These are the People in My Neighborhood....

It’s not every day that you see a six foot two, two hundred fifty pound woman walking down the street in a bright pink pant suit wearing a long auburn wig…inside out. That’s right. Wig inside out and tilted a little bit down and over the eyes. The expression on her bright and smiling face said that she was having a good hair day, felt confident and looked fetching. Well. She did make me smile when I went by. So I guess she served her greater purpose, which was to make people smile, thereby brightening their day.

This brings me to a subject near and dear to my heart...and that is the culture of “characters” that inhabit the more urban parts of this fair city. Yes, they exist in every major city in the country, but we seem to have a disproportionate amount of them here due to the good weather and the particular rejection style of the entertainment industry. It’s one of the reasons I live by choice in a more urban area of the city. There’s always something going on and when it happens, it usually happens there first. Living in a more “gentrified” outer suburb of Los Angeles is something that I have tried and never warmed to. Mainly because I can't stand the term "gentrified." I lived in rose lined, pretty Pasadena for a few years and was able to see the San Gabriel Mountains a total of 5 times during that period, and then only after a heavy rain – even though they were about twenty blocks away. I figure if I’m going to live in filth at least be honest about it and move back into the city. Being able to walk out of your building to see a large, colorful woman wearing an inside out wig; a Hollywood exec picking up a 15 year old hooker in his Beemer; watching the neighborhood Tweakers make their way home squinting with pain from the glare of the morning sun after a weekend crystal meth binge in a dark room; noticing that the pretty 20 something girl at the end of the block who is prone to depression has had her face inexplicably tattooed with some sort of Maori design... can be more jam packed with comedy or tragedy than anything you’ll see on the teeVee. Unless you watch the commercials.

There is a delightful cast of characters that can be found on the avenues, streets and at the numerous Starbucks of L.A. proper – with the notable exception of a woman in suburban South Pasadena who eats avocadoes all day while simultaneously having secret whispered yet animated conversations with her left hand -

For example, there is “The Creature,” as she is cruelly nicknamed by people with jobs, but I prefer to refer to her as The Woman With the Really Tall Shoes...this woman seemingly floats down La Brea Avenue in a ground length black caftan, wears her hair in a severe top knot that puts Cindy Loo—Who to shame, wears bright circles of rouge high upon her cheeks and custom made platform shoes that are seven inches high. She slowly makes her way up and down La Brea, speaking to no one, deep in thought...floating. She’s fabulous.

Then there’s a man of indeterminate age, somewhere between 55 and 120, stoop shouldered, wizened, terribly thin, with overly tanned skin that has become shoe leather. He likes to walk down Wilshire Boulevard wearing nothing but a leopard print thong. This I could live my entire life without seeing and be the better for it.

There’s a guy at my gym who is tattooed over all areas of his body not covered by clothing – and I’m thinking that he is tattooed on those areas covered by clothing as well, since the guy that did the two that I have said that he has tattooed some “privates” in his day...which just fills me with scary visuals that know no bounds...anyway, his bald head is covered with tiny and dainty flowering vines. I wonder what kind of work he does.

One of my all time favorite characters is a guy at Venice Beach who rolls around on skates while playing an electric guitar that he has a special battery pack amplifier for...if he catches your eye, he will follow you for several yards, composing a song right on the spot...just for you. He delights in your embarrassment. It was better though before he got the guitar, because in years past it was a ukulele, which has far more embarrassment potential. To be serenaded with, I mean.

There are so many more than those I’ve mentioned and there’s always a little tragedy that goes along with being a character. That is, at some point in time the individual made a decision to completely retreat from the world – or the world retreated from them. The Hollywood history books are rife with the forgotten or rejected that threw themselves off the Hollywood sign, or killed themselves in some other fashion after their fall from Hollywood grace. For some reason a bizarrely large number of those people lived on Woodrow Wilson Drive. You will never find me living on Woodrow Wilson Drive for any reason because of that fact alone. I doubt I’d even go to a dinner party there. When I speak of the Hollywood forgotten, there is one woman in particular that I find rather haunting. She is an elderly woman, of the homeless variety, who can be found wandering around downtown or thereabouts, with an Oscar in a paper bag that by all accounts is hers. I’d like to know her story.

So...while I continue to nosily watch the goings on, wonder at the back stories and comment on the lives of my various neighbors, I’ll continue to be furious at the meager offerings of the television set and prefer the comic yet sordid entertainment and mystery of my own 'hood, reveling in the sights, smells and filth that make up that place I call Home.