Hello readers. I wrote this article for a now defunct magazine and it has been lost to the sands of time broken URLs and lapsed domains. All of the photographs unless otherwise noted were taken by my friend and colleague, Benjamin Parker Karris, who died four years ago this month.
He was immensely talented and kind. Carry Narcan. Goes the adage: nobody walks in L. Or so says Missing Persons , as well as a certain socioeconomic set ever since. Who knows the city? Only those who walk. Only those who ride the bus. Forget the mystical blatherings of Joan Didion and company about the automobile and the freeways. It's also an astonishingly, geographically congruous depiction of a bright, Angeleno December day—primarily through the eyes of those who walk.
The mile radius surrounding Santa Monica and Highland, their community, is full of people who walk. If anyone knows Sheryl please ask her, thanks! The year that article was published, photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia began documenting male sex workers in the same area. One of my favorite portraits from the series, which would later be published in a book called Hustlers , is of a young man sitting across the street from Donut Time, a landmark of the seedier community in the area and a major location in Tangerine.
Gay and Lesbian Center who came to Hollywood in Hernandez says that in the '70s, prostitution was kept in the clubs along Cahuenga and Ivar. But not for long:. After the Hollywood vice squad worked to close down those establishments, L.
She was last seen alive at Donut Time. The rest of the film bubbles outward from here:. This is the parking lot where Sin Dee susses out a name, and where Alexandra will later tussle with a john. For those who walk in L. Briefly, the geography changes as the film makes a locational leap standard movie magic but rare for this film. Sin Dee marches to a rundown motel to yank Dinah from a drug-fueled in-call session, and continues yanking a single-flip-flopped Dinah across Hollywood.
