Travis Barker, Kourtney Kardashian and the Rainbow Bar & Grill in Los Angeles. Staff and Wikicommons composite.

I was having dinner last weekend when I spotted my first Kardashian in the wild.

To be fair, there’s lots of them, so the odds are pretty good you’ll see one on the savannah of Southern California.

This was the one who dates Travis Barker, who was carrying drumsticks, in case a spontaneous rock show broke out. A half hour later I saw him leave the club next door, only this time someone else carried his sticks. Seriously, Travis Barker had a stick roadie.

Khaki? Klaus? Kourtney … ?

Whatever. Only tourists care about those things, but I actually was a tourist this time. We were at the Rainbow Bar & Grill, getting the out-of-towner treatment from former roommates/bandmates with whom I moved down there 30 years ago.

The tourist treatment is the same there as in the Bay Area: Use out-of-towners as an excuse to do things you never do when you live somewhere. The only time I’d ever been to the Rainbow was when I hosted visitors. It’s on the official “impress-your-friends-by-how-unimpressed-you-are-by-celebrities” tour.

We went to the Viper Room afterward, another tourist attraction I hadn’t been to in 28 years (I had to go that time, because someone put my band on the bill, and those guys were kind of unreasonable when it came to missing shows).

I lived down there from 1990-’93, before Al Gore figured out how to send music over the Internet. It was a time when seldom-showered people in bands had to go to the record companies to become famous enough to date Kardashians.

I never dated a Kardashian, though I did once go out with a girl who worked at Hollywood Guitar Center. The date ended not long after she speculated how good looking our future children would be, followed by me nearly dislocating my shoulder waving to the waiter to bring the check.

I returned after a long 10 years (the last time I was there, Aerosmith still made records, which I saw happening at my buddy’s studio). This time was a reunion of mostly Bay Area transplants, including a couple once-and-again sort of minor rock stars and an old friend who’s a Disney TV honcho, who was happy to see us but not enough to grant my request to bring his Emmy to dinner.

Why even have the stupid thing?

Like I said, I got the full tourist treatment. The guys in Junkyard were even kind enough to headline the Viper, so I would know some songs.

It was fun. It was tiring. I was ready for bed by midnight.

I traveled down for one night with another former bandmate and roommate (these “mates” seemed to be everywhere–some were even schoolmates many centuries ago). Like me, he’s a non-drinker … now. Constantly at the back of mind was the idea that I was going back to a place where I was never close to being the best drummer (like, there were real drummers there), but no one compared to my prowess in a bar.

I’d be lying if I wasn’t a little nervous. Not only was I seeing people I hadn’t seen in years–people with whom I basically learned to drink–I was seeing them where our drinking took on professional proportions. Never mind bothering to learn how to play well, I’d nailed that other part of rock star life.

It was fine, which was weird, but was also fine. Better than fine. One person had a beer with dinner, and the only reason I noticed was because it was an Iron Maiden beer (I never even knew they had such things, or I may not have quit). The table was the mathematical inverse to what it would’ve looked like three decades ago, when maybe one person would’ve had food while the rest drank our dinner.

Drinking and music has always been in lockstep for me. But it was really no big deal; people actually do one without the other. Sounds like a new habit I’d like to pick up.

Follow music critic Tony Hicks at Twitter.com/TonyBaloney1967.