The Village

Living in West L.A. was really cool back in the sixties and early seventies, which I typically lump together with the sixties. From where I lived next to University High School one could easily take the bus down Wilshire to Santa Monica Beach, or take the route down Santa Monica Blvd. to Venice beach where I actually met General Hershey Bar and Swami X. * If you went the other way down Santa Monica Blvd., you'd run into Emerson Junior High where I went to school with Tito and Germaine Jackson, who I met but didn't really get to know. Their band, The Jackson Five was popular back then. But if you took the Wilshire route eastwards, you'd run into my favorite place to hang out, Westwood Village.

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There you could browse the Import Shops like Pier One, get lunch at the Hip Bagel (or Alice's Restaurant which came later), or spend time reading at the Free Press which had every alternative publication in the world if it made any sense.

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Westwood Village is located just South of UCLA and in the sixties the campus was a happening place, especially whenever counter culture heroes like Jerry Rubin of The Chicago Seven showed up to speak.

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We walked up to the campus that day and there were riot police lining the streets everywhere, and walking along looking at these guys I stumbled over a curb and caused some of the cops to get a bit jumpy like I was going to jump them or something. One cop looks at me hard with his Adrenalin gushing and just says, "Cute." As if I'd meant to scare him or something.

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After dark was always cool. Movies are often released in Westwood Village first. There's was this little corner of old world looking buildings where people used to huckster their hip jewelry and odds and ends, and one night I heard a band start up there and went inside the little court yard to have a look see. The band played from a balcony and even had a light show going, and something told me to turn around. When I did I saw Telly Savalas looking back at me with this enormous grin on his face. Really blew my mind. But in L.A., where there are so many entertainment people, everybody is very cool about celebrities and treats them pretty much like anyone else. So I gave him a look like, if only you knew who I was, even though I was a fan of his. Same thing happened when I saw John Austin of The Addams Family fame when I took my niece to the little amusement park in Beverly Hills. L.A. is just like that, everybody had stories of seeing someone somewhere. "I saw Tommy Smothers smoking a pipe load waiting in line to see Performance, man. But even though I was the one from a small suburb, my sister was an actress and I knew that to be cool you just went, "Oh." Even though I was really a big fan of his too.

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While we were poor where I was I had lots of friends because my crash pad was two blocks away from University High School where I sometimes condescended to attend. So, I ended up with some friends from Beverly Hills and Bel Air, and even though they were rich and I was poor they wished that they could be me. I lived with my sister, and she was really cool, man. And my friends from Bel Air told me that when they were younger, they used to see Red Skelton driving by in his Rolls as they waited at their bus stop, and he would always slow down and wave. I loved Red Skelton. I finally lost my cool. "You saw Red Skelton!?"

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Anyway, I turned on to pot, tuned out the media, and dropped out of much of my High School experience, which I did by making sure that I wrote my own first excuse note. That's the one that they compare all future excuse notes to. So, it was Carte Blanche on the freedom scale for me. Anyway... Oh yeah! The Village, man! * When I first moved there from Downer I went to a party held by a fellow classmate from my drama class. She was very specific. No drugs, she said. But I was smoking at the potheads house up front and he rolled me four joints to take with me, and I was new in town then, and wanted to be as hip as possible. That was like my second time getting high, man. Anyways, so I take a cab to the party, and right away this guy asks me if I had any pot. What, I should LIE? "It just so happens...", and so in order to be respectful of the ban, him and me and these two chicks split cause he says he knows of a place where we can toke up. He then led us into the village where we scaled to the second floor of some high rise under construction and had a great time. The weed was really good, he said. I was proud. I was hip in L.A., man!

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When we got back though we were interrogated by our hostess. "You didn't do drugs, did you?" My new friend explained that we did, but technically, we were no longer at the party when we did. While all of this is going on this black chic just looks at me and gives me a big french kiss out of nowhere man. And I'm like, oh my God! I love L.A.!

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Anyway, the Village was really hip, man. Sometime I'll have to tell you about our psychedelic Halloween that started off in the botanical gardens of UCLA, where my friend was turning into Tarzan and the shrooms made me think that I'd become a big orange head with green hair, no trunk, legs or arms, but hands and feet. Just a big, orange talking head.