Studio EP’s
Track of the Week:
“Hollywood & Vine, 1980”
At a time when large portions of my city have disappeared into smoke, I thought it appropriate to present a piece that attempts to preserve an unglamorous moment in our city's most mythical neighborhood. In 1980 I got a job as a nightshift waiter at the Howard Johnson's at Hollywood & Vine. I spent two years there, and although I always wanted to write a piece about it, it took many years to figure out just how to do that. John Pitarresi and I recorded this in 2021.
Downtown LA, the final stop of that fifty-dollar Greyhound special, and the first thing they do is cab-it-over to Hollywood and Vine. Yeah they’ve arrived, the high school theater phenom and her sweetheart. Fresh from Erie PA, they’ve given themselves 2 years to break in. But for now they’ve braced themselves for what they need to do. Always pragmatic, the sweetheart harbors notions of pimping her out in a pinch. You can’t help but wonder how so many land right here? There are, after all, no Bogart handprints on this grimy stretch. They come out wanting to be on records or they come out wanting to be on the tube, but you’re truly more likely to catch ‘em on the screen of The Cave or The Pussycat.
But at night this entire Boulevard turns into a City of the Floating World.
Monday comes round and David, who’s training her for the early morning coffee shift, shifts into one of his rants: “If you go down to Sunset and turn right, and you just go-go-go all the way to the water and then turn right again, you will soon see houses on the left. They don’t look like much but inside, two or three expansive stories below, they open right up onto the beach. Now here’s the promise and here’s the validation.” And then he teases her. “Who owns these houses? Who owns the private beachfronts? Who owns the sunsets? Not you.”
Down the street from their room, she steps on Jackie Gleason, and then Audrey Hepburn. She’s reminded that there’s a lot to like and a lot to want out here. Still, she knows that for the most part what we all want and like are the same things, so if you don’t wanna sell your ass or live in an alley you’d better figure something out. For now she works the morning counter at HoJo’s from where she can observe the foot traffic on Hollywood and where for a 50-cent coffee any runaway can hang for half the morning. Men, young and old, hand her cards: producers, models’ agents, directors. Could even one of them be real? It’s hard not knowing when in the end who you know is all that matters?
This is my corner, this is my boulevard, and this is my sidewalk. And I don’t want you here. Who owns the buildings? Who owns the Sunset billboards? Who owns the hillside? They don’t know you. Who owns the HoJo’s? Who owns the Chinese Theater? Who owns the porn shops? They don’t need you here. Who owns the Lakers? Who owns the fucking Lakers? Who owns the forum? They’ve never heard of you. This is my corner, this is my boulevard, and this is my sidewalk. I don’t want you here.
