Category Archives: Greater L. A. hipsterpolitan region

Leslie Van Houten

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When I heard Leslie Van Houten was granted parole I had a weird reaction, startled, then a chill. Completely unnerved for a moment. But then we live on Waverly Drive, and so did the LaBiancas, and the Manson Family’s visit on August 10, 1969 is by far the most famous thing that every happened on Waverly Drive, and if you live on this street long enough you’ve thought about it a lot, when you drive along that stretch, or when someone asks, or whenever a parole hearing comes up. Now a 67 year old murderess gets out–though all she did was stab a dead lady, over and over and over–and there is not a person on Waverly Drive that doesn’t wonder for a ridiculous second if she will come back here, as if she could do anything at all. Still, though, there was a momentary chill, and memories of all the homicidal craziness that followed in the seventies and eighties, from the Zodiac to Son of Sam to the Night Stalker, a golden age of psycho killers. Now one harmless old lady is released, dues paid, and it bothered me. How odd.
Leslie Van Houten3

Leslie Van Houten, 1970

Cute

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Not that we’re looking–we’re renters for life–but the wife keeps finding cute little places in the L.A. Times Hot Property section that are a million five or more. And the thing is, they are cute little places. The kind of house you see tucked away on a hillside cul de sac amid shade trees and roses. It’s gotten to the point now that cute costs as much as fifty average Americans make in one year. Pretty cost twice that. You don’t even wanna know gorgeous.

We were driving in a stretch of Burbank a couple nights ago, where the city butts up against the Verdugos and can’t go any further. Cute were the bottom end places, most of the houses were in the pretty range, with the occasional gorgeous occupying half a block. We must have gone miles, winding with the streets, once coming smack against the mountain, the bottom of a cliff really, and you could smell pine and hear birds we don’t hear down here in the Silver Lake hills. But it occurred to me as we drove along that we had never been up there before. Never been on any of those streets, and that we know no one who lives up there. They’re not in our class, the wife joked. But they aren’t. They’re in the class where cute is a mere million five, and I can’t even imagine that.

Rock dove

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We no longer have pigeons in Silver Lake. We have rock doves. Indeed, there was one on the sun deck. Just one. Very selective, our rock doves. The elite. Not like the mobs of pigeons you’d see in the Ralph’s parking lot, waiting for the crazy bird lady. But Ralphs is gone, the bird lady is gone, and the pigeons are gone, who knows where. There are other parking lots, other bird ladies. So there was just the one rock dove, gleaming after a winter’s rain. He landed on our sun deck with its million dollar view, and the mere mourning doves and finches and sparrows scurried out of its way. The rock dove carefully selected only the choicest seeds, looked about, and then, tired of slumming it, flew off to the rich people in the hills, where he can find a finer selection of avian cuisine and bird baths sculpted in Carrara marble. Meanwhile, back on our sundeck the mourning doves and finches and sparrows rushed back in, bickering, pecking, a disorder of tiny dinosaurs with no class at all. Gentrification has a long way to go among these birds.

A hoi polloi of pigeons, unwilling to discover their inner rock dove.

A hoi polloi of pigeons, unwilling to realize their inner rock dove.

Dress to impress

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Just out on the westside. Lotta white people over there. Even the Mexicans speak English, and when they speak Spanish they leave spaces between the words. We stopped at the beloved Santa Monica-adjacent Norms. The usual assortment of customers. The protagonist of the novel was based upon a real Los Angeles murderer shouted a weirdo a couple tables over. I ordered salsa with my omelet. It was watery and about as hot as a maraschino cherry. So I poured Tapatio all over everything. The people around me stared like I was some kind of dangerous masochist. Maybe I was that real Los Angeles murderer. Then a drop dead gorgeous blonde walked by. And another. And a third.  Wow. They come in batches over here.

We wandered about getting back, looping one way across town, then the other. Driving just for the hell of it. At Sunset and Vermont there was a Transsexual Liberation rally. Hey hey, ho, ho the guy screamed through the bullhorn, something something has got to go. He screamed it over and over through the traffic din. Around him stumped a couple dozen protesters waving signs. Transsexual Rights Now, etc. None appeared to be transsexuals. They just looked like regular frumpy people, computer nerds, couch potatoes. Either they have gotten remarkably realistic with the surgery, or none of them were transsexuals. A blazer or two wouldn’t have hurt any. It’s certainly a good cause. They just need a little fashion sense. Dress to impress, even at a protest rally.

My wife is the lady in waiting in the south of Ireland

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(I wrote this in 1980.)

There was a crazy man on the bus today, twitching and jerking, rocking back and forth, singing, talking to everybody about the Royal Army and Lord Mountbatten and that he himself was the ambassador to somewhere. He scared everybody with his broken brain. “My wife is the lady in waiting in the south ofIreland” he said, chain smoking cigarettes, lighting the next one from the butt of the last. He muttered about the Royal Army, and counted off British sounding names, and then sat there forgetting his cigarette until; something set him off again, drumming his fingers on the seat, clutching his bag, tapping his foot to some long lost march.

Zen

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Emerging from Griffith Park, the stoned lady forget to press the button at the crosswalk, though she never noticed the difference as she walked across Los Feliz Blvd staring at her iPhone. The traffic stopped and blew their horns in admiration. The lady never noticed.

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White Fence

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So this chick from Silver Lake told me White Fence were at the Natural History Museum. I did one of those Facebook double takes. At the Natural History Museum? Yeah, she said, it was First Fridays Night. You mean all those USC kids and White Fence? Yeah, and White Fence played. White Fence are a band now? Yeah, she said, for a few years now. La Eme order that? They’ve gotten into the Alternative Music industry now? I imagined a bunch of guys covered in tattoos and tear drops singing Cisco Kid and Farmer John and Tell Her She’s Lovely. What the hell are you talking about she asked. I realized it wasn’t the same White Fence. Nothing, I said, I’ve just lived here too long. I began to write that over at Cafe NELA they’d have thought the same thing I did, but on my side of the river now White Fence are some hipsters in a band…but I deleted it. It was a great show, she said, they’re really good. OK, I said, but I remember when they tagged my car.

White Fence

White Fence

(Photo by Kevin Dean www.betaart.com. I recommend checking out the site…he does some remarkable work.)

Matches

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Apparently they no longer have Musso and Frank matches anymore. We’ve been lighting candles with Musso and Frank matches for thirty years. Now what? Lighters? Are wooden matches too analog? Has digital civilization passed me by entirely? I can feel Hollywood Forever drawing me near, coldly, whispering join us. There’s a spot between the Fairbanks’s and Toto just for you, big guy. Hipsters will park their asses atop your bones all summer long and iPhone through entire movies, puffing matchlessly on electronic cigarettes. Sitting on Brick Wahl, they’ll tweet, I never heard of him either.

We used to have dozens of these, a bowl full. But those were different times. The poets, they studied rules of verse, and the ladies, they went after the drummers.

We used to have dozens of these, a bowl full, but those were different times. The poets, they studied rules of verse, and the ladies, they went after the drummer.

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(Picture from thematchgroup.com. You can find anything on the internet.)

I love this town

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A wedge of Canadian geese just did their morning commute overhead from the Silver Lake reservoir–that’s why the grass is so green there–to the Los Angeles River behind me. Honking frantically. What a cacophony. They’ll come back a little less noisy at dusk heading back to the reservoir. I love the sound, and their ragged V’s are always perfect against the sunset. The sunsets have been lovely. Last night the sky to the west went from a gorgeous pink to a beautiful orange that filled the whole front room here with its light. Almost spooky. We went out onto the sundeck and watched till it turned to shades of grey and into black, and the lights in the hills came twinkling on and a last bunch of geese flew past, heading home.

And I wasn’t even stoned.

I love this town.

Canadian Geese (and a couple coots and a mallard) in the L.A. River.

Canadian Geese (and a couple coots and a mallard) in the L.A. River.


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Sam Rodia and the Watts Towers

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I’d forgotten about this wonderful documentary about the Watts Towers and the man who created them. If you’ve never seen them, do so. They are one of truly astonishing creations in this city. Crowds of people stare at the giant rock the idiots at LACMA paid zillions of dollars for. And people faun over the zillion dollar constructions of Frank Gehry. That’s just rich people spending money. Too much money. It’s not art, it’s just decadence. Sam Rodia did not have a lot of money. The Watts Towers are the real thing. Check out this beautiful film.

http://www.ibuildthetower.com/


Sam Rodia and the Watts Towers
Definitive documentary film on the Watts Towers in South Central Los Angeles, a monument of ‘outsider’ or ‘folk’ art built by Italian immigrant Sam (Simon) Rodia.