Published: Feb 27, 2005 LOS ANGELES (AP) - The hulking letters of the Hollywood sign loom over the homeless shelter where Andrew Stone sleeps, but the teenage guitarist is no closer to stardom than he was on the streets of Atlanta.
Posted on 02/27/2005 11:20:21 AM PST by TheOtherOne
Teens Find Desperation on Hollywood's Streets
Published: Feb 27, 2005 LOS ANGELES (AP) - The hulking letters of the Hollywood sign loom over the homeless shelter where Andrew Stone sleeps, but the teenage guitarist is no closer to stardom than he was on the streets of Atlanta.
The gangly 19-year-old tells a story that sounds like the slow lament of the songs he writes.
Got here just two weeks ago in a 1985 Chevy Caprice. Car trashed by thieves who snatched a friend's guitar. Pawned a minidisc player for $27, but a thief stole the cash and a cell phone as well. Got $20 for his precious blue Alvarez guitar. The buyer planned to smash it in a rock video.
Now Stone is broke and doesn't know anyone except the few friends he smokes pot with as they roam the streets.
By day, he still sees a second chance in every new encounter. He's desperate to make music - and to recreate himself - on this new stage. At night, he's one of 64 teens who crash at the Covenant House crisis shelter off Santa Monica Boulevard.
About one-third of Los Angeles County's estimated 10,000 homeless teens and young adults live on Hollywood's streets. They're a fraction of the estimated 175,000 unaccompanied teenagers who are homeless somewhere in the United States during any year, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless.
Here, their hard-luck stories - of gangs, drugs, prostitution and jail - have a Hollywood twist.
"Sorry to burst your bubble, but this is reality and there's no movie stars and there's no one here to take care of you," says Linda Chipres, 20, of the star-struck teens she has seen come and go during two years on the streets.
Chipres, who is addicted to crystal meth and dates a male prostitute, says the new arrivals crowd the best squat spots and siphon away the resources of aid groups.
"It's like, 'Go home, you dumb bastard!'" she says, pushing up glasses held together with a thin twisted wire. "... 'Cause the longer you stay out here, the more you get stuck."
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Stone says his road to Hollywood began five years ago, when his mother started dating a "crazy guy." They clashed constantly and, within months, Stone and his three brothers were in foster care.
It wasn't long before their mother retrieved them. Then, two days after the reunion, she told the kids they were going to Dairy Queen for ice cream. Instead, she parked at a local foster care office, dropped off her children and drove away.
As he watched her go, all Stone could think about was his brand new drum set that was sitting, unpacked and unplayed, on her living room floor. He had just turned 14.
"I don't care to see my mother," he says now. "My mother had a chance to keep us and she chose not to."
After four years of foster care, Stone turned 18 and no longer qualified for the program.
He says his foster father was a good man who offered to support him if he chose college over music. Unwilling to give up his guitar, Stone quit high school and began life on the street.
"He always thought I was too wild and he always thought my music was a bad thing," Stone says. "He didn't see that this is what I wanted to do with my life."
An older brother is now in college, his foster father adopted one brother and the third was placed with another foster family.
At his lowest point, Stone says, he worked at a Subway shop during the day and slept behind the store at night.
"You just think, 'What did I do to deserve this? What did I do to get here?'"
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No one is more familiar with Stone's passion for music than Paul Baker, his foster father. That passion may be the only thing Baker would recognize about Stone today.
Baker knew Stone by his middle name, Kyle, as did everyone Stone knew in Atlanta's northern suburbs.
Stone's dirty blond hair, now clipped short, was long and curly "almost like an Afro," Baker said in a phone interview.
Stone never spoke with the British accent he now affects and he wore Polo shirts, not polyester bell bottoms. He was an excellent student, active in a church youth group and was taking a horsemanship class, Baker says.
But when Stone turned 18, Baker says, he became another person. He challenged house rules and "went ballistic" when Baker disciplined him.
Baker says his foster son was so convinced he would make it in music that he "lived in a kind of fantasy world." He says he never forced Stone to give up that dream, but counseled "a balanced life" that included college.
Within three weeks of turning 18, Stone had quit high school and was gone. Baker had no idea where his foster son was until The Associated Press called him for this story 1 1/2 years later.
"This is a bright kid, fully capable of school and college, who made a personal choice to pursue music. But it didn't work out. And when it doesn't work out, he creates a new identity, a new scenario," said Baker, who directs an alternative school for emotionally troubled youth.
"He never had to be homeless."
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Every outreach worker knows kids like Stone who don't have to be homeless.
There are the young girls who follow their boyfriends onto the street, the kids whose parents wire them money and the teens escaping foster care.
Yet statistics suggest that a vast majority of homeless teens are not on the streets by choice - and many struggle with mental and emotional problems.
Nearly half of homeless Hollywood teens displayed some form of mental illness and almost one in four left home because of physical abuse, according to a comprehensive 1998 report presented at the National Symposium on Homelessness Research, "Homeless Youth: Research, Intervention and Policy."
Once on Hollywood's streets, one-third engage in prostitution. About half of the homeless at a Hollywood drop-in clinic reported using alcohol and drugs, the report found.
Some children use homelessness to get attention, says Susan Ruswick, a former homeless teen who now delivers blankets, food and hygiene supplies to Hollywood teens several times a week.
These children quickly get in over their heads - but are too scared, too addicted or too proud to ask for help, according to Ruswick, who founded Youth Link of America, a support organization for homeless teens.
"If they don't get it together by the time they're 20 and choose a different life, they wind up with all sorts of mental problems," she says. "Once you're down, that's where you stay."
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Stone gets up and leaves the shelter every morning with his remaining guitar strapped to his back, a beat-up acoustic with psychedelic mushrooms sketched in black ball point pen.
He walks the streets searching for a job, a gig and a friendly face - anything to get some money, to get a name. He plays on street corners in the rain, on the subway and for hours in the shelter as metal doors slam in the background.
Stone hopes that his donated bell-bottom polyester pants, fading rocker T-shirts and a gray cap stitched with the words "Acoustic Stone" will distinguish him in a place crowded with aspiring talent.
"I have to play my guts out every time I play a song," he says. "Out here in California, everyone wants to be original and they're so original they're all the same."
---
Stone was in Hollywood one week when he spotted the Rockotitlan Cafe. The cozy, out-of-the-way coffee shop has a cramped stage and a microphone no one's using.
Tiny white lights on the awning twinkle in the dusk, and painted black geckos climb the multicolored walls filled with artwork. A brochure on the counter offers: "Are you a musician? Just come by and play."
And Stone does, jamming for more than an hour as the rain washes down the grimy streets.
He smoked some pot a few hours before, and the music flows: a love song to his high school girlfriend, an ode to his late grandfather, a bouncing bluegrass tune that makes his brow furrow and his legs jump.
"My story has been told
I'm stuck in the middle
I have to go now
And make my decisions
You can't be in them
So I turn to dreaming."
At 7:55 p.m., Stone is ready for another set when someone in the audience who knows he's homeless shouts: "Hey, what time's your curfew?"
A few people in the small crowd chuckle. Stone glances at his watch, shrugs and decides to blow off the shelter's 8 p.m. curfew for new residents.
"Who comes in at eight?" Stone replies into the mike. "If they kick me out, I'll sleep in my car and be happy."
Twenty minutes later, he steps off stage, eases his guitar into his backpack, collects a free soda and slides on his jacket.
"I'm Andrew Stone, The Acoustic Stone," he says, but no one is listening. "All-original music by an all-original loser."
And he slips out the door into the rain.
AP-ES-02-27-05 1332EST
LOL!
OK, you have a point.
It's probably the result of liberal self-esteem education in the early grades that causes so many youngsters to confuse "originality" with "talent".
Good post.
He does seem to have enough sense to keep trying. Hopefully, the mission chaplain will tell him the story of the prodigal son and he'll go back to his foster-father. When he's out of his twenties, most likely
Ha! I worked at Harry's Cafe for two years, the sister store of Joe's. Fiesta was so much fun.
It's such a small world, isn't it?
Now that I think about it, there is something hopeful and maybe even good about this story. These kids may have gone about it the wrong way and not know when or how to get out, when they don't succeed. But they at least had the guts to take a stab at their dreams.
Well, don't despair completely about us. You get out of the yuppie suburbia crowd, there are alot of X'ers who are conservative, pretty strict with their kids, and work one job with a stay at home or part-time working mother. You won't see that highlighted in the media I assure you.
Having been thru the BS the first time, we're not falling for it with our kids the second.
I'm glad you escaped after only three days ... but about the novel ... I have written two of them and find it difficult to get anyone to read them, including family members ... so, if you'll E-mail me yours, I'll E-mail you one of mine and I promise I'll read yours if you promise to read mine. Ozman@telerama.com.
It's a deal. See my profile for the first 7 chapters. I'll send the rest within 24 hours.
So is there no legitiamate story about homeless during a republican administration?
Oh yea, and what in this article says anything negative about the current republican administration....other than your comments?
Right. Right. I live near Hollywood too. See first hand the entertainment industry, get them bright eyed innocent youngsters from the Midwest or back east and get chewed and spit up. Raped and stripped of dignity (sometimes). either way, it's the end. also: homeless in santa monica tend not to be those kids. they are the old bums. and yes they are treated well. correctamundo. funny isn't it.
OK, maybe the kids are wrong, mayn are foolish, whatever. BUT they should NOT be prostitutes. that's completely horrible.
I agree, we have the oldies here in SM, you have the kids in Hollywood. We have the better bums by far.
Your point is exactly right. The homeless were absent in the media from 1993-2001.
I've always been an artist, but I've never given up the work a day world in hopes of a "break." I made art on my free time, and loved the work that gave me a paycheck. I am retired now, and realize that I made more paintings when I was working, if only because I knew how to use my free time. It is terribly important for the artist to have one foot in the world of the normal, but the lesson is lost on the young.
Exactly! Our main job as parents is to provide kids the tools by which to make good choices and become productive citizens... they are not pets to be pampered, or objects to be ignored or abused.. they are human beings that depend on us to help them into what they should be.
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