Hollywood...
It wasn’t what I
expected.
It seemed every
other building along the boulevard contained a head shop, tattoo parlor, dive
bar, or outlet for worthless, plastic souvenirs and T-shirts that boasted
bullshit such as, “MY PARENTS WENT TO HOLLYWOOD AND ALL THEY GOT ME WAS THIS
LOUSY T-SHIRT.” Sure, there were pockets of glitz and glamour here and there,
but mostly it was a trash heap. The boulevard itself is embedded with grimy
salmon-colored and gold-embossed stars that boast the names of the currently
known, the long-forgotten, and everyone in between.
This was Hollywood?
Then there were the
people. The outcasts, the forgotten, the ignored. The angry young men and
women—once bolstered by a dream but now dazed by a hard life—struggling against
poverty, drugs, booze, madness, and railing mightily against whatever it was
Mommy or Daddy or Uncle Joe supposedly did to them once upon a time. They
populated Hollywood Boulevard and the surrounding area like cockroaches on a
grease-encrusted sewer pipe.
(Excerpt from Luigi's Chinese Delicatessen,
a novel by Jim Vines)
(Photo © Jim Vines
Luigi's Chinese Delicatessen is available
in paperback and e-book, from Amazon!
