The afternoon of Halloween found me on my bike on the Ballona Creek bike path, a concrete channel running through the western portions of the city to the sea. Beneath the Overland Avenue bridge, a group of young men congregated in the late afternoon light. One of them, in costume, posed for me. "Who do I look like?" he asked me. He looked just like Johnny Depp, who played the part of gonzo-journalist Hunter Thompson, in the film "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," based on Thompson's book. The kid not only looked like Depp, he sounded like him. He had even read "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," portions of which he quoted to me.

I want to believe that Hunter Thompson himself - if not Johnny Depp - would have posed like this for me.