Mr Mojo Read Free Page B

small bunches of tulips and individually packed red roses. Pinet Fleurs, the florist next door to the entrance to the cemetery in Boulevard de Ménilmontant, say they sell flowers to Morrison-mourners every day of the year.
    As you leave the cemetery the graffiti continues: ‘The Doors are for ever, not some fast trend’, ‘I ask this of you, Jim, is this the end?’, ‘Fuck it all’, ‘Jim, dead but not gone’, ‘Some oysters for you, Jim’, ‘Jim, we party for you for ever’, ‘Jim, Becky from Crystal Lake, Illinois,Loves You’. There is graffiti from all over the world – cryptic little messages in Italian, French, German, Spanish, personal pleas from Australia, America, Canada and Britain. The final message, scrawled on a plastic rubbish bin opposite the Métro, is written in thick black felt-tip: ‘Jim stinks’, it says.

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    The New Californians
    Today in Los Angeles, the sixties are still very much alive and kicking – if you know where to look, that is. Laurel Canyon is often written about as the place that gave the world Crosby, Stills & Nash, the place that inspired Joni Mitchell’s ‘Ladies of the Canyon’, Danny Sugerman’s
Wonderland Avenue
. It is a neighbourhood of benign bad behaviour and clandestine misdemeanours. Everyone from Clara Bow and Christina Applegate to Frank Zappa and Marilyn Manson has lived there, and it retains a genuine local feel – almost impossible in LA. This being Los Angeles, the area has also had its fair share of dark moments, not least the Wonderland murders, which happened in 1981, when four people were bludgeoned to death with striated steel pipes in a drug-related plot that involved the porn star John Holmes.
    Despite being the subject of standard-issue gentrification, the Canyon has kept the funky, rainbow-coloured charm of the Love Generation, something that is most apparent when visiting the Canyon Country Store, still the neighbourhood’s social hub. Wedged along the twisting Laurel Canyon Boulevard in the Santa Monica Mountains between West Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley, this is the place mentioned in Jim Morrison’s ‘Love Street’ (‘I see you live on Love Street, There’s this store where the creatures meet’). In fact the song was completely based around the store; Morrison would spend days hanging out there, loafing around outside, sitting on an orange crate, staring at girls and drinking from a bottle of Scotch. For years the graffiti MR MOJO RISIN’ graced the front of the store. The wooden-floored grocery shop/café is still the place to go for canyon dwellers with the munchies, or for those in the industry who aren’t working, and who need somewhere in the morning to stop for an espresso having spent all night partying in the Valley. Here they’ll find Dandy Don’s ice cream, Dave’s Kombucha (fermented tea), bespoke sandwiches, hearts of palm salads, and the almost-but-not-quite-legendary decaf almond-milk latte. Run out of Californian chardonnay, Heinz baked beans, Daddy’s Sauce or patchouli incense? Look no further.
    The Country Store is also the site of the annual Photo Day each October, where the residents of theCanyon all come together to have a group picture taken. The tradition dates back to the late eighties, a celebration of the sort of community spirit you don’t find anywhere else in LA.
    Over the hill, the temporal nature of Hollywood is at its most obvious. Here, in the village of bougainvillea and watery melodies, time stands still. And if you want to wear your bellbottoms and feathers, don’t think twice, it’s all right. This is where so many people ended up when they moved to LA in the mid-sixties. Sure, there were many more who ended up living in squalor in East Hollywood, and even more whose living arrangements involved the wrong end of Sunset Boulevard (where the house numbers are