L.A. LIFE: If You Want Greenery, People Watching, or Anything Like a Park, Buy Your Own Real Estate

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(Not as Off Topic as it looks to be at first:)

I Just Wanted a Place to Sit Down. Some Shade.

Out among the growing number of pedestrians in L.A., I hadn’t been to the Farmers Market at

Ivar between Sunset and Hollywood in years, so wandered over there on a recent Sunday.

I thought I’d buy a tomato or two with the handful of change in my pocket. But in an L.A. Farmers Market it’s more like nine dollars will buy you a sack of organically grown tomatoes manured by happy cows, or something like that.

Our Farmer’s Market has brand new high rise “luxury” apartment and office buildings all around it, and the blocked off streets were jammed with pedestrians who had driven there. The proprietors of the stands selling produce were not very friendly to me at all, probably because it was obvious I wasn’t there to spend money. My shoes, my hair, hands, all show I don’t have “disposable income.”

Around me was a bustle of people, young New Republican types, buying gallons of raw milk, with nine dollar sacks of produce bulging from their designer shopping bags.

Soon I just wanted a place to sit down, some shade.

There was nothing there for me.

Well, there was a 3-piece jazz combo, a guy with wrinkles, so he must be my age, there singing sleazy blues-jazz songs with another guy leaning over a keyboard and a drummer between them. They were set up in one of the farmer blocks with parking space lines, and they had a hat on a speaker in front of them to collect dollar and coin tips. I tried to lean on a pole and watch them perform a song and almost pulled down the Santa Barbara Pistachio Farm stall.

When the singer finished his song, he got more aggressive about wanting coins and dollars in the hat.

I wandered a few feet out of range, and his amplified voice called out, “Well if you don’t have any coins, why don’t you just take me home with you?”

Stunned. I had a little PTSD reaction.

I’m an adult victim of a pedophile priest and it affects your life until you die, it seems. Thirty years ago I would have taken the singer up on it, in fact I would have been eyeing him and his microphone stick blatantly from the sidelines. That Sunday standing there in the heat, I felt the remnants of my old life left all over me in my sweat, residue from a hundred or so men like the skinny bony singer flirting with the audience now from his makeshift stage.

I shivered, turned, and walked away.

My sister would have stayed until the market closed and taken the singer home.

She and I are two adult victims of Father Thomas Barry Horne, pedophile priest from Chicago, 1940s-1950s, and we both have led unusual, intertwined but disconnected, oversexed lives. Today we both are old ladies living alone in neighborhoods that are known for being part of the sex industry, me in L.A., my sister in S.F.

Leaving the Farmers Market, I walked up the slight grade of hill between Sunset Boulevard and Hollywood, and it almost felt like San Francisco topography I was getting so tired, but at least there’s shade up on the Walk of Fame.

Still no place to sit for blocks. I walked, I walked.

Then at last, comfort: A wrought iron bench. When I finally sat down, the metal almost felt soft, it was cool, pain relieving.

In the shade, with the wind massaging me, I gazed up at the Capitol Records building, remembering that time, another incident from my Annie Fannie days…. I could sit here for hours, I thought, just continue to discretely smoke, using my visor to hide the pipe and block the wind. Gaze at people walking by, enjoy the day, gaze at the Capitol Records building, see what else I remember.

Then three recent arrivals from a Southeast Asian nation squeezed onto the bench next to me and asked about the Metro. I was friendly, tried to be hospitable, but on a Sunday, them waiting for a bus, they could be there for hours.

So I left the bench, left the memories of Capitol Records 1968 buried on one of those round floors, and wandered on to Argyle and Hollywood, to catch a ride home myself.

At the Armenian grocery in my neighborhood, I noticed they really are trying to keep the floors clean now and make the store more hospitable, the fruit isn’t rotting there anymore. I bought some Chocolates with vodka and liqueurs in them and spent the rest of the day at home.

The closest I’ll ever get to a park and shady place to sit in this city is probably the small square of yard in front of my apartment building, where some prophetic manager decades ago planted a handful of palm trees.

Today they connect together at the top and make several square feet of shade in the grass.

As long as I live in L.A., I have to accept it. If you want greenery, or anything resembling a park, you have to have your own piece of real estate.

Blogged by Kay Ebeling, where this post originally appeared a little longer Thursday, May 27, 2010 here:
The Isolation Comes with Aging, then Add On having lived a weird life like mine…
Ebeling Produces The City of Angels Is Everywhere

This post also appears at AlterNet:

.L.A. LIFE: If You Want Greenery, People Watching, or Anything Like a Park, Buy Your Own Real Estate
POSTED: 8:01 am, May 29, 2010 COMMENT NOW!