I read (and re-read) Weetzie Bat at least a dozen times before I became an adult, but I’m not sure I’ve picked it up in the intervening years since then. I still have my contemporary copy I bought when I was 14, because I got sick of checking it out from the library, my name written on the inside flap in my teenaged hand writing, complete with ephemera from the era tucked into the pages (a ticket to the San Francisco Giants vs Texas Rangers game from Jwhen I was vising SF my return plane ticket to Alaska from SF and a Bazooka Joe bubble gum comic.) Weetzie Bat was the dream, and it’s one that was imprinted on me at an early age. Weetzie Bat physically moved me in a way no book ever has since and I ached to live in Weetzie’s magical, lush rendering of Los Angeles, with the loving support network she created.
Reading Weetzie Bat for the first time gave me a visceral, physical reaction-as I read it, I felt a hole in my heart that I didn’t know I had finally being mended. A few of them went so far as to make their chat room handles characters from Block’s books, and I knew I had to get my hands on them. I discovered Francesca Lia Block because in 1996 I spent a lot of time in a long-defunct website chatroom called WBS Pre-teen Chat, and cobbled together an online circle of super rad girls, spread out across the country, who were slightly older, and really, really into Block’s books.
He ducks behind the curtain before introducing L.A.’s original American ska band, The Untouchables.Weetzie Bat is near and dear to my heart-when I was 12, I was awkward, angry at the world, and ready for my real life to start as I’m sure a lot of 12 year olds were like then, and probably are still like now. Through the thick crowd of 20- and 30-somethings, I glimpse Harry Perry’s turban, accessorized with a black visor.
The scene is a bit worn out like a Hollywood miniature, with scant groups of aging rockers sipping craft beer near a sign that admonishes, “If you stage dive, you go home.” Photo by Cynthia Drake.įinally, I visit the Viper Room, which came after the time of Weetzie, but would have likely been part of her world. Later in my trip, I venture out alone in West Hollywood to some of the clubs that are still around from the Weetzieverse like Whiskey a Go Go (gay clubs like Rage and Revolver where Weetzie and Dirk went “duck hunting” are still there, too). For the first time, searching for the remnants of Weetzie Bat’s L.A., those shimmery, weird beacons in a city that casts away old things, I can empathize with this character’s sadness.
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