Life in the Moulin Rouge

The famed Whisky where it all seems to happen.I wrote a while ago about a strange run-in with a scraggly looking man in my stairwell that was looking for Motley Crue’s famous old apartment, thinking maybe it was in my building. Upon later research I discovered that my street was in fact the former home of these staples of American rock and since it is also where you will find the famed Whisky A-Go-Go, it is home to a great deal of history of Los Angeles’ seedy underbelly. Apparently, after an incident a couple weeks ago, it would appear this history is more current events, and that I have unknowingly been living in a secret Red Light District for the past six months.

I have made good friends with my neighbor who is an older woman. From what I can tell she spends most of her time around the house, and she has lived there so long that she is somewhat the de facto building manager so it helps to have a friend in a high place. She’s very sweet and well meaning, but at the same time I’m not entirely convinced that the stories she tells are not born from paranoia and a need to create drama. It’s almost a virtual Melrose Place in our small eleven-unit rent controlled abode.

The apartment next to me used to belong to a middle-aged gay man who we all heard getting “acquainted” with his boyfriend many, many times. We all had some good laughs about that and of course quietly thought back to ourselves about if everyone could hear us as well. He moved out with his boyfriend last month and then the drama of renting the place began. I got all kinds of warnings from my neighbor about the kinds of people we might see come through. I joked about going over there and mentioning my satanic rituals or tendency to kill drifters in my apartment in case we needed to scare someone off. She looked at me with a very serious face and worked out a specific code she would give me to let me know I needed to do that.

I enjoyed the silence of an empty apartment next door until one day there was a knock at my door. My neighbor had a grim look on her face as she told me the landlord had decided to rent the apartment to some “Asian girl with platinum blonde hair and her friend.” I figured it wasn’t really that bad and that she was just over sensitive to today’s whippersnappers around the building. Then she said the girl told her she “had to live here.” Apparently that was the same logic used by the other quiet Asian girl in the garage apartment who was placed in this building by her pimp.

If the stories I proceeded to hear are true, then it appears I’m in the middle of something very, very strange. About a quarter mile up the street into the Hollywood Hills lives a man named Fig who has white hair, a white moustache, and any number of outrageously gaudy, yet unkempt, roadsters. Fig is one of, if not the most, prominent of the Los Angeles pimps and is known for his lavish parties and extra long fingernail (pixie dust ain’t just for kids!). Apparently at one point an older French hooker lived in the garage apartment and had many in-calls who would block the driveway with their cars. She wouldn’t make them move until she was done so needless to say she ran a very high profile at the building. She was then replaced with the quiet Japanese girl who is there now who speaks little to no English and my neighbor, who knows how everyone’s car sounds and can tell when they are there or not, has seen her come home many a night cracked out of her gourd. At least she doesn’t do in-calls.

When that girl moved in, Fig apparently strong-armed our landlord to give her a parking space and keep her there, saying “She had to live there” which was the same line that seemed to catch my neighbor’s attention. Another knock a few days ago alerted me to the fact that the new tenant on the other side of my wall had laid out a doormat that says “VIP Lounge.” She then wished me good luck and retreated back behind her bolted door.

I won’t even start with the fact that the house just two doors up from my apartment is a full-fledged brothel, the new “San Vicente Inn” down the road which despite its weekly and daily rates is really just a bathhouse, and the mysterious red light coming from the attic in the house across the street.

I always thought that I would know if I moved into the bad part of town, but as is customary with Los Angeles, there is a lovely façade covering the secrets. Perhaps this is an excellent place and time to start my underground ferret trade…