I happened to be walking early one morning this week in the streets around the Beverly Center, here in Los Angeles. I wasn’t looking for the seamy underbelly, since it’s a fairly swank neighbourhood, and I’d have looked in vain, but I was looking for things with a bit of quirkiness or patina.
Quite a few people were leaving their houses and apartments, getting in their cars and going to work. A young couple fell in step walking behind me, so I didn’t get the very best look at them, but I got a general impression of young, attractive, cleanish cut, and I could hear their conversation quite clearly.
HE: I can’t believe Bobby’s got a job already. He’s only been in LA like a week.
SHE: He got four casting calls in his first three days! He’d have got the J.C. Penney job if he’d been able to ride a motorcycle. He looks like the kind of guy who could ride a motorcycle.
HE: That’s the thing about Bobby. He’s so straight, but casting directors always think he’s so gay.
As you may have read elsewhere in this blog I have an ongoing interest in what I call “feral furniture” – couches, chests of drawers, televisions, that have simply been dumped on the street. Some, of course, look in better shape than others, but I have never seen such a stylish abandoned couch as the one I saw that morning in the environs of the Beverly Center. It looked like this:
And I was thinking to myself, man, this must be a really classy neighborhood. The people here throw away furniture that looks cooler and more elegant than any furniture I’ve ever owned. And then half a block later I came across something else feral, an abandoned toilet tossed into the ivy at the curb, which suggested that some of the area’s inhabitants may be slightly less classy than others.
