9/12/2023/TUESDAY/5AM
Last Sunday's LA Times featured the new All Night Menu publication courtesy @zanopticon. This is the first All Night Menu book not centered on the writings of publisher, Sam Sweet. Instead it is a story told through the photos and remembrances of Rick Castro (@castrrick). Rick is an exquisite soul and an LA original. A native of Monterey Park (his dad played handball in Maravilla), he has been exploring and observing LA since the early 1970s. He gave himself to the city and found pure gold in places where others refused to look.
Like most of Los Angeles, the hustler culture of Santa Monica Boulevard is widely assumed but scarcely documented. The tradition withstood AIDS, crystal meth, heroin, and the emergence of West Hollywood as a sanctioned gay entertainment district, but it would not survive redevelopment. In the late 1990s, plans were made to transform the boulevard into a “Champs-Elysees of the West.” Prolonged construction decimated foot traffic and displaced hustlers into the virtual landscapes of Craigslist and online escort sites.
While the internet shielded the street trade from police, it also robbed it of its soul. The physical reality of Los Angeles was no less essential to hustlers than to lowriders or skateboarders. Divorced from the landscape, the tradition was drained of myth and stature. Those who moved to the computer were like cowboys without a range.
“They were doing whatever they needed to do to survive,” Rick said. “You can’t get any more all-American than that, right?”
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