Marines, Hollywood Blvd. Are an Odd Mix

Past bars and cinemas, the Marines walked in a cluster of clean-shaven heads. Hollywood Boulevard is a carnival on Friday nights, and these Marines drifted conspicuously through crowds of tourists, long-haired heavy-metal devotees and punk rockers.

“There are lots of jarheads (Marines) here,” said Lance Cpl. Bob Botos, 20, who had driven two hours from Camp Pendleton. “We come to Hollywood to buy some beer and get drunk.”

“And look for girls,” said Lance Cpl. Bob Barr, 19. “What’s a Marine without a girl?”

A punk rocker in jack boots moved toward the Marines. He was ranting incoherently when, suddenly, he spun and slammed his fist into a storefront window. Boom! But the glass did not shatter.

“What a freak!” Botos yelled. “Our job as Marines is to take care of freaks like that.”

The Marine and the punk stared each other down, if only for a second. The punk was pulled away by a passing friend who insisted they meet someone named Santa. The Marines laughed.

“As long as we keep to ourselves,” said Pfc. Tony Greene, 22, “we’ll be all right.”

Military men, if only because of their numbers, have become an accepted presence on the boulevard. Almost 22,000 of them came to Hollywood last year, according to officials at the Bob Hope Hollywood USO. At least, that’s how many stopped by the USO. Probably another 20,000 bypassed the place and headed straight for the boulevard, USO officials estimate. That means up to 800 servicemen can hit Hollywood on an average Friday night.

These military men are a visual oddity when moving among the boulevard’s bizarre habitues--the rockers, drug dealers and homeless. Arriving on weekend passes from 21 military bases surrounding Los Angeles, the servicemen dress in a kind of forced casualness: T-shirts and out-of-fashion designer jeans, or clothes too trendy for their strict haircuts. They mix, if somewhat uneasily, with the Hollywood crowds.

“I’m constantly surprised by the numbers of military people who come through this place,” said Todd David Schwartz, doorman at Club Hollywood. “You see them walking on the street. They have that all-American look, not the big-city look.”

Dance clubs like Club Hollywood and the Krush Bar are favored hangouts, as are clothing shops and bars just off the boulevard. Said one bartender, “You get six of them in here and three of them are under age . . . you know.”

A popular tattoo studio near Hollywood and Ivar Street offers a variety of military designs. A bulldog with the letters “U.S.M.C.” beneath costs $54. Seventy dollars buys a nude woman in an Army helmet.

And a good number of the servicemen spend the evening simply cruising, stopping by a liquor store, talking to young women, yelling to buddies. Street regulars quietly tolerate these weekend intruders.

“The Marines? They come in here to get a pizza sometimes,” said Andrea Navarro, 18, a regular at Greco’s, a hangout for heavy-metal rockers.

Dressed in a black leather jacket and torn jeans, Navarro sneered at the thought of meeting a military man. “No,” she said, “we don’t talk to them.”

One of Attractions

The Marine Corps, Army, Air Force and Navy all operate major bases within three hours of Los Angeles. Hollywood is just one of the attractions for servicemen bored with base life.

Universal Studios Tour, five minutes away, drew more than 100,000 servicemen last year, an executive there said. The beaches and Disneyland attract large numbers of enlisted men. Camp Pendleton is just an hour or so north of San Diego, so many Marines go there.

However, just as many go north to Hollywood. Marines from Camp Pendleton and other camps to the south and east, such as El Toro and Twentynine Palms, are the most frequent visitors to Hollywood, said Joan Jones, executive director of the Hollywood USO.

So many men from Twentynine Palms travel west that the Desert Stage Bus Lines schedules a route from camp to the front door of the USO. Marines step off the bus by 9:30 on Friday night, check into the Holiday Inn or a cheaper hotel nearby and head back to base on Sunday afternoon.

Army and Air Force officials said their enlisted men also favor Hollywood.

Popular Attraction

“We have a number of our soldiers that go down there, I couldn’t tell you how many,” said Lt. Col. Francis Pitaro of the Army’s Ft. Irwin. “Have you ever been to Ft. Irwin? You know where Barstow is. You turn left at Barstow and that is where Ft. Irwin is.

“You have to travel three hours to get to Hollywood,” the lieutenant colonel said. “But once you get there, there’s a lot to do.”

Not all of it is wholesome. Police and USO officials say servicemen can run into trouble with the prostitutes, pimps and drug dealers who do their business on and around Hollywood Boulevard.

“For the most part, we don’t have that much contact with the military,” said Los Angeles Police Officer Barry Moore. “If they do have a problem with the police, it’s because they get busted trying to solicit a working girl. Or we may run into them, and they’ve been partying a little to much. We’ll send them back to their hotel rooms.”

Servicemen say they come to Hollywood forewarned.

“Our first sergeant and platoon sergeant warned us about where not to go,” said Pfc. James Washington, 19, a Texan who was making his first trip to Hollywood. “They said don’t go into these strange-looking bars. They said stay out of tattoo joints.

‘Hey, Marine, Stop’

“When I saw those freaks down here with hair cut all these ways and their big boots like it’s cold, I kind of stayed away,” Washington said. “These hookers here say, ‘Hey, Marine, stop.’ ”

For those Marines who do not stop, there is refuge. Jones of the USO said a good part of her work is trying to protect naive soldiers from “somebody cheating them out of every nickel they have or (from) some hooker on the street.”

“If you’re a kid from Georgia and you don’t know from nothing, Hollywood can be a shock,” Jones said. “They are fascinated by it but also frightened.”

Jones told of an Air Force officer and his wife who, newly transferred from Arkansas, made their first visit to Hollywood last weekend. They were promptly robbed on the street. The officer still had a $400 check, but no one in town would cash it, she said. The couple showed up at the USO penniless.

“They were frightened out of their minds,” Jones said. “They told me, ‘We’ve never seen anything like the people in this town.’ ”

Place of Refuge

The USO occupies a modern building located just off the boulevard, on the same block as a library and a strip joint. There are no beds, but soldiers in need can sleep on couches. The kitchen is always stocked, there’s a place to check duffel bags and the showers are clean.

On weekend nights, volunteers keep the USO open into the early hours of the morning in case servicemen run into trouble.

“If they’ve been mugged, we take care of them,” Jones said. “If they need to sleep it off, they sleep. If they’ve spent all their money on having fun, they can come here to eat.”

The USO also offers a number of diversions from night life on the street. Soldiers can dance with UCLA sorority members on some nights or watch movies shown in the basement on a big-screen television. They can buy tickets at discount to plays, professional sports events and tapings at television studios.

“If they’re just going down there on their own, the first thing they are going to do is hit the bars and then they get into trouble,” said Rich Christie, a recreation specialist at the Marine Corps base in Twentynine Palms. “If they plan their days, say take in a play or go to a Raiders game, this helps them stay out of trouble.”

Appeal of Neon Lights

Still, it is the neon lights of Hollywood that appeal to many soldiers.

“They’ve heard so much about it, and now they can actually go there,” Christie said.

Pfc. John DeVito, 21, continues to come to Hollywood from Camp Pendleton in spite of--or perhaps because of--the strange sights he sees there.

“I almost got shot here, but we won’t get into that,” said DeVito, a native of Boston. “I like this place. I’m a glutton for punishment.”