Hollywood provides endless fodder for one of my worst habits: collecting street ephemera. There is something not present in Los Angeles, a missing piece of the urban environment, that makes it the place par excellence for crazies communicating via light posts. It lacks the self-consciousness of a small town, and it is without the presumed superiority of aesthetic skill of other big cities. It is the epicenter.

I’ve collected a lot of crap off these mean streets, but none of my previous finds had prepared me for my discovery of some weeks past.

Picture this: I’m walking down Sunset near Guitar Center. Possessing a trained eye for such matters, I notice a bundle of papers sitting atop a mailbox. Writing is visible; instantly, I recognize that the letter forms bear the trace of a lunatic. A quick glance around establishes that the author is nowhere present. I grab the packet and go on my merry way.

Later at home, I find this:

Intrigued by the high craziness, I googled on the names of the women to whom the letters were addressed, and discovered that they were individuals who’d written into Vogue on the topic of racism in fashion. Their letters appeared in the July 2008 issue:

Moving along, we come to drawings of a highly sexualized nature, the first of which poses the eternal question: “Paula,… do you masturbate?”

Next, we approach matters automotive:

For the curious, here are pages 7 and the left side of 7 1/2 merged. Together, they form the full Chack-Chack Roadster:

The final two pages are an address on current affairs. Typical of most post-9/11 street writing, these pages include a denunciation of George Bush and Dick Cheney. Most street writing, however, doesn’t suggest that either man associates with crack-cocaine using bordello prostitutes, nor does it typically involve convoluted fantasies of an imaginary bank:

Thus concludes this installment of literature from the streets.

You might be interested in knowing on what sort of paper such a series of thoughts and illustrations would be written. I have helpfully scanned the back of one of the pages. The reader will note that this is a mileage reimbursement form for an employee of the Los Angeles Public Libraries. This is true of all 10 sheets of paper, which in some form or another relate to mileage reimbursement. They date from 2002 through to 2007. Many of them include the name of said employee. (Omitted here, obviously.) The page I’ve scanned appears to be a fax from or to the Goldwyn Hollywood Library; but, again, thanks to Google, I was able to trace the forms to the Will & Ariel Durant Library.

This branch sits a few blocks away from where I found the papers. I imagine the whole thing somehow started there; after all, they probably keep Vogue on the racks. Anyway: