Neighbors resent the immorality and the damage to their marigolds. : Hookers Amid the Honeysuckle

Hardly a day goes by that someone is not crawling up the wall over a public nuisance that threatens his serenity, his morality or his right to a good night’s sleep. Show me a neighborhood that seems at peace with itself and I’ll show you a neighborhood at war because the cat next door is in heat and yowls all night.

The most recent example of San Fernando Valley outrage was aimed at the teen-age nightclubs whose hours were limited because of complaints from residents living close to the discos.

Admittedly, I found it difficult to take the whole thing too seriously, which prompted a reader to demand: “Have you ever been awakened by the sound of a teen-ager urinating against your house at 2 in the morning?”

I can’t say that I ever have, but I’m a heavy sleeper and might have missed it. However, the question does call my attention to the general problem of maintaining the virtue of a suburban neighborhood in an urban society.

Evil is bound to splash over from Broadway onto Peach Street.

I mention this by way of establishing my concern for a new vexation that threatens Life as We Know It. Ladies & gentlemen, boys and girls, I give you the Great Sepulveda Boulevard Casual Hooker Outrage.

They are rolling in the roses in suburbia.

Those who take pride in keeping informed know that Hollywood, led by my old friend Buzz Johnson of the Tick-Tock Cafe, has been working hard for many months in order to sweep hookers off the streets.

Buzz has even gone so far as to confront these ladies, shake his finger in their face and tell them to go back to Iowa where they belong and stop shaming their mothers. They just sort of look at Buzz and back away.

However, the Buzz Crusade has apparently worked. Armies of prostitutes, lacking the wit to seek flashier environs, have begun appearing on Sepulveda Boulevard.

Even by L.A. standards, Sepulveda is not exactly a Great White Way. It is, to the contrary, a heterogeneity of taco stands, car lots, topless clubs, beer bars, thrift shops and motels that rent by the hour.

That is not to say, I add before the missiles fly, that there are no decent, reputable, family-oriented establishments along the boulevard. Many of the motels offer nothing more arousing than free local calls, and a restaurant near Roscoe features a sign that announces, “Mel & Dottie Welcome You!”

The problem has gotten bad enough, however, for those living in the neighborhoods off Sepulveda to band together to do something about the prostitutes.

Hookers, boasting few graduate students among them, have taken to doing their business on the side streets to avoid the attention of cruising police cars, selecting front lawns, flower gardens and lobelia-lined pathways to satisfy their customers.

This has naturally attracted the attention of neighbors who resent the noise, the immorality and the damage to their marsh marigolds. First gophers, now this. So Sepulveda is organizing a kind of Neighborhood Hooker Watch.

I spoke with Judi Lirman, one of the organizers. I have heard of Neighborhood Watches against burglars and Community Arson Watches against fire-setters, but never a Prostitute Patrol.

I asked Judi how she would recognize a hooker if she saw one. She said she would be on the alert for women “hanging out on the street and not looking as though they were coming back from the grocery store.”

Oh.

“They have a leisurely pace,” Judi added wisely. But as we discussed the problem, she admitted that other hookers do not fit the traditional pattern:

“Some wear jogging shorts, T-shirts and sweats and look as if they’re out exercising. Casual hookers.” Recognizing a prostitute will not be easy. I wandered the Sepulveda Boulevard area all day and the closest I came was a young woman in French-cut shorts, a light T-shirt with no bra, frizzy hair and bare feet. She could have been a hooker or she could have been a feminist. Sometimes it’s hard to tell.

I might have simply flat-out asked her, except that she was carrying two plastic bags filled with empty aluminum cans, which would indicate she was probably a housewife on her way to a recycling bin.

Well, yes, she may have been a hooker who juggled aluminum cans while performing miracles, but I wasn’t about to ask.

Hours passed as I hung around Thirsty’s Hideout, which features tap beer and adult entertainment, the Oddball Cafe (“Live Nudes!”) and a motel with no name that offered closed-circuit television. A statue of a naked lady adorned the entryway.

And then I saw it. An attractive woman in a jogging suit sashaying down Sepulveda and not at all looking as though she had just come from the grocery store. A casual hooker, no doubt.

An older man in a Buick pulled up behind her. As I moved in, the horny old fool honked and opened his window. The woman stopped, smiled, leaned in the car and said, “Hi, dad.”

Hi, dad, hell. Stay out of your mother’s periwinkles.