Giveaways
ARRIVING in Los Angeles from Las Vegas, I decided that I was going to stay in Hollywood, the home of the American motion picture industry but also a suburb in its own right. I hadn’t been to that end of town before.
On Hollywood Boulevard, I found a nice hostel. I was in a women’s dorm. The Hostel provided free breakfast: bagels, cream cheese, and coffee. I could shop locally, for instance at a 7/11, and get three tacos for $8 and a beer for $4.
You could get all sorts of street food, and they have a lot of caravans. Places to eat were often out of the way, on the fourth or fifth floor of buildings, and in and around the Dolby Theatre and Grauman’s Chinese Theater.
Hollywood Boulevard is where they have the famous Walk of Fame, with nearly 2,800 stars along it.
The Walk of Fame is often confused with the celebrity hand and footprints in wet concrete in the forecourt of Grauman’s Chinese Theater, a custom that began in the 1920s.
I hopped on the bus for a one-day Hollywood tour, which included visiting the Warner Studios and the magnificent Griffith Observatory in the hills above Hollywood, from which you can see the famous sign that reads HOLLYWOOD (originally HOLLYWOODLAND), erected by a real estate agent in the 1920s and eventually gazetted as a landmark.
We started out down Sunset Boulevard: full of homeless people, which isn’t so glamorous.
Come to think of it, maybe Sunset Boulevard wasn’t so glamorous even in the days when they made the film Sunset Boulevard (1950): a famous example of what they called film noir back then. That was a French expression that meant films made in the dark.
Most of the films noirs seem to have been set in Los Angeles: no doubt because it was convenient for the studios. But film noir ended up giving Los Angeles a creepy reputation as the sort of place where absolutely anything could happen, even on Sunset Boulevard, once the sun had set.
And some of it was true, since, for as long as anyone can remember, there have always been two sides to Los Angeles,
On the one hand, a land of endless sunshine — a sort of fantasyland, if not as blatant as Vegas — and on the other hand, the end of the line and the last roll of the dice for people escaping their past along such famous migration highways as Route 66 (‘get your kicks/on Route 66’).
People who sometimes made a fresh start and sometimes not.
Someone told me that half the homeless people in America are in Los Angeles, though surely that can’t be true. But a lot of homeless people do migrate there since it is better than being homeless in a place that snows and rains a lot, or that is mostly just as sunny but has less liberal attitudes, such as Texas.
For, given that they are mostly descended from refugees and dreamers, the Californians are tolerant of eccentricity and misfortune on the whole.
And so, I heard that the homeless had a right to pitch tents where and when they want. Though, it got to bother a friend of mine who got burgled three times (I am not sure by whom) and got to be really paranoid about tents pitched outside her place.
Her driveway was blocked, the police not doing anything about it as she was only a renter and not the owner, and one of the local hobos, past whom she took her daughter to school, was later jailed for murdering someone.
Iin some other places, such as Finland, they have a more proactive policy to help the homeless than California’s mere live and let live, or coercively moving people on, as in other US states (so that they go to California!)
Lately, the US Supreme Court heard a case in which it affirmed the right of cities to force homeless people to move on even if there is no other shelter available (the Grant’s Pass case).
Our bus tour went on up into the movie-star suburb of Beverly Hills as well.
And then on to the seaside suburb of Santa Monica and Santa Monica Pier. This was pretty, but a bit bland because of all the restaurants on the pier. They were trying to stop street vendors: I wonder why? Street vendors have the more reasonably priced food. Otherwise, people will just bring their own food.
Here is a quick pan and scan video that I filmed on the pier:
It was interesting to see signs saying Kennedy for President. If anybody had been frozen for 64 years, they would look familiar.
Though, I think this one was a bit more of a long shot, even before he confessed that a worm ate part of his brain.
The next photo shows one of the old Civil War-vintage shore-battery cannons that are now mounted in Palisades Park: a park that runs along the top of a cliff above Santa Monica Beach. Plus, someone who has decided to catch a bit of sun beside it.
And some street art down by the beach.
Plus the Hotel California, not sure if it is the Hotel California.
Next, we visited the amazing Farmers’ Market. In this part of LA you could literally buy anything from furniture to food. I got myself a steak with mashed potatoes followed by ice cream. There was a Walmart, and I went to a furniture place to have a look (not that I was planning to lug any back to New Zealand on the plane).
There was a vintage tram at the Farmers’ Market, as well.
Next, we went to the Griffith Observatory, opened in 1935 as a gift to the people of Los Angeles. The observatory, the surrounding park and the nearby Greek Theater were all paid for by a wealthy philanthropist named Griffith J. Griffith, whose other claim to fame, or infamy rather, was that he served a year and a half in prison for shooting his wife while in a drunken stupor (clearly, he could afford a good lawyer as well).
It had great artwork and sculpture from the 1930s, and fascinating scientific displays.
Many of the scenes in another 1950s classic, the James Dean/Natalie Wood film Rebel Without a Cause, were filmed at the Griffith Observatory.
And as I mentioned, you can see the Hollywood sign from here.
Finally, here is a video of the scenes I filmed in Hollywood and nearby, including, at the end, the Midwest Street Backlot and a set where scenes from the 1970s comedy The Dukes of Hazzard were filmed, at the Warner Brothers studios in Burbank, a few kilometres northeast of Hollywood.
I’ll be concluding my rambles through Los Angeles next week!
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