After taking a few days off, I returned to my exhaustive and fetishistically complete schedule of porn party coverage with the Eastside Story release event downtown.
Aside from Repo Man and the movies of Michael Mann, very little is known about downtown Los Angeles. We are only aware that there are no roads in that area, just the dry L.A. Riverbed where we race our Greasemobiles and hide from the Terminator.
Downtown L.A. is the most New York-y section of the city but, unlike New York or San Francisco, where the homeless are seamlessly integrated with the urban landscape (even having restaurants open up inside them), L.A.’s homeless are concentrated in a small area beyond Los Angeles Street, where they can be most easily filmed.
I talked with Eddie Santoro, a man who was sleeping in a doorway a block down from Bar 107.
“Where you headed?” he asked.
“Up the road,” I said.
“Lot of pretty girls up there,” he said. “I was by there a little while ago. Girls showing their titties.”
“Well that’s where I’m going then,” I said.
“They shooting a movie up there?” he asked.
“No, but they make movies.”
“I played a homeless guy in Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” he said.
“And were you – “
“Nope! I was living in a house in Arcadia.”
Michelle Aston is not homeless. She lives in the Barclay, a hundred-year-old residence hotel that used to be where farmers from outlying areas would stay after they brought their products into the dusty city and did their banking at the federal-style bank across the street.
“If I have guests, they have to pay an extra ten bucks,” she said.
“Just ten bucks?“
“Well…”
We walked next door to the bar. I’ve been off the hard liquor for three days. I didn’t know what to do wth myself. It’s not like I’m going to bring a thermos anywhere anymore. Aston bought me a tall PBR.
“I don’t drink beer, but this is very nice of you,” I said.
Then I looked around and noticed that everyone was drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon. I carried that can around with me for three hours and I think I finished an eighth of it. I’m going to do that from now on.
I stood with Aston as we watched her scene with Page Morgan on the screen. I haven’t watched the movie yet, but the colors are very trippy. They were both smeared with lipstick and Aston was throwing Morgan around like a flesh-covered bean bag I want to have sex with.
“I’m really going to town on her there,” Aston noted.
“Yes you motherfucking are,” I said soberly.
Outside Morgan herself was hanging out by a collection of Triumph motorcycles. She couldn’t get in because she’s only 20. A woman asked her if she shopped at John Fluevog, because she looked familiar.
“No,” Morgan said, ” I shop at the Salvation Army.”
“Did you get that dress at the Salvation Army?” I saked. Now that I’m sober, I have the wherewithal to set her up with all ther gingham she needs, provided she doesn’t wear it inside the house.
“No, I think I stole this one.”
Now that Eon McKai can be photographed it seemed unoriginal to take a photograph of him, but I did ask if he needed to make room in his office for Ray J., white-hot auteur of the Kim Kardashian ouevre.
“I was wondering why Steven (Hirsch) didn’t answer my e-mails for so long,” he said.
Speaking of New York and San Francisco, Joe Gallant and Violet Blue stopped by. Gallant is shooting in L.A. this weekend and is mulling a move here. “To downtown? To the loft area?” I asked, thinking that it would more suit his aesthetic.
“No, we’re looking at Studio City,” he said. Next time I see him he’s going to have a glowing bluetooth headset in his ear and have no recognizable facial expresssions.
Blue was down with Eros-Zine editor Thomas Roche to promote her book “Fetish Sex”. Strangely, I have only met Blue twice, both times after bodily injury (to me, not her). It is as if the Intelligent Designer requires me to be compromised.
As you know, I am a fan of full-contact flat track roller derbies. I did my Master’s thesis on them (“Blood on the Oval: The Need of Kneepads in Modern Feminist Theory”). I interrupted XBiz event planner/terror skater Joetta as she was phoning in a scoop, and she almost high-sticked me.
“That’s not what Nancy Kerrigan would do,” I said.
I stumbled home out of habit and poor motor skills rather than intoxication.
Previously: Eastside Story gets its priorities in order; ReBelle Rousers on location; Michelle Aston will eat your girlfriend…; Can you tell me how to get to Avenue X?
See also: Vivid-steve
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