Word on the street spotted five teenagers playing in the driveway of a private home. Four teens — two black, all four of them with “hops” — played basketball on a lowered rim — slam-dunkin’, alley-oopin’ and chest-thumpin’. THE OUTCAST, ER, REMAINING LAD — a tad overweight, bespectacled and as white as washed-up Styrofoam — passed the time shooting a plastic hockey ball into a net by himself... Maybe they’ll build that fiber-optic ice rink thing on the Santa Monica Pier this winter and give wannabe Gordie a goalie...... In the alley between Third and Fourth streets, heading south last week was a youth on a skateboard, wobbling and wary. To his forehead he held a balled-up T-shirt, apparently KEEPING THE BLOOD HE EXPECTED FROM FLOWING down his face like flotsam on the beach after a storm. Buzz is thinking the boy tried to get his grind on at the new Main Library but hit one of those anti-skateboard brackets...... Last Saturday, Buzz was BIKINI GAZING IN PALISADES PARK, just south of San Vicente Boulevard. There they were, lying about in their natural habitat, not a care in the world, sometimes face down and sans tops so as to soak up more of the sun than any one hardbody should be allowed. When Buzz reached the California Incline, the bikinis were gone with the Santa Anas. In their stead, homeless men and women grazed amid park-goers much too wary to shed their itsy-bitsy, teeny-weenies. Is there some kind of electric fence for homeless that abuts the intersection? No abuts about it, Buzz wants one for his carport!...... Just because: Overheard at the corner of Broadway and Sixth Street on Thursday — ONE TEENAGER CALLED ANOTHER A “GAYBIRD.” Now there’s a word Buzz hasn’t heard bandied about for a while. Buzz filed that one away long ago with “boondockers,” “whippersnapper” and “individual freedoms in Santa Monica...”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 7, 2006. Read the original PDF.