This is the city in which I grew up, Los Angeles, California. The event I was attending here was the L.A. Street Scene, held on October 8 – 9, 1983.

Entertainment and food were distributed seemingly everywhere as the festival covered many blocks from Spring Street, Main Street, and Los Angeles Street.

There have been times in my life that I nearly have to scratch my head and wonder, were my early years as diverse as I want to remember? Then I look back at these photos I took on my Ricoh KR-5 and get a glimpse of just how different my reality was from the TV images that linger in my memories.

In my world, punk was already on the way out as New Wave started to dominate the music scene along with Metal.

As I’d wander the streets of L.A. during this fest or even back before I could drive in the mid-’70s, I would witness all types of characters. Unfortunately, some of the images of homeless people, prostitutes, and mildly deranged people ranting about some conspiracy or other that I shot when I was 13 to 15 years old were all thrown away by my mother while I was away in Germany as she felt they were all trash. I miss that part of my history. Back then, I’d ride the RTD (Rapid Transit District) busses through El Monte Station and connect to lines that would deliver me to Alameda and the 101 Freeway.

Nearly naked men on stage doing the Chippendales gig didn’t seem all too peculiar to me. I’d seen performance art of things I would have never shared with “normal” people who already thought L.A. was filled with nut jobs. To me, this city was eclectic and alive, and the funkier it got, the more real it was to me.

Every ethnicity was active in this city. I had tried living in Phoenix, Arizona, from late 1980 to mid-1981, but that city was highly segregated and bland as shit. The culture shock of moving somewhere that appeared to only be populated by white people rattled my senses; it was boring. Years later, I would return as I learned that where diversity is alive, the economy is brilliant, and competition will strangle you, but with a little ambition in somewhere like Phoenix, it was easy to get ahead and carve out your own space.

Those days of being oblivious to just how elegant life was when the melting pot was in full swing are sorely missed. Today, here in 2021, rage and racism are once again making themselves known. Of course, the same hostility probably existed back then, too, but I was immersed in a universe that blocked out the old stupid ways of my parents and their parents. What was important in middle America had no bearing on what California was doing; we were living our dreams.

Sometimes, those dreams looked peculiar.

And if it was your dream to channel Eddie Munster, then you did it because, hey, we live in L.A. Operative word: live!