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You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/24/dreams-turn-to-dust-on-las-great-bleak-freeway-brigid-delaney-diary
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| Version 2 | Version 3 |
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| Dreams turn to dust on LA's great bleak freeway | Dreams turn to dust on LA's great bleak freeway |
| (about 1 month later) | |
| One of the most depressing places on Earth must be the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The only thing you really come away with is how enormous the gap is between the dream and the reality. | One of the most depressing places on Earth must be the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The only thing you really come away with is how enormous the gap is between the dream and the reality. |
| I went there a couple of Saturday nights ago. We parked and walked over the stars of the not-forever famous – William Bendix, Johnny Mack Brown and Spring Byington – my attention drawn instead to people, some as small as children, shoeless with blackened feet curled around telegraph poles for kilometres along the strip. | I went there a couple of Saturday nights ago. We parked and walked over the stars of the not-forever famous – William Bendix, Johnny Mack Brown and Spring Byington – my attention drawn instead to people, some as small as children, shoeless with blackened feet curled around telegraph poles for kilometres along the strip. |
| There were souvenir stands and nightclubs and 24-hour sex shops and large groups of people ambling slowly up towards the Dolby theatre, vaping, smoking weed, creating miniature cloud formations around them. There were groups of people living under tarps and people sprawled on a star that said John Howard, and another on Mike Myers, smoking crack from an apple, and other guys smoking it in glass pipes who we had to politely step over. And an older Fagin-like guy, who fixed an evil eye on me, which caused me to become paranoid that he had a gun and would shoot me for no reason at all. And so we crossed the street past a slow-moving Hummer crammed with a screaming hen’s night all the while my friend was saying: “We’re almost at the place where they have the Oscars! It’s up here somewhere.” | There were souvenir stands and nightclubs and 24-hour sex shops and large groups of people ambling slowly up towards the Dolby theatre, vaping, smoking weed, creating miniature cloud formations around them. There were groups of people living under tarps and people sprawled on a star that said John Howard, and another on Mike Myers, smoking crack from an apple, and other guys smoking it in glass pipes who we had to politely step over. And an older Fagin-like guy, who fixed an evil eye on me, which caused me to become paranoid that he had a gun and would shoot me for no reason at all. And so we crossed the street past a slow-moving Hummer crammed with a screaming hen’s night all the while my friend was saying: “We’re almost at the place where they have the Oscars! It’s up here somewhere.” |
| They have the Oscars here? On this grim, hot street that stinks of medical marijuana? The idea of the Oscars – all that money, all those dresses, all that glamour and decadence and liberalism – being held here seemed grotesque and mocking, somehow. | They have the Oscars here? On this grim, hot street that stinks of medical marijuana? The idea of the Oscars – all that money, all those dresses, all that glamour and decadence and liberalism – being held here seemed grotesque and mocking, somehow. |
| I picked up an avocado to buy for breakfast but it was plastic and I’d accidentally walked on to a film set | I picked up an avocado to buy for breakfast but it was plastic and I’d accidentally walked on to a film set |
| My friend was talking about how limos clog the streets around the Dolby theatre but usually celebrities don’t hang out on Hollywood Boulevard unless they are getting a star on the walk of fame or are at the Oscars. | My friend was talking about how limos clog the streets around the Dolby theatre but usually celebrities don’t hang out on Hollywood Boulevard unless they are getting a star on the walk of fame or are at the Oscars. |
| We had already driven through Beverly Hills at dusk, where the celebrities keep homes. The richest and most famous of them have fences too high to peer over and so the tour buses that take you around stars’ homes are forced to point at locked gates and security cameras and say for your $80 and Instagram feed, “Justin Bieber lives here.” | We had already driven through Beverly Hills at dusk, where the celebrities keep homes. The richest and most famous of them have fences too high to peer over and so the tour buses that take you around stars’ homes are forced to point at locked gates and security cameras and say for your $80 and Instagram feed, “Justin Bieber lives here.” |
| On Hollywood Boulevard we arrived at a place that looked like a Lowry mall, all showy suburban glamour with tall columns and a grand off-white staircase, like a cleaned up Roman Colosseum or the inside of Bondi Junction Westfield. | On Hollywood Boulevard we arrived at a place that looked like a Lowry mall, all showy suburban glamour with tall columns and a grand off-white staircase, like a cleaned up Roman Colosseum or the inside of Bondi Junction Westfield. |
| Ta-da. This is where the Oscars are held. We didn’t even bother with a selfie. As a tourist attraction it felt tainted somehow. We just wanted to get out of there. | Ta-da. This is where the Oscars are held. We didn’t even bother with a selfie. As a tourist attraction it felt tainted somehow. We just wanted to get out of there. |
| My local friend, who was playing tour guide, has a gimlet eye on America and politics. They don’t care anymore, he was saying. They just want to be entertained. They don’t believe the government can do anything for them and anyway you create your own luck. | My local friend, who was playing tour guide, has a gimlet eye on America and politics. They don’t care anymore, he was saying. They just want to be entertained. They don’t believe the government can do anything for them and anyway you create your own luck. |
| A drunk driver hits you on the freeway then you sue his family for compensation. Don’t expect the government to come and help you with a comprehensive statutory compensation scheme. That’s for rich socialist countries like Australia, he said. | A drunk driver hits you on the freeway then you sue his family for compensation. Don’t expect the government to come and help you with a comprehensive statutory compensation scheme. That’s for rich socialist countries like Australia, he said. |
| In this worldview, there’s no point being sentimental or upset about the disconnect of Hollywood Boulevard. Whether you are on the ground sucking a crack pipe stuck in a green apple or ascending the gilded staircase on Oscar night wearing $2m worth of diamonds is your own business, your own hard work and your own goddamn luck. | In this worldview, there’s no point being sentimental or upset about the disconnect of Hollywood Boulevard. Whether you are on the ground sucking a crack pipe stuck in a green apple or ascending the gilded staircase on Oscar night wearing $2m worth of diamonds is your own business, your own hard work and your own goddamn luck. |
| Later that week I saw actual celebrities. There was Matt Lucas from Little Britain in the piano bar that was featured in the movie Swingers, watching an ageing lounge act Marty and Elaine crooning old standards while dressed in sequinned caftans (the lounge act, not Matt Lucas). And then the next day Aziz Ansari from Masters of None at a very cool brunch place in Westlake! | Later that week I saw actual celebrities. There was Matt Lucas from Little Britain in the piano bar that was featured in the movie Swingers, watching an ageing lounge act Marty and Elaine crooning old standards while dressed in sequinned caftans (the lounge act, not Matt Lucas). And then the next day Aziz Ansari from Masters of None at a very cool brunch place in Westlake! |
| I’d just binge-watched the second series and seeing him gave me the vertiginous feeling of seeing an old friend – and so of course I had to remind myself that no we hadn’t met and I should leave him alone. Later, the waiter confided in me that Ansari actually used to work in the kitchen as preparation for a role as a chef but had to leave the job because customers kept taking photos of him and blocking the pass. | I’d just binge-watched the second series and seeing him gave me the vertiginous feeling of seeing an old friend – and so of course I had to remind myself that no we hadn’t met and I should leave him alone. Later, the waiter confided in me that Ansari actually used to work in the kitchen as preparation for a role as a chef but had to leave the job because customers kept taking photos of him and blocking the pass. |
| The story – in some strange way – reminded me of what happened on my first jet-lagged morning in LA. I went walking in Echo Park and found a fruit stand and picked up an avocado to buy for breakfast but it was plastic and all the fruit was plastic and I’d accidentally walked on to a film set thinking it was real. | The story – in some strange way – reminded me of what happened on my first jet-lagged morning in LA. I went walking in Echo Park and found a fruit stand and picked up an avocado to buy for breakfast but it was plastic and all the fruit was plastic and I’d accidentally walked on to a film set thinking it was real. |
| Your short-order cook is an actor and the fruit is a set dressing. These things seemed emblematic of the city somehow. | Your short-order cook is an actor and the fruit is a set dressing. These things seemed emblematic of the city somehow. |
| On what felt like every freeway there was a pileup and arseholes in Porsches screaming past the accidents like it would never happen to them. And then a beachside restaurant in Malibu where we parked but they said we weren’t allowed on the beach because the parking was actually for the restaurant only, so we looked longingly at the waves from our parked car and snuck across and on to the sand when the valet wasn’t looking. | On what felt like every freeway there was a pileup and arseholes in Porsches screaming past the accidents like it would never happen to them. And then a beachside restaurant in Malibu where we parked but they said we weren’t allowed on the beach because the parking was actually for the restaurant only, so we looked longingly at the waves from our parked car and snuck across and on to the sand when the valet wasn’t looking. |
| The people who get it right about LA are not the film-makers but the writers Joan Didion and Bret Easton Ellis. In every canyon, a rattlesnake. In every swimming pool, a suicide. | The people who get it right about LA are not the film-makers but the writers Joan Didion and Bret Easton Ellis. In every canyon, a rattlesnake. In every swimming pool, a suicide. |
| Los Angeles | Los Angeles |
| Brigid Delaney's diary | Brigid Delaney's diary |
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