Thursday 19th April 2007. LA, USA.

Today I explore Santa Monica Boulevard where there seem to be a somewhat endless stream of memorials to the dead of this community, brought about by the impact of the ‘gay cancer’; HIV/Aids. I literally walked for miles and miles and miles today finding that I am one of the few who walks in this city.

Finally I found the AMEX office and now I have cash (limited, but at least its cash). My bank card seems to have given up on me and now I am relying on the travellers’ cheques I have. I negotiated freeways to get here and at times it felt like I was playing “chicken” with the automotive world.

The first thing I did, on having cash, was to go and feed the distinguished looking elderly African/American gentleman who had asked me as I passed earlier if I could spare any change. You really would have had to have a heart of stone to ignore him.

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One of the great things about walking is discovering that which drivers never see. Today I discovered the Children’s Clock by Lynn Goodpasture (2003) on the corner of Melrose and La Cienega, which is part of the West Hollywood Urban Art Program.

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Anyway…time has moved on and I am sitting writing notes here in Holloway Park and Veteran’s Memorial on Santa Monica Boulevard and despite all the traffic going everywhere I am transported back (don’t know why) to when I was sitting and contemplating life in the botanic gardens in Buenos Aires. I think it must be all the poetry here, and it makes for a most interesting memorial to our war dead.

Amongst my favourites are:


Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart
O when will it suffice?
William Butler Yeats, ‘Easter 1916’.

There in the heat of the battle,
There in the heat of the fight,
Loomed he, an ebony giant
Black as the prisons of the night.
Swinging his scythe like a mower
Over a field of grain.
Paul Laurence Dunbar, ‘Black Samson of Brandywine’.

How sleep the brave who sink to rest
By all their country’s wishes blest!
William Collins, ‘Ode Written in the Beginning of the Year 1746’.

They fill freezers with food.
Neon signs flash their intentions
into the years ahead.
And at their ears the sound
of the war.
They are Not listening, Not listening.
Denise Levertov, ‘Tenebrae’ (fall of 1967).


Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You’d treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown
Thomas Hardy, ‘The Man He Killed’.

I loved seeing Hardy’s work here as it transported me back to my early Twenties in the beautiful county of Dorset.

This particular memorial has a dedication to all the people of West Hollywood and the members of diverse communities who have sacrificed much – all sharing a common ground allied in struggles against oppression and intolerance.

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After a morning of contemplation I dined at Hugo’s on Santa Monica where today as part of ‘Dine Out, Los Angeles 2007’ (happening all across the city) a minimum of 20% of my bill will be donated to Aid For AIDS to help prevent homelessness and hunger for families and individuals impoverished and disabled by HIV/Aids. I am really glad the money went to the charity, but the food was bland and the service very poor.

As I continue exploring the area you get a real sense of just how liberal politics is in Hollywood. I see banners proclaiming ‘Obama 2008’ and 'Peace is Patriotic' as I walk the streets. This is a democratic heartland and there is something to be said for that.

My other observation today is the obsession with the body beautiful. I have never been anywhere in the world that is so materially and aesthetically obsessed. People don’t even take off their sunglasses inside the restaurants. Maybe its fashion, or maybe they just want to look important…I naturally fit right in, NOT!

With my old clothes (that I am now traveling with in case of another robbery) and my backpacker look…

BUT, then again this down-beat look helps on my walk to the Celebration Theatre tonight.

I wanted to see theatre in Hollywood and I refuse to go again to see Wicked the campest, daftest show I have ever seen; (it is the Wizard of OZ before the wicked witch went bad and I endured this high camp, kitsch extravaganza with no substance two years ago in Chicago and I simply won’t endure it again)…

Anyway, I am off to see Beautiful Thing, a play that I don’t know except that I have seen the book in the library at school.

So I set out for my night at the theatre and after a bit of a poking around I found Kinasee Thai Bistro on the corner of Fountain and La Brea which saved me from having to eat the industrial produce of some chain. And what a find it is, the food in this unassuming little place is great.

The area surrounding the theatre is definitely the less salubrious end of Santa Monica Boulevard and when any weirdo approaches me I simply talk loudly and violently to myself and shake a little…it works, they seem to think that I am nuttier than they are and this is a tactic I use when walking home through the mean streets of LA tonight.

Having located the theatre I head inside to see a play that is billed as an urban fairytale set in the unloveable surroundings of Thamesmead…before the performance begins it makes me want to be back in dear old Blighty. I loved the fact that on the way into the theatre there was a full glossary of East End patter and a history of 90’s Brit Pop culture to help set the scene.

As a back-drop, Thamesmead was a centre of 60’s urban utopian idealism where slum clearance was hailed as creating the new-Jerusalem of high rise living. The reality, as the world came to observe, was social depravation and crime-ridden hopelessness.

This theatre is very well run and keen to make its mark. On arrival they had a press pack ready for me in my role as a roving educational reporter.