Surviving the Streets of L.A. with Humor and A Little Sex..

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We were coming home from a night of theatre in West L.A. one night about 2:00 am when this picture was taken. I am somewhat of a theatre junkie. We had season passes to most of the theatres in L.A., so this was not an unusual night out. Always dressed for a night out on the town we would leave our downtown loft and take either the Third Street Metro bus west or the Wilshire Rapid west to Beverly Hills or Westwood for supper. Sometimes we would walk three blocks in our stilettos and fur stoles to the subway up to Hollywood. Then onto whichever show we had tickets to that night. On this particular night we had gone west.

We had supper in Beverly Hills and then over to the Freud (pronounced Fruud because the theatre patron for whom it was named was a hostile cousin of Dr. Sigmund Freud. He wasn't a fan and insisted the theatre be pronounced Fruud to distinguish himself from the family member) Theatre to see a "Reprise! Broadway's Best" production of probably something Rodgers and Hammerstein. We had wrangled very good season seats in this exclusive little theatre where the audience is even more star studded than the cast. It was always among the best of nights out; whatever was showing.

On the way home we would catch the Wilshire Rapid, the big red bus, eastbound back to Alvarado where we would hike the three blocks uphill, along MacArthur Park, to our home on Third Street. Or, if we were feeling skittish, we would depart the Rapid in Beverly Hills and walk the three blocks up to Third Street where we would take Bus #16 home - it dropped us just at our front door. The dilemma with the second option was that the #16 only runs about once an hour at that time of night and sitting on a bus bench for an hour this late at night, even in Beverly Hills, isn't always the best choice. My general rule of street smarts says, keep moving.

On this particular night we were headed home straight for Alvarado. We had hiked that three blocks up hill in our high heels after midnight on more nights than I could count. The first time we found ourselves there we were taken aback. We had mistakenly assumed that a gypsy cab would be waiting near the subway & we could pay them $5.00 to take us the rest of the way. A gypsy cab, if you aren't familiar, is an unlicensed taxi. The licensed taxi's didn't brave this neighborhood at all other than just to pass through, and then only if absolutely necessary. Even the gyspy cabs don't brave the MacArthur Park area of Alvarado after midnight. On that first night that we found ourselves in this situation, we must have been obviously afraid. A group of men hollered at us from behind, "ya'll girls are actin' like you afraid. Ain't nobody gonna mess with ya'll in this neighborhood." This was the first time we had a clue that we had the courtesy of the local gang protection. If you read my post, "Home Sweet Home" then you know what I'm talking about.

So we're coming home from the theatre that night as happy as two girls having had a fun night on the town could be. We were frolicy with the music still reeling in our heads. The Metro was crowded with the ususal crowd - UCLA students, workers from the west side restaurants and bars headed back downtown, an odd homeless person here and there, and a few gang members. Nothing out of the ordinary. We were out of the ordinary but somehow we always are. We took seats at the back. My preferred seat is the one half way back, next to the back door. It sits up higher than the seats in the first half of the bus and when the door opens to let people exit every few minutes, you get a little fresh oxygen. That seat wasn't available though so we took seats across from one another almost at the very back. We were planted in a cluster of gang members which we had become accustomed to as our neighbors and in some cases, even friends.

We were about 15 minutes into our ride home when we realized these guys weren't from our neighborhood. A rival gang most likely. They were exhibiting behavior that seemed predatory and they had obviously singled us out. This had happened before, but not often. When it did happen, we had always had the protection of a neighbor gang member or undercover L.A.P.D. officer who saw to our safety. On this night, we weren't so lucky. We hadn't passed the Beverly Hills stop yet so that was still an option but it carried a big risk. Beverly Hills was virtually deserted at this hour. If they followed us off the bus we could be in serious trouble. Following us off at Alvarado could be equally risky since our neighborhood gang street patrol wouldn't be out that late and the police wouldn't likely be either.

Humor can be a really worthwhile line of defense. Just as we were nearing the Beverly Hills stop, I tossed my camera to Bonnie (my mom) across the aisle from me. She picked up on my instincts and started shooting pictures as I started clowning a mock strip tease, pullled the cord without anyone realizing I had done it, and pole danced my way off the back of the bus, blowing kisses at the gang that was now rolling on the floor in laughter. They thought she was taking pictures of me, and she was, but another reason we always carried a camera around was because people love to have their pictures taken - even predators. You get them distracted, snap their photo, and then if you do have a problem you might also have a means of identifying them. Lucky for us, we didn't need it.




I miss the Metro. Most of the people I know don't understand that. We Americans are not Metro goers as a rule - New Yorkers being the one true exception. My dad was car obsessed and so was I for much of my life. I had a toy race track when I was little girl and I had picked out the 1939 Mercedes Benz convertible as the car I would have when I grew up. Then came Burt Reynolds and Sally Fields in "Smokey and the Bandit" and my eyes were set on a lamborghini Countach, black with gull wing doors. I would be the girl in the sexy jumpsuit that talked her way out of tickets for driving too fast. Such ambitions for such a young girl. I learned to drive a car by myself when I was 9 years old. I did have ambitions where cars were concerned.

Then I moved to L.A. My car at the time was shot - over a quarter of a million miles and barely ticking. One of the big selling points to my new address was that the Metro bus ran ever 3 minutes and 24 hours a day just outside my building. Three blocks down Alvarado and I had an all access pass to the subway. At the time it was about $50 a month for unlimited rides on either. Busses and subway trains are not late. People may use it as an excuse for being late but they are immensely reliable and you don't have to pay $20 to park. I am a little home sick maybe - maybe just for a girls night out on the town.

A Life Journeyed Through the Magic Box

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Wanda Smith (left) dancer from "The Jimmy Durante Show" was my guest at my first play in Los Angeles with her friend, realtor, Laura Vickery


From my earliest memories, I have always been pretty much television addicted. When I was a toddler I envisioned myself as Buffy from "Family Affair". My mother would fix my hair in curled pig tails so I could look like her. We called them "Buffy Tails".


I still have a thing for Buffy Tails

I remember waking up before dawn when I was in pre-school and kindergarten to catch episodes of Mr. Magoo, Captain Kangaroo, and The New Zoo Revue. I have never been a morning person and my parents would laugh at my gusto to be up in time to tune into my friends before school. They annoyed me, my parents. My mother never really understood my question, when I asked her to buy the Mrs. Butterworth's Pancake Syrup that talked not the doll shaped bottle that was stationary, only a bottle. She never managed to buy the Rice Crispie's Cereal box that had the REAL Snap, Crackle, and Pop guys who jumped out of the box and poured my cereal and milk on a Saturday morning. She was holding out on me? Or she was just a dork? I was never really quite sure.

By first grade I was all about "Wonder Woman". The show would come on and I would be ready to watch. Linda Carter would twirl as the show began as her wardrobe changed. I would wrap a blanket around me for a cape and twirl with her - revealing my Wonder Woman Underoos just in time for the episode to begin. When the show ended, I would run and find a wire coat hanger from the closet and hold it like a bow and arrow, sachet through the house and arabesque on the couch singing "Dun da da dun! I AM WONDER WOMAN.......in my Wonder Woman Underoos. The underwear that's fun to wear! (launch by imaginary arrow from my coat hanger bow).....dun da da dun!"

My dad worked out of town alot and back then we had the old console televisions that had tubes in the back that had to be replaced from time to time. He taught me all about them when I was 5 or 6. One day the television went out while he was away and I nagged my mother into taking me to the place to buy the color tubes. Her saying all the way, "we have to wait until your Rusty Daddy gets home to put them in." A patient man at the counter listened carefully and helped me find what I was looking for. When we got home I removed the back panel from the television my mother saying "you're going to break it and then there wont be any tv at all." Oh pish! I coaxed her into watching the screen while I performed a tube transplant in back. She was shocked I fixed it and more shocked that I didn't electrocute myself. I wasn't. I couldn't miss an episode.

In first grade I was also fixated on "Gilligan's Island". I dreamed of living in a hut, on a beautiful beach, and having a family of kooky and colorful friends. I would be Ginger. I practiced her walk relentlessly and much to my parent embarrassment. She was gorgeous. That's what I wanted to be. In a cocktail dress and stilettos on a beach. Made perfect sense to my six year old diva self.

By third grade I was watching "The Love Boat" and Charro was my idol. "Coochie coochie".....I copied all of her moves. I was her biggest fan. I knew her from a show on the Mexican channel that I also used to watch but never could understand. This was followed by "The Muppet Show" and "The Muppet Movie". I was experiencing an awkward stage around this time. My mother politely referred to it as "baby fat". Kids at school were less subtle.


Miss Piggy's Legacy - the goddess within and without still reside in me

I related to Miss Piggy - both her weight & her inner diva. For Halloween that year my Bonnie Mommie made me pig ears and a snout and a red satin strapless short set. She loaned me her clear high heels, mesh stockings, full length faux mink coat, and all of her best costume jewelry to go trick-or-treating in. The only nine year old trick-or-treating in high heels, I was a fashionista & an absolute hit. Every house invited me in to model. This was probably my first and best lesson in learning to work the awkward moments in life to my advantage.

Then came "Happy Days" and I had my first sense of what I had to look forward to as a teenager and also my first sense of the lives my parents talked about having when they were kids. Idealized, no doubt; but I didn't know enough to know that. I had my first tv crush on Fonzie that I projected onto a boy at school named Frankie. I called him Frankie Fonzerelli. He had blonde hair, wore a black leather jacket, ate his crayons, and once stapled his fingers together to prove how tough he was. I was in love. I was his Pinky Tuscadero but he didn't know it. Oh my!

I still dress to impress my first crush

"Happy Days" morphed into the film "Grease" with Olivia Newton John and John Travolta, and "Joanie Loves Chachi". This was the promise that I would have fun, friend filled, dance filled, teenage years. That I would dance and go to parties, fall in love and get married - that life would be a never ending happy ending. Thanks to the advent of cable television and 24/7 movie channels, at one count I had seen the film nearly 100 times and I wasn't even in junior high yet. Dressing for the part, my newest favorite outfit was a pair of silver lame shorts that were hand me downs from an older cousin's dance costume and a bright orange "Mork & Mindy" T-shirt. Oh, I loved Mork too but he had nothing on Danny Zucko. And I had the off-set, pony tail hair do's of Chrissy Snow from "Three's Company". I loved Jack Tripper too but he reminded me of my 4th grade teacher so he was never a crush, just Chrissy's good friend.

By seventh grade, my parents had divorced and my mom and I had moved to a tiny little, nothing, nothing town in the middle of nowhere but where she had been raised. She worked three jobs and I came home every day and every weekend to an empty apartment with only a cranky, aging poodle for company. I absorbed myself in Nick At Night re-runs of "Leave it to Beaver", "Father Knows Best", "Dobie Gillis", "The Andy Griffith Show", and the like. I came to know the idealized era my parents had spoken of in their childhoods and the curious musings of Maynard G. Krebs. These years would migrate to re-runs of "Hogan's Heroes", "Mash", "Gomer Pyle", "The Beverly Hill Billies", "The Adams Family", and "The Patty Duke Show".


By eighth grade I had taken a volunteer job at the local hospital which led to a full time job after school and on weekends; my T.V. watching hours diminished. My tastes had evolved to "Dallas" which would lead to a series of prime time soap operas - an emerging trend of 80's television. Just a year in this tiny little, nowhere town and I began to become aware of the influence television had on the people in my environment. The woman I knew as my grandmother and a particular aunt, both rivaled one another for the role Susan Lucci played on a day time soap opera. They competed not just in her style - clothes and hair, but also in her character's antics on the show. If Susan's character was having an affair you can bet the town was talking about one of them. When "Dynasty" began, they both took on the character of Alexis - not necessarily pleasant. My mother was a fan of "Dynasty" too. She identified with the character Crystal Carrington.

Bonnie Mommie 1980 - the Crystal Carrington look

She bought the sewing patterns for the clothes from the show when they came out. She also identified with "Melanie" in "Gone with the Wind". He'll flame when I say it but I think my dad identified with J.R. Ewing from Dallas - wanting enough money to control everyone around him. He also had a penchant for Burt Reynold and "Smokey and the Bandit", maybe a little "Jack Tripper" thrown in for laughs. When I heard the news that John Ritter died I was in downtown Los Angeles waiting on a bus. I was so distraught that I hailed a gypsy cab home to escape my grief. I was grieving more for the abandoned humor & personality of the dad I had once known as a little girl. He had not been that person to me in decades but that part of him was missed.


I probably wanted to be Lucy Ewing - cute, blonde, fun. I was a brunette back then...sigh.

When I was older I identified with Nicolette Sheridan's character on "Knott's Landing". I made all of her clothes, lost a lot of weight, did my best to take on her persona for a couple of years. I was just barely 20 then.

For a while in my early twenties I fell into the "Beverly Hills 90210" storyline. I wanted to move to Los Angeles even then but didn't and really, I think 30 is young enough to new in L.A.

Then we had some years where life just fell apart. There was no family. I was too lost to face old friends. We wandered aimlessly through life for a few years sorting out the tougher past and here I grounded myself to daily, re-run episodes of "The Walton's". They became my extended family. I flew with Olivia Walton on her first flight, listened to John Boy's story's, watched Jim Bob build a car from scraps he saved up for and traded for for years until he got it done, sat with the family by the radio as they took in the news of the day. Grandpa Walton's soothing voice and sensible wisdom carried me through life's trials. Their family took me in for several years as one of their own. I saw John Boy through college, the beginning of a writing and publishing career. Watched them all survive the trials of depression era West Virginia with remarkable wisdom and grace.



Angela Catirina & Sheldon Epps: director of television series "Frasier"

It is no wonder that at one point I packed up and moved to Los Angeles in pursuit of a career that would offer me a life in the imaginary reality that had been such an influence on me all of my life. I was too much "The Walton's" and not enough "Playboy" to pursue it to success but even that experience opened my world to a wider world around me. Wider possibilities than I had know, which led me to theatre, plays, and music I had not before known. Elegant and maybe untouchable, certainly not unreachable.


from one of my first film shoots. An independent children's film about a crazy circus.

Then came Netflix and my television viewing turned to foreign films and documentaries - "Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion", "Fahrenheit 9/11", and all things Bollywood. Suddenly my world became wider and my cultural and political interests broader.

I look back on technology: from Jim Bob Walton stringing wires over the mountain and across town to hook up the television he built from scratch, to the tube televisions of my childhood. Stories my mother told of her grandfather bragging about his 1950's color television that was actually a clear plastic film he purchased to put over the screen. It had green at the bottom for grass and blue at the top for sky. Perfect when watching those wide shot scenes of "Bonanza" and "Wagon Train" but giving close up shots of people a green and blue face. I remember the years before cable when Reynold's Wrap was the aluminum foil of choice to wad up on the ends of the antennae's, a.k.a. "rabbit ears". How frustrating is was when I was the person picked to hold the foil bobs and antennae in place to tune the picture in and just as I sat to watch it would all turn to snow once again. The beautiful color and reception of cable television. Ted Turner's gift to the salvation of old film footage by colorizing the old movies. Controversial to many but opening up the original art of cinema to a generation spoiled by color. Netflix, YouTube, iPhone.... and now the Digital Conversion. What will it bring? Hopefully a wider world to even the remotest of places.