The Cave

(Prohibition, when caves and alcohol didn't always mix.)


Part1.
There are tales about the basement I sit in, some real and some rumored.

The wood floor in the Bordeaux Room really is the original dance floor from when that was the ball room during the Hotel's heyday.

The Glendale News Press in 1998 wrote, "The basement adjoined the Silver Room, which [Clark] Gable and the World War II crowd is said to have frequented...and in the basement today you find The Cave...four chambers that rest on the old ballroom dance floor...amid concrete walls and thick pine doors."

The thick concrete walls of this underground cavern and hidden passage ways, a deliberate design for a speakeasy? Prohibition began 1920 and the Hotel opened 1925. That the restaurant and ballroom were in the basement at all is generally considered one of the great design flaws of this building (of many...), or was it entirely by design?

Part2.
The busy-ness of shipping season led into the busy-ness of Thanksgiving, and I'm not really sure what happened here Thanksgiving eve because I saw nothing, but in a totally unrelated vein...

There is one bottle missing in action, a barley beer, if I recall correctly. I bypassed the smoked porter - love porter, not so much smoked - but the Jubel 2010 Once-A-Decade Ale was quite delicious. Of course not only was I not here, but I was working diligently when I was here, so where the rest of this stuff went is beyond me.

There are about two hundred people who come to The Cave. One gentleman who's been here six years recently commented how he's never seen anyone else while here, and it's true, it can go like that. What I like about being here (one of the many things) is that over time I get a bit of a sense of who collects what or who's interested in what, and once, maybe twice a year two people with similar interests will intersect. I'll introduce them, try to steer it through some awkward conversation, and then, if all goes according to plan, step out if it entirely and watch them take off. It is such deep satisfaction, as it was Thanksgiving eve; you know it's going well when everyone involved gets to the "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" stage.

Certain traditions live here, came here as part of this place and remain, these thick concrete walls where they gathered and still do, at The Cave.

The best chocolate wine ever?

If you've been paying attention at all it may seem hard to believe this troglodyte has standards. That's right, the same Cave-dweller who so carelessly combines some kind of 1994 French wine with a white pizza has standards, a paragon in the sand that separates the occasionally misguided but civil none-the-less from the mere amateur, and today's line is this:

This was sent to me from a concerned citizen with the query,"Get much of this at the Cave?" As a matter of fact I'd never heard of it, and after looking at this picture for a very long and astonished time, I emailed back to ask where she saw it. At Walgreens in Ft. Lauderdale. Oh, well, when you put it that way now I understand.

Sometimes, it turns out, low culture is so beautifully low it is suddenly lowbrow no longer. ChocoVine by itself, not doing too well. ChocoVine + Walgreens + Ft. Lauderdale, let the metamorphosis begin.

ChocoVine. The great taste of Dutch chocolate and fine red wine. (The website clarifies it as cabernet.) I imagine this to taste exactly how this reviewer on snooth.com describes it. "Terrible. Absolutely and indescribably awful. Take the worst cabernet you can find. Pour a bottle of Yoohoo into it. You, my friend, have just made your own Chocovine." But other people really like it, and one enterprising person decided it tasted better added to her latte.

Walgreens. Walgreens is a drugstore and we all know drugstores are where one goes when seeking out the finer wines.

Ft. Lauderdale. I've never been to Ft. Lauderdale, it's way down there, but I drove to Cocoa Beach once, and all the way down the 95 the most prevalent sign read, "Beer, Bait, and Guns." I don't know, maybe I'm just making that up, but at least this brilliant Floridian saw the future when he did a food pairing of Fluffernutter and ChocoVine. And the future is bright indeed.

By now you're wondering where you can get your hands on this stuff, just in time for the holidays. ChocoVine with yam and marshmallow casserole! ChocoVine and Fruitcake! ChocoVine Nog! Here. 'Nuff said.

The fury of the sound.

Like someone flipped a switch, shipping season arrived. One day I was sitting here contemplating the lint in my navel and the next day people showed up in droves, boxes of long awaited acquisitions in tow. The Cave lost few people last year to the economy, but little wine came in, too. This year is different, busy, vibrant, lots of people, lots of boxes. It's nice.

And the holidays loom.

About once, maybe twice a year I hear it: the sound of a bottle breaking. Maze-like and convoluted this place can be, it is a sound that travels unimpeded and pure, and it is awful to hear. Unprecedented, yesterday we lost two on one day, the real heart-breaker being the 1974 Heitz Cellars "Cellar Treasure Angelica" Rare, highly rated, widely touted, this is a real loss.

I also see a lot of these bottles here, usually intact. A loss indeed, but the optimist owner conceded there were other bottles in the box he dropped that, if broken, would have been worse.

I, less gracious, would be lying on the floor with a straw.


Could the waxing gibbous be blamed? The excitement of season? Let us hope the yearly quota of this sound is exhausted.

What's for dinner?

Artichoke pesto pizza with curried mushrooms, mmmm.

To celebrate the return of the oven and all good things there-in, I decided to open something that was so generously given me last winter and patiently waiting for me for the last ten months. I think we've spent enough time together to know a troglodyte's menu is never going to do the wine justice, so let's all have a collective cringe and pretend it doesn't matter. (Still, I confess, a white may have better served this one. Sorry, legitimately cringing earth dwellers.)




So I opened this up instead. I'm getting pretty good at getting the cork out. Cool amber bottle,

cool crusty bottle action, nice age on the cork - all things that I find interesting that in reality are neither here-nor-there, all the stuff that makes it romantic and beautiful.

Reading about this wine today I confess, I agree with the fairly consistent 70/100 rating. A nice bit of pleasantness and better on the first night...but really, what what was I doing in 1994? I'd just left NYC. I drove a van cross country, arrived just in time for Christmas of '93, slept in the van on the beach, and within the month was staying in a free condo overlooking a golf course down in OC. Then this one happened. Welcome to California! Do I look as crusty as this bottle? (Rhetorical, but thanks anyway.)

Conditional essentials

All I have to say about this is I've updated my list of lockers to break into in case I get trapped down here after an earthquake. This one goes on day 37, the final hour. I'll be the corpse with the broad grin.

A roof with a view.

Here's a few photos of the Verdugos over the years, ending with one taken from the roof of the building last night. (As always, click on to enlarge.)

Roof to Cave, I got you covered.




I threw an extra one on the end there of DTLA on the other side of it.

























Nice night.