• Pico Diary

    By Jon Wiener

    A caravan of four Stanford football buses roars down Pico Boulevard with a police escort — in town for the Rose Bowl. I stand at the corner with a delivery guy from the Domino’s Pizza down the block — he’s an older Latino man.

    He asks, “Is it Obama?”

    Obama did come by a couple of months ago.

    “No,” I say, “It’s Stanford.”

    “But why?” he says, pointing to the motorcycle cops with the flashing red lights stopping traffic.

    “This is football,” I tell him. “This is America.”

    He shakes his head sadly.

    ¤

    At the newsstand next to the McDonald’s, I ask the Turkish girl who works there what’s happening. “What’s happening is Playboy,” she says. “Everybody is buying. Because it’s going to be the last nude issue. We are always sold out. One man just bought 200 copies. I guess he’s going to sell them on eBay or something. I checked eBay today — normally they are $12, but now they are $25 — for the current one. My boss raised the price — from $10 to $15.95. He put a new sticker over the old price. Today I got ten more copies, but I think they are going to be finished again.”

    ¤

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    A homeless guy with a dog has camped out on Pico near the pet store — he has one of those Booth dogs, white with a black ring around one eye. He’s a young black man, in pretty good shape for a homeless person. It’s a cold morning, and he has the dog in a stylish blue-and-white striped T-shirt. He also has a little stuffed penguin, obviously for the dog, but actually it’s a child’s toy. And he has a dog food dish. I give him some money. He becomes animated and charming, and wants to explain things. “I used to in a gang,” he says. “My father was a Black Panther. But I decided to take another road.” Then he points to his little camp as if it were a good thing.

    He motions to the pet store, holds up the money, and says, “I noticed that they have little socks in there. I’m going to get some for my dog.” He says, “I had another dog, a puppy, but they took it away.” Then he says, “You don’t know what you did today, but I know why it happened.” He looks at me out of the corner of his eye and says with a big smile, “He’s always watching me.”

    ¤

    Jon Wiener lives south of Pico, near the Pep Boys at Manning Ave.