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Bullshitters I have known ■ Why do people bullshit? ■ Good responses for bullshit ■ Where do most bullshitters live? ■ What do bullshitters drive? ■ The fake it ‘til you make it mentality ■ What is the salvage economy and why does Larry love it? ■ Which has the highest concentration of bullshitters, politics, academia or corporations? ■ Put on your hazmat suit and prepare for a deep dive into the world of bullshit!

Bullshit and bullshitters are everywhere, but the highest concentration is in The City Without a Soul, Los Angeles. When you think bullshit, you think agents and studio guys and entertainment attorneys in their I’m too cool offices spewing lies like a minigun spews 7.62 rounds. I’ve heard it myself from all of the aforementioned parties. But I really didn’t expect an avalanche of bullshit on the other side of the tracks, in the industrial bowels of the San Fernando valley, from a junkman who called himself an antique curator. He claimed to be worth many, many millions, but hung out in his dingy junk shop on a gorgeous Saturday morning because he “missed working.”

I encountered him while searching for coffee as my car was having an alignment at a shop in an alley.

Given a choice, I will always support the small business man, and avoid the corporate entities. Get an alignment at Pep Boys, and a chunk of the tab is buying club memberships for the corner-office jack-offs who’ve never scrubbed bearing grease off their hands with a bar of Lava. Fuck them. And their clubs.

I support the small business man, who feeds his family by his toil. And they invariably do a better job than some hourly-wage felon working at his third chain repair shop this month because he’s incompetent.

While my wheels were finding their proper camber and castor and toe-in and out, I took a little walk around the neighborhood. A neighborhood that soccer moms and senior partners would never venture into. Is it dangerous? Probably no more than the upscale malls and boulevards. But it doesn’t look so tidy and neat and sanitized and goddamn BORING!

I hate the phrase “photo essay.” The authors of most photo essays are guys with chin-strap sun hats and Birkenstocks and lifetime Sierra Club memberships. That ain’t me, folks.

So I’ll just post a few pics and comment as I go, and leave the photo essaying to… them.

First: sex. I should have stepped inside and asked if Dr. Love was seeing patients today. But whoever he (or she) is, I admire their blunt approach to marketing. In better neighborhoods, sex shops try to be subtle and tasteful. In the flats of the mid-San Fernando valley – the region that birthed the porno business, they gave subtlety a golden shower 50 years ago, and left it on the bathroom floor of the hot-sheet motel/studio.

The mannequins are dressed and posed to engage and engorge. Wanton. Crass. Whorish. Craven. Every man’s dream woman in polyurethane and stretchy , washable Rayon.

The salvage economy is both diverse and highly specialized. Erring on the side of variety: the Moon Store, where you can buy shoes (3 pair $20! – imagine the quality…) and cell phone accessories, all while you have your pants altered.

God is everywhere, especially here, with the Camino de Santidad. Turns out this storefront church is a chain, so I won’t be attending. I guess Corporate God Providers have to start somewhere. For more about those, click on any Sinners’ Sunday link. .

In the salvage economy, used is not a dirty word, and they don’t spray paint it with bullshit by calling it “pre-owned.”

Here’s a store that sells used bikes and only used bikes. Some rust on the handlebars, but they’ll probably go for miles or decades more. In tonier neighborhoods, they call these things “beach cruisers.” In my childhood neighborhood, they called them truck bikes. They were ridden by delivery boys, who were often grown men, but that’s what they were called.

Odd that they are all girls’ bikes, sans the testes-crushing crossbar standard on boys’ bikes. Yeah, I know, some shit about no crossbar accommodating flowing skirts. Seen any females riding a bike while dressed in a flowing skirt? Neither have I. Get your shit together, Diamondback, Trek, Scott, et. al. You’re doing it WRONG.

Nobody in the salvage economy sweats the details or aesthetics. Made a mistake on your window sign? Fuck it – just redact it with a fat, chisel-point marker. It’s good enough for de-classified FBI shit, isn’t it?

Seems like every neighborhood (we don’t use the word community here – it’s too close to Commie) has a mystery door. This door would look right on a nice, Spanish or Mediterranean style home. Why is it plugged in here with the wrought iron security fencing? Inquiring minds want to know.

Maybe it is the door to a home – where the owner of PayDay loans resides. With 460% interest charges, he probably needs a lot of security.

L‘art pour l’art? Maybe in Paris, but in the deep Valley, there’s always a prick with a can of Krylon to fuck up your masterpiece. Looks like they want blood on Larry. And they like (sell?) LSD. You just can’t have nice things in the new America.

Lastly, this plumber’s truck. Vintage 1950’s? 60”s? Whenever, it pre-dated the need for a phone number or URL. Toilet’s plugged up in Canoga Park? Stick your head out the window and scream the crapper’s clogged!

Mr. Allen will hear you. It was a better world in his day, I suspect.

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