Into The Sun

A few hundred feet above Palm Canyon, the silence begins to sink in. I first noticed the stillness as I woke from a night of deep, dreamless sleep. There were songs in my head, and songs in the trees. Just outside my window, chirps and warbles of every aviary denomination sang praise to the early…

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Permanent Vacation

There’s something about the desert… There’s something about the desert that keeps me coming back. I first visited Palm Springs in 1997, just a few weeks after moving to New York City. I was dating a woman who worked in Joshua Tree National Park, and spent a few days camping there. (I ended up turning…

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Helter Skelter

Three friends meet for dinner. They converge well after sundown at El Coyote, a kitschy Mexican joint smack in the middle of Hollywood, California. In the dusty haze of 1969, Sharon Tate ate her last meal there. They are three men, all in their early thirties, with less hair, perhaps, and more girth, for certain,…

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Welcome To The Jungle

When I saw Godsmack front man Sully Erna walking out of The Rainbow, I knew I had arrived. I am comfortably ensconced in room 322 of La Montrose Hotel in West Hollywood. The Roxy is just two blocks north. The Viper Room is not much further. It’s all very L.A., in an Axl Rose sort…

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