When I was out and about walking, beating the bounds of Hollywood a
couple of weeks back, I came across an interesting bit of ruin – an abandoned
gas station on a strangely large plot of land, on Western Avenue, just south of
Sunset Boulevard. There were fences all
around the lot, but in any case it was the end of the day, it was getting dark and
there were no lights in the place. But I
was intrigued. This is how it looked on
Google earth.
So a couple of days ago, I went back.
Still, thinking I might do my “every street in Hollywood” project, I
didn’t go directly. I walked down Wilton
intending to turn left at Sunset but I dunno, I guess I was enjoying the walk
and found myself a few blocks south of Sunset on Lexington (“drunk and dirty
more dead than alive” as they say, though not about this Lexington) and I had to back track. My eventual route looked like this:
Well, in daylight the place wasn’t much more visible than it had been
in the dark. The fences were at just the
right height to prevent you looking in, and although there were gaps here and
there I could only get a very restricted view.
Yes, the place was definitely an abandoned gas station, but it must
have been abandoned a very long time ago because there were palm trees growing
up between the pumps. There was also a huge area of space behind the gas
station, with sheds, bits of furniture, multiple garbage cans, and although it
didn’t look exactly lived in, it didn’t look like it had been left completely
to the elements. Somebody at least went
in there and swept up once in a while.
I still couldn’t see over the fence, of course, but this is why a
camera isn’t such a bad thing for the urban explorer to have. By holding up my
arms and pointing the camera over the fence I could manage to get some
pictures.
They’re
not exactly the most revealing pictures about who, why, when, or how, but then I
did some zooming in, like Decker in that scene in Bladerunner that once seemed unimaginably futuristic, all that “Track 45 right. Stop. Center and
stop. Enhance 34 to 36. Pan right and pull back. Enhance 34 to 46. Pull back.
Wait a minute …” Wait a minute indeed. Was that a person sitting in there?
Well, the more I look the more I’m sure it wasn’t a real live
person. I think it was an inflatable or perhaps
a solid rubber version of the Hulk.
Incredible. Another ruin deity
presiding over his domain.
I did a circuit of the streets around the whole of the ruined lot and
found myself around the back of some brand new building project that’s going up
on Sunset Boulevard. I think it’s going
to be a new Target but I could be wrong. I rather liked what I saw. It looked like some sort of medieval
fortress, crenellations, bizarre fortifications. I’m going to bet it doesn’t look nearly as
good when it’s finished, but I’m sure it’ll look better in a couple of decades
when it’s in ruins and being demolished.
On a final note, I know that Hollywood has some reputation as a sexy,
if not a sexist, place. I encountered
two rather dubious examples of the male gaze on my walk.
First, above, another manikin, some company for the Hulk perhaps, offering to
buy junk TVs. You can see there’s been
some serious amateur breast enhancement here, but I think I’d have to say I’ve
seen worse boob jobs in this town. The
women on the left look disapproving, though whether of the manikin or of me
taking the picture it’s hard to say.
And secondly there was the above example of street art – a “slap” – of
Frida Kahlo, kind of nice in its way, but then somebody had drawn a mustache on
her. I still can’t decide whether this
is needlessly and superfluously cruel – I mean nobody needs reminding that the
lady’s top lip did sprout some serious growth - or whether it’s some cleverly
subversive reference to Duchamp’s Mona Lisa. I hope it’s the latter, but maybe it’s both.
