Just Another Friday

Monday, April 11, 2005, at 08:36AM

By Eric Richardson

Sometimes I just have to sit back and wonder how it is that I ended up in my life out here in LA. Friday afternoon was one of those times.

It all started when I wanted to buy a pirate hook.

I wasn't sure where to do that. So I emailed Jon Regardie at the Downtown News and asked if anyone around the newsroom knew where I might pick one up. Oddly, he did.

Jon suggested a costume shop up in Los Feliz, on the corner of Hollywood and Mariposa. That's only a couple blocks away from the Sunset/Vermont Red Line station, so I walked over to Pershing Square and hopped on the train.

The ride there was uneventful. I brought a book -- The Immortal Class -- and read the first few pages. It's a short ride, though, so before I could really get immersed in the pages I was there.

Waiting to cross the light at Hollywood and Vermont a black lady, probably in her fifties or so, approached me.

"What school do you go to?"

"USC."

"I need to get an application there. How would I get one of those?"

"You'd probably just want to go down there and pick one up."

"How did you get yours? Do you know the number I could call?"

"They mailed it to me. I don't know the number off-hand. You'd probably just want to go there."

"How did you first get in touch with them?"

"They started sending me mail. I never really called or anything."

"So you don't have a number?"

"No, I'd say just take the bus down Vermont and ask someone where the admissions office is."

We talked for a couple more minutes. She said she was going to be sure to go do that. I said I had to go.

I didn't tell her I was going to buy a pirate hook.

But buy a pirate hook I did. Four dollars, from a costume shop stuffed above a lighting shop that's been there since the 1940's.

Bright yellow bag in hand I walked back to the subway station and caught the next train to Downtown.

I sat down in one of the handicap/elderly seats that face into the middle of the train. Next to me was a black guy, probably in his mid-twenties. I read a few more pages, then he asked me if I knew my way around Downtown. I told him I did. He wanted to get to somewhere in the 1000 block of S. Broadway, so I said to get off at Pershing Square and it would just be like five blocks from there. He was running late to go meet up with a friend. Sitting on the train he started telling me about how he was starting this group of people who believed in "pure love" (or something to that effect... i'm hazy). He said Jesus taught that we either had a spirit of hate or of pure love, and he believed we needed to choose the latter. If he got 1000 people to sign his mailing list, he said the government would have to recognize his group as a religion and give him a building.

I didn't tell him I had a pirate hook either. I did let him use my phone to make a call once we got off the train. Then I pointed him on his way down Broadway and walked back to my apartment.

With a pirate hook in a bright yellow bag.