The Times, UK
May 31 2005

Top prize for utter stupidity: to drink and drive over this of all weekends
LA Notebook by Chris Ayres

I LEARNT something very important about Los Angeles on Memorial Day
last year. As with many cultural revelations, it came at about 1am,
when I was standing on the patio of the Saddle Ranch Saloon on Sunset
Strip, looking at the Ferarris and SUVs rolling by. In my hand was a
pitcher of Long Island Iced Tea. Somewhere behind me, a miniskirted
18-year-old was riding a mechanical bull.

“Hey,” I said, turning to my friend Jeff, who seemed to be swaying
in the desert breeze. “Do you think everyone here is going to
drive home?” Before he could answer, a white Hummer H2 filled with
high-school students rumbled past us, swerved and shunted into the
back of a LADP squad car, which was parked on the central reservation.

The police car bounced forward with an indignant squawk, causing it
to smash into another LAPD vehicle, which was parked in front of it.

For about half a second, the patio of the Saddle Ranch fell silent.

Then, as four whiplashed, angry and heavily armed patrol officers
stumbled out of their cars, the Hummer reversed, corrected its path,
and continued westward, with rather more urgency than before. The
patio burst into spontaneous applause.

“Oh dear,” said Jeff, a celebrity photographer who knows a thing or
two about the traffic laws of Los Angeles. “Hitting a squad car while
driving under the influence is a federal offence. Leaving the scene
of a federal offence? That’s, oh, 15 years. Easy.”

Within seconds, four highway patrol motorbikes had flanked the Hummer
and brought it to a halt at the roadside. The driver, I assume,
is still in jail.

So my lesson was this: nearly everyone who drinks and drives in Los
Angeles ends up drinking and driving. Not that Angelinos will ever
admit it. During my first few months in California, I kept being
invited to restaurants or bars that were halfway up mountains, on
remote beaches, or out in the desert suburbs. No one took taxis.

There was no public transport. The car parks were full. Yet everyone
seemed to drink. It didn’t make sense.

Then an American friend gave me a lift to one of these bars, where
he quickly sank four rum and Cokes. As he climbed back into his BMW,
he said: “One day, when I’m not driving, we should go out and have
a drink.” From then it all started to make sense.

I mention all of this, of course, because of Oliver Stone’s arrest this
Memorial Day weekend for drink-driving and drugs. Consuming alcohol
before operating a vehicle is more than usually stupid in Los Angeles,
where you stand as much chance of hitting a Beverly Hills lawyer as
you do the kerb. It is prize-winningly stupid during the Memorial Day
holiday – the official start of summer – when LADP officers set-up
“mobile command centres” along Sunset Strip, complete with random
alcohol-testing facilities and flatbed lorries on to which they will
roll your car after giving you a fine, a ban and a date with a judge.

But the Oscar-winning film director’s behaviour doesn’t surprise me.

Angelinos are some of the laziest, most selfish people on earth. I
know this because I’m one of them. I will get in my car to cross
the road, then valet-park when I get there. The very thought of
Angelinos taking taxis to restaurants or bars is laughable. This is
a city where every second car is a Bentley Continental. Turning up
for dinner at Morton’s in a Checker Cab, while trying to convince
the Armenian driver to wait for you, would be social suicide.

Fortunately, I’m such a bad driver when sober that I would never risk
limiting my concentration further with booze. Alas, I cannot say the
same thing for my friends.

“The safest way to drink and drive is to avoid Sunset Strip and
take Mulholland Drive,” a friend told me, with a straight face, at
a barbecue on Sunday. Mulholland, I should add, is one of the most
treacherous stretches of road anywhere in California, traversing
the crest of the Santa Monica mountains from east to west. The LAPD
doesn’t patrol it, because it assumes no one would be stupid enough
to drive along it drunk.

“As long as you don’t fall into a canyon, or get lost, you’re fine,”
continued my friend.

It was then, of course, that she offered me a ride home in her
Porsche. I politely declined.

Next Memorial Day, I plan to drink at home.

War Reporting for Cowards, by Chris Ayres, will be published by John
Murray on June 6.