What do the following...

have in common?

The Fred Segal building on the East side of 5th Street at Broadway in Santa Monica.
A CVS drug store on Santa Monica Boulevard and La Cienega in West Hollywood.
A 7-11 on La Cienega at Rodeo Road.
An office building on Wilshire Boulevard at 26th Street in Santa Monica.
A vacant lot on Century Boulevard near LAX.
A retail business on Hawthorne Boulevard south of Artesia in Redondo Beach.
The Embassy Suites Hotel in El Segundo on E. Imperial Highway near the 105 Freeway.
The third floor of a retail center near 3rd Street and Alameda in L.A.'s Little Tokyo.
A Big 5 sporting goods store on Crenshaw south of Exposition in L.A.
A building near the intersection of Manchester and Western, in Inglewood.
A Bally's Total Fitness on El Centro Avenue in Hollywood.

I'd list more, but I think you can figure it out from these.  If you can't, think about it as you read the rest of this.  If it doesn't come to you when I'm finished with this entry, I'll give you the answer.

I was in Santa Monica today because things change.  I was at the VA this morning for a follow-up visit and to finally give in to something I've been avoiding since I got my car back after my extended hospitalization.  I gave in and got a handicapped placard.  I've been eligible for one this entire time but avoided getting it because it was my little mental game of pretending I'm less disabled than I really am.  But no more.  I can continue to work to get better but I can't pretend that it isn't a real strain to be forced to park at a great distance from places I go.

So I got my primary care physician to sign the paperwork (an offer I've had from prior primary care physicians) and then headed to where I knew there was an office of Triple A.  The nearest office to the VA is on Sepulveda, just South of Santa Monica.  Or it was.  It isn't there anymore.  Fortunately I knew for a fact the office in Santa Monica on Santa Monica at Harvard was still there, so I didn't have to go too far to get my blue placard.  But it was annoying to drive by where that office had been and to see the entire building being retrofitted.

Then as I was heading home, I noticed that the building that used to house Airport Pharmacy has finally been leased.  Does that mean there is hope, since a long-vacant building is finally going to be occupied?  Is this a sign the economy is turning around?  Unemployment isn't going up anymore, but it isn't exactly going down either.  I guess the truth will be told in the months and years ahead.  When whatever is going in where Airport Pharmacy used to be opens, and how long it remains there will be a clue.

But some things are never going to turn around and that list I gave at the start of this entry is a sign of that.  What do all of those locations have in common?  They were all, at one point, successful bowling alleys in Los Angeles County.  I thought of at least six more that have closed that I didn't list, so it wasn't just those either.  At one time I bowled in all of them.  And it should be noted that while there are fewer bowling centers in existence today than there was back in the day, Lucky Strike is doing well with their upscale version of the bowling center.  The problem is the death of "league bowling".  Millions of Americans used to gather one night a week (for some of us, it was three or four nights a week) and bowl in an organized league.  The phenomenon of "Las Vegas" leagues still goes on here in the L.A. area, where part of the fee paid each week by the league members goes into a fund to pay for a weekend trip to a Las Vegas hotel/casino where the league's members compete in a tournament for some of that cash.  But compared with its height in the 1970s, league bowling is a dying activity.

Interestingly enough, I had bowled at each and every one of those bowling centers that is now something else (and the other six that came to mind) before my 18th birthday.