Fifth and Broadway, downtown

I sit here on the corner of Broadway and Columbia, ­puffin’ a smoke and remembering the old broad. Carol, I think was her name. She was the cocktail waitress at this place back in the day, back when it was ­Cindy’s Topless A Go Go, and I used to look at her and think, Damn, she musta been hot back in the day, with her cocaine eyes, shake, shake, ­shakin’ her booty on the dance floor in a miniskirt and platforms circa ­1977.

That was, what, back in ’92? Then, she was already washed up, with false teeth and a nasty scar on her right cheek from God only knows what kinda devil. I was dating one of the dancers from that club. Hah! “Dated” — a sugar-coated word for what we really did. She was about 35, a decade and a half my senior, but kept herself up like super glue. Called herself Autumn on stage, but her real name was Jane. Said she liked younger men because it made her feel young. I guess I liked older women because it made me feel like a tough guy. Like, everything I did back then I did to feel like a tough ­guy.

Now I sit here, finish off my smoke and go for another, the tough guy in me gone like ­yesterday’s keg. ­I’m just a phantom along the highway now, some lonely specter trying to remember. Was it here? Now ­there’s nothing but a ­Bruegger’s Bagels or soon-to-be Crescent ­Heights restaurant. The grit of the old strip-joint district I lived amongst is gone now, replaced with a sanitized version of what was meant to ­be.

I pass the old Piccadilly Hotel. The bar here was one of Jane’s and my old haunts, replete with transsexual hookers and crack dealers. This was where you could find the people I felt comfortable with: the rabbles, the dregs, the down ’­n’ outs, those whose souls had been stripped right down to their bare bones who babbled glossolalia into their highballs and never expected a damn thing from no one. Because those have always been the people for me — creatures caught in the vicious grip of a malevolent fate, victims of vicissitude, harbingers of ­madness.

Now this place is called the Sofia, with a plaque honoring that racist dick, Pete Wilson. The bar is now a pretentious upscale café that calls itself a “California brasserie,” with eight-dollar salads and ten-buck drinks. Inside are people made of plastic who all look like mannequins in your local department store. Outside is a mixture of the suits of the rich and shadows of humans so far gone ­they’re beyond redemption and Ave Marias. I smoke another cig, knowing ­I’m the only one left who walks between these two worlds, a place now my own, as if ­I’m in my own personal ­purgatory.

Where was that liquor store around here? The one whose owners used to score dope from my neighbor, where a car crashed into the joint back in ’95 and the cashier pulled the driver out and beat him senseless. ­It’s all faded into an endless nothing. I light another smoke and walk ­on.

Years ago, ­I’d have continued down this street as if it were still called D Street back in 1910. ­Would’ve gone to other dives like ­Beanie’s and Sushi Deli for a few rolls, some hot sake and large Kirins. But that whole block is like a ghost town now, all boarded up and abandoned, waiting for the wrecking ball like the condemned. I ­would’ve gone to see Mona at the Hong Kong, then on to the Limerick and Hard Times Billiards. But that building was razed long ago, replaced with a vapid square glass structure offering nothing more than a 7-Eleven, Starbucks, and some overpriced office spaces that all look vacant. Then ­I’d do the same tour back and end up with some honky-tonk special or at the Pussycat Theater on Fourth before crashing at my flop-room at the Golden West ­Hotel.

Now, since that world is gone, I light another smoke and take a right on Fifth, off Broadway. The Gaslamp Tavern, where the old Western Hat Works was, is a helluva joint. Among all the kitsch and gaudiness of the new downtown, this dig is a genuine rough in a town full of fake diamonds. Not a dive, not a place where ­you’d find Carol, but the bar has had more soul than Davy ­Jones’s locker since day one. The folks that run the place ­don’t judge, always give a second chance, and ­don’t ask too many ­questions.

I order a bottle of Bud from Emma. I tell her ­I’ll tip her next time, but ­she’s heard that BS from me before. Somehow the staff here still treats me like a king. Maybe ­it’s because their bar instincts let them know that ­I’m as loyal as a hound, or maybe ­it’s that old Sympathy for the Devil ­thing.

I walk out and soak up the panoramic view of this world I can no longer relate to: the hustlers and hussies, the beautiful people who look so miserable. Could it be them? Are they all stamped out of the Lohan mold and run right off the Paris press? Or is it me? Am I just an apparition caught in the vortex of time, somewhere between Liquid Television and the O.J. ­trial?

I finish my cig and inhale the warm late-summer air. This place looks like a postcard ­I’m living in — not a cool psychedelic postcard like they sell at the Black in O.B., but the cheesy tourist kind like they sell at Longs in Horton Plaza. I think about Jane and wonder, Is she some hot-shot real estate lawyer now or did she end up like Carol? ­I’m guessing somewhere in between, probably closer to the ­latter.

I think of how glorious and euphoric it was to have Jane, sweet sweet Jane, all naked, wrapped around my body, yet how much more real and in place she seemed as Autumn on the ­stage.

I think of Jane, then let it rest. Best leave her nestled away in the heart of my memory, way back, back in a more dangerous yet simpler time — back when you ­didn’t need a MySpace account to make friends, when full-sleeve tattoos ­weren’t a dime a dozen, when Gwen Stefani was a cute little lead singer for an unknown, outside of Southern California ska band.

Jenna asks me if I want another Bud. I tell her I'm broke, but she serves me one on the house. As I thank her with the supplication of a stray dog, I reach into my pocket for a smoke. I have one grit left and, therefore, a chance.