Category Archives: Greater L. A. hipsterpolitan region

John Ramirez

Posted on by

You big literate fuck, quit writing so well. There’s only room for one poetic underachieving big gnarly lug in this town, and it ain’t you. So what’s with the “I smell tamales, marijuana, burnt hair, and disappointment. What the hell is going on here?” This is Facebook. Writing is dead. Mediocrity prevails. Why can’t you get with the program? Just hit the like button a few times, change your profile picture, add a YouTube link and voila, you’ve written a novel. Better yet, tweet something. Anything. 140 characters, including spaces. But lay off the literacy and pretty writing. I don’t want to see one more post I wish I’d written. Fuck you.

Aside from that I’ve had a great weekend.

John Altman

Posted on by

John Altman plays with the Mark Z Stevens Trio tonite, Saturday Feb 2, at the Desert Rose in Los Feliz, corner of Prospect and Hillhurst. Music is 7 to 11. There’s no cover. That’s the bare facts. Everything below is just my usual charmingly humorous diatribe, but hell, if I were you I’d read it. Besides, Mark asked if I could spread the word about the gig. I said sure, Mark, anything for you babe.  Because that’s the way we talk in show biz, and that’s the way we roll. Continue reading →

All you can do is watch and remember

Posted on by

(Comments I added to a story about how Silver Lake got to be so damn straight in the Eastsider, 2012. Amazing what you can find when you google your own name.)

I’ve lived in Silver Lake for close to thirty years. The gay scene in Silver Lake (which was Silverlake back then, incidentally) was devastated by AIDS. It never recovered. Silver Lake’s gay scene was very leather, and that scene was hit particularly hard. The survivors began moving out, selling their homes, leaving town. Too many sad memories. Straights filled the void.

Silver Lake had the most wonderful estate sales back then. You’d pick through the stuff, get great deals, and head back out to your cars feeling vaguely guilty. Weird time.

When AIDS first hit Silver Lake it was scary. The dying were everywhere, the dead not there at all. Lost a lot of friends. Soon it seemed we had no gay friends left. They’d all vanished…moved, died, or just stopped going out.

I miss those days. I miss the gay bars, the ones we could go in, the ones we couldn’t. I miss the gay hamburger joint and gay coffee shops and gay steak houses. I miss the gay newspapers. I miss the leather guys in their chaps buying crisco at the corner markets. Good times. Even for a soooo straight couple.

Btw, in the sixties Silver Lake was a hippie haven. By the punk rock 80′s when we moved in there were a few of them left. They’d go one about the old days and wonder where everybody went.

Now us old punk rockers wonder the same thing.

Cities change. All you can do is watch and remember.

(And you know, I’m still not used to it being Silver Lake. Before it was hip and famous and yuppie breeder heaven it was Silverlake. Then the city put up that damn sign on Sunset….)

Silver Lake again

Posted on by

(2012)

This morning right after I got up there was knock on the door. A rather urgent knock. I’m wearing yesterday’s clothes, my hair in all directions, half awake, cup of coffee in my hand, and swung open the door. There’s a gorgeous thing, tall, gracile, coifed and made up in some bizarre get up like something out Jimi Hendrix’s closet. She looked flabbergasted. Can I help you? Oh. Is this 2671 and a half? No. Oh. They’re upstairs. Upstairs? Yeah, around the corner. Oh, I’m sorry. Anytime. I stepped back and though the window watched that sweet package go down the stairs and thought how this neighborhood used to be all queers.

Then coming home tonight there was a shattering Asian babe in the shortest dress and highest heels ever hanging in my driveway. She was smoking a cigarette and the smoke wreathed her head and only added to the picture and I thought how this neighborhood used to be all queers.

The gay guys are gone, most of them. It’s all breeders and babes now. The breeders are on the street below, propagating the species and fighting over preschools. The babes are on our street, walking their dogs or knocking on the wrong doors or waiting in driveways and smoking and looking drop dead gorgeous. Is that for the better? Probably not…the neighborhood used to be a lot more fun. I miss the gay guys. Miss them a lot. Then again, from a purely aesthetic point of view it’s a nice change of scenery for an old man and besides, children are important. I know I was. Not that I had any.