Locals often blame drifters and the homeless drawn to Hollywood’s old lustre for perpetuating its seedy atmosphere

Locals often blame drifters and the homeless, drawn to Hollywood’s old lustre, for perpetuating its seedy atmosphere.Mayor Riordan is up for re-election this autumn and busy cultivating the estimated 300,000 residents, more than half of them Hispanic. Sardi’s, at Hollywood and Vine, where Charlie Chaplin dined, has become one of the many porno theatres.Hollywood’s decline dates back to the late 1950s, when the stars moved their homes west to Beverly Hills or Brentwood. Almost every day, police said, they are visited by a stricken tourist family who have been robbed at gunpoint or had their car looted of all their possessions. The side streets are home to more than a dozen gangs, drug dealers, and prostitutes who haunt the cheap motels.

Flowers mark the spot where the late George Burns planted his cigar in the concrete; Disney runs premieres at the newly restored El Capitan theatre; and there are plans to reopen The Egyptian, where the first film premiere was held for Douglas Fairbanks Jnr’s Robin Hood.But an atmosphere of grunge infects the area. Hollywood is littered with stunning art deco architecture and memories of the silver screen. Six million tourists a year, the mayor claimed, come to pick out the stars’ names on the pavements and linger over their imprints in the forecourt of Graumann’s Chinese Theatre.Most of them take one look and never come back. But the subway has fanned new hopes that Hollywood can rebound from decades of neglect.

By 2000, three stations are planned to link it with the tourist centre at Universal Studios and central Los Angeles.
The mayor, Richard Riordan, pledged recently to revitalise old Hollywood It is cast as one of the city’s greatest wasted assets. The boulevard of broken dreams is closed to traffic. Workers on Los Angeles’ multi-billion dollar and much-maligned new subway system tunnelling beneath Hollywood Boulevard, have been stalled by a series of sinkholes. Jordan is now under the Israeli sphere; it is being taken out of the Arab world We are to be `used’ against Iraq and maybe Syria We are mercenaries. But we must rebuild Arab relations.”If King Hussein has his way, Mr Shubeilat will have plenty of time to develop his theories – in his prison cell..

But his real crime appears to be his opposition to the peace accords. “They are not going to succeed,” he said last month.”They are going to be imposed … If they keep me in prison, it will become a nightmare for the government.”Shkaki, the Islamic Jihad leader, was assassinated several months after boasting that his organisation had staged a double suicide-bombing that killed at least 20 Israeli soldiers at a bus stop near Tel Aviv.Earlier this month, Mr Shubeilat said he condemned the killing of innocents in Israel but that the slaughter came about “because Palestinians cannot express any more what they want except in such acts”.The trade unionist, who was re-elected head of the engineering union while in prison, has visited Bosnia and spoken regularly for a constitutional rather than an absolute monarchy in Jordan. The state prosecution witness later said that he had been blackmailed by Jordanian intelligence into giving evidence.According to Mr Shubeilat: “[King Hussein] said: `Do you want what happened to you before to happen to you again? Because this time I won’t interfere.’ But what can I say? I must be free to speak.