We all have places we’re attached to, places that are important to us, places that become part of our landscape. In most cases it’s easy to explain why they mean so much. Maybe it’s a restaurant we’ve been going to for years, or a club where we used to hang out with our friends. Usually, it’s a place where we’ve had a lot of good times, a locale that’s loaded with memories. But in some cases it’s hard to explain why the place means so much to us. Why its disappearance feels like a loss.
I was riding the bus down Fairfax last week and I saw that Oki Dog had closed. I can’t say I got choked up, but I did feel like I’d lost something. I’m not sure why. I never spent any time there with my friends. In fact, I never even ate there. But for decades now I’d seen it sitting there at the corner of Fairfax and Willoughby, a small, ramshackle building that only stood out because it was painted orange.
The only reason I paid any attention to it at all was that I knew Darby Crash used to hang out there. Darby Crash, AKA Bobby Pyn, AKA Paul Beahm, was the lead singer for the Germs, one of the key bands on the LA punk scene back in the late 70s. They played a lot of shows, put out a few singles and an album, and then Darby killed himself by ODing on heroin on December 7, 1980. He was 22.
I never ate at Oki Dog because the food didn’t sound like my kind of thing, but the place had many diehard fans who raved about the messy, greasy hot dogs and hamburgers. I spent some time looking at the reviews on Yelp, and it was kind of hilarious how divided the comments were. Some commenters thought the food was disgusting, and were creeped out by the place’s grungy décor. Many of them said they’d never come back. Other commenters thought the food was amazing and loved the down-at-the-heels vibe. Many of them said they’d been eating there regularly for years.
But for me the only connection was knowing that Darby used to hang there with his friends and followers. I never saw the Germs live, but I’ve got the album, and a few of the singles and live recordings on various compilations. They were an amazing band. It’s tempting to say they were gone too soon, but like a lot great bands, they probably couldn’t have maintained the intensity much longer. When you play that hard and live that crazy, it’s probably impossible to hold everything together.
So for me, I guess that rundown orange shack at Fairfax and Willoughby that I never stepped inside is like a link to LA in the late 70s, when punk was raging through the clubs and it seemed like some kind of revolution was going on. And a young guy named Darby Crash was taking things all the way to the edge. Before he finally decided to jump off the edge.
RIP Darby.
UPDATE: Thanks to Margaret for pointing out that Oki Dog was originally located at 7450 Santa Monica Blvd., about two blocks up and eight blocks over from the location at Fairfax and Willoughby. The original restaurant opened in the late 70s, but I was not able to find out when it moved over to Fairfax. See this article from WeHo Times for more details.
The Horizon and the Skyline 