9/18/2006, midnight.

I am going to tell you a story.    

This is going to take a while so please don’t be in a rush.  Don't hurry by, you may miss something.  Just walk with me for a while and let’s see where we end up.

I live in Hollywood, California.  That's right, “Hollywood.” Aren't you impressed.  Don’t be.  It's not as glamorous as the tabloids would have you think.  Especially my Hollywood.  The streets of Hollywood.

I always have said that there are three Hollywood Boulevards.  There is the daytime Hollywood, where the day to day business goes on, the early evening to 2:00 am Hollywood Boulevard where tourist and partiers roam the streets looking for th magic, and the night to day Hollywood boulevard, where the only ones left are the only ones left.  The ones who have no home to go to, or rather they are home and have just waited for the guests to leave so that they could take off their shoes and get comfortable, stretch out and call it a day.  

I always have felt more comfortable on the streets at night.  I wouldn’t recommend it.  There are bad things that go on in the night, unspeakable things, and if you don't speak the unspoken language you will be discovered only too soon.  Please stay away, you will only gum up the works.

But for me, (yes, my third grade English teacher told me to never start a sentence with “"but") I come alive at night.  Oh, not so much anymore;  I am older now and have loved ones to care for, but at times, when they are asleep I like to open a door and smell the night air and hear the grumbling sounds of a city in fitfull sleep while the people of the night awake.

To be continued...