Equator Books ~ Venice

“There’s a boy who fogs his world and now he’s getting lazy
There’s no motivation and frustration makes him crazy
He makes a plan to take a stand but always ends up sitting.
Someone help him up or he’s gonna end up quitting.” ~ Green Day

CORAZON DEL PUEBLO presents…
Flowers of Fire: Poesia de Lucha y Amor

Join Boyle Heights Bards:
BUS STOP PROPHET, KRISTY LOVICH & JOHN CARLOS DE LUNA
for a FREE Bi-Monthly Poetry, Performance, & Open Mic Event

January 13th
8:00pm-Midnight
Early Sign-Ups for Open Mic: 7:30pm-8:00pm

@ Corazon del Pueblo
2003 E. 1st St.
Los Angeles 90033

JANUARY 13th
Featured Poets:
Matt Sedillo
John Carlos de Luna
Luluminous

Featured Musician:
Calix Reneau

JANUARY 27th
Featured Poets:
Abel Salas
Christy Ramirez
Dora Magaña

Featured Musicians:
City Terrace’s own Original Rock Sons
I.A.M.U.
Willie Herron lll (Los Illegals)
Sid Medina (The Brat)

FLOWERS OF FIRE scheduled for January 13th & 27th
EVERY 2ND & 4TH WEDNESDAY OF THE MONTH @ CORAZON DEL PUEBLO

Pico Blvd. & Highland Ave. ~ Mid City

www.skylightbooks.com

www.myspace.com/milomartin

www.mrshobbs.com

Jim Marquez. Photo by Rick Mendoza.

WAITING

by Jim Marquez

The silence of it all is the thing that first gets you. So fucking quiet at 2:37am on a Thursday or Friday or Saturday morning in Downtown Los Angeles.

The men wait at a corner, huddled in twos and threes and fours, the truly adventurous man waits alone. Dressed in white T-shirts with oil-stains, jeans, and trucking caps. Some are drunk, red eyes glisten under dull street lights; they waver in place, trying to remain upright, while others are wide awake, jittery, hands shoved in pockets, rocking back and forth on their heels, taking quick glances at their buddies, wordlessly asking each other in Spanish if they should leave or make their move.

It’s cold out this night, unusual for this time of year, but that does not deter them; they gather here on this corner and wait for the taxi dancers to come streaming out of their place of business on this and every other night and I know this because I’m the only drunk that bothers to look at them rather than push past as the amateurs do when they stumble out of a bar in their own groups of 17-30 deep, sloppy and loud and obnoxious, catching the ears of all the pigs that increasingly patrol the downtown streets now.

I’ve been to whorehouses and strip clubs and swingers clubs all over the world, but, I have never seen the inside of a taxi hall. Talk about old school. Buy tickets, pick a girl, actually slow dance, be close, pretend you’ve taken her out on a real, old fashioned date, then, if the friction is right, or not, retire to a back sofa, in the dark, and hope for a hand job or, for the truly adventurous woman, a blow job.

So I’ve been told.

But after is when the real money is made. When the real action takes place. And it’s all for the asking, apparently.

The women gather under the awning of their building. Wrapped in bad coats, holding big purses, teetering in cheap platform sandals, whispering in Spanish to each other about this guy or that guy that is standing across from them on the sidewalk. They don’t smile. They don’t wave or encourage. But they do await the first moves.

Christ, it’s like being at a junior high school dance.

From what I’ve witnessed before, it takes these men-lonely and plain looking, scared, skin dark from being in the sun or pale from being stuck in factories, hands rough, the men that work for our city when nobody else has the balls to-just a few words: ‘How much?’ & ‘Where?’ The reply is usually ‘$50′ & ‘My place’ or ‘A room’.

Simple enough. But sometimes a negotiation takes place, and more words are needed. Dammit, I wish I knew more Spanish. Not all the women are looking to be escorted though. Some are legitimately waiting for their husbands or their boyfriends or their brothers or their fathers to come pick them up after work. They know what kind of people hangout afterwards; they know what kind of men wait late at night on this corner in Downtown L.A.

Some women band together and grab a mini-bus taxi to come and take them away. Some have cars and scamper in pairs to a parking lot and dart off before anybody can ask them the questions. Those women are left alone. The ones that primp and preen and stand apart from the others… well, then.

This is done while the cops blow by chasing after amateurs swerving in their earth-killing SUVs. Never is a glance wasted on the flashing lights of a black & white. It’s ok. No problem.

The women see me standing there, smiling, erection visible despite the tight jeans, or maybe because of them, and they wait for me too to make my move.

Excerpt printed courtesy of the author.

Jim Marquez   will be reading at the opening of photographer Rick Mendoza’s solo show at 410 Boyd Street this coming Friday.

Bertrand Smith’s Acres of Books ~ 240 Long Beach Blvd. ~ Long Beach

Jim “The Beast” Marquez reading from his latest book “L.A. Bitch IV” at the “L.A. Bitch IV DVD” release party last Friday night. The DVD is a slide show of Downtown life with words written and read by Jim Marquez, photography by Rick Mendoza, and paintings by Carl Ramsey. The DVD was produced by Dale Youngman and Gail Zone.

Having thoroughly enjoyed the candid, outspoken and poetic style of Jim Marquez’ “PG 13″ book – in Jim’s own words – “East L.A. Collage,” I was looking forward to hearing The Beast unleashed in “L.A. Bitch IV.” Since the show, I’ve started reading his X rated tales. As disturbingly real and graphic as Jim gets, his heart is the leading force behind his unnerving depictions whether he rants against or achingly needs his fellow mortals as in “After the reading” (see excerpts below,) an undeniable proof that Marquez has mastered the art of the short story and is right to have moved on to writing his first novel. If I were you I would get a copy of his self-published books fast; in my opinion Marquez has already transcended his beginnings as an “East L.A. writer” to possibly become one of the most authentic recorders of our 21st American century.

“I should’ve been happy after the reading and signing of my latest book: big crowd, standing room only, college girls sitting on the floor and gazing up at me like I was the Mexican-Charles-fucking-Bukowski himself, but something was off…” Jim Marquez, “After the reading”

Paintings by Carl Ramsey.

“The booze flowed well, it always does when I read, and I read the fuck out of the material; freaked everybody out and even surprised myself with the ferocity and rage in which the words exploded off my tongue.”

Downtowner and “Bathroom Graffiti” author Mark Ferem with whom I got to sip iced coffee before the show. During our animated conversation, which I hope to continue with Mark soon and share with my readers, Mark waved and smiled at a friend across the street. “It’s Gronk,” he said. I grinned. How cool was that! Above him are paintings by Eric Jones from the Dale Youngman’s gallery’s closing exhibit: “Father.”

Sketch by Carl Ramsey from the LA Bitch IV DVD.

“Institution”

I found myself going back to this painting over and over again during the show. My photo didn’t do it justice. Fortunately I found it on www.downtown.la. I couldn’t help sharing this other one with you because I believe it’s on the DVD and… well… it speaks for itself.

“Street Dance”

Photographer Rick Mendoza.

“I mean, I was running late because I had to pick up the chairs for the show, pick up a 20lb bag of ice, buy the drink bucket, and buy extra beers and, so, because all that shit was on my mind, and because I still had to fight rush hour traffic into Downtown L.A. in the fucking rain, and add to the fact that I had come to that afternoon with the sickness (hangovers to mortals, an entirely different and agonizing level of suffering to those of us who actually drink,) so, I guess I wasn’t in the best of moods come game time.”

Jim Marquez, Rick Mendoza, Carl Ramsey.

To find out more about the authors, go to: www.MySpace.com/JimtheWriter, www.rickmendoza.com, or click here for a link to Carl Ramsey’s work.

Rick Mendoza’s photographs were not prominently displayed during the show. The only way to experience his work was to watch the “LA Bitch IV” DVD on a small laptop. Fortunately there was that picture on the cover of the DVD and Jim’s latest book which left me wanting for more. Rick Mendoza’s work is currently on display at the First Street Studios, 2026 E. 1st Street, Boyle Heights, CA 90033.

frankiely has a blog.

www.rickmendoza.com, www.lulu.com/JimMarquez, Carl Ramsey

“Lickable Wallpaper” is James Gabriel’ second self-published work and his 4th novel. Here’s an intriguing excerpt from this California Native. For more info on James Gabriel, go to www.lickablewallpaper.net.

“The foot.

The biggest I have ever seen or imagined was held by a few famous basketball players’ whose shoe sizes are on display in a many native sports shrines which I have had the misfortune of wasting hours of my time in. This one dwarfed all of them. It was wrapped in a large black sandal, but the appendage was so wide it spilled around the edges and the base had been squeezed into a puffy cushion of skin framing it with stretch marks as if it were threatening to burst. The owner of that must be extremely heavy I surmised and if this had been the only curiosity I would have returned to my business without a thought, but the toes of this hoof were the most interesting of all.

The big toe of the mammoth pad was like a sausage. It started early and reached out beyond the others and past the tip of the sandal to curl beneath the next toe and a portion of the other. By my word if that failed to strike me on some way, the other toes did it. Each was quite long and knurled with thick nails that came out and curled down, almost as one would imagine a claw. Ideally it had no business displaying itself in a sandal of any type, but it thoroughly escaped me as to what shoe would enclose such a foot. I was suddenly struck by the image that it did not belong to a man, but some sort of troglodytian creature like the Moorlocks from Wells’ Time Machine and it was then that I decided I needed to see what this person looked like, if not learn who he was altogether.

As a result I doubled my efforts to finish my business which was no small task and my straining had me afraid of causing an aneurysm. The foot stepped out of the stall and I heard the sink turn on for a short moment, then off. I quickly wiped and buckled my pants, with a sudden air of thanks when I heard the drone of the hand dryer.

I stepped out.”

A few months ago I’m heading North on Lincoln Blvd. when, on an impulse, I jump out of my car to pixellate The Red Garter’ sex-appealing logos.

As soon as I see the closed door and the yellow notice my natural born protector-of-the-small hops back into my car, grabs my cell phone and contact the real estate broker. “Hello, I’m calling about The Red Garter in Venice. I was wondering if you could put me in touch with the seller because I write for an LA blog and would love to preserve a little bit of LA history by photographing the interior of this vintage “cocktail lounge” (before it gets recycled into another retail store.)” I keep the last portion to myself as I hear a voice in my head arguing that what I call “a vintage cocktail lounge” most people would call “a dive,” including the real estate agent at the other end of the line judging by the awkward silence. “The property’s been sold.” “So maybe I could talk to the new owner?” Upon my insistence, the broker reluctantly gives me her e-mail address, gets mean on me when I ask her to repeat it and hangs up before I have a chance to deliver a spirited: “Thank you for your commitment to…” She didn’t commit to anything but I nonetheless rush home to pen a passionate appeal to the new owner while I fail to swat the annoying buzz in my head that keeps repeating “Frankie, it’s a dive!”

This incident takes an unpredictable turn when I learn that at about the same time, a young woman by the name of Lauren Everett answers her own maternal call for the preservation of the human over the commercial when she sees an ad on Craigs List for the sale of an apartment complex where LA’s own dirty old poet, Charles Bukowski, once lived. Everett and other preservationists contact the Cultural Heritage Commission and manage to halt the sale of the East Hollywood property long enough to attempt to build a case for the designation as Historic Landmark of the DeLongpre Avenue bungalow where USPS worker Henry Charles Bukowski became, at 49, a full-time writer. Just as I assume my e-mail to the Red Garter’s new owner was dragged across the real pain in the esstate’s broker desktop and dumped in her Trash Bin, I don’t believe for one moment the author of “All the Assholes in the World and Mine” will get the seal of approval from the City and when I see a picture of the building in question I even wonder: “Why? It’s a…”

Photo by Phil McCarten for Reuters.

I look online for an answer and give to my dear Taco readers a story in quotes almost as unpredictable as a Bukowski title:

Blogger AF Duncan of Kung Fu Rodeo.”The impulse to make Bukowski’s home a monument comes from a feeling that he was a more accurate chronicler of the city than other writers, said David Fine, author of “Imagining Los Angeles: A City in Fiction.” Raymond Chandler, Aldous Huxley, Nathanael West and F. Scott Fitzgerald are far brighter literary lights, along with others who came here to toil as screenwriters. But they tended to portray an apocalyptic landscape of crime noir and empty celebrity. Bukowski grew up here and saw it from a less cynical, more authentic down-to-earth vantage point.”

Councilman Eric Garcetti: “Hollywood is famous not because everybody has been a saint or a nun… It’s always attracted complicated and important people and Charles Bukowski certainly fits that mold.” Garcetti added he was worth remembering but “he was not necessarily a guy you’d want to be friends with.”

Richard Schave of www.esotouric.com: “Esotouric’s “Haunts of a Dirty Old Man” bus tour on the anniversary of (Bukowski) passing included a stop for donuts and coffee at Pink Elephant Liquor, though many opted for beer in a paper bag instead. “

LA Weekly’s Matthew Fleischer: “Suddenly, the rumble of a large diesel engine can be heard, and moments later a tremendous white tour bus pulls to a stop outside. The doors swing open and out steps John Dullaghan, director of the acclaimed Charles Bukowski documentary Born Into This, and his fellow tour guide, Richard Schave. Trailing behind them is a diverse group — black, white, brown and even some pasty Brits, each of whom has paid 55 bucks to stand in the rain and snap pictures of an empty, trash-strewn bungalow (DeLongpre.) None of them seem disappointed though. They’re here for a piece of Charles Bukowski, and this is the biggest, coldest, wettest piece there is.”

LA Conservancy.org: “Myth #4: “Preservation is only for the rich and elite, and for high-style buildings.”Fact: Historic preservation isn’t just about house museums anymore. Today’s preservation movement is increasingly diverse: here in Los Angeles, many of our newest historic districts (Historic Preservation Overlay Zones, or HPOZs) home to economically and ethnically varied populations. Preservation today also addresses not just grand architectural landmarks, but more modest sites of social and cultural significance. Just look at the small Ralph J. Bunche House in South Los Angeles, boyhood home of the pioneering African-American diplomat, and Little Tokyo’s Far East Café, a beloved gathering place for the city’s Japanese-American community – both restored in recent years. Or, consider a current preservation effort to save the modest Vladeck Center, a Boyle Heights building that was the center of the Jewish labor and immigrant resettlement movements of the 1930s. Such sites underscore that preservation can be about the “power of place” found at sites containing rich social and cultural meaning.”

The Canadian Press: “The poet’s widow, Linda Lee Bukowski, said she did not think her husband would have appreciated seeing a fuss made over the house he rented. “He was not the kind of person whose ego needed a large edifice in his memorium,” she said. Linda Bukowski added she was sickened by earlier proposals that the house serve as a residence for writers and artists. “That would be repulsive to Hank,” she said, using the writer’s nickname. “It would be against all his natural human ways to have little writers and poets in bungalows together, little Bukowskis running around.”

The Long Beach Press Telegram: “As Linda Bukowski said, “The De Longpre address was but one of many that Hank rented and wrote in during his years in L.A. Indeed the novel `Post Office’ was written there, but so many more books were written at (another) address … After that, the rest of his work was written in San Pedro, in the home where he lived until his last precious breath, and where I still reside with nine cats.” But as has been noted, you aren’t going to sell many literary tour bus tickets to San Pedro.”

Victoria Gureyeva, owner of the property at the time the application was filed: “This man loved Hitler. He may be a great writer — I’m not a critic. But that’s what libraries are for. This is my house, not Bukowski’s. I will never allow the city of Los Angeles to turn it into a monument for this man. He never acknowledged his Jewish side. The rumor is that Hitler’s mother was part Jewish. Now we have Bukowski — Hitler number two.”

John Martin, publisher, Black Sparrow Press (and the man who gave an income to Bukowski so he could leave his post office job and write full-time): “(The Nazi claim) is ridiculous. Bukowski wasn’t a Nazi, he was a contrarian. Anything he could say to get people’s goat, he’d say — especially when he was young.”

Bukowski pictures found on www.bukowski.net courtesy of Michael Montfort.

On February 26, as I drive once again past the The Red Garter and gaze into an empty hole where its luscious sign used to tease my natural born feline, the Los Angeles City Council ignored the property owner’s dubious (and self-serving) claim that Bukowski was a Nazi and approved the designation of 5124 De Longpre Avenue as a historic landmark on the recommendation of the Cultural Heritage Commission.

Charles Bukowski’s former home can now be found on the list of City Declared monuments next to, among others, the Val d’Amour apartments at 854 S. Oxford, Bob’s Market on Bellevue Avenue, the oak tree on Louise Avenue, 210 feet south of Ventura Boulevard, and the 76 mature olive trees on Lassen Street.

Unfortunately, my attempt at preserving in pictures a place where Bukowski may have shared drinks and stories with other Angelenos failed. The construction of a new retail store at 2536 Lincoln Blvd. is well under way. I don’t know why I dreamt of entering this deserted lounge – just another bar out of LA County’s 1000 documented drinking places. Maybe I was hoping to channel the departed and hear echoes of conversations dating back to the days when bars were called saloons. I wanted to be where generation after generation of Angelenos came to feel a little less lonely, a little more confident after a few drinks, maybe even a little happier? I fantasized about leaning back on its velour bench and the warm feel of a man’s hand making its way under my silk skirt in search of that red garter… before they put a price tag on it.

The House

They are building a house
half a block down
and I sit up here
with the shades down
listening to the sounds,
the hammers pounding in nails,
thack thack thack thack,
and then I hear birds,
and thack thack thack,
and I go to bed,
I pull the covers to my throat;
they have been building this house
for a month, and soon it will have
its people…sleeping, eating,
loving, moving around,
but somehow
now
it is not right,
there seems a madness,
men walk on top with nails
in their mouths
and I read about Castro and Cuba,
and at night I walk by
and the ribs of the house show
and inside I can see cats walking
the way cats walk,
and then a boy rides by on a bicycle
and still the house is not done
and in the morning the men
will be back
walking around on the house
with their hammers,
and it seems people should not build houses
anymore,
it seems people should not get married
anymore,
it seems people should stop working
and sit in small rooms
on 2nd floors
under electric lights without shades;
it seems there is a lot to forget
and a lot not to do,
and in drugstores, markets, bars,
the people are tired, they do not want
to move, and I stand there at night
and look through this house and the
house does not want to be built;
through its sides I can see the purple hills
and the first lights of evening,
and it is cold
and I button my coat
and I stand there looking through the house
and the cats stop and look at me
until I am embarrased
and move North up the sidewalk
where I will buy
cigarettes and beer
and return to my room.

Charles Bukowski (1920-1994)

Click here for Taco’s review of the screen adaptation of Bukowski’s “Factotum.”

frankiely has a blog.

Sources:

• http://www.presstelegram.com/ci_7636769
• http://www.laweekly.com/columns/a-considerable-town/bukowskis-ruin/17756/
• http://la.metblogs.com/?s=charles+bukowski
• http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20080226-1152-bukowski-home-.html
• http://news.therecord.com/Wire/Entertainment_Wire/article/315110
• http://www.laconservancy.org/preservation/top_ten_myths.pdf
• http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-house/
• http://kungfurodeo.com/2007/11/29/charles-bukowski-house-landmarking-hits-weird-snag/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bukowski
• http://www.preservationla.org/commission
• http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/bukowski.htm
• Click here for the list of City Declared Monuments.