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
This has been going on in Hollywood since at least the 60's, the beacon of stardom, cheap and plentiful drugs, and the "sex, drugs and rock and roll" lifestyle calls them. I used to have to deal with them when i was hanging out in Hollywood at the peak of the 80's boom when Guns N' Roses debuted - most of these kids *chose* to run away from home and think living on the streets is glamorous - lots of the wannabe rawk stars back then even thought it gave you more credibility to be "from the streets", and lots of musicians who made it would lie about it in interviews, claiming to have lived on the streets to make them look tough, when we all knew that were trust fund babies or had stripper girlfriends who paid the bills on comfy apartments. We used to talk to these kids, they're just fanatically naive - they thought getting a job was "selling out", they just did'nt get it - they expected free handouts, got bitter and nasty when you did'nt "share" what you had with them, and were more concerned with their drug use than eating, all the while badmouthing everyone and everything because society refuses to fund their extended vacation from responsibility. (sound familier?)
I just can't summon any pity for these kids, we used to try and help them, but they'd just spit in your face if you tried to do more than just hand your money and possesions over to them, rip you off blind if you turned your back, and laughed at you if you tried to talk to them about getting out of all that.
There's plenty of organizations that try to help these kids out, like Children Of The Night, donate if you want, but the best solution is to give these kids car fare so they can go home. Nothing forced these kids there, they're rolling the dice for "stardom", and childishly refusing to better themselves so they can perpetuate a silly rawk and roll posture they think makes them better "artists". Like the article says, most of them will try it for a while, and when it gets colder at night around November, they'll skedaddle back home.
If you make it easier for them, there will just be more of them, thinking it's cool to live off handouts, spare change and dumpster diving.
this is typical...Immature kids punish Foster parents for the sins of the real Parents. They try to believe that they can run away and erase the past. but life is tough for everyone in some way.
They "Blew it" when they ran off.
Now they wallow in self pity..and form their little "Victim" identity. justifing Lieing,stealing,and not really trying to work.
It all boils down to Rebellion, and blame of others.
they never get better untill they "Grow-up"
It's a place fairly dripping with dispair. It took me all of about three days to come to that conclusion, turn around and get my sorry ass back to school. No regrets.
They probably don't even know what "growing up" is. Broken families are a pretty consistent theme. It's not reasonable to expect a person to understand something they've never been exposed to.
I fall into the Generation X age group and for me to have an 18 year old right now I would have had to have given birth in high school. You are really stretching the limits there.
When I lived in Santa Barbara in the late 70's, we had many homeless as well. And, yes the weather was a big draw. There were always slews of guys from Boston or Philadelphia who had decided to "go West, young man!" working as bartenders and busboys or waiters, as well.
I think the myth-making machine of Hollywood creates a reality to the weak-minded. I grew up in the Central Valley and always knew the "make it in Hollywood" scenario was nonsense. Unfortunately, when I lived on the East coast I can't tell you how many people, young and old, got starry-eyed when I told them I was from California.
They were under the impression that it was wall-to-wall movies stars and we all palled together.
You must live near me.....the urban outdoorsman have it pretty good in Santa Monica. They get ocean front meals and sleep on the beach.....people in 3rd world countries don't live as well.
But I knew better anyhow. ....well someone had to say it. THANKS!
You're right, but I also think that by the time he was placed in the foster home at 14, too much damage was done for him to think rationally.
That's exactly right. It's easy to say he made poor choices but, while that is technically true, it isn't that simple.
If your whole life is lived in turmoil and you're filled with anxiety it's pretty damn hard to make all these wise choices people are talking about. I am by no means a bleeding heart, but what happens is that these kids just don't have the same tools to cope with their situation and make decisions that others do.
Covenant House does heroic service in the best tradition of Christian chairty. Bill Simon is a major supporter of that organization, something he did not emphasize enough during his gubernatorial campaign.
Isla Vista! Gad! You poor thing. I lived on Olive St off of Micheltorena. I could walk to work at the El Presidio.
Santa Barbara is indeed a beautiful city, and is the only city in the USA to have completed their landscaping project. The big concerns when I was living there, was the development of East Beach and the Futures Foundation which at that time was headed by Fess Parker.
Is the AP really that stupid? Do they REALLY believe that when 20,000 no-talent doofuses come to LA every year and fail to become stars, that society is at fault?
Well, at least you don't call us slackers anymore.
Why are you hassling MR? He agrees with you, ya nut. :P
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