Welcome to Hollywood...

The air is polluted, you can feel it in you constant loss of breath. There are a few ‘bright’ lights littered above the street. Nothing spectacular, just a lit up McDonalds, Hard Rock Cafe and a handful of theaters. The pavements are meant to be formed from star dust, but they’re just the same as the rest. Cracked and broken. Tacky shops selling awful costumes and tat nobody want make up the neighbourhood. A faint smell of pot is always present. A man with no hands stumbles down the sidewalk. Another guy with a palm full of torn shopping bags drags past. This place is run down, a crumpled postcard from another time. The sign on the hill says ‘Hollywood‘ but the word on the street is disillusion.

Everyone on the boulevard seems to be excited to be there except us. We were expecting glamour, glitz, the golden age, kept preserved in all its finest moments. Stars’ names can be found in the pavements just like you’ve seen on T.V but they’re not as amazing as they’d have you believe. Like I said, many have been cracked by over grown roots from the trees and some have been defaced by morons. We saw one guy all on his own with a toothbrush, taking the time to clean some of the slabs. How depressing. There are studios around nearly every corner and a couple of famous theaters, but nothing here feels special. Just another street in America. Badly maintained, home to the poor and mad. The only cool thing are the hand and footprints of movie stars outside the Chinese theater. Someone there at least has made an effort to preserve them.

IIf you take a right off Hollywood Boulevard and head to the end of Fuller you get to Runyon Canyon. An almighty hike up the steepest side will get you to the top, and an awesome view of the L.A bowl. Mostly hidden by thick smog, we could just make out the vastness of this city as it stretches as far as the eye can see. To the left, in the distance, is the famous white lettering. It beams down on the famous streets below, a relic of another time. We are so high up that my ears have popped. The climb has left me winded and jealous as other far fitter dog walkers jog past. Everyone looks on with disgust as one guy blatantly sees his dog poo but doesn’t clear it up.

So where’s the celebrity? The glamour? The famous palm tree littered roads drenched in sunshine? We take a walking tour with a local guy who stops by the hostel. He warns us we’ll stand out, to pretend we’re architecture students. Says he’s the only person who does a ‘walking tour’. We arrive in Bel Air by bus. Probably the only people to do so in quite a while. Immediately I understand what our guide was saying. There is nobody about. Cars whizz past with black out windows but there are no faces anywhere. A few gardeners and maintenance men drive past and give us the finger. I’m not sure why. As we walk along the corroded and beat up roads framed by eight foot tall bushes. This is supposed to be a rich area so why are the roads so bad? Our guide says they’re originals from 1923, like that means they’re relics. Why not repave them? Because they’re history. Oh please.

As we are shown house after house belonging to some famous or other person I realise all we’re going to see our iron gates. Privacy is the main priority here. Each house is basically an island. Shut off from the outside world, connected only when needs be by those crappy roads. The next road we turn down has candle wax melted into the curbside. We look up to a window with a balcony. ‘This is where Michael Jackson died’.

I thought I would enjoy the walking tour but instead I’m left feeling empty. I’ve entered a different world and feel completely alienated. I realise I’m not interested in where the stars live. I’m not a stalker. I wouldn’t go staring into my neighbour’s house so why am I trying to see these people’s? They’re only houses...well much, much bigger houses. The money these places cost. It’s enough to make anyone feel a little sick. As we wait for the bus out of ‘paradise’ cars drive past and people watch us from they’re Jags, Bentleys, Porshes, Mercs and Hummers. People at a bus stop must be a novelty for them. Wasn’t it supposed to be us staring?

We get off at Rodeo Drive and head towards the shops. Every house along this avenue is unique and as always, big. 30’s, 50’s, contemporary, villas, art deco, every style of building can be found here. These houses weren’t behind bars but the cars in the driveways still screamed super wealthy. After ten minutes we reached a crossing. In front of us large glass fronted shops loomed. As we walked past shop after shop we looked in with amusement. There was hardly anything on the shelves and too many staff crowded a single person in each shop. These weren’t the kind of stores you just walked in to. The air smelled of leather and perfume. Like when you walk into a department store yet more refined. The smell of money. I’ve never experienced anything quite like it. It was a smell I will never forget. Beautiful yet so far away from reality. Nothing in ‘real life’ can ever smell that good.

Again I thought I would be excited to be there but I wasn’t. I didn’t even take any pictures. We were out of place, showing ourselves up. It was clear we didn’t belong. No one walks onto Rodeo Drive. I needed the toilet anyway so Ollie and I decided to keep walking until we found a cafe or something. That was a mistake. We must have walked for over two miles and not once did we see a place we could have gone into. You might think that’s pathetic and that anyone should be able to go in anywhere but I can assure you that’s just not the way it’s done here. Even in my best clothes and make up on I wouldn’t have stopped for lunch at one of the restaurants. It’s not real life. No wonder famous people so often end up off the rails. Nothing they are surrounded by holds any semblance of normality. And the worst part? Go two or three blocks over and you’ll be back in the dirt with everyone else. Wealth surrounded by poverty is never a pleasant experience and yet here in Beverly Hills that’s exactly what’s going on. And it’s the same as always. That blind eye turning.

I’m not being disparaging on purpose to look ‘cool’ or ‘arty’ this is honestly how I feel about Los Angeles. Some people may love the fake tacky glamour and the rich cut off in a suburb but I certainly don’t. I have no problem with the famous and wealthy but it just doesn’t sit right with me that such different pay grades are living just meters from each other. That some people can accumulate such wealth while others can’t even afford to buy a pair of proper glasses. I sat on a bus next to a guy who had lenses half an inch thick in metal frame that looked like it had been made from a coat hanger. He lives in Hollywood. But you’d never believe it from the photos. It’s just not fair.

We wanted to feel like we were seeing a piece of history but it didn’t work out that way. Hollywood could be anywhere and anywhere could be Hollywood. Because all that’s really left is a name.

18/11/11