Sights and Sounds of Hollywood

With an armful of old eyeglasses, I visited my optometrist. He straightened out nose pads and arms before we settled on a new pair for close-up reading. Technically, this doctor is not my old optometrist, but a mentee who took over when my old guy retired - now filling his days with tennis and working in stained glass. However the office remains on Sunset in Hollywood, close to where I lived for many years. Hollywood was a dangerous dump when I moved there in 1979. I don't care how many multiplexes, Olympic clean-ups, hot night clubs, or tourist shops the place gets - it's still seedy. It seems metal fences and razor wire have multiplied over the years. There are streets so dystopian, they look like images from a first-person shooter video game. And it continues to attract the different.

As I was driving north toward Franklin, I stopped at a light. A young girl, early twenties, headed toward the crosswalk, all unisexed up in a man's dress shirt and tie, ball cap on sideways, tight jeans. Stepping off the curb, she passed a middle-aged Mexican guy with a shaved head, digging through a garbage bin and plucking out aluminum cans.

"You're recycling, recycling, recycling, that's so cool," she called. "I love you."

The Mexican guy lifted his head out of the garbage and called, "Yeah? Then kiss me."

But Unisex flounced across the street, head full of love, environmental purity, and cluelessness.

Ah, Hollywood: where the show never ends. Almost enough to make me nostalgic. Almost.