malibu, CA

may, 2010

HOLLYWOOD AT STREET LEVEL
or, Around the Neighborhood Photos, Spring 2010: A beautiful spring with lots of rain.

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the back side of hollywood blvd.

"where is hollywood located? Chiefly between the ears. In that part of the brain recently vacated by God." -Erica Jong

The Other Hollywood: This is the L.A. Gay and Lesbian center. It's a healing place, with free parking, a friendly parking lot attendant, youth services, recovery groups, and lots of attractive people working and volunteering there. Definitely worth checking out. One of Hollywood's treasures.

seeing eye: peace

signs among vines

stained glass window inside another window

mosaic downtown at Metro station 1st and Hill

sassy palm

the branches and vines are transmitting energy

"Strip away the tinsel in Hollywood, and you'll find the real tinsel undereneath." -Oscar Levant

"Hollywood always wanted me to be pretty, but I fought for realism." -Bette Davis

"Hollywood gives a young girl the aura of one giant, self-contained orgy farm, its inhabitants dedicated to crawling into every pair of pants they can find.” -Veronica Lake

found this in the carport....who knows..

the director

The Strangeness Of California

SPOOK VALLEY IS A NICKNAME GIVEN TO A CLUSTER of La Jolla companies specializing in nuclear-weapons technology, strategic defense, border control, industrial security, and military surveillance. Many of these are secret, or "black," programs, funded directly by the CIA or the Pentagon or the Department of Homeland Security. Some of the companies started back in the early 1990's, but a lot of them have sprung up since 2001. I thought of John Van Flyke's figure of 7 billion
of R & D money from Homeland Security alone and what share of it came to San Diego.

Spook Valley isn't spooky at all. It's everything Southern California is supposed to look like--swaying palms and twisted coastal pines and jaggedly beautiful beaches under blue sky. The green hills tumble down to the Pacific like spilled loads of emeralds. The architecture in La Jolla is a vivid mix of Mediterranean, Spanish Colonial, Spanish Revival, Craftsman, Prairie, California Rancho, postmodern, contemporary--you name it. Even the "Tuscan" monstrosities have caught on here, though they look overweight, hunkered on their tiny but expensive lots. But the Spook Valley companies cling quietly to the top-secret shadows while the rest of La Jolla basks in the light, and everyone comes together at the fancy restaurants on the bluffs to watch the sun go down.

-T. Jefferson Parker, The Fallen

airship out and about on Valentine's day giving rides to loving couples
army store

At the Academy Award Dinners all the actors and actresses in Hollywood gather around to see what someone else thinks about their acting besides their press agents." -Bob Hope

bettie page building

black-and-white-dressed couple out on the town

lots of dilapidated beauty in the neighborhood

love those ed hardy designs for your dogs

fake people

the Coolest Loser: street musician in Hollywood who is quite good. came to LA with nothing and still has nothing. put a dollar in the hat if you can.

is Buster up there?

searching for Buster

many wonderful grasses grow in the gardens

head ahead

john ritter lives!

leaded window at shakey's

lemon tree on our block

monstrosity: the neighborhood takeover by advertising images for gadgets

neighbor's mascot

fabulous purple bush

red door

sage

shadow and vines

light fixture on Highland

Mime who works on Hollywood at Ripley's and jumps out to scare people walking by

Storytelling is this town's industry and we are proud of it because it's fun

yoga studio being built on the corner posts "nothing clever here" as in "post no bills"

shoe drop---shoe repair shop on Highland. drop off your shoes to be fixed. a beautiful thing.

Talent, Inc. (the vortex where talent disappears forever in the chronic undertow of dysfunctional Hollywood)

Talent, Inc: Exterior

We believe Talent, Inc (on McCadden Place) is a physical manifestation of a psychological vortex that really does exist in Hollywood, which threatens every self-respecting artist: a place where old talent goes never to create again. The building itself appears to be abandoned, and the smell of mouse dung around the place extends for about ten feet. Looking inside (above) we saw an enormous amount of abandoned belongings, and numerous smallish creatures darting continuously around the dimly lit atrium visible through the mesh.

Time is broken

Lots of tourists lately because the dollar is so low

typical resident of Hollywood

chandelier in abandoned storefront on Highland

"The L.A. Sheriff's Office hailed from the Wild West days. It was a modern police agency suffused with 19th-century nostalgia. The LASO embraced Wild West motifs wholesale. It made for brilliant P.R.

The Sheriff's manned county lockups and patrolled county turf out of twelve substations. Said turf ran through the city of Los Angeles and out into the north-, south- and eastbound boonies. Deputies worked the desert, the mountains and a swanky stretch of beach. Their jurisdiction took in hundreds of square miles.

Malibu was plum duty. West Hollywood was good--the Sunset Strip was always percolating. East L.A. was full of rowdy Mexicans. Firestone was wall-to-wall colored. Temple City and San Dimas were out in the San Gabriel Valley. Deputies could drive up into the foothills and shoot coyotes for kicks.

The Sheriff's Detective Bureau investigated criminal actions county-wide. Sheriff's Homicide handled murders for numerous Mickey Mouse police departments. The Sheriff's Aero Bureau flew county skies and supplanted rescue operations.

The Sheriff's Office was expanding full-tilt. 1958 L.A. was a boomtown.

Los Angeles was always rough-and-ready. The place was built from land grabs and racial grief. The L.A. Sheriff's Office was chartered in 1850. It was meant to bring rule to an unruly slice of land.

The first string of County Sheriffs were elected to one-year terms. They dealt with marauding Indians, Mexican bandits and Chinese tong wars. Vigilantes were a significant threat. Drunken white men loved to lynch redskins and dusky bandidos.

L.A. County grew. Elected Sheriffs came and went. The sworn deputy force grew, concurrent with county expansion. Civilian help was often required. The Sheriff would deputize men and form them into mounted posses.

The L.A. Sheriff's Office modernized. Cars replaced horses. Larger jails and more substations were built. The L. A. Sheriff's Office grew to be the largest of its kind in the continental U.S. of A.

Sheriff John C. Cline resigned in 1920. Big Bill Traeger served the remainder of his term. Traeger was elected to three four-year terms of his own. He ran for Congress in 1932--and won. The County Board of Supervisors appointed Eugene E. Biscaiuz Sheriff.

Biscailuz joined the Sheiff's office in 1907. He was half Anglo and half Spanish-Basque. His people came from money. His California roots went back to the Spanish land-grant days.

Biscailuz was a half-assed progressive. Some of his views were near-bolshevik. He expressed those views in an avuncular manner. He was rarely accused of spouting heresy.

Biscailuz mobilized forces to fight fires and floods and developed the county's "Major Disaster Plan." Biscailuz built the Wayside Honor Rancho and shaped its rehabilitative policy. Biscailuz launched a juvenile crime deterrence program.

Biscailuz intended to hold his post for a good long time. Wild West rituals helped re-assure his elections.

He reinstated the Sheriff's Mounted Posse. The Posse rode in parades and searched for occasional lost kids out in the boondocks. Biscailuz was often photographed with the Posse. He always rode a palomino stallion.

Biscailuz sponsored the annual Sheriff's Rodeo. Uniformed deputies sold tickets all over the county. The rodeo usually sold out the L.A. Coliseum. Biscailuz appeared in western garb, replete with twin six-shooters.

The rodeo was a moneymaker and a goodwill extravaganza. Ditto the annual Sheriff's Bar-B-Q that fed at a rate of 60,000 per year.

Biscailuz took the Sheriff's Office out to the people. He seduced them with his very own myth. Mythic show-and-tell perpetuated his power. It was blue-ribbon disingenuousness.

Biscailuz knew a lot of his boys called Negroes "niggers." Biscailuz knew that phone book beatings assured rapid confessions. Biscailuz rounded up Japs and locked them down at Wayside after Pearl Harbor. Biscailuz knew that one shot with a beaver-tail sap could knock a suspect's eyes clean out of his head. Biscailuz knew that police work was an isolating profession.

So he gave his constituents the Wild West as Utopian Idyll. It got him re-elected six times. He backed his ritualistic bullshit up to an ambiguous degree. His boys were less suppression-minded than their crosstown rivals in blue.

William Parker took over the LAPD in 1950. He was an organizational genius. His personal style was inimical to Gene Biscailuz's. Parker abhorred monetary corruption and embraced violence as an essential part of police work. He was an alcoholic martinet on a mission to reinstate pre-20th-century morality.

Biscailuz and Parker ruled parallel kingdoms. Biscailuz's myth implicitly stressed inclusion. Parker co-opted a TV honcho named Jack Webb. They cooked up a weekly saga called Dragnet--a crime-and-severe-punishment myth that ordained the LAPD with a chaste image and godlike powers. The LAPD took their myth to heart. They stuck their heads up their asses and isolated themselves from the public that Gene Biscailuz embraced. Bill Parker hated Negroes and sent goons down to Darktown to lean on club owners who admitted white women. Gene Biscailuz liked to schmooze with his Mexican constituents. He was sort of a taco-bender himself.

Gene Biscailuz's myth was strictly local stuff. Bill Parker's myth was marketed nationally. The Sheriff's resented the LAPD's celebrity. The LAPD considered the Sheriff's a bush-league outfit and hogged the credit for their joint operations.

Idealogy divided the two agencies. Topography divided them more. The LAPD pointed to the densely-packed jurisdiction and racial demographics as proof of their superiority and the justication for their state-of-seige mentality. The Sheriff's pointed to the county spreading out at a boom rate.

They had new turf to learn. New cities were signing up for contract services. They simply couldn't afford to kick indiscriminate ass.

Bill Parker turned 56 in 1958. His sensibility was on the rise. Gene Biscailuz turned 75 and planned to retire at the end of the year.

Biscailuz joined the Sheriff's Office 50 years before. He saw horses replaced by flivvers and "Grey Ghost" sedans and Ford black-and-whites. He saw his Wild West Los Angeles grow and reinvent itself--way outside the borders of his myth.

He probably knew that white settlers raped Indian squaws. He probably knew that Wild West lawmen were psychopaths and drunks. He might have conceded that his myth was mostly wishful thinking and moonshine.

He might call nostalgia an indulgence. He probably knew that the Wild West played hell on women--then and now.

He probably knew that Wild West Saturday Nights comprised a myth of their own. He might have written that red-haired nurse off as a mythic casualty."

James Ellroy, My Dark Places

this house at the end of the street glows in the sunset

gorgeous weed

great drummer playing utility buckets at the top of the Hollywood & Highland Metro station the day after the Oscars

someone lost it

save me, Superman

winter sky

abandoned christmas tree

About Birds
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music by guadalcanal diary

Buster has flown.. a plant pushed out an unstable windowpane and he rode out on the breeze one night when we weren't home. We have fliers up all over the neighborhood, but no one has seen him.

(Since Buster left Jan. 13, Bob has been tearing his feathers out. These all came out in one day, just since last night's vacuuming.)

SOMEWHERE OUT THERE

Here are some photos of our pretty Buster, who we miss. He is the white bird with bright turquoise on his back.

Nosebird

MY ANGELS

AROUND THE NEIGHBORHOOD

creepy abandoned building

CALIFORNIA ON THE ROAD

“Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas ... with the music at top volume and at least a pint of ether.” -Hunter S. Thompson

burn area