Hi Everybody!
My idea of “sports” is figure skating. Some people would disagree. Especially hockey fans. Chill out… We’re talking about ice-friendly competitions here…
That said, I am over the moon because The Los Angeles Kings finally, and I mean finally, won the coveted Stanley Cup. My husband says to me “I didn’t know you like hockey?” My friends too. “Where did this come from…?” They wonder aloud. Well actually it has everything to do with people and place and time, and hardly anything to do with sports.
The Kings used to play at the Forum, a large arena in Inglewood. Not far from there I performed six nights a week in a piano bar called The Bar Melody which we lovingly referred to as “The B.M.”
Come on…in makes sense.
Our cozy bar shared a rear parking lot with “The International House of Massage.” Well I think they were doing massage… But I do know that the cars on their side of the lot were Cadillacs and the cars on our side were not.
The Bar Melody attracted an “eclectic” crowd. Rough-hewn locals, celebrities, aerospace wonks, cops, adventurous LAX travelers nursing a drink before catching their delayed flights and most notable here, it was a hangout for the Los Angeles Kings, who would drop by on occasion after their games at the Forum. Earlier in the evening the devotees gathered around the television set to cheer them on. Or not. Then a few players arrive. My pals at the piano bar had to point the guys out to me because I didn’t recognize them once they changed into regular clothes and as one customer noted “put their teeth back in.”
They were nice fellas, these hockey players. I let one superstar play my guitar and the customers went gaga at the sight of their hero strumming some beloved Canadian folk song.
One of my bar friends insisted on taking me to a Kings game, so I acquiesced. In the name of research, I guess. All I remember is the noise and how fast the puck moves. But mostly the noise. The fans were on fire. My friend, who under normal circumstances was a mild-mannered scientist type, morphed into a wild boar. I swear he could have ripped a deer in half with his teeth. That was my first and last hockey game.
Ah the good old days. I was so young and The Bar Melody was the unlikely edifice for my “graduate studies” in life. The people, the stories, the drunken brawls and The Los Angeles Kings are all part of this passage in time. Right now it’s washing over me again. In high def.
So like the Kings, shall we all endure, keep on keeping on and perhaps one day we will win our own silver cup. It’s good for a year.
Cali Rose
In this blog post, I wrote how the Kings’ Stanley Cup victory brought up an arena full of memories for me. All of a sudden I am playing in the old piano bar. Again. At one of the King’s postgame hangouts, The Bar Melody. Judging from the responses I received, you were slippin’ and slidin’ back in time too. Please know that I read every one of your emails and I’ve included a few in my latest blog post.