In an engrossing mini-travelogue, Laura Barton traverses the “boulevard of broken dreams”:

When we mention that we are walking the length of Sunset [Boulevard], people look at us in disbelief, assuring us that it was not only dangerous but most definitely weird. At street level, though, you see more: an IBM laptop in a discarded takeaway box holding seven prawns; two men dancing in the back room of a salsa club; the words “Love Is What You Make It” scrawled across a wall. You catch the faded incense as you walk past the Church of the Blessed Sacrament, see Jayne Mansfield’s pink suitcase displayed in the window of the Dearly Departed Tours Office and Curiosity Shop, with a sign beside it instructing you to “note the damage”. …

To walk Sunset is to be struck not only by the deliberately outlandish characters but by the many mentally disturbed people on its sidewalks: the woman rooting through bins who growled on approach, the man masturbating in a car park, the slink-eyed souls muttering darkly to themselves on street corners. Then there was the peculiar encounter not far from the intersection with La Brea Avenue, as a normal-looking young man hurtled towards us on a skateboard.

He was bare-chested, carrying a guitar and eating an ice cream, and it was only as he drew close that we saw something fractured in his eyes. “Save us!” he barked as he skated by. “Before they all kill us!”

And if the air soured then, it was just as suddenly sweetened by the chirruping of a man sitting among the plants on the verge, his hair a tangle of ribbons and purple plastic, swigging Bud Light from a large water bottle. “I’m in the penthouse!” he called brightly. It would be wrong to say we had a conversation. He spoke as if a string had been pulled to make him talk. Why had he come to Los Angeles, I asked, and he gave a disconcerting grin. “I’m tropical, like a dolphin!” he hollered. “You don’t put it in the snow!” He propositioned us, and upon our polite refusal he launched into Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain”. We all sang it, from start to finish, there on the sidewalk.

(Photo by Flickr user misterbutler)