EVERYTHING I IMAGINED AND MORE!

Hancock Park is an affluent neighborhood that I drive through every day on my way to work. It looks like a perfect cookie cutter world where every blade of grass grows in just the right shade of technicolor green. In years past the people who lived in the neighborhood were white and not Jewish. They were definitely not black. They all went to the Wilshire Country Club to golf and immerse themselves in properly attired white life. People from the entertainment community were not welcome by virtue of their celebrity the way they are today. Their nouveau, boojy butts were relegated to the hills of Beverly. When Nat King Cole purchased a house in Hancock Park in 1949 his neighbors shunned him and circulated a petition to make him move out. He stayed.

Today the neighborhood is made up of old money holdouts and those who can afford the real estate. There has been a lot of uproar and protest about the wealthy Koreans who have moved in and made changes to the stately old homes to reflect their own culture; change is, after all, hard, but no home has raised more furor than the one on Muirfield purchased by a black man who proceeded to paint the house all white with a faux grecian facade.

Because the owner didn't stop there, thematically speaking! On his front lawn, behind the white rod iron fence that surrounds his property he installed twenty3 foot tall statues of Michelangelo's naked David, all standing atop white Ionic columns and as their center piece in a slightly elevated position is a smaller replica of the Venus de Milo! At night they are illuminated by floodlights!! It's a smaller version of the sheik's mansion that used to sit on Sunset Boulevard in the 80s, surrounded by statues with painted pubic hair. So, you know, it could be worse.

There were association meetings and petitions circulated in an attempt to get the owner to take the statues down. His response was, "Fuck you", it's my property and I can do what I want. Personally, I enjoy driving by his house everyday and imagining what the inside looks like. I imagined gilded mirrors and flocked wall paper, very flamboyant and Liberace-like. I imagined that he was probably flamboyantly gay because who else but a Bobby Trendy would surround themselves with naked Davids? I have never seen anyone going in or out, nor any sign of life beyond the Bentley that occasionally sits in the driveway.

Until today.

Today I was almost killed by the owner of that house as I was driving to work! And I was so thrilled to actually see him in the flesh that anger was not, per usual, the next emotion I felt after the fear induced rush of adrenaline! No! Upon seeing his huge top down, convertible Bentley, bronze with metallic orange side panels, come screeching around the corner on two wheels directly into the path of my oncomng vehicle swerving wildly to avoid hitting me, my only reaction was to gape with mouth open, in undisguised curiousity, at this vision! Is it Sly Stone? Is this where he's been all these years? It happened so fast I only have an impression of the man driving the car. He had a huge golden hued afro that was blowing around his leonine face and he was wearing what looked like one of those Quiana knit disco shirts from the 70s, unbuttoned to his sternum. The pattern of the shirt matched his car and his hair! I was mesmerized.

He is better than I ever imagined and I am about one half inch away from becoming a stalker. He fascinates me!