L.A. is full of characters - public figures, stone weirdos and street cartoons.
You grin or grimace when you see them, wonder who they really are underneath the "act," register them as part of the streetscape and take them for granted. One such character just died, reports Will Campbell, who never took the guy for granted.
Will noticed "El Circo Loco" missing from Silver Lake. He inquired of the L.A. County Coroner's office. And he delivers a lovely, bittersweet elegy for the odd, squinty guy in the technicolor toreador costume, whose legal name we learn was "Antonio Ruiz" and who may have OD'd ...
I contacted the mortuary and was told that his family is not going to hold any sort of service. Instead they�re going to be transporting his body out of the country. I didn't ask where, but I did ask if it would be possible to pass my name and number onto his next of kin in hopes that they might contact me so I could express my condolences, perhaps even found out a bit more about El Circo's - I mean Antonio's life. Doubt it I'll hear from them, but it's the least I can do.
Sometimes it's those on the farthest edges of your perimeter with the most tenuous of connections that can tug the hardest when they leave you and Antonio's certainly proof of that. It's not that I knew him. But when you start walking around your neighborhood as I've been these last few months, the "regulars" can't help but stand out either with their presence or their absence.
I last saw Antonio last Thursday. He was sitting where he could often be found, on the southwest corner of Golden Gate Avenue and Sunset Boulevard. In full El Circo Loco regalia he was fussing with some final touch of his costume - getting ready to get his party started. His small boombox was beside him on the sidewalk blaring his trademark brassy music, and the high-pitched whistle he always blew was between his closed lips and he was tooting it in rhythm with the beat. As I passed him, I caught his eye and I patted my closed fist over my heart and pointed at him and he met the gesture with a semi-acknowledging squinty half-smile as I passed him.
So: If any of these L.A. fixtures suddenly disappeared -
- Angelyne
- Dennis Woodruff
- Dr. Marc Abrams
- Melrose Larry Green
- the fist-pumping loudmouthed old mountain-bike rider always seen in and around mid-Wilshire
- the bunny-stroking amateur opera-singer who sits outside the Hollywood Bowl
- or that older woman with the ossified beehive hairdo who lives in the huge black-lava-colored house near Melrose and stalks the street in leopard-skin prints ...
... would you notice?
Would you wonder what had happened? Would you wish you had bothered to stop and say hello while they still were alive? Would you care?
