Hollywood, Los Angeles, California

:For other uses, see Hollywood (disambiguation)

Runaways

A serious problem for Hollywood since the 1960s has been its attractiveness for desperate runaways. Every year, hundreds of runaway adolescents flee broken homes across North America and flock to Hollywood hoping to become movie stars, as portrayed by the lyrics of the Burt Bacharach song Do You Know the Way to San Jose "All the stars /That never were /Are parking cars / And pumping gas." They soon discover they have extremely slim chances of competing against professionally trained actors and end up sinking into homelessness, which is a severe problem in general in Hollywood for adults as well as youth.

Related Topics:
1960s - Runaway - North America - Movie star - Burt Bacharach - Homelessness

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Some go home; some stay in Hollywood and join the prostitutes and panhandlers lining its boulevards; others go to Skid Row in Downtown; and some end up in the seamy underside of the entertainment business–the large pornography industry in the San Fernando Valley. This grim side of Hollywood was portayed in Jackson Brown's song, Boulevard, whose lyrics include reference to a notorious hustler hangout of the 1970s, "Down at the Golden Cup/They set the young ones up/Under the neon lights/Selling day for night", and in the books of Charles Bukowski.

Related Topics:
Prostitutes - Panhandlers - Skid Row - Downtown - Pornography - San Fernando Valley - Jackson Brown - 1970s - Charles Bukowski

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