Sidewalk Superheroes

It was the Sunday after Thanksgiving, our second day on Hollywood Boulevard and the day of the Hollywood Christmas Parade, which would step off at the corner of Hollywood and Highland. We showed up a bit earlier, since the characters we had met the day before said that mornings are usually the best time for making money, and wandered around a bit. Still dressed as Holly and Eliza, we earned a lot of admiring looks and loads of people sniping pictures when we weren’t looking, but still no one seemed to want to really photograph with us. We were cool, but we weren’t that cool. Still, business was improving from the day before, and there was still a lot to look at and absorb.

We spent a lot of the day just walking up and down the block, from Highland to Orange and back again, trying to grab the attention (and hopefully business) of all of the tourists and extra locals hovering about. There was supposed to be a big block of entertainment right in front of the Chinese Theatre from noon until the parade started, but it ended up being a load of crap Disney kids bands gyrating obscenely and trying to make it big. It was appalling, honestly, and the music was terrible. I saw a few teenage girls walking around with posterboard and glitter signs for one of the bands and considered asking them if they’d been paid to wave them. I just couldn’t believe anyone would take that god-awful drivel passing as music seriously. It also pulled out a lot of kids, and kids don’t know who Audrey Hepburn is. We did get a few moms who loved our costumes and forced their kids to take pictures with us, which wasn’t too bad.

But with crowds come the crazies. While the day before had been mild, even for a weekend, the draw of thousands of extra people with money and the news vans filming all over the place, the weirdos began to show. There was a relatively harmless older fellow who played guitar while whistling on the sidewalk, and while he was nice, he only seemed to know two songs. No one seemed to care for what he was playing, though, and avoided him. He started following us around, which further pushed business away from us. To make matters worse, Dollhouse Guy appeared. Apparently he is pretty well-known on the Boulevard, and he really is called Dollhouse Guy. I noticed the miles too big green jacket with that title painted on the back (in what looked like white poster paint) and wondered why. He and the guitarist got along and Dollhouse would make up bawdy lyrics to the two songs the guitarist knew. After we’d finally shaken them both, we turned around to find Dollhouse Guy, with a large dollhouse on his head, gyrating on the ground next to the stage set up for all those crap Disney kids. Oh, so that’s how he got his name.

(photo by blkmarket)

After a slow morning we were getting fairly hungry, and decided to walk to Mel’s for lunch. My dad’s a huge fan of the place because American Graffiti was filmed there — well, at one of their locations, anyway — and I knew there was vegetarian-friendly fare there for us, so off we headed. Before we even made it to the intersection, though, we met Homeless Boyfriend. He seemed ordinary enough at first, at least for Hollywood, but a little weird. He stopped us very politely and said we looked beautiful, and kept babbling on about how nice we looked. We said thank you very nicely and kept walking because we were hungry, and besides, a few of the more lecherous men had told us as much earlier. Let’s just say that in our short time there, we’ve made a lot of male fans, and they still feel the need to say hello or tell us how good we look whenever we walk by.

We have a decent lunch with minimal stares from the tourists nearby, and are even recognized by a smartly dressed businessman on his way to a booth. When the bill comes, though, and we see that we’ve just pissed away our days earnings on sandwiches, it’s time to face the facts: Audrey Hepburn just isn’t working for us this time. We love her dearly and covet her film wardrobe like you wouldn’t believe (Givenchy is a god among designers), but there’s a huge difference between garnering admiration at a costume party and people wanting to pay for your image. My partner admitted that she was already ordering pieces for a Catwoman costume, and would try it out the following weekend. In a quiet panic, I know that I really can’t go it as Holly Golightly all by myself, and start to scramble for ideas. Always liking Natalie Portman’s Star Wars wardrobe — erm, the latter two films, when she had the more relaxed senator’s wardrobe and more easily attainable hair — I decided to order this costume when I got home:

sexy Padme

Gratuitous, maybe, but I felt it would do well. Star Wars is always popular, and half naked girls in skin-tight sci-fi costumes are always popular, so how could it fail?

Feeling slightly defeated but looking forward to trying again with newer, sexier costumes, we walked back to the theatre to see what was going on. In the same spot we had left him was Homeless Boyfriend, who once again stopped us to marvel at our looks. Okay, so we’re easy on the eyes, but this was getting to be uncomfortable already. To make matters worse, he actually put his styrofoam container of food down in the street and bowed at our feet, pressing his forehead to the ground.
“Oh wow,” I muttered, not wanting him to hear.
“This is a little freaky,” my partner said.
“I know! Is he crazy, or is he just being really nice to us?
“I don’t know, but let’s go,” she said, pulling on my arm. He was still bowing on the ground, mumbling to the pavement, and while I felt a little bad at leaving him prostrate, it would be even more awkward to stand there staring, waiting for him to get back up and do who knows what.

Before we had even gone the full block to the Chinese Theatre, another man stops us. This one looks more normal, with bleached hair and a large army surplus bag slung over his shoulder. He admired our costumes and introduced himself as the Prince of Hollywood. I wish I could make this up.
“Maybe you’ve heard of me?” he asked hopefully.
“Erm.” We hemmed and hawed, in the off chance that we really were missing out on something worthwhile in the entertainment scene.
“I’ve been on TMZ and E! and all the entertainment shows. I’m on there all the time,” he said helpfully. We kept mum, not wanting to break the news that we didn’t really watch TV.
“Well, I’m pretty well-known here and around the world,” he said, quickly moving past that embarrassing scenario. “I travel the world a lot and I’m actually going to be knighted next spring. By the queen and everything. The Pope’s even going to be there.” If the red flags hadn’t been unfurled before, they sure were now. We exchanged looks but kept our smiles on, and I hoped a fire would break out, one of the pre-teen Disney kids would be caught smoking crack with a dead prostitute, anything to get us away from this guy. After touting himself a little more — “You know David Beckham? He’s my boy, we’re like this,” he said, crossing his fingers, and I snorted, remembering all the Tom Cruise crushing on David Beckham jokes I read on the Internet — he got down to why he’d stopped us.
“I’m a designer as well,” he said, “mainly post-Victorian fashion, stuff like that, and I really like your style. Do either of you design?” Actually, we both had dabbled, and I’d done a little Fashion & Design school in San Francisco, but I’ll be honest, I didn’t have a bleedin’ clue as to what he meant by “post-Victorian.” Maybe he didn’t either. If we made all our costumes by altering existing patterns and accurately replicating film wardrobes, then we should be able to work with him, he rationalized. He asked for our numbers and we gave them, in the off chance something actually came of it, and parted ways.
“Knighted by the queen and the Pope?” I snorted as soon as he was out of earshot.
“I know, he was all sorts of crazy,” my partner said. “Still, maybe he really does design.” After a pause, she asked, “Did you think he was homeless?” I thought for a moment.
“You know, I honestly couldn’t tell.”

The pre-parade festivities were in full swing by the time we got back, but there still wasn’t a high demand for either Audrey Hepburn. A man from Café Audrey stopped by and hurriedly shoved a stack of menus into our hands.
“If you girls hand these out for us, we’ll get you some food and maybe talk about some sort of business deal,” he said breathlessly. “Stop by when you’re done with these and we’ll talk more,” he added, and hurried off.
“But we just ate!” my partner said.
“I know! Why couldn’t they have suggested this before we spent all our tips?” I groused. Still, the prospect of a longer-term business deal with them was tempting, and we set off trying to nicely hand out menus. Hollywood Boulevard is not a good place to hand out papers, though, as we quickly found out. There’s flyer monkeys out all up and down the Walk and they’re much pushier than we are, and most people know to just keep walking and not acknowledge them. We also found that by handing out papers, people assumed we were being paid by the café and wouldn’t tip us for photos. This wasn’t working out. We were getting cold and tired and just wanted to go home at that point, but felt obligated to finish what had been started for us. After finally getting rid of all of the menus, we wandered over to their tent across the way and were sent to the café itself.
When we showed up we were allowed to order whatever we wanted, and even though we weren’t hungry, we ordered our food and drinks to go and hoped for a more thorough explanation of this business venture. But they were still busy with the café and the tent for the parade and asked us to come back later on in the week, when the owner had had time to think over some proposals. Thoroughly worn out, we went home.