In what feels like an earlier life, I lived in the heart of Hollywood for a while. To those unfamiliar with Hollywood and its recent history, this may sound a bit more glamorous than it was. Far from its reputation as the Tinseltown full of beautiful people, large portions of Hollywood in the early 1980s were lined with seedy, run-down apartment buildings, and hookers populated many street corners along Sunset Boulevard. I had a ground floor one-bedroom apartment in a slightly less shabby building on Cherokee Ave facing De Longpre Park.

I was in my first (and only) semester at Loyola Law School, and as a student, one bought old, used TVs, not new ones. So I used “The Recycler” – the Craig’s List of the day – to locate one that probably was from the early ’70s and bought it for about $50. Color TVs in those days weighed a ton! I don’t know if they lined them with bricks or what the reason was, but if you wanted to move a 20” TV without endangering your back, you better asked for someone’s help. I don’t exactly remember how I got mine into the apartment, but I did. I hooked it up to the antenna and enjoyed it for many… days. I watched the whole 1981 World Series on it, and mere minutes after the Dodgers won it – while the players were still celebrating on the field – there was a pop and an electric sizzle and the TV went dark, with a little puff of smoke rising from the back. The behemoth was dead.

Repair was obviously not an option, but I wasn’t quite sure how to dispose of it. After some deliberation, I had a Eureka moment: I decided to use the criminal element, which was not in short supply in Hollywood at the time, to get the job done. My kitchen door opened to an alley, and a staircase passed right over the top of the door, and so there was a nook underneath the stairs, next to my door, hidden from view from the street. I decided to drag the monster out the door and “hide” it under the stair case, and for good measure, I covered it up with a blanket.

The next morning, it had been stolen.