Sunset Boulevard

When I first got to Los Angeles the first place I headed for was Sunset Boulevard; I had heard of it and I really needed to see it.

Many years ago we lived in Shropshire and we could receive TV from the Midlands, North West and very faintly Wales.

One night I was channel surfing and a movie came on the Welsh channel; it was very foggy as we were receiving from the back end of our ariel, and even though I had to watch as if I had double cataract eye sight, I was intrigued by the movie.

It was about an ex movie star and William Holden was in it and it was – of course you know – Sunset Boulevard. (above)

It has been one of my favourite films ever since.

In those days there were no VCRs, DVDs, TIVO or anything else – if you didn't catch the TV show there and then, you'd never get another chance till the movie came on again or was shown at some cinema doing a retrospective or something.

So that's why I headed there that day – I went up and down the strip and the first thing I noticed was the state of the road surface – what is called in Britain the Tarmac.

It was full of pot holes and cracks and that's something I got used to in Los Angeles. That and the fact they they called the road the pavement and the pavement the sidewalk!!

I can't remember exactly how long Sunset Blvd is but it must be about 25 miles.

It starts off in down town and is the continuation of Caesar Chavez Blvd. The full title is Sunset Blvd West and I bet Sunset Blvd East was before they named the eastern end after that great union leader.

When Sunset reaches Hollywood it forks off to the left and Hollywood Blvd goes straight ahead starting at about number 3,000 or so. Then when it reaches 7000 it is at La Brea Avenue – known as La Brea – and on Hollywood on the corner of La Brea it's also around number 7000. All the streets down La Brea – Hollywood, Fountain, Sunset, Santa Monica Blvd – have a number near number 7000 on each corner. So you can never get lost in the City of Angels and how could you not love a city with such a name; Los Angeles.

Between 7,000 and 8,000 Sunset is a bit busy with loads of restaurants, hotels who offer 4 hour renting periods (what for, I wonder), recording studios and – oh you name it and Ralphs (which I've mentioned before) is called Rock'n'Roll Ralphs because the supermarket is open 24 hours a day and artists from the studios would go into Ralphs in the middle of the night – I saw Christine Aguilara there once and she didn't tell me how to spell her name!!

From 8,000 it is a very different Sunset, just after The Directors' Guild, and that's where Sunset Strip starts.

There is The House of Blues (where I saw Percy Sledge, one day), The Comedy Store (which was a famous club in the fifties) and where James Dean is supposed to haunt – and not long after that, I'm afraid, it becomes uninteresting.

At around 9,000 is the famous Hamburger Hamlet which the exposé book 'You'll Never Eat Lunch in this Town Again' was written from and about – but that is on the 'odd' side of the street.

At 9000 is a huge building full of the people who run Hollywood – the agents.

There are bigger agents in other parts of LA in Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, but that's the end of the corporate part of Sunset.

A little way further west you will pass the street where Frank Sinatra lived, a bit farther and you'll pass the street where Elvis lived when he was in Hollywood and then when you go even farther west you used to pass a big pink house that belonged to Englebert Humpadink; it was originally built and had a strange shaped swimming pool, by Jane Mansfield. It has now been demolish, by the way.

Then on to Brentwood, where OJ Simpson lived and killed, Pacific Palisades, where Speiberg lives and then on to the end which goes straight on to Pacific Coast Highway which you've all seen with the Pacific in the background and way out to the Neptune Fish'n'chips where the motor bikers hang out.

Not bad fish'n'chips but why would anyone from these islands ever eat fish'n'chips any where else?

As you turn right on to the PCH there is a great fish restaurant called Gladstones, if I'm not mistaken, which is fairly expensive; I was in there one day and asked for fish'n'chips and I asked the waitress what came with the fish'n'chips and she said French Fries!!!!
So there we are – hope all is still good there and there are the same crazy people knocking around – running backwards, dying their hair green, breast transplants bigger than France and glorious weather.

Why do I hanker after such a place?

They've just voted David Cameron back in here, that's why!

Pacific Coast Highway.

Facebook and Privacy.

I think I wrote on here about rock'n'roll Ralphs; rock'n'roll Ralphs is on Sunset Boulevard and Ralphs is one of the main supermarket chains here in Southern California.

When I go in there I usually go to the automatic checkout and use my 'Ralphs' card – by the way Ralphs is spelled without an apostrophe as a man called Ralphs started it; that's what they say or they might have invented him when they found that the sign writer at the first store had spelled it that way.

But I digress; when I use my Ralphs card – shouldn't it be Ralphs's card?? - a load of coupons come out of the machine. The machine knows it's me and knows what things I buy on a regular basis.

It give me coupons for other brands so most of the time so I throw them away.

But this got me thinking; Ralphs know what I buy there every week as it's on their system. What would happen of Ralphs was to sell this information to my healthcare insurance company and what if I bought a couple of bottles of whiskey there a week – or even whisky?? Wouldn't I be in danger of losing my benefit?

And not just whiskey – we are what we eat and we buy what we eat and I feel uncomfortable about broadcasting that to everybody; I'm a bit uncomfortable about letting the world see my DNA via this blog but I've got used to it. We have let Big Brother take over and with things like Facebook, MySpace and the like we are exposing ourselves to things we probably wouldn't want to if we actually knew the full details.

I have a Facebook page and my children periodically put photos on there of their activities with their children and it's great to see them but people actually put their ages on there, let their friends know when they are going away – helloooo the house is empty!! – and put all sorts of personal things on there.

The other day I received an e-mail from a friend of mine, Dave, in Wales with a link to a web page.

I went there and it was a link to a site selling Viagra!!

Dave sent an e-mail later and told me that Facebook went into his address book and sent e-mails to the people there – so who did I talk to about erectile dysfunction?

I don't have my correct date of birth on there as I was always suspicious about that and I have my year of birth on there as 1913!!! So what were they trying to do with the Viagra? Kill me?

I say be careful my friends in what you say on Facebook.

Just a short post today as it crossed my mind and in the true sense of Facebook - I am going to Porto's in Glendale for lunch; I love than Cuban sandwich.