HOLMES AND AWAY (OK, SO YOU COME UP WITH SOMETHING BETTER)

 This is Burton Holmes (1870-1958):

 

He’s posing ‘As a gentleman of Japan dressed for rainy day promenade.’  It looks to me like he’s wearing wearing two kimonos, neither of which appears all that rain-proof.

 

And this is me posing on Hollywood Boulevard with various walkers behind me.  The dinosaur you can see behind them is atop the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not museum.

There’s a little more connection between these two images than you might immediately think, chiefly that Burton Holmes has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which at this time of writing I do not, but there’s more to it than that.

Burton Holmes, who some people know, and many more don’t, was a great traveller in the days when being a great traveller was a ‘thing.’

 

I know him best as a photographer but he was considerably more than that.  He delivered hugely successful public lectures about his travels, illustrated first with hand coloured slides and eventually with film that he’d shot. This put him way ahead of the game, before the slide show and the home movie became domesticated and ruined many a family evening. It’s also said, and I have no reason to doubt it, that Burton Holmes invented the term ‘travelogue.’

 

I’m not sure how much walking Holmes did.  It was possibly limited by how much photographic gear he was carrying, 

 

but certainly plenty of his photographs show people walking:

 

And this is me, posing not ‘as a gentleman of Japan’ but as an Englishman in a kimono, and not ‘dressed for rainy day promenade’ but for mooching about in a hotel room.

And here’s where it all comes together.  Holmes owned, among other properties, a duplex apartment in New York which he named "Nirvana," an understated little bolthole as you can see:

He eventually sold the apartment to Robert Ripley (1890-1949) – he of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not cartoon strip and eventually a series of museums, which I understand are franchised, including the one on Hollywood Boulevard: see above.  This is Ripley with the whole world in his hands:

And here he is posing, and very possibly walking, walking in China:

 

Much more about Burton Holmes here:

https://www.burtonholmes.org

 

 

 

HOUSEHOLD WALKING

Yes, I walked when I was in Los Angeles last month, of course I did.  It’s what I do wherever I am.  And despite urban myths to the contrary I saw plenty of other people walking too.  Like these good folks on Hollywood Boulevard:

And I went to Palm Springs and saw people walking there too.

And also in Yucca Valley.

And right at the very end, on my last day, I was walking in Little Tokyo in LA, and I wasn’t trying to have one of those ‘perfect moments’ to round off the trip, and I hadn’t even been thinking much about obelisks, I certainly hadn’t seen any on my trip, but then I hadn’t really expected to, and yet and yet .. there I was on East Second Street and suddenly this mighty metal obelisk loomed out at me.

My first thought was that it could be a decorative element for the nearby Japanese restaurant but it seemed a bit grand for that.  A basic online search didn’t bring up anything and I told myself that was OK.  Sometimes it’s good for a walk and an obelisk to retain a certain mystery.

         But back home further searching revealed that it’s a work of art (as to some degree are all obelisks, I suppose) but this one is called Sliver Tower and it’s by the artisy Peter Lodato, from his "Wrathful Means" series which apparently “depicts the power and ferocity of Mahakala, the protector of Lamism,” though I don’t see how you’d know that from looking at the obelisk

But … and hold onto your hat kids, you know what’s on the wall of my living room, a thing that I bought on a whim in all ignorance from the local junk/antique shop – yep it’s a mask of Mahakala.  

Spooky?  Nah, just the kind of stuff that happens all the time.  In Japan, I understand, Mahakala is a protective household god.  I can really use one of those.

WALKING IN PATCHES

As I walk around Hollywood, I still see a few patches of open, undeveloped land. It’s been a wet spring and they’re still green now, in early May.  Of course, as the building bubble continues to stretch and inflate, I think, “Well, that won’t be there long much longer.”  And I'm generally right.

And as I look, and sometimes take a picture, I think to myself, there’s an art project here – "The last patch of green in Hollywood."  It isn’t a project for me but it definitely could be for somebody.

For instance, there used to be a patch of bare ground on Franklin Avenue that stayed empty all year and then each December some local entrepreneur rented it and sold Christmas trees from it.  This was recently paved over and it’s now the staff parking lot for Gelson’s supermarket. I don’t know what will happen come December.

And a couple of days back I was looking at a patch of land on Hollywood Boulevard, empty and still with a few remains (rather than ruins) of whatever had previously been there. 

As well as some greenery there were also, naturally, piles of rubbish, although you can see worse piles of rubbish in this city, in pretty much any city.  There was even this surprisingly stylish, abandoned bra (although maybe it's half a bikini):

And as I was taking these photographs I heard a woman shouting, “That’s right.  Take more pictures.  Take more pictures.”

         She sounded annoyed although not specifically with me, and she did, in some sense, mean what she was saying.

“Take more photographs and send them to the mayor,” she said, with passion rather than anger.  “I’ve written to him but it does no good.  Maybe he should see some pictures.”

         So we talked, and she said that this empty lot had become a hangout for homeless druggies, hence the garbage, though it was uninhabited at that moment.  She lived in the apartment block next door and she thought this lot was disgusting and dangerous, and you could definitely see her point.  Sympathy with the homeless doesn’t necessarily mean you want them as immediate neighbors.

And then she said, “Ah well they’ll be building there soon,” which was undoubtedly true.

Not very far away, in a corner of a newly built apartment block, I did find this patch of green.  It’s a (very, very small) dog park.  The “grass” is Astroturf.

A LITTLE WALK NEVER KILLED ANYBODY

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. 

LOOKING AT THE STARZ

Another day, another walk in Hollywood, and a day of faces, some looking down, some looking up from the sidewalk.  Some (as it were human) some less so.

A minimalist Lou Reed from his Transformer era.  I mean, I’m pretty sure it’s Lou Reed, but it does look a bit like Michael Bolton:

A comparatively detailed face signed by Klassy:

And then what at first I thought was best of all, a stencil of our soon to be Fearless Leader:

“Pendejo,” as I understand it, means a fool or an idiot, though it also (and simultaneously) means a single pubic hair.  Good knockabout, activist stuff you might think, but it turns out that “Ilegal Mescal” is just a brand of liquor which rather spoils the “guerilla” effect.

And meanwhile high above it all on Hollywood Boulevard, in Thai Town, not so much looking down as looking beyond, four golden statues of Apsoni, a mythical half-woman, half-lion, which appear thoroughly unimpressed by what’s going on below.  We’re all in the gutter, right?

WALKING WITH THE EXECUTIONER

I’ve been reading a book titled Hollywood Hell, so that you don’t have to. It was published in 1985, and of course it was the title that hooked me - and maybe the cover, though it's not very representative of what goes on in the book, which is all about waifs and strays and street kids, who get involved in crime and porn.

The hero is one Mack Bolan – sometimes know as the Executioner.  

Not to be confused with Marc Bolan obviously. "You’re not really going out in public in those shoes are you Marc?"

Mack Bolan is the creation of Don Pendleton – and if online sources are to be believe he’s appeared in 600 novels.  Pendleton sold the rights somewhere along the line, and a crew of lesser scribes evidently took over.  

Don Pendleton

Mack Bolan gets around: Cambodia, Soho, Beirut, and does a lot of killing with a very big gun.  To be fair most of the really violent action of Hollywood Hell takes place in Topanga and Pasadena, and the writer (who isn’t named, though somebody called Mike Newton is given “special thanks” on the copyright page) doesn’t put a whole lot of effort into giving a sense of place, but there is one strangely evocative description – of walking in Hollywood – almost certainly on Hollywood Boulevard:

“The hunter (that would be Bolan) parked his rental car upwind, deciding to walk.  He noted there seemed to be no continuity among the people he encountered in this neighborhood of sleazy bars and businesses.  Along the short block’s walk he met a human of every race and gender.

         “Men in stylish business suits looked sheepish or defensive as they caught his eye: the punks, decked out in leather with their spiky hair dyed every color of the rainbow, tended toward defiance seasoned with a dash of apathy.  A macho body-builder type paraded past him, hand in hand with his diminutive bearded lover.

“Across the street a stoned guitarist played for the amusement of some black youths dressed in street-gang colors, and a wino occupied the vacant doorway next to his objective, grumbling fitfully in alcoholic slumber.”

All of which sounds vaguely appealing, like a cultural and ethnic rainbow coalition, where everybody’s learned to just get along, which might be the very reason so many waifs and strays end up on Hollywood Boulevard, although Mack Bolan takes a different view.

I walk along Hollywood Boulevard all the time and of course I see waifs and strays, and sometimes their interactions with cops, which in general seem to be a lot less antagonistic than you might imagine.  I remember seeing one tough-looking kid, maybe in his late teens, being asked by a cop, “How long you been out here?” 

The kid replied, “Been out this time for ten days.  Been on the street since I was 12.”

In Hollywood just about everybody knows how to deliver a good line.

And because I’m one of those scavengers who picks up unconsidered trifles when he walks the street, I found this:

It’s a piece of rather expensive cardboard packaging, dense with layers of writing by different hands, not all the words legible, some of it a birthday greeting to Ringo Starr, some a description of street life of Hollywood waifs and strays.  The best I can make out says: - “I want my best Hollywood house now - my safe place 2 sleep” – “How many guys have my phones” – “Pinup poster girl & everyone keeps stealing my stuff” – there’s also something I can’t quite make out about sleeping outside and finding the sprinklers suddenly turned on.

It’s better written, more moving, more eloquent than anything to be found in Hollywood Hell.

ULYSSES ON HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD

 It’s a good few decades since I first read the opening lines of the “Proteus” chapter in Ulysses, the chapter in which Stephen Dedalus walks along Sandymount Strand.   I read the words "Ineluctable modality of the visible," reached for the dictionary and looked up the meaning both of ineluctable and modality, and I think I was at least very slightly wiser afterwards.

Now I know, or at least I’m given to understand, that this is a reference to Aristotelian notions of form and substance, that what the eye sees is not inherent in the thing seen.  At one point Stephen closes his eyes and wonders if the world still exists, to which the all too obvious answer is “Duh.”

At the very least I suppose those words mean that we can’t escape the visual, though I’m not sure why we’d want to. 

And of course there’s a double bluff going on here, in that Joyce’s novel is transforming a visual experience (though obviously not only a visual experience) into a verbal one, into a text.  And I often think, as I walk in the world, that the separation between the verbal and the visual is largely a false one.

I’m a writer and I love words, but a lot of the time I write about what I see. And occasionally I take a photograph to capture details that I might otherwise forget, even as I accept that taking the photograph changes the nature of forgetting and remembering.

  But the fact is, the world I see when I’m walking is full of language, visible language, words in a landscape. Cities seem to be full of fragmented poetry and prose, right there on the wall or the floor, and very occasionally up in the sky.    

This isn’t why I walk, but it definitely makes the experience of walking all the more worthwhile.  Sometimes I wonder if language is ineluctable.