Wild Side Walk: Pt 12.

(Unexpurgated) 1982: Report from the astronaut

photo: Danny, a stranger, Smiley & Snake at Santa Monica beach (1982), Los Angeles
©1982 www.stuartpage.com

I walk towards downtown through lots more broken glass, and switch my tape deck onto FM Stereo. Gliding through the stations I get a collage of RADIO NEWS REAGAN ARMS TALKS BREHZNEV OLIVE SALESMAN MORE NEWS ISRAEL WEATHER ADS ITALIAN NEWS RELIGIOUS ADS BLACK WOMEN SLOWLY RECITING STORY DAVID BOWIE PUTTING OUT THE FIRE WITH GASOLINE LEATHER JACKET FROM LONDON $120 ANDRE DELORE FROM KOREA EXCLUSIVE FASHIONS MOTHER'S DAY HEAVY METAL LOST ANIMALS KMXFM CLASSICAL METAL STATIC OSCAR NOMINATION ANAHEIM HOTRODS MISS MILLER BEER MICHELOB CONCERT GREEK THEATRE...

Passing a carwash with 5 bays, a whole bunch of real fat guys drinking beer and hosing their cars, lots of loud radios all tuned into different stations competing, kids shouting. A black Fleetwood licensed BIG-REG gold plated hubcaps and bumpers. Cross signal sounds like a cuckoo. Fresh concrete pavement completely tattooed with HEARTS, SKULLS, TAGS, I LOVE JOE, FOOTPRINTS, DATES, FUCK and some crazy guys pushing chrome supermarket trundlers collecting aluminium beer cans and newspapers and their meals from trash cans. I make a phone call on push button play-a-tune Ma Bell telephone. Crisp electronics, notice all the signs and directions how to use everything. Designed for utmost simplicity and ease of understanding, and so strong, everything's heavy-duty, solid, and fittings sealed off out of reach of curious screwdrivers and crowbars. The food products are really well packaged, labelled with all the grisly details of chemical contents.

Walked about 3 or 4 miles so far, and I can feel a headache kicking back of my head. It's very hot and I feel dehydrated, my mouth tastes like sulphur, my eyes stream, and my T-Shirt is grey where I wiped my brow. In the distance, I see skyscrapers disappearing into airbrushed smog. I'm walking past endless car parks and drive-in super mart complexes; more guys hose cars, and wax 'em.

The buildings become contrastier as the smog level reduces, soaring hard-edged glass and steel mountains, and anonymous matt-black vertical dead boxes, dark windows, no sign of human life inside. Robert Crumb characters truck past me, some duck under my camera view, there's music everywhere, booming out of Hi-Fi shops: Spanish disco, soul and reggae. I don't see any Punks; they seem to hang out on the edge of Hollywood. I see mostly Blacks, Mexicans, Latinos playing basketball in parks, groups of old men sitting in the shade playing poker, chess & blackjack, some tables covered in notes and trash cans over-flowing with Bud cans and wine bottles.

I'm in the finance area now, it's lunchtime and well-dressed officey types strut around in pairs and trios moving straight ahead and quick, decisive. Every few steps I hear " spare a quarter, spare a dime?" and see dirty faces staring in at clean faces stuffed with burrito, felafel, burger and french-fries with coke, and pastrami / salad with black coffee. Hello, your receipt, thank you, you're welcome, have a nice-day, good bye. Eat. Shit. Die. I’m sitting down, eating, nostrils full of spicy steam, can't figure out what that weird smell is, sniff my sleeve, wow, smells like Rotorua.

Later in the afternoon, I catch a Grumman bus back to Hollywood. So smooth and fast, powerful. I'm back in no time. Meet Snake and Smiley (the Californian Girl), and Danny, who'd just got out after doing time for borrowing a safe or two from a drugstore in LA. Danny spent his earlier years in Santa Monica, so we caught a bus out to the beach, and on the way Danny was all "Ooh" and "Aaarrgghh" as we passed new sights, and places he used to hang out that had vanished.

Eventually we got to Santa Monica pier, which used to have a large wooden roller coaster like the Coney Island Cyclone, but it eventually started rotting and had to be dismantled. Now, the main attraction seems to be the Video Parlour, where you can arm-wrestle a blindfolded mechanical forearm and biceps or play any of the more common space-attack games. On the end of the pier, sipping Bud and holding hand lines, are several groups of old hippies, and old Chinese couples. They haven't caught anything all day, but they're not really trying, just hanging out in the sun, getting out of it, watching the waves, and talking about how great the pier once was.

(To be continued).

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