Will Self: PsychoGeography - Down and out in Beverly Hills

Nobody much talks about the homeless in Los Angeles. My hunch is that there's a kind of collective denial: in this, the most illimitable – and yet curiously individuated – of megalopolises, the homeowners tend to assume that being without one can't be that bad; after all, the weather's always good – there's benches, and 70-odd miles of white sand beach. The homeless – they can just hang out, then stroll the boulevards; while those who're saddled with the upkeep of mile after mile of Tudor revival, Spanish Mission, and Art Deco have to feel the acid burning through their duodenums, while the oil price hikes, and they sit, marooned, for hour after hour on the Harbour Freeway.

But it ain't true – this is floor covering for a city, rolled out across a desert, and at night, the temperature plummets. You see the results of this in the skin of the homeless, which is annealed by day then chilled by night, until their faces are as tanned as hides. In the darkness they huddle beneath the freeway overpasses, then when the sun rises, like lizards, they emerge to sop up the heat.

I saw a lot of the homeless in Los Angeles – because I spent the entire week I was there on the streets, travelling at 3mph. I walked from LAX to Downtown, via the Baldwin Hills, Crenshaw, West Adams and South Central. I walked from Downtown to Hollywood, via Echo Park, Wilshire Boulevard, Fairfax and Melrose. I walked through Beverly Hills to Culver City, then back again. On Saturday – a rest day – I merely trolled through Hollywood, then headed up through Runyon Canyon Park to Mulholland Drive, then back down through Laurel Canyon.

Then on the last, and longest, day I walked from Sunset Boulevard to Santa Monica, then along the coast to Venice, around Marina del Rey, then past the Ballona Wetlands and back to the airport. It was my longest urban walking tour to date – especially given that there was a London leg from my house to Heathrow via Pinewood Studios as well – and I couldn't possibly do justice to the experience in 8,000 words – let alone 800. You'll have to wait for the book: Walking to Hollywood, which – once it's written – will doubtless soon be a major motion picture, with Leonardo DiCaprio playing me (albeit with a body double for the walking sequences).

In the meantime, let me offer you this little teaser: on the final leg of the walk, leaving the humping marina behind, I set off along Lincoln Boulevard, past hoggish Harley-Davidson dealerships, cut-price waxing salons, and young men twirling enormous cardboard arrows to advertise real estate. The sun squeezed my ear between its finger rays, and the exhaust of a thousand Escalades blatted into my face, while the paving slapped my soles. Then, horror of horrors, the sidewalk gave out, and I was in the middle of a dark wood of asphalt.

Luckily, a Virgil appeared to guide me through the auto-purgatory; to wit: John, who was fit and compact, with steel-grey hair, a yellow vest, khaki shorts and a leather rucksack. He'd been into Venice to do a little shopping, and now he was walking home. Yes, walking. "I do it all the time," he said as we moved along the verge at a brisk canter. "The thing is, the pedestrian always has the right of way in California – the car drivers know that, so if they do hit you they drive off, because they'll be in big trouble."

John lived in a house at the end of the bluff that rose up above the wetlands: "I've been here 27 years," he told me. "When I came this was a toxic swamp, but the developers who built Loyola Village had to clean it up as part of the deal. I think they've done a pretty good job."

They had, the wetlands looked reassuringly wet: a green-and-blue jewel glittering in the mucky concrete of LA. Of course, Ballona has its own strange psychic currents: the discovery of ancient Native American burial sites is blamed by Angelenos for the hex that's been visited on various developers over the decades; among them Howard Hughes, who based his aircraft company here in the 1930s, constructing a two-mile-long airstrip (the longest in the world), and building the infamous Spruce Goose, a giant seaplane that only flew once, with Hughes himself at the controls.

John and I parted at the bluffs, where he took to a trail and I to the sidewalk – which had reappeared. At least, I think it was me who plodded on past motels and gas stations and golf courses to the airport. It might've been Leonardo DiCaprio – after all, he played Howard Hughes in Scorsese's The Aviator; but then, I suppose the stunts were a little more interesting than nearly being mowed down by traffic. And while Hughes may've become phobic about cutting his hair and fingernails, he wasn't truly homeless – he just looked like a dosser.

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