SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEOFF

Lately I’ve been going for a walk on Sunday afternoons – no big deal, just in the neighborhood, East Hollywood and sometimes drifting up into Griffith Park, more of a stroll than a psychogeographic expedition.

And since more and more places are open on Sundays, and since more and more people work on Sundays, you might think Sunday shouldn’t feel so very different from every other day of the week, and yet it does.  I’m not completely sure whether it’s me or the universe, but there is something curious and melancholy about the world on a Sunday when you’re walking.

My best guess (for the time being) is that the people who are on the streets on a Sunday have more time on their hands, they move at a different pace than in the week, they have some sense of being “at leisure,” they’re drifting just like I am, and this creates some specific “ambiance.”

And naturally I found myself thinking about Thomas De Quincey’s line, “It was a Sunday afternoon, wet and cheerless: and a duller spectacle this earth of ours has not to show than a rainy Sunday in London.”  And yes I do think that a rainy afternoon in London is much worse than a sunny afternoon on Hollywood Boulevard, but the latter is not without its melancholy.

I can’t swear that the fellow below on the sidewalk (he's the same as the one up above) is an opium eater, but I’d guess he’s probably taken an opiate if not an opioid.  He looks quite comfortable.  And you know, having taken the picture I'm feeling guilty.  Should I have checked his pulse?  Should I have called an ambulance?  Well yes, possibly I should, although if you called an ambulance every time you saw somebody passed out on the sidewalk in Hollywood you wouldn't have time for much else.

And I can’t tell you what, if anything, this fellow below has taken (maybe beard-enhancer) but it didn’t seem to have cheered him up much:

And as for this person, well I don’t know if anything had been taken at all, which is to say I don’t know if this is a man or a woman, transvestite or transsexual, or someone who’s just gender fluid  – hey, in Hollywood in the park on a Sunday afternoon we don’t always check IDs.

LIGHTS ON FOR THE TERRITORY

Meanwhile while drifting  in East Hollywood in December …

Is it just me or is there always something incredibly melancholy and mysterious about seeing abandoned women’s shoes lying in the street, whether singly or in pairs? You assume there always has to be a story there, and depending on your taste in stories it may be incredibly banal – woman finally got fed up with her fancy shoes, found them too painful, decided to throw them away – and maybe she had a pair of sensible shoes with her.  Or maybe it's evidence of some noirish narrative – a chase through the night, escaping from real or imagined demons, shoes cast aside to increase mobility.

So what’s the story with these rather elegant, and as far as I could tell, perfectly serviceable black suede, high-heeled boots that had been carefully placed at the base of a tree?  A gift to the neighborhood?  They were certainly gone when I walked by again later in the day.

Of course it goes dark early in Hollywood these day.  When I first arrived here a decade or so ago it seemed that the neon of Hollywood was something very spectacular.  I seem to think there were organized bus tours.  Now I either don’t see it or the whole neon thing has dimmed.  Consider the Hollywood Downtowner Motel, which in neon form has become the Hollywood Downtowner Mo.  Is that a joke?

And just round the corner from there one of the apartment buildings has decided to make it a prehistoric Christmas.  I think this is just wonderful, while also being fairly glad that I don’t live in the building next door.