The strange, underrated intimacy of L.A. sidewalks

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Perversely, I’m running later in L.A. Ubers than I ever did taking the New York subway. There’s a certain contingency to public transport — miss one, go by another — that does not apply to a freeway pileup, and right now it means I’m late for a date.

It’s my first week in L.A.; I can’t even tell you if Eagle Rock is in the north or east. Alighting under Capri Club’s red awning, I make for the door, only to be stopped by a woman in an off-shoulder dress on the tree-lined sidewalk, nursing a Negroni.

“Don’t look down,” she says, quiet but dramatic. “Your fly’s open.”

“Oh, God.” I zip discreetly. I mean, I did put on a lace thong, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. She appraises the rest of my fit — corset, low-rise jeans, ankle boots — and nods encouragingly. Thank you, I mouth as I slip in.

Inside it’s cool and dark: warm wood paneling, oxblood booths. My eyes adjust to find Jonny at the corner of the curved bar, beneath a shelf of vintage amaro.

Writer Amanda Lee Koe and Jonny at Capri Club in Eagle Rock. “Hey, stranger.”

“Hello, yourself.” I haven’t seen him since we met over the weekend at a techno rave in an unventilated downtown warehouse. “What are you drinking?”

God, he’s such a goth. Neither the West Coast nor men were on my bingo card, but here we are. I decide to give the Capri Sour a go.

Smoky mezcal and amaro, counterbalanced with sweet almond on the back of the tongue. Right away, I know I’m going to be sad if I never get to taste it again. Jonny tells me Capri might be his favorite bar in the world. “You think you’re coming in for one, and then it turns into a whole thing.”

I take this seriously because he is Scottish, has two passports and has sampled his way through bars on tour from Tokyo to Mexico City.

As we talk about the cities we’re familiar with, I realize how much spontaneity is tied to walkability. I’ve always lived in places where you can hoof it on a whim. On a night out, the city colludes in what happens next: Singapore, New York, Berlin.

For all its sweep and chaos, my impression of L.A. is linear, contained: You leave home and get in a car to go somewhere specific. You meet the person you arranged to see. You get back in the car. The only extemporaneous variable is traffic.

“You haven’t decided if you’ll stay, but you’re already complaining about traffic?”

Neither of us has a car, which makes it safe enough for me to joke that he should be my passenger princess.

And yet, perhaps something has already started to shift. I look through the open window, catching the eye of the woman who had, moments earlier, saved me from walking into a date with my fly down. We share a private, conspiratorial smile. My New York neighbors barely said hello; in Singapore, a stranger would probably politely look away rather than risk embarrassing you.

Here, outside Capri, a stranger crossed the distance with ease. For all the urban density I’m used to, this feels strangely intimate.

Jonny orders a martini next. Gin with a twist, I note.

Stop it, I tell myself in the next breath. Why are you already clocking how he likes it?

My Silver Lake sublet has a panther-shaped coffee table and David Bowie records on display, though the player isn’t connected to speakers. I extend my stay so I can keep seeing more of the city and — let’s face it — him, the drinker of Corpse Revivers.

I give myself plenty of time to take the 4 to Chinatown.

This time, I’m early. I’m meeting Andres and Lily, in town from Boston. Andres Sevtsuk leads the City Form Lab at MIT. We met in Singapore when he taught urban planning there; now he’s working with Metro to improve walking experiences in L.A. ahead of the Olympics.

L.A. Chinatown, a place for outlandish yearnings and improbable dreams Over the years, Chinatowns have offered me ephemeral homecomings in city after city.

As we drink fresh coconuts from a roadside stand, Andres tells me our social sensory apparatus works best below 10 miles an hour.

“Past that threshold, our ability to perceive detail and read socially meaningful cues falls off fast,” he says as a Mustang whizzes by. We talk about how when the vast majority of movement in a city happens by car, there are fewer occasions and grounds for unplanned encounters to materialize — and how, given the statistical scarcity, that feels all the more precious here.

I tell them about the last time I was in Chinatown, at Café Triste with Jonny’s bandmates. Four of us start at a table inside the bohemian cave à manger by the mirrored bar, sharing an inviting fig, speck, ricotta dish and a tomato stone fruit panzanella. As more people show up, we spill outside with another chilled red.

“I’d assumed L.A. wasn’t a ‘bump into your ex at the bodega’ or ‘see your editor on the subway’ kind of city, much less a ‘run into a foreign colleague on the sidewalk’ one,” writes Amanda Lee Koe of places like Café Triste in Chinatown. I drift from the band toward a stylish knot of people who turn out to be dancers. The lady in the asymmetrically-cropped black top that perfectly frames her baby bump has performed with Beyoncé; the androgynous hapa with the paisley silk bandanna actually worked a year in Singapore, where I was born and raised. We bond over Hainanese chicken rice before he tells me his local booker had wanted his waist-length hair shorn: more masculine, more bookable.

I’m apologizing on behalf of my conservative countryman when a dead ringer for Tadanobu Asano in “Ichi the Killer” passes on the street and waves at the dancer, who does a double take.

It’s an ex-colleague from his stint in Tokyo, getting pizza from LaSorted’s. I’d assumed L.A. wasn’t a “bump into your ex at the bodega” or “see your editor on the subway” kind of city, much less a “run into a foreign colleague on the sidewalk” one.

Yet here they are, yapping about omakases. Had we stayed inside, they would have passed within 10 feet of each other without realizing.

One time for L.A.’s grand cathedrals of fine dining Raise a glass to Old Hollywood restaurants. The martinis, tuxedoed waiter and cigarette stains on a mural are a window to history.

The indoor table’s pleasure is intimacy and predictability. A sidewalk’s social contract is leakier.

Outside, a new piece can always wander onto the board.

When I later tell Zach Jarrett, Triste’s co-owner, about the dancers’ sidewalk reunion, he’s delighted but unsurprised.

“Not to be woo-woo, but there’s an energetic resonance to it,” he says. We’re sitting in the alcove overlooking the sidewalk, drinking a funky rosé as ML Buch plays. “Space, food and drinks are great nonverbal transmitters.” The people who end up here, he tells me, may already be responding to some shared frequency, be it indie music, pet-nat or an acoustically-treated room.

“It’s about what opens up when you share a language.” He pauses. “It’s a desirous thing.”

The sidewalk hang has prerequisites. New York has a slim window when your glam eyeliner won’t melt but you can still wear the halter without a jacket. In Singapore, you’ve perspired through your little black dress before the first round arrives.

L.A. has the weather for the linger: dry air, low humidity, late sunsets, long evenings, flattering light.

“Permission to linger isn’t neutral,” writes Amanda Lee Koe. “Geographical coordinates and the price of a cocktail have done some sorting before you ask a stranger for a cigarette.” Bar Seco in Silver Lake. Outside the permanently chic Bar Seco in Silver Lake, people with killer cheekbones and lightly-tousled hair take pictures of one another between sips of matcha horchatas and bites of beurre blanc scallops — cute cocktails and delectable morsels you can consume without interrupting the conversation, or the camera.

At times, this buzzy stretch of Sunset Boulevard between Hyperion and Lucile resembles a catwalk. It doesn’t pretend to be blasé; it’s here to be seen. Perceiving and being perceived are folded into the pleasure of this scene. A Miu Miu gabardine hat set at a jaunty angle, wraparound Moncler sunglasses at night. Legs crossed, uncrossed; another picture. Maybe they’re models; maybe everyone in L.A. low-key knows how to pose like one.

FWIW, I too partake in the 0.5 flash selfie, so what I’m really getting at is: This is not an Angeleno’s usual experience of a sidewalk. Especially as a lone woman, a sidewalk is an interstitial danger to overcome en route to a destination.

We’re used to walking at a clip. Scanning constantly. Hand closing around the pepper spray in our purse, just in case — but outside these bars, the social instruction flips, tantalizingly: Stay.

But permission to linger isn’t neutral. Geographical coordinates and the price of a cocktail have done some sorting before you ask a stranger for a cigarette.

The sidewalk offers randomness, but the bar has curated the sample.

In Eagle Rock, the crowd outside Walt’s wraps around the building beneath green neon that still says “CONNOR’S PLUMBING.” It’s unclear where the bar ends and the street begins. Here, where you can play pinball for a buck and get a Hamm’s for five, it’s harder to tell apart a real ramshackle drifter and an unwashed nepo baby.

A Ukrainian bottle blond in a Hello Kitty hoodie tells me she used to make seven dollars apiece collecting Lime scooters when she first got to L.A. after Kyiv got bombed. Someone takes a swing at a piñata strung from a lamppost. When it finally gives, cigarette packs and condoms rain onto the pavement.

I still don’t know if I’m staying for sure, but I buy a beat-up 1988 Ford Bronco from a lesbian influencer in Silver Lake, and move out of Silver Lake.

While looking at our starred places in New York on Google Maps, Jonny and I discover we’d frequented the same cafe — Sweetleaf in Greenpoint — and bar — Night of Joy in Williamsburg — for a few months in 2018, when he was there rehearsing for tour, and I was finishing my first novel. With zero social or professional overlap, a Scottish drummer and a Singaporean novelist could easily never have met, then or now.

We decide not to f— it up this time and move in together.

In Highland Park, we find something we both thought L.A. might require us to surrender: pedestrianism!

Figueroa Street has all of it, walkable: grocers, cafes, bars, restos, not to mention some of the best tacos in the entire city, and a Metro station. It isn’t New York or Singapore, and increasingly I don’t need it to be.

Join a walking group, visit a new neighborhood and feel the ground beneath your feet.

Even though we have a truck now, we take the A Line to Chinatown. It’s just three stops; the ride itself is seven minutes. We drop by Café Tondo. It’s a Tuesday — bolero night. Cozier than the weekend, when it’s packed to the gills, but no less vibey.

“I just wanted a place where it’s relaxed….” says Abraham Campillo, who co-founded Café Tondo in Chinatown. “You don’t need a reservation, you can pull up in a big group. We’re tribal beings.” Abraham Campillo, who co-founded this chilled-out wine bar right by the station where the trains go by overhead, had told me as we smoked his Camel Blues and watched the crowd pop off to the DJ’s vinyl selection: “I just wanted a place where it’s relaxed…. You don’t need a reservation, you can pull up in a big group. We’re tribal beings.”

Tonight, the singer in the open window has a lovely voice and a kewpie doll tattoo. She cheekily informs us that Alvaro on guitars is single. The night is warm; I’m in a vintage lemon yellow Frederick’s of Hollywood slip. How decadent to have a vermouth on the rocks and sweet treats — affogato, flan, a silky strawberry panna cotta — under the half moon slung low in the sky.

The band sings “Las Mañanitas” for a Gen Zer in kitten heels celebrating her birthday on the bougainvillea-fringed patio. Turns out the abuelita in a white knit dress a few stools down shares a birthday — she pulls the granny up to dance.

They’ve got the moves. We clap for them. People call out birthday wishes in Spanish. It’s a beautiful thing to see, two strangers holding hands. I think about Andres and I discussing whether Angelenos are friendlier than East Coasters because they’re compensating for the relative shortage of chance encounters.

As “Bésame Mucho” starts up, the abuelita’s husband, a mustachioed gent in suspenders, asks her for a dance. Without a word, they move — rumba hips, waltz steps — in perfect, knowing sync.

“How long do you think they’ve been together?” I ask Jonny.

The red neon casting a Hopper-esque glow over the parking lot flickers as a train goes by. He smiles as he watches them.

Jonny and I drop by Capri Club on a weekday afternoon. Look, if you know your local’s weekly specials by heart, you’re probably staying awhile. Mondays, lasagna. Today is Pasta Tuesday.

We share a tortelloni, handmade moments ago, each piece lusciously coated with butter and sage. Francesco Allegro, their Puglian chef, lets me peek into the kitchen, where he kneads a ribbon of dry white into the dough. When he’s done, he joins us for an espresso on the sidewalk.

“In Italy when you hang out, it doesn’t feel like an appointment,” Francesco chimes in. “You go to the piazza, you don’t even say a time, because you know the rhythm.”

Right then, a guy in a Talking Heads shirt waves at Francesco. “Hihi.” He’s a regular who just vacationed in Rome, wants to tell Francesco about all the pasta he ate there. “You Italians do everything perfect, except burgers.” Francesco belly laughs.

After he leaves, Francesco marvels. “This is just what we were talking about, no?” He pauses. “Something that you couldn’t plan feels like home.”

Cities are made of buildings and roads, zoning and transit. You can do it by rote, or you can let your routines be greased by chance.

Jonny and I move to the corner stools by the bar — our usual spot.

Paradoxically, at this time of the day, the light is more golden on the inside than the outside. A brunette with a Bobby Special — beer and a shot of Ferrari, fernet branca and a house blend of red bitters — reads Virginie Despentes’ “Dear Dickhead” alone at the bar. We run into our pal, Travis, two martinis deep with his manager in a booth. Francesco sends over a delicious amatriciana made with crisp-edged guanciale. Almost behind my back, a collection of chance encounters has been acquiring the density of a new life.

I look at Jonny, and think: I live here now.

I don’t realize I’ve said it aloud until he pulls me closer.

Slowly, and then fast all at once, the sun goes down. Behind the bar, warm orange lights come on. Sixties Jamaican dub plays at a perfect volume; the last bottle of green Chartreuse is getting decanted into shot glasses. One gets passed to me, then Jonny.

Everyone looks everyone else in the eye as we raise the glasses.

It’s L.A.; we’d rather die than risk seven years of bad sex.

We clink glasses, bash them once against the counter. Salud.

Amanda Lee Koe, born in Singapore and now based in Los Angeles by way of New York and Berlin, is the author of “Sister Snake” and “Delayed Rays of a Star.”