the deal, what’re you gonna do let ‘em hit the floor? No sir, nobody’s gotta tell you twice, so you pause mid-conversation, mid-dance move, maybe you’re doing neither loser and you offer up a fist, an elbow, a finger, ‘cause those things’ve gotta fly, they’ve got to, it’s just a part of life.


I assist a balloon and it’s the first time in ages I feel like I’m a part of A Community. We’re A Community here and our unspoken compact’s that the balloons’re not to touch the ground. Anyway it’s such a beautiful thing, one of the highlights of my night, there’s life happening all around you, people are happy and God willing they haven’t had too much to drink, they’re with their friends and so are you and we’re all duty-bound to keep some stranger’s balloons afloat and that’s exactly what we do. Star.


How’re the drinks at Gomorrah? How’s the service? Don’t ask me, I brought a flask. What, y’think I’m some goddamn Rockefeller, think I got beaucoup bucks laying around? Ha. There’s a self-serve water station so as far as I care the service’s star-worthy too. And do you see the goddamn line I’m not going in there, you’ll sober up before you can get a second drink. I’d leave a tip but what for. There’re facilities too and if you can wait in line long enough they work, what more do you want. Me I’ll piss in the alley I don’t give a fuck. The one time I love being a man. We go back outside and talk about using our hot friend to lure some schmuck into buying her a drink. The assortment of bozos here on this Sunday morning aren’t in fuckable condition however, not for our hot friend, so we go’n dance some more.


Here’s where I’ll note that my friends give Gomorrah another star. I can’t help but to think that if I were here without them I wouldn’t be having such a grand time. Look, some people don’t have any friends at all and it’s such a shame because having friends’s one of the things that makes life lovely, it’s so important to hang onto your friends because there’re times where their existence’s the only thing that means you aren’t a stone cold loser and that if you dropped dead this instant somebody would bat an eye. I love my friends so much, there’s Natalie and Devin and Joey and let’s not forget about Mikayla and we’re all on the dance floor and dancing with varying degrees of competence and fuck you I’m not reviewing a dance recital here. I do like that there’s a stage though and that we’re on it for some reason.


The people-watching gets another star from me. I love to see others in the 18-49 demo doing whatever it is they do on a Sunday morning in their natural habitat. There’s a sweaty guy, he’s smiling and dancing and he’s either on some stuff or he’s just blasted, maybe both and I’m happy for him. There’s a couple that’re so old it makes you feel like they’re chaperones at the school dance and they’re really grinding and making out and going for it and I’m so supportive of that. I make eye contact with a woman so beautiful my gut immediately tells me I need to make her aware of this fact but I don’t. The balloons try to come crashing down and none of us let them.


I brought poppers (Amyl nitrate) by the by and nobody stops me from doing them so that’s another star, probably, I’ve lost count. My friend Joey, he says poppers’re like riding a mechanical bull and me I think it’s more like jumping on a grenade that won’t harm you but won’t offer any tangible benefit either really. Anyway my friends love them and I love my friends and we’re dancing and doing the poppers I brought and that’s the action in this little space we’ve carved out for ourselves on the floor while so much life is happening all around us. And the balloons.


It’s such an important skill to have, knowing when to leave, but me and my friends we all have it and we know what’s what so we scram while the getting’s good. This shouldn’t really be a star for Gomorrah but I’ll grant it anyway, an extremely shrewd businesswoman has seen fit to set up shop right out by the exit and night after night, rain or shine, there she is, hawking her wares: hotdogs and sausages and chips and shit and she’s even got her own speakers and playlist going. Mikayla gets a sausage on the way out and we love that for her. She eats it loose without a bun which rocks and away we march, back to our cars and sure I’ll take Natalie back to hers, it’s only four minutes away.


I drop Natalie off and go home and this shouldn’t be a star for Gomorrah either but somehow it is, I get on the 101 and on this Sunday morning everybody actually seems to be interested in going at or above the goddamn speed limit for once which is a miracle. And there’s nobody stopping us so we do just that, each of us barreling forth at our own speeds and I witness some crazy driving ahead’a me but the thing is nobody dies and that’s why this here’s A Community northbound on the 101 on a Sunday morning, perfect cap to a perfect night. Anyway I get off at some point and life goes on on the 101 and it goes on at Gomorrah and in my friends’ respective homes, just as it does in the homes of strangers and in the homeless encampments and in the Santa Monica Mountains, it just goes on, it goes on at that same tempo we’ve come to know and love, 60 seconds to a minute and 60 of those to an hour and so on and so forth, the point being that the next time you’re in Frogtown with your forces marshaled there’re good times waiting to be had so long as you can pull the stick outta your ass: ★★★★★

Will Jacobsen is a Los Angeles-based delivery driver. This is his first published work.