(Apartment at 875 South Bundy Drive, above.)
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"Which one do you like?" OJ Simpson asked, as he leaned towards me on the balcony of the upper floor of the Red Onion Nightclub in Palm Springs, also known as The Red O, a chain of meat market bars in southern California in the 80s.
We were watching a bikini contest, with a fairly sparse field, in fact only two contestants. Both were attractive women in their late twenties, notable for their looks and age, at least compared to the rest of the college crowd there for spring break in 1989. The two women were slightly taller than the average Red Onion, and were dressed in the best outfits, neon stripper bikinis. My two male friends Duane and Jeff were downstairs, and I wandered up to the second floor to look around. I leaned on the balcony, looked down, with people on either side of me, one of whom turned out to be OJ Simpson.
We noticed that The Juice, quickly made his way into the club that evening. He was taller than most and unmistakably OJ Simpson. He was also a senior 22 years too good for us, and at least 15 years older than anyone else there. He wore a sports coat and an open dress shirt, while many of us wore spring-themed t-shirts. Seeing OJ mingling was not entirely unusual, in our college experience. OJ was a former USC student, where we went to school. Arguably USC's most famous football hero, he was a frequent presence on campus before the 1984 Olympic soccer, where his old team played at the Coliseum. OJ was known to be friendly, would shake hands and take pictures with anyone, and so, he was a long-time USC student at a place that was perhaps 1/8 USC students on spring break. However, this was the first and only conversation I ever had with him, as he began discussing the physical attributes of the bikini contest participants.
Before I could give my opinion, OJ answered for me, a blonde with a larger bust. He gestured with his hands as if he were placing them on her chest.
I couldn't argue with this physical fact and nodded. I was also enjoying the company of a famous man, so I nodded quite vigorously. This seemed to seal the deal. The girl in yellow.
The DJ interrupted our bonding, we have a special guest in the house, ladies and gentlemen, OJ Simpson!! He will be our final judge in the bikini contest. He pointed to OJ on the balcony next to me, and there were cheers as everyone looked up. OJ left without saying goodbye and went downstairs to get Mike and present the prize, whatever it was, to the girl in yellow.
My impression of Orenthal James Simpson that night? 1.) He really likes being famous, 2.) He also likes being one of the guys, 3.) He's a big guy, 4.) He seems like a Horndog, although all of us were too. And as much as he seemed to like being loved, there were plenty of people who loved him back. That night, I was one of them. There's a high senior celebrity that I noticed after a celebrity gave me their attention, especially when I was young. It's like an adrenaline rush that boosts my energy, makes me talk faster, and makes me happier for a moment. It may be the most temporary mental illness, but I'm sure I'm not the only one. I'm not really proud of it, but it's there.
Unlike seeing him in the famous naked gun movies, I didn't think about OJ much again until a few years later, in 1994, when he was behind the White Bronco speeding down the LA freeway with Al Cowlings at the wheel. My roommate and I were in West LA and we were watching the infamous chase live on TV and when we saw the Bronco turn onto the 405 freeway, the closest to us, we all ran out, piled into my car and drove to get a glimpse of the most famous car chase in history. However, when we got anywhere close, we could hear the news that Cowlings had pulled over on the surface street, and we were turned away.
Of course, I told my story, I had met OJ, with friends on that day, because it made me feel more important, but I would be one of thousands in Los Angeles, who simultaneously tell similar stories. While selecting a jury for the murder trial, many were dismissed just for having met OJ at this time or another, prompting a news commentator to note that it seemed like almost everyone in LA had their own encounter. A juror was actually dismissed for not disclosing that he had taken a picture with OJ at a store where he worked.
A few months later, in December 1994, I found myself in the midst of a roommate breakup and hastily looking for a new place to live. It turns out one Paul Amakori, the owner of the apartment I had responded to an ad for, was also hastily looking for a new place to live. To the point where he quickly accepted me without a credit check to move into his apartment on Dorothy Street in Brentwood, just a stone's throw from the condo where Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were murdered just five months earlier, across the street from the intersection of Dorothy and Bundy Drive. I had looked at a few apartments that day in the general West LA neighborhood, and had not connected myself so closely to a murder house, as it was known in the neighborhood, until a few days after moving in, when a friend came to visit and exclaimed, I didn't realize. You're right here!"
The location of my new apartment was not a plus or minus for me, but it was for my new landlord, Mr. Amakori, who later confided that he wanted to move to a new place until all the weird Muslim people disappeared. He seemed to want to get out of the neighborhood to the point where I had once half-joked to myself that Mr. Amakori was involved in the murders, but also partly for another reason, not spoken by Mr. Amakori, and I found out from neighbors. Mr. Amakori actually moved out because he had attacked a neighbor upstairs, a tall man, for making too much noise walking around in the middle of the night. The tall man walked as tall as he actually was, but I just turned up my music louder. Clearly, Mr. Amakori had a problem with the old man and tried to strangle him before the man's wife pulled him off. However, as the OJ trial continued, it became clear that while my landlord was a violent asshole, he probably wasn't the violent asshole who committed these murders a block away.
The weird Muslim people certainly came down Dorothy in 1994, if not, it was a small residential artery between the much larger Barrington and Bundy thoroughfares, including 2 apartment buildings and parallel, where twenty-something professionals lived together as roommates, along with some married couples, and some elderly people. Mostly sleepy. A place that basically went to bed pretty early, because most people worked. The younger ones would occasionally have a party, but it was rare.
Bundy Drive is a major street running through West LA, although it's just one lane on each side. Not long after moving to the apartment on Dorothy, I was haunted by the details of the Simpson case, mostly because I could step out the door and offer my own theories on the actual street where the murders took place.
Traffic on Bundy had come in waves, so there were times at night, sometimes as long as a minute, when there was no traffic at all. Then, there would be a few cars at once, all going fast, with little time for a driver to glance on both sides of the street. The corner of Bundy and Dorothy was very quiet at night. There were people walking dogs, joggers occasionally, a few pedestrians, but usually, just no one. At night, the street was dimly lit, with just a few streetlights, but pockets of darkness everywhere. In short, there was plenty of time for someone covered in blood and possibly carrying a knife, to run out of an apartment and a car, without anyone seeing a thing. Around 10 pm, when the murders were believed to have occurred, Bundy may have been very inactive and quiet, as usual. Even if one of the speeding cars on Bundy had gone by at the right time, the driver would have to look to one side and catch a glimpse of the killer running down an unlit street.
875 South Bundy Drive, the apartment owned by Nicole Brown Simpson, was not part of a condo complex. I think there were separate units next to each other, but I'm not sure. The door to her apartment was hardly visible from Bundy, nor was most of the building, just the entrance and gate, next to a bush. Although it was one of the most photographed locations in the world for a while, and I stood across from it more often than I can count, I still couldn't tell you what the building looked like. There was a sun-dappled brick path leading up to the gate, small palm leaves and bushes obscuring the gate, and another path inside the gate, only partially visible.
About once a week, always at night, I would walk up Dorothy to Bundy, and stare intently at the gate covered in palm prints. I could never bring myself to walk up to the apartment gate. Somehow, it felt like it would be more disrespectful, although I didn't know who I thought would judge me.
I, along with countless others, surely, would join in if I were there? A conversation with myself, as I stood across from the apartment if I had just walked by when the killer, perhaps covered in blood and perhaps carrying a knife, ran out? Suppose it was OJ? Or OJ and an accomplice? Or a completely different killer? Was I so haunted by the celebrity that I would ask OJ if he remembered meeting me at The Red Onion during spring break '89 and only after announcing blood? Would I have the courage to try to stop him? Would I even know he should be stopped?
Some of my neighbors on the street would start to emerge as witnesses in the trial, most notably Robert Heidstra, a grizzled European-accented man seemingly in his 60s, who worked as a car detailer according to the news, and who was walking his large sheepdog near Nicole Brown Simpson's condo around the time of the murders. He remembered hearing two male voices seemingly arguing. He then walked a little further and shortly after, saw a white car, like a Jeep. Heidstra also claimed he was writing a book about his experiences, although I'm not sure they would be more than a novel. I often saw Heidstra, who basically lived across the street, walking his sheepdog up and down Dorothy Street. He seemed to walk the dog constantly. We had once engaged in a debate about a parking spot that I had started before him, and that was the extent of our personal interaction.
The trial made me aware of other neighbors that I would never have noticed otherwise. Such as actress Gloria Stuart, then in her late 80s, who lived almost directly across the street from Nicole Simpson's apartment, in a cute house on South Bundy Drive. Best known for her role in The Invisible Man in 1933, Titanic would bring her a late-life comeback and an Oscar nomination, two years later in 1997. I had never seen Gloria Stuart while living on Dorothy, but she must have moved out during the trial's peak years, due to the number of random people knocking on her door, looking for the murder house. And unlike my landlord, Mr. Amakori, I was 100% sure that Gloria Stuart had not committed the murders.
Perhaps the most surreal thing about life on Dorothy in the mid-20th century, is that while the street could be eerily quiet on long nights, the days had become something different. OJ Lookee-Loos, the gawkers or tourists looking for the murder house, would constantly stop their cars to take pictures in front of it. Sometimes on the sidewalk. Sometimes right up to the gate. Some somber, some smiling. Sometimes an entire family posing in front of the apartment, mother, father, and two children. Their arms around each other, usually wearing t-shirts from Universal Studios and Disney. Today, those people might have posted those photos on Instagram. But there were others there with less decorum, and more emotional reactions, to the murders. A woman stood across the street with a large handwritten sign that began, Nicole Nicole, my heart breaks for you, along with some other lines that I drove too fast to read. It's unclear whether she kept the sign for anyone special to see, and it's possible, this is something she just wanted to express, with the sign as the medium. No media outlets shielded the neighborhood on the day the woman with the sign appeared, unlike the day the jury toured the murder site, and I stepped out the front door into a street full of people and news crews. Melrose Larry Green, a Z-list celebrity famous for standing at the corner of Melrose Avenue and La Brea with daily signs praising Howard Stern, walked by at the same time with signs related to OJ-Howard It was a billboard, meaningless text that I had forgotten. A strict fan back then, I made the mistake of telling him I liked his work, and he quickly asked if he could use my bathroom. I told him, sorry, the restroom is not blushing, and he shuffled down the street. Perhaps my landlord had the right idea about getting out of this neighborhood while he could.
A few houses down, in downtown Brentwood, the most famous restaurant in America, mezzaluna, was constantly mentioned as the place where Ron Goldman worked as a waiter and where Nicole Brown Simpson had her last meal, really struggling, after years of success before the murders. A Maitre d' told a mutual friend that tourists would come in and order a drink and take a picture, and then just leave. The regular customers soon moved on, partly to avoid Gawkers, but also because there was a lingering sickness hanging over the place. An unexplainable eeriness accompanied dining there. El Coyote, where Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, and Wojiech Frykowski had their last dinner before being killed by the Manson family, somehow survived to this day. One difference may be that El Coyote was a tourist trap from the start, while Mezzaluna reluctantly became one.
The OJ fever didn't last forever. By 1999, the Lookee-Loo traffic at the apartment had dwindled to the point where you could wait for hours and not notice anyone looking for the apartment. The world had moved on. Except for a seismic event like the OJ Simpson trial resonating for decades. The fame of the Kardashian name began with the late Robert Kardashian representing OJ as part of his dream team. Many experts and news analysts had their first major breakthroughs about the trial, including Harvey Levin, who went on to create TMZ.com. The debates about race and the LAPD became a central focus of the trial still being argued many decades later as the well-written and directed miniseries The People v. OJ Simpson: American Crime Story.
I left LA over a decade ago when I returned last year and drove down Dorothy Street once again, one night. I parked on the corner near Bundy and stood across the street from the apartment. The street numbers and the facade of the building had changed, but the land doesn't usually change. Clearly where the original apartment was located. No worries.
Bundy is quiet, as it often is at night. A few cars then zoomed by, in a wave like they always did decades ago. And then it was quiet once again.