Flipped

Yesterday I spoke of some of my exploits as a pedestrian. Today I offer another. Being out and about on foot as much as I am, I bear witness to some remarkable things. They seem remarkable to me, at any rate. A high percentage of them occur in Hollywood. To the person who lives outside Los Angeles, Hollywood may be more a distillation of their ideas regarding the entertainment industry more so than it is a physical place where people live, work and engage in recreation. To have one's imagined Hollywood replaced with the genuine article is not necessarily a disappointment, but it is not an easy swap.

I always say that it is the weirdest place I've ever been, and I repeat that now. You see things happen there that are somehow understandable only in that context and in no other. It's like a geographic equivalent of intoxication. To say that one did something because they were in Hollywood is about as acceptable as because they were drunk. I would take that anyway. Of course, the two excuses coincide with great regularity.

Now, if I might get to the thing I saw this time: It was a small thing and passed so quickly that maybe only I saw. It was broad daylight, and I was walking along Hollywood Boulevard near Vine. There was this Asian fellow standing there , and I only get as descriptive as that because it could provide some explanation of what transpired. A white man who seemed to be part of a somewhat unruly group got in his face and vigorously flipped him off, then moved along. The Asian guy showed no reaction, and retained a general cheerfulness that I had noted before anything happened.

It was an unpleasant thing to see, and I was angry at the man who did it, but never diverted from my own business. I wonder what was behind all that. What could have been the motivation for doing such a thing? Did I see the tail end of something that had already been set in motion, or was it the whole thing? At the very least, I would be quite interested to see enough of the white man's life leading up to that incident for some understanding. Could he have been a bigot, a drunk or a mere jackass? I can't imagine, but I'm sure I've put more thought into it already than most. Maybe it's like Plato said, and this belligerent man is engaged in some kind of hard battle that explains his conduct though it can't excuse it.