On the morning of December 27th on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard
and McCadden Place there was a young black man, standing very straight and
still, and saying “Fuck” loudly, repeatedly, rhythmically. The street was too crowded for people completely
to avoid him, but the many passersby, mostly tourists, were doing their very best
to pretend he wasn’t there.
The young man was holding a stack of CDs. It’s the kind of thing quite a few scammers
do on Hollywood Boulevard, and being of sound mind I’ve never got involved, but
I gather the drill is they “give” you a CD, sometimes even sign it for you,
then ask for a “donation.” Declining
this turns out to be much harder than you’d expect. Even so, it struck me that yelling fuck at
passersby, in fact possibly at the whole world, was not the very best way to
draw people into your CD scam – unless it’s a hip-hop thing. Below is a man with a better technique.
There was plenty of other action on the post-Christmas, pre-New Year
Boulevard that day. It is, of course, a
common complaint that Los Angeles lacks street life, yet here you could find the
homeless, the drug-addled, people dressed up as Batman or Minnie Mouse, guys
drumming on empty buckets, panhandlers - at least one of them in a wheelchair
exposing his stump: all of these people more than willing to extract a little
gelt from the tourists.
The tourists in turn appeared to be in a constant state
of confusion, asking themselves questions (I imagine), some more Existential
than others – “Why are we here? What are
we doing? What are we supposed to be looking
at? Did we really come all this way just
to go shopping at The Gap?” In despair
some of them end up walking round the Madame Tussaud’s waxworks. Because yes, this is a walking street – as
Johnnie Walker was there to remind us.
And of course people were taking lots of photographs, of
the stars in the sidewalk, of each other, and of course of themselves. For these folks there was a stern warning
stenciled on the ground.
I didn’t see anybody taking much notice. And even if it were true I don’t imagine the
American people would want to give up their selfies any more than they want to
give up their guns.
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