Movin' on up.

I hear that the city is spending a lot of money to gentrify my neighborhood. Every week there are new restaurants (Hungry Cat – try the heirloom tomato/watermelon salad!), clubs (Les Deux is back!), new throngs of club kids (Lindsay Lohan drinking bottled water at Hyde!), and nowhere to park.

Last month when my building was being retrofitted for earthquakes, the workmen kept parking their trucks in the driveway. Hey, I’m paying for that parking space in the back. “You can’t park there,” I said. “But there’s no parking in the street,” the foreman complained. “You can’t block the driveway,” I insisted. He threw me a surly look and went to move his truck.

Hollywood is still a barrio bordered by prettified Larchmont and picturesque Hancock Park, but we have the best farmers’ market in the city, and the sweat and stink and smog evaporate in the pines and eucalyptus of the hills, where red-tailed hawks circle lazily on warm currents of air.

In Griffith Park this morning I saw a movement, three coyotes through the mist: scrawny, rangy critters fixing me with that wary, resigned, flitting stare before loping up the path I was going to take with my dog.