Pico Blvd, the one-stop shop for all your hood film needs

I live very close to the intersection of Crenshaw and Pico boulevards. Crenshaw has been immortalized in numerous hood movies from the 1990s such as Boyz in the Hood. Pico, meanwhile, is a relatively unknown strip to anyone living outside of Los Angeles. The funny thing is that I notice a film crew shooting on the street at least once a month. I've determined that Pico must be one of the prime locales of urban film set pieces. For example, on one mile-long strip of Pico between La Brea and Fairfax, you'll find Lucy's Drive-In (the burger joint from the Singleton film Baby Boy), Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles (from every friggin' where), We Jammin' Jamaican food, The Comedy Union (LA's top black comedy club), C.J.'s Diner, the Black Dahlia Theater and several art galleries. The film crews are almost always shooting on this particular strip. My guess is that the area must be particularly suited to films in which it's necessary to show black Angelenos in street scenes. Even the Vons grocery store at Pico and Fairfax has a kind of ghetto superstar mentality. Recently while I was shopping there I ran into Bishop Don Magic Juan. You know, the pimp from the Hughes Brothers doc "American Pimp" who has been a regular stage presence at Snoop Dogg performances. It was hard to miss him. He was wearing his trademark green and gold shades, as well as a complete green and gold ensemble. I honestly believe that in this particular Vons, someone like Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman or Natalie Portman could walk in and no one would recognize them. But you wouldn't believe the response people had to seeing Bishop Don Magic Juan! You could determine his location within the store by simply listening for someone to shout out his name as he entered their aisle. "Don Juan!" Sounds like he's in the pasta aisle. "Bishop Don Juan!" Oh, it sounds like he's in the meat section. One of those priceless LA moments.