Nicotine fiend nurses on smoke break aside, unless you’re stumbling to the Kaiser Medical Center emergency room, no one has any business along Barnsdall Avenue in Hollywood. Running along the ass end of the Hollyhock House of Frank Loyd Wright

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Popped into our default late night booze purveyor Rite Aid, scoring that nite cap to fuel the solitary act of writing into the early morning and this tune surprisingly playing in that emptied flourescent Eggleston venue made our night; Many Rivers To Cross had us joining in with Lenny Kravitz in front of the wall of beer, as did a shell shocked rocker who had admirably downed a Modelo tall boy, putting the empty back into the case

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A Friday night ride brought cyclists into a confrontation with cops along Hollywood Boulevard, near Highland as best we can make out from this video posted on cycling scene site Midnight Ridazz. Holding promise for a truce during the popular monthly Critical Mass rides, Police Chief Charlie Beck announced a policy to better train LAPD officers on the rights of cyclists. Apparently this one officer missed the briefing; at the 26 second mark a bike patrol officer in shorts and cycling helmet throws a snap kick at a passing rider.

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Maria Callas-Capitol Records Building, Hollywood

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One of our stops on Oscar night led to this revelation: “The recovery is here, it will be steady and long.” That’s what Marty Collins, co-owner of the new W Hotel ran by us at the E! party red carpet, the first glitzy event to roll into his new joint. Collins, CEO of Gate House Capital, is confident his venture’s generation of 500 jobs has been the tipping point. We ain’t holding our breath. But what the Legman can say is this is the only building in LA that can be improved by controversial supergraphics. The past few years our daily routine had us taking in the ballet in steel that was the process of erecting The W complex. And the end result? The completed project is a randomly polychromed architectural pastiche, clashing with the stately pre-war loft buildings at Hollywood and Vine, evoking nothing but a bucket of Lego’s overturned on the living room floor that was then slapped together by special needs children. Now with everyone beat, It remains to be seen who will be heading to Drai’s -the Vegas scaled mega night club in the hotel (other than celebs drinking on the arm) and who will buy up the residences at the W. “That’s the final piece in the puzzle, we begin leasing next month” Collins noted. Now we’re radically skeptical and will keep tabs on the venture. Not from Drai’s-but rather from our perch over a three dollar draft across the street at The Frolic Room.

The Frolic Room occupies a sliver of the ground floor in the landmark Pantages Theater where the starred pavement of Hollywood Boulevard begins. The theater opened in 1930, the bar sometime after and hasn’t closed a day since, remaining  the oldest gin mill in Hollywood.* The Frolic is adorned with autographed glossies of its celebrity habitués, ones that hung around after the neighborhood spiraled into shit, like Silvester Stallone and John Belushi. But above them all hangs a linocut profile portrait of the poet Charles Bukowski who was a regular before his death in 1994, and fans of the poet will gather here come Monday to discuss the literary works they share a common interest in. With neither stage nor microphone, they will casually recite their favorite poetry in the quiet time before the joint fills up around six. The bar maintains a small library of volumes “but anyone can bring stuff they downloaded from the internet” says Reece, a photographer who on a recent evening took up the authors favorite stool, at the end of the bar by the cigarette machine.

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Seeking to bolster our reporting from the streets-its a lot of territory for The Legman to cover- we scoured the back alleys of Hollywood Boulevard to find a new contributor to this thing of ours. Not to be outdone by the New York Post and their high-paid columnist, we present Adena Connolly, 24, a barfly blogger living a pathological lifestyle of LA style glam poverty. Direct queries on life, love, the meaning of the universe to her here. “I’ll give advice. I’m bored. Or if you just want to hang out and smoke weed that’s cool too.”

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