"I wish every kid 'dreaming' of making it
in Hollywood could read your page."

BUSTED!

Date: Mon, 02 Jun 1997 23:09:01 -0700
From: Alan (alan@pacbell.net)
Reply-To: alan@pacbell.net
To: Richard Geib (cybrgbl@deltanet.com)
Subject: Hollywood thoughts
At 11:09 PM 6/2/97 -0700, you wrote:

Dear Richard,

I don't know how I found your web page, but I'm glad I did.. You see, I went to LA and Hollywood 8 years ago as a singer/songwriter and, to a certain extent, experienced many of the same things you did. It's funny, you move out there thinking it's so "cool" and "just like paradise" buy you quickly get slapped in the face. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy hangin' on the "Strip" on Sunset during the Golden Years (it's sooo depressing to go back, what happened?), drinking, and at least feeling like a rock-star, but soon it got old. The flakes and fake-attitudes get to you and leave you longing for something better. "How long can I put up with hangin' around in this (Hollywood) environment?" I would ask. Although I never did drugs, or live in Hollywood (I lived on the West Side and in the Hancock Park area on Masselin), I completely agree with your viewpoints and wish every kid "dreaming" of making it in Hollywood could read your page.

Your right about the gang problem as well. It's completely out of hand. These guys own the streets in areas, the cops and residents are giving up, and the bad neighborhoods continue to spread. Not to mention the real-estate markets has sunk fot the last 6 years. I can't think of any reason to buy a house in LA, let alone raise a family and send my kids to one of the pathetic LAUSD schools. I don't see any improvements, and fear the worst. It seems so bad in LA comparatively to where else I've been. For instance, race relations in LA are terrible. Blacks, Whites, and Mexicans are all reaching their boiling points, blaming each other for each's problems. It got worse every year I was out there.

Now, I've been out of LA for a month, after packing up my hopes and dreams and moving them back home to Chicago. where I'm a computer programmer. Although I wouldn't trade my experiences out in LA for anything, looking back it was real tough and the people were real "interesting." All I can say is that I hope your happy with where you are and your not alone. Almost everyone that I knew as a real friend has packied it up as well. I can't imagine what it's like today.

Thanks for the thoughts,

Alan

      Dear Alan,

      Thank you for taking the time to read my pages and I am glad you liked them. I always wondered about that lure of moving to Hollywood, and I guess I was also taken in a little by the whole thing - even after I had been living in LA for many years. I guess everyone has to learn for themselves. In particular, I really feel that all those runaway teens are duped in thinking they will find what they are looking for in Hollywood. If I was a parent whose child had run away and I had heard he/she was living on the Hollywood streets, I would be out of my mind with worry.

      I learned a lot of new things living in Hollywood/Los Angeles and consider myself the wiser for it. Although I would prefer to eat crushed glass rather than return, I don't regret having lived there. I got the impression you feel the same.

      Los Angeles - and many other big cities - are perhaps great places to be a young adult but terrible when it comes time to invest in a community with family, career, etc. There is just too much of everything: drugs, gangs, poverty, wealth, etc. In Hollywood and Los Angeles especially, there is suck a lack of parks, sports teams, etc. and such a preponderance of show business morality in terms of the supremacy of style over substance, consumerism, etc. It sucks. It is not for nothing that so many people leave after going to school or growing up there.

      I am not quite sure where I will settle down, but I am fine where I am for the moment. Thank you for inquiring.

      I wish you luck out in Chicago in your future.

      Very Truly Yours,

      Richard Geib