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Los Angeles City Without a Soul

Through the thick brown cloud of smog the plane descends. L.A. below us. Millions of cars cross the city on web-like arteries called freeways.

From San Fernando to Newport Beach, Santa Monica to Ontario. Greater L.A. Perhaps over fourteen million people. The Valley, with two million middle class white-collar workers bringing home $$$ so they can give an allowance to their kids so they in turn can buy from the pusher. Into a stoned haze or under a junk spell. For most, a way of life. Teenagers in the Valley, or San Gabriel Valley. Floating to high school. On clouds at $10 a lid. On dime or nickel bags. $5 a cap of L. 5 whites (amphetamines) for $1. 20 reds (barb) for S5. No matter how you do it, you've got to do it because that's the bag, man.

Out of the Valley's rows of estate houses. Over the pass into Santa Monica and Venice. Rows of apartment houses. But streets here, as in most of L.A., lined with trees.

The ocean is near and on a summer weekend there are cars to the horizon. Wait for two hours and your car will be allowed in a parking lot. Another hour and you might find space for your towel somewhere on the 20-mile stretch of sand from Redondo to Malibu. The sun may even break through the smog. It's so good to be alive to live by the ocean.

Pasadena, that town of old ladies and money. You don't see the money in the people but next door in San Marino they don't let you in unless you can pay $100,000 for that house. But Pasadena has City College Number 3 behind Berkeley and Harvard in the Drug Poll. Also there is Caltech. Yes, moon probes and bio-chemists are made within its walls.

Pasadena on New Year's Day. Nearly two million people line the streets for the Rose Parade. The night before, it was car parade time. Fords and Chevys with 14 inch slicks and rears in the air. Up and down Colorado Boulevard it's a drag. Copulating with a hundred thousand other fucking couples. Waiting for the dawn and the parade of flowers.

Three hours of horses and floats and it's over for another year. Just what was that damn broad's name. Anyhow, you can always get a shot of penicillin from the Free Clinic.

The Free Clinic can: give pregnancy tests; cure VD; stop bad trips; help cure hepatitis; give you a group session hang up sure; cure the common cold . . . and it's all free. Main one is on Fairfax in Hollywood. Every night from five to midnight the people with problems arrive. Help Free Clinic with a donation and your tax gets a break.

Street people sell dope, shit and fuck indiscriminately. So they need the Free Clinic. Agnew says they're Commie bastards. Nixon likes them dead. And your local draft board will give you a free vacation in sunny downtown Saigon. And a grey box for your bits and pieces when they fly you home. Fuck the draft. Fuck the President. Fuck you. Love Santana. Dig the whiskey.

If you live near Sunset, Mr Bum Hippie, this is your life: Noon—get up. Noon & 20—out with the number or needle. 1 pm—hamburger at the Hamlet. 2 pm—sit around outside the Psychedelic Conspiracy. 3 pm—another hamburger. 3-6 pm—hit the tourists for coins. 7 pm—another hamburger. 8 pm—Whiskey, Thelmos, Gizzari's open. 8.30 pm—score, sell and repeat the noon & 20. 9 pm-1.30am—dig the music at the Whiskey. Joplin grinding the mike between her thighs. Burdon on his knees gets into the act. Lights and strobes. Tomorrow night it'll be CTA. 1 pm-back to the street. Maybe deal a little shit. Then it's crash at a pad. Fuck till 4am.

Or if you're Hollywood it's parade your arse along gaytown road. The If Club may be closed but a thousand other bars allow your tendencies to bum or bitch flow free. The Gays hold a Gay Liberation Front Parade along Hollywood Boulevard. Fag in cars, on foot and in arms show their goods to the crow. Sympathetic.

California is the nut-bowl of the world and L.A. is it s stone.

Down the Hollywood freeway cruising in the Cad. Downtown like a sore. Bums on skid row at Sixth and Main. Gut-rot wine between their lips. Terminal dope freaks with the needles at their eye-balls. This is your centre, L.A.—city without a soul.

Unless ... $10,000 per annum . . . three-bedroom super delux . . . better than your neighbour's . . . house without a home ... in beautiful Anaheim . . . centre of Orange County . . . home of Disneyland . . . and thousand of never-to-be-seen-again clean-cut Mouseketeers . . . Forgotten America . . . Orange County salutes you . . can be called your soul, L.A.

Unless . . . two hours on the freeway . . . 20 miles to the office . . . stereo radio or tape . . . telephone on the seat . . . power steering ... power windows . . . power brakes . . .. leather seats . . . tinted glass . . . big V8 . . . better than last year . . . only $100 deposit from your friendly Ford dealer . . . can be called your soul, L.A.

Unless . . . one million blacks ... in South Central L.A. . . . Watts . . . barred windows . . . pawn shops . . . second hand stores . . . but even if my underwear is dirty I have a black Caddy . . . colour TV. . . don't give me no sheet, man . . . run-down houses . . . beautiful 50 years ago . . . this festering sore on your arm, America . . . can be called your soul, L.A.

Unless . . . 50,000 Italians in highland Park . . . 400,000 wogs and jews in Fairfax . . . 40,000 nips in Monterey Park . . . 2,500,000 wetbacks, beenas and Mexis in East L.A. . . . 200,000 fags in Hollywood . . . 2,000,000 dopers all over. . . 4,000,000 white collars . . . 2,000,000 blue collars . . . 1,000,000 John Birchers . . . and I . . . can be called your soul, L.A.

K.A.G