He Has His Walking Points

Huge chrome hoods shone in a carwash for semis. Plump pigs and country folk in overalls frolicked in the mural on the Farmer John meatpacking plant. On the sides of a boxy warehouse, someone had painted jewelry, batteries and ladies' briefs to lure customers inside. In a tidy row at curbside, spindly, freshly planted trees stood tentatively, tethered in place. Farther along, ones just like them, planted earlier, had withered and died, still tied up.

At Vernon and Santa Fe Avenue, kitschy statuettes of French maidens and dolphins paraded in a wholesale store window. On Santa Fe, a fence outside a factory had been transformed into a gallery wall for garish paintings of horses and glistening roses in vases.

It was well after lunchtime when Hopper at last spotted the wigwag -- a simple red light at the center of a black disk. It sat alongside nine railroad tracks, high on a pole on 49th Street. He stood below its long arm, examining the mechanism that makes the signal swing back and forth like a pendulum to warn that a train is approaching.

Hopper didn't dawdle. It was just one sight of many.

"I guess this was my destination. But then, I don't really like to have destinations on my walks," he said.

*

Hopper's world keeps getting bigger, but somehow, he says, it's smaller too. As he charts the city on foot, the black lines on his maps spider out over ever more terrain. With each foray, there's more that's familiar, more city he can claim.

He already has nearly met one of his two longtime goals: to eat at all 16 King Tacos in the chain. All he lacks is Baldwin Park, El Monte and the new one that just opened in Pico Rivera. And of course he plans to backtrack.

His other big goal may take a lifetime or longer. "By the time I die, I would like to have walked every major street in Los Angeles at least once," he said. He isn't worried. He is only 59.

His long Saturday trek to Vernon ended as his walks often do, on the Red Line heading out of downtown, bound for Hollywood. He found a seat and glanced around at the other passengers.

"When I'm out here, I get to see other human beings that I have nothing in common with other than we're all people," he said. "And even though I never talk to them, it makes me feel that I'm part of humanity."

Hopper had another 10-minute walk ahead of him once he reached Hollywood and Vine. The station escalator moved slowly, pushing passengers out into the heat. It was at least 90 degrees and humid. Hollywood Boulevard smelled sweaty. Hopper stepped onto it and smiled.

"It's the best I ever feel, when I'm out walking," he said. "You just get that euphoria and think, why doesn't everyone want to live here?"