Tell about 43 shots that got away

I would have liked to have taken a shot of my feet resting on the platform inside a big wooden bucket half filled with steaming herbed water at the China Tibet Foot Soak place..

Four rounded bags of cloth and who knows what else rested on the sidewalk outside the Studio City Branch of the LAPL. The muted grays and blues were terrific together, small holes providing accents in lighter tones.

I almost went back to the car for my camera, but decided they would still be there when I got back. They were, but their owner was also there, and I didn’t want to bother him. I can’t imagine how he carried them. There wasn’t a cart in sight.

As I drove by about a block from Kaiser-Permanente Hospital in Panorama City, a 30-something man in a blue hospital gown crossing the street with a bottle of soda in his hand. The wind rippled through the split in his gown and his flip-flops slapped the pavement as he headed back to the medical facility.

Wonder what he was in for?

Just outside a circle of guitar players and singers at a campsite, a white poodle rests inside a guitar case lined with emerald green. Her chin rests on the edge of the case. She sighs happily.

I drove through Hollywood this morning around six in the morning. Near the corner of Hollywood and Highland I missed this shot:

A homeless man sleeping sitting up on a bench, with the neck of his hoodie pulled up over his mouth. Above him, a huge poster with a row of clean young women in pastels sitting in lotus position, smiling serenely.

I was too close to even attempt a snapshot through my car window.

I tried to get my camera out, but couldn’t in time.

A good looking guy in jeans and a cowboy hat stepped up onto the back rung of his shopping cart and started coasting down the Trader Joe’s parking lot in Palmdale. Even better, his wife or girlfriend put her fingertips on his butt and gave him a push.

6 boys
3 skateboards
1 hill

Dang, they were having fun.

As I got into my car this morning, the newspaper man went past and threw the Los Angeles Times from the window of his car with such wild vigor that it landed on the neighbor’s roof.

He had to get out, walk over, and get it down. I was burrowing for my camera when he did it, so I don’t even know for sure how he managed it. Maybe this happens often enough that he has rigged a paper-retrieving device!

I was coming out of my office and saw a nicely groomed man in a business suit on the other side of Evergreen with a ladder under his arm. But what was really interesting was that he was cruising along the sidewalk on a skateboard!

Perfectly erect as he swooped around the corner and up the alley. Wonderful!

And me with my camera in my backpack!

The neighbor girl, about 11, just jumped up onto the concrete wall that separates our houses to check the weather, I guess. She was in a tee shirt, bare foot, and walked down the wall like she was on a balance beam. Her feet were about 20 feet above me and 20 over because the wall’s at the top of a slope. She looked out at the clouds topping the mountains, which I can see through my kitchen window. The thermometer outside reads 40 degrees.