One mistake tourists make when they come to Hollywood is thinking there's a Hollywood that one can go visit. There's a big sign on a hill. There are studio tours and TV tapings. There are many great sightseeing opportunities not actually in any area that can be described as "Hollywood." But if you get in a cab and tell the driver "Take us to Hollywood," God knows where he's going to let you off.
You might find yourself on Hollywood Boulevard, which has about as much to do with the place that makes movies and TV shows as Sunset Boulevard has to do with the sun going down. You can go to the Chinese Theater and see which stars of the past had the same size feet you do. You can walk down said Boulevard and see a lot of their names embedded in the Terrazzo. You can even pay to have your photo taken with an unauthorized Spider-Man in a homemade costume that doesn't get his boots right.
(A year or three ago when I was walking down Hollywood Boulevard, reading the stars' names in the pavement. I decided for no particular reason to take a photo of the name of the first star I came across who I'd worked with. It didn't take long to find one and take this picture…)
It is truly The Street of Disappointments. Big ones. It's also sometimes dangerous. You might get swindled by a conman, mugged by a thug or — worst of all — accosted by someone who works for Jimmy Kimmel who'll drag you into a bit where you can't help but come across like Gomer Pyle.
I've been around that street for much of my life. There used to be great bookstores there for the comic book collector. There used to be a lot of great restaurants there instead of just The Musso and Frank Grill. There used to be parking spaces.
And I think in all my years, I've only had one real incident of seeing "stars" outside of Musso's. I told it back in this post and now that I review it, I see that I accidentally left out the punch line. Here's what I said then…
One of my favorite "star-spotting" memories occurred not far from the Musso & Frank Grill. Across the street and down a bit is the Hollywood Magic Shop, which like most magic shops caters to a lot of amateurs and beginners. But it also serves many celebs and seasoned professionals, and one day in the seventies when I was walking by, I spotted two men standing out front — Orson Welles and Carl "The Amazing" Ballantine. Carl was heckling tourists who walked by and Orson was roaring with laughter at everything Carl said, which is still not an uncommon response around Ballantine. I stood there for maybe ten minutes, taking in the show until a huge convertible pulled up at the curb and Welles, with great effort, went over and got in. Years later, when I became friends with Carl, I reminded him of that day and thanked him for that moment. It was one of the rare times Hollywood Boulevard was ever as colorful as we all wish Hollywood Boulevard was.
And here's the punch line which a professional writer of comedy would have thought to include: After Welles departed, Carl started to walk off, then turned and announced to me, "My next show is at three o'clock!"
So you get what I'm aiming at here: That street is a pretty crummy place to be that famous and I don't think anyone disagrees. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and other such agencies agree so much that they've been drawing up plans to refurbish long stretches of it and so far, all the announced proposals or plans or whatever they are sound terrible to me. Most include narrowing (yes, narrowing) one of the slowest-moving streets in town so they can widen the sidewalks to encourage more pedestrian traffic and more restaurants with sidewalk dining.
In so doing, they will eliminate an awful lot of parking spaces, thereby breaking an immutable rule of Los Angeles: People here never go anywhere it's difficult to park. It's an obvious reason for many businesses failing.
And nothing in the proposals I've seen does much to make the Boulevard either safer or more interesting. I'd suggest they start the renovations with three things: More off-street parking lots and structures, a friendly police presence and having Disney build some Carl Ballantine animatronics to heckle passing tourists. That's about what it would take to get me up there to do more than dine at Musso's.