My Date With One of the Last Chuck E. Cheese Animatronic Bands

The San Fernando Valley is the kind of place where the A/C is on year-round and almost everything is a shade of brownish-gray, either a “coming soon” construction site or some anonymous strip mall, sun bleached and covered in a light film of dust.

When people think of L.A. traffic, they’re thinking about the Valley, where the 101 and 405 slow down to a bumper-to-bumper crawl; but the relatively affordable housing, pool to person ratio...