Once there were Carmelita Days


 

“I was sitting in the Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel.                                 I was staring in my empty coffee cup. . .”*

Here’s a vintage postcard from the Hawaiian Hotel (now the Princess Grace Apartments). Always reminds me of my friend Warren Zevon - gone now almost 19 years. The postcard is a dead ringer for my first Los Angeles apartment and my Carmelita lifestyle - mariachi static, living on Pioneer Chicken and the glow from the tubes of my radio - where I woke one morning to 6’ waves rocking the pool, courtesy of the 1987 earthquake. It was my desperado time and I’m lucky (grateful) to have survived long enough to escape Hollywood. though I'm still staring in empty coffee cup. . .

[The Hawaiian Hotel, is also where Ray Davies wrote the Kink’s “Celluloid Heroes.” And where Fleetwood Mac guitarist Jeremy Spencer shared a room with Mick Fleetwood.  He left to visit a bookstore and never returned, forcing the band to cancel that night’s show at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go.  Spencer was later found, having joined the religious cult The Children of God - the cult did not leave at the Hawaiian Hotel. "Everybody’s dreamer. Everybody’s a star."]


* “Desperados Under the Eaves"                                                                           Warren Zevon (1976)

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