Scarff Street

Scarff Street was crazy.

Scarff Street is a real place, though it doesn’t seem real. In fact, so much craziness happened there, Scarff Street to me, feels “surreal” .

Scarff Street is a secluded street in Los Angeles, surrounded by W. Adams, 23rd, Hoover and Figueroa.

Scarff Street was less than a mile from the USC campus but it might as well have been in Indonesia. It was a community on the fringe with a personality that was as predictable as broken glass.

During the day, Scarff street could be pleasant. When gun fire was minimal, there was a equanimity and feeling of community.  Unlike many central L.A. streets, Scarff was lined with trees that formed  a canopy of branches and leaves that inter locked a hundred feet above us, creating a cathedral like dome over head. When the air was cool and the sun just right, the sun light filtered through the foliage like angles dancing through stained glass.

I’ve got to admit. Living here was fun. It was different. It made you feel alive. The pretentiousness of USC was unknown. What you drove and how much your daddy made didn’t matter on Scarff Street. On Scarff Street what mattered was carrying yourself properly and having lady luck on your shoulder.

A ride down Scarff Street revealed a variety of lifestyles. There was a classic elegance. Many old homes built when L.A. was just a child of a city growing up near the Pacific, trying to find its own identity. Many of the homes were renovated and well maintained. Many others were run down, and looked like a place to lay down and shoot heroin. There were vacant lots and over grown yards. There were multi unit apartment buildings and single family homes. All the apartments looked the same, with their stucco blandness and 12 unit, gated monotony. The buildings were set on lots that were narrow and deep, often stretching several hundred feet off the street.

At night, Scarff Street transformed into a monster. This is when the shadows emerged from the darkness, immune to identification and prosecution.

Night on this street was dark like black velvet. It was outer space dark, where no one can hear you scream. At night, the thick canopy choked off all light. Occasionally the brightest full moon could penetrate, but typically illumination was at a premium, generated by a distant street lamp that was often shot out by a sniper’s bullet. Truly, the only light you could count on was from the ubiquitous flare of the LAPD choppers that flew over so often, you would think you lived in Baghdad.

On a beach cruiser, you could get to the USC campus in 10 minutes. 2 blocks to West Adams, hang a right. A left turn on Portland. 2 more blocks and you were on the craziest street in L.A. 28th street, also known as the ROW, where sorority and fraternity houses were side by side. Laws didn’t apply here. Streets were washed with buckets of paint. Stop signs were decorated with the Greek alphabet. Intersections were parking spots for Budweiser delivery trucks. There was no drinking age and sexual promiscuity was part of the master plan.

Like any good drama; the setting is integral, but it’s the characters that make this story. And these characters were unlike any I have ever met.

                                                   picture circa 1985 South Central L.A.

Schultz (wiping blood off his brow)  and Geroux (back right standing on a turnstile) and Gilmore (glasses and stained shirt bottom left) and that’s me in the back (apparently holding up a pay telephone, where the hell that came from I can’t even hazard a guess)

We all moved to Scarff Street, 2nd semester 1985. We were living in the Delta Chi house at the time, but for a myriad of reasons, which I am sure I will remember in future editions of “That’s Crazy” we were asked to leave by the national chapter.    

it’s not often that frat members, fully paid on their dues, are asked to leave, but that is the way it went down.

If you’re a fan of That’s Crazy, then Schultz you know. A salami sandwich for a brain. A Mexican soap opera for a temperament. A man looking for a challenge to overcome and an insult to defend.

Gilmore was a business major who had an eye on success and a head for figures. He fancied himself a modern day gunslinger who had a nice jump shot and a belly-laugh that started in his bowels. But when he was drinking, he was human phlegm. He could be irrational like a menstruating mastodon. He could be  unpredictable as a Tijuana traffic light.

Geroux was a USC football player. PERIOD. He was a fullback who could have gone pro. But one day, all by himself on practice field, his knee went one way and he went the other. A couple of major surgeries later, his USC football career was over. Even though he still had a free education to a premiere university, Geroux quit. School was not why Geroux came to USC. He was there to play football. When football disappeared from his life, The 250 pound side of beef with a marginal interest in studying, disappeared from the classroom. With no tests to study for, no homework to do, Geroux became a Scarff Street instigator, a ying to Schultz’s yang.
There were other characters that came and went. Tony and Dawson and Big Boy and Battle Cat. When you woke up in the morning, it was unclear who or what might be asleep on the couch. Scarff was a magnet for an anything goes attitude. You want to hammer the spice rack through the kitchen wall, Buffy, go ahead. You want to roast hot dogs over an open flame in the back bedroom, Blondie, who cares.

It’s Scarff Street and nobody cares about anything here. I can say with great certainty, this was the wildest time of my life. The most carefree time of my life. Indelible stories were forged during this time that are so unbelievable, it’s a good thing we have a few photos to prove we’re not liars.

Schultz, Gilmore, Geroux, Cordan: This quartet of humanity in the end apartment at Scarff Street would end up living a Hunter S. Thompson existence that required a safety belt, a crash helmet and a priest.

to be continued…..