Category Archives: California

The 420 Bus to Hollywood

In the late spring of 1995 I lived with Scottie Taylor in a North Hollywood pool house. The homeowner ran a strip club off West Pico Boulevard. Dennis’ dancers sunbathed nude in the mornings. They were Jesus freaks and read the Bible like a choir of fallen angels. Scottie and I were sinners in their […]

June 29, 1995 – Los Angeles – Journal Entry

Only four more days until I leave Los Angeles. I made no friends. No one told a joke or a story. I’m more than ready to leave. I came with nothing. I leave with nothing. Scottie and I remain friends and I do withJoel Bernard.. Time to go. The tempeeature is rising and the cloudless […]

NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD by Peter Nolan Smith Chapter One

Six women crowded the honeymoon suite of the Coastal Motel north of Ventura. The buxom ‘groom’ patiently lay on the bed for her ‘bride’, while the brutish camerawoman glanced at the director and tapped her watch. “Lena, are you ready yet?” A bead of sweat trickled down the wiry director’s spine, as she knocked on […]

WHEELS OF FIRE by Peter Nolan Smith

In the late summer of 1971 my Paul Deseret and I hitchhiked from Boston to San Francisco. Several of our college friends were living in the Haight. They were girls. I had had sex with one of them and sleeping with Marilyn again was enough of a reason to cross a continent, especially since neither […]

AMONG THE REDWOODS by Peter Nolan Smith

The noon sun shimmered off Monterey harbor. The moored sailing boats bobbed with the light breeze and hundreds of pleasure craft wavered on the wake of a departing fishing boat. A middle-aged man took a photo of his wife before a large trawler tied up to a forlorn dock, while I walked toward Cannery Row. […]