Perfect Stranger L.A.

Name: Annie Tevelin, 30.
Found: Outside of Co-op 28, 1728 N Vermont Ave. in Los Feliz.
L.A. Story: Originally from the suburbs of Virginia.

“For me, a great moment of my day is putting on make-up. I’ve done it every day. I take time to do it; not everyone has the patience for it and not everyone gives a damn about it, but it’s something I love. I leave the house looking good and feeling good. If everyone went around feeling good, then the world would be a much happier place.”

Make-up artist Annie Tevelin isn’t a walking, breathing beauty magazine, but she spends almost all of her time thinking about how to make faces look good.

Cosmetics can make people look and feel pretty, she said, and that is important, but putting on a little eye shadow and taking care of one’s skin can lead to a deeper, fuller appreciation of life. It’s these feelings that are the catalysts to self-care in Tevelin’s view.

“The more you care for yourself, the more you feel your life,” she said. “My hope is that putting on something that looks good, feels good — then maybe skin care will lead to a bath and then maybe that bath will lead to a book in the bath.”

And that’s it — a fuller life through self-love and care, one step at a time.

After years of experience working as a professional make-up artist for Lancôme, Tevelin has founded her own business, SkinOwl, and has started to create her own like of eco-friendly, all-natural skin care products.

In part, her product line is born from her love of make-up, but she has also never forgotten all of the horrible experiences she’s had as a consumer, dealing with products and people in the cosmetics industry.

Approaching that make-up counter at the mall can intimidating, no matter how old you are, she said, and too often, people are going home with products that aren’t suited for their skin types.

“Three years as someone with persistent acne and truly being lied to just so these associates could make a sale was just exhausting for me,” Tevelin said. “I would walk out of what I thought were an expert’s hands and my skin would get worse.

“I think that a face is the first thing that people see and a lot of girls don’t ever want to leave the house just because of how their skin looks. And I think that their acne could have been healed a long time ago if they would have had the right advice.”

A woman who said she has always had dreams of being an entrepreneur, Tevelin has found a way to take her own struggles and use them as the foundation for a business.

To bring people the advice they’re looking for, another branch of Tevelin’s business includes consulting for her products. She offers a service called a “Face Off,” for which she will actually visit clients in their homes and digs through their make-up cases or vanity drawers.

In these Face Offs, Tevelin looks at her client as an individual and helps to determine her needs and priorities. For instance, Tevelin can look at what skin type the client has and answer questions about the products the customer is already using — she even brings knowledge about the business practices of many cosmetics companies, such as whether they test on animals. If the client’s blush, say, or foundation doesn’t match what she is looking for or what Tevelin recommends for her skin type, Tevelin tosses it in the trash and replaces it with something else.

Tevelin also takes a look a product’s ingredients to see if they are safe.

“Skin is an organ and it breathes in and out. So when you put on a product that is full of mineral oils or mica, the skin is breathing it in and it can go into the blood stream,” she said.

“Ninety-nine percent of the people looking at the back of the box have absolutely no idea what they’re looking at. Titanium Dioxide, Mineral Oil, Purple Peutu — people are like, ‘OK, cool, yeah, that’s what it takes to make that product.’ But when you look deeper and research all of these things, there’s ingredients hidden inside of those ingredients.”

Tevelin said there are currently bills being drafted by U.S. legislators that would require cosmetic companies to post warnings on product packaging any time a chemical could be detrimental to consumers’ health. Some of these concerns include developmental toxicity, reproductive toxicity (products that can harm a woman’s uterus or ovaries) or products that can turn normal cells into cancerous cells.

Tevelin frequently checks the Environmental Working Group website, EWG.org, to keep tabs on what are considered to be the most dangerous products on the market. A database of about 60,000 different products, every listing receives a numbered score between 0 to 10 based on its toxicity.

“I’ve found that a lot of the products that people are attached to in my experience are 8′s and 9′s and 10′s,” she said, meaning they’re often among the most toxic cosmetics available.

“I don’t want to name names, but there are some cult products, number one-selling products across the nation and they’re like 8′s and 9′s.”

Her aim with SkinOwl is to go back to the basics and create something simple and timeless with her cosmetics: the little black dress of skin care, as Tevelin puts it. Something that won’t be tossed to the side for the newest hot brand or product.

“I want it to come with the idea that the skin care represents an appreciation of life and it is built with ingredients that are unique and special the same way that you should feel unique and special. In order to preserve yourself, you have to take care of yourself.”

Tevelin’s business’ website is set to launch in the next six months and she has just recently released her first skin care product: SkinOwl Argan Infusion. She’s also been organizing public events and beauty classes, where she is able to physically put her products on people’s faces.

SkinOwl Argan Infusion

At this time, consumers are able to buy her product (and future products) through Tevelin herself, and eventually, through her website. She is, at the moment, considering a multi-level marketing model similar to how Mary Kay and Avon are sold.

For more information about SkinOwl, request to join the company’s exclusive Facebook page at @Artistry by Annie Tevelin.

Annie Tevelin’s Beauty tips for everyone:

-The number one most important thing to look good and feel good is to get 8 hours of sleep. Period.

-Drink two liters of water a day. Especially if you have acne or extremely congested skin.

-Change your pillow cases, clean your phone, clean your steering wheel.

-Wear a great moisturizer, eye cream and sun screen.

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Name: Jean Chang, 60
Found: Outside of Anime Jungle, 325 E. 1st St. in The Little Tokyo Mall in Little Tokyo.
L.A. Story: Moved to Los Angeles from China more than 40 years ago.

At the end of a long, echoey hallway, a woman is tinkering with the wiry insides of a large Japanese photo sticker machine.

From afar, the photomoton resembles an old arcade cabinet, with it’s off-white coloring, dated design patterns and florescent-colored knobs.

Its front service door is open and Jean Chang, 60, is kneeling down in front of it on her hands and knees. Her clothes don’t resemble a service uniform of any kind, she carries no tools and there’s not a clipboard in sight, but she appears to know exactly what she is doing. After a few quick taps and tugs, she climbs to her feet, tears a hand-made “OUT OF ORDER” sign from the machine’s screen, and uses her keys to lock the service door.

“The paper jammed last week and I’m finally getting out here to fix it,” she said, crumbling the paper in her hands. “This is a very old machine, a first generation. It’s 10 to 13 years old. They don’t do them like this anymore.”

These sticker photo booths, known as Purikura by the Japanese, have been a huge part of her life for the last 10 years. She and her husband, Stephen, are the co-owners of Cue! Studio in Rowland Heights, a store that is filled with various different kinds of Purikura. Chang said her store is the only one of it’s kind in Los Angeles and possibly all of the United States.

The machines’ customization options are what make them special. After the photos have been taken, a person can use the booth’s touch screen technology to add stamps, pictures, clip art, colorful backdrops and borders to the digital images. There are even some booths that allow users to tweak their physical appearances, allowing such changes as adding sparkle to eyes, reddening lips or blurring blemishes.

“You put money in there and then the machine will start to talk in Japanese. You’ll have no idea what they’re saying – I don’t either,” she said. “You can just tell when the camera is ready.”

Chang’s store carries the latest models of Purikura, she said. Anything Japan has, it’s available at Cue! a half a year later.

She still keeps a few of the older models around, though. Because she is acquainted with the owners of Anime Jungle, a Japanese culture collectors shop in Tokyo Mall, she has permission to keep a pair of her older photo machines in the hallway, just outside of their store.

“This location is very popular for some reason,” Chang said. “Probably because there are a lot of tourists.”

Chang said it was her daughter who inspired her to go into business. She and her friends talked about going out to the clubs on the weekends, which made Chang worry.

“They may not serve drinks to minors, but the clubs are still not safe,” she said. “It’s good for young people to do something positive and feel good about themselves. To hang out in my store, it’s much safer.”

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Name: Muhammad Azmi, 22
Found: At Stories Books & Cafe in Echo Park, 1716 Sunset Blvd.
L.A. Story: Muhammad Azmi is originally from Dubai. Later, he lived in New York and has been in Los Angeles for the last two years.

Though it may sound pretentious, Muhammad Azmi, says he has always enjoyed all of the ‘hippie things in life’: literature, music and filmmaking.

“All of the non-real things that aren’t being a doctor or a lawyer,” he specifies.

Known to friends and strangers alike as just ‘Azmi’, the corners of his mouth turn up slightly when he talks about working as a unit production manager, cinematographer and photographer for an alternative production house called The Indie Workforce. But he hesitates when he’s asked if this is his dream job.

“Yeah, I guess I am. I’d like to think that I am. Ultimately these things that we do, work and create is to just meet to right person and settle and have a family and all that right stuff.” he said. “This seems to be what I’m good at and the only thing I know how to do.”

When Azmi was 15 years old, he requested to switch up a school assignment that called for putting on a play and create a film instead. After he was given the go ahead, he cast his actors and then spent the next several months directing a full length film. He kept making films after that and it, at some point, turned into a way for him to make a living.

For the last two years his focus has been mainly fairly centered on music videos, working behind the scenes. When he’s not directing, he’s work lights and make sure that things run smoothly on set.

At 22, Azmi is still a pretty young guy, which means a lot of other people in the business often initially have doubts about his level of experience and ability as a professional.

“If I’m in a position of DP (director of photography), or something, it takes a few hours if the person I’m working with is much older to establish that position. I wear shirt and tie, which kind of helps that a little. That (age) is something I am very conscious of, even if the other person isn’t.”

The day we met, Azmi was preparing to shoot a video for a song called “World of Global” by Los Angeles funk band, The Dead Trees. Filmed on location, “World of Global” was set in Slab City, a place in the Southern Californian Colorado Desert where squatters live in trailers and there is no local government, electricity, or running water.

“It was the directors choice (to shoot there),” he said. “He thought the place has a kind of post-apocalyptic feel to it.”

Azmi tends to move around a lot. Back when he lived in Dubai, his family lived in six different houses. He lived in New York for two years and just as he’s getting situated in Los Angeles, he’s considering moving to San Francisco to finish up his formal education.

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Name: Vicki Gibson, 59
Found: Outside of 7-Eleven, 2900 Hyperion Ave. in Silver Lake.
L.A. Story: Gibson is from Yakima, Washington. She’s in town for a week to visit with her daughter and grandson.

Where 59-year-old Vicki Gibson comes from, coffee shop baristas wear lingerie, bikinis and costumes that show off a lot of skin.

A trend that’s been labeled “Sexpresso” by the press, dozens of these businesses, with names like Peek-A-Brew, Twin Perks, Chika Latte and Java Juggs, have popped up all over Washington state in just the last couple of years.

Two and a half hours outside of Seattle, the coffee shop capital of the world, in a town called Yakima, it’s quite possible that Gibson was one of the entrepreneurs instrumental in kicking off the trend.

Five or six years ago, she and her daughter created the concept of Brewlesque Espresso, a drive-thru coffee shop where pretty women serve lattes and mochas in skimpy, cabaret-inspired outfits.

“The girls all dress in fishnets and garters and bustiers and I really try to hire the ‘girl next door’ type,” she said. “They are all very cute, sweet girls.”

Gibson received a lot of backlash, mostly from Yakima’s large Christian community, when she first opened up the doors of her two Brewlesque locations.

Pastors began dropping by the coffee shops to talk to her, and her stores were featured regularly on the nightly news. Gibson still receives complaints on a fairly frequent basis that her business is “inappropriate,” “offensive” or “disgusting,” but most of the racket has been curbed since three other copycat businesses have opened up shop nearby.

“They’re just like my businesses, only a little raunchier,” she said. “It got really bad for a while because they were doing thongs and really kind of trashed it up. It just isn’t as much fun as when it first started.”

Because she’s been facing more competition, and her town isn’t very large, business just isn’t as lucrative as it once was.

Lately, Gibson’s been considering the possibility of relocating her business to Los Angeles, which would also bring her closer to daughter and grandson.

Currently, she’s in the midst of a week-long visit to the city and is staying with her daughter, who lives in the Glendale area.

“I’m kind of gathering information while I’m here. I have a couple of businesses and own a house, but honestly, I’m trying to figure out how I can get unbound from them, move down here and start over,” Gibson said. “I would have a blast down here if I could find a place.”

At the same time, however, the coffee business has been a part of Gibson’s life for years and she’s considering trying something different.

“I’ve been doing Reiki, Japanese hand healing, for a couple of years and that is so much more my bliss. I am honestly thinking it over, at 59 years old, starting over in the healing profession,” she said. “I’m not afraid of change. I gotta go do stuff.”

Reiki is a holistic and spiritual healing technique in which practitioners attempt to channel energy from themselves to a patient through their palms. A form of therapy, it’s implemented to combat pain, depression and anxiety.

Five years ago, she was invited to Reiki circle by a Reiki master to treat a man in the final stages of cancer. “I didn’t know what it was, but I was curious,” she said.

“There were eight women there and the Reiki master told me to put my hands on this man. When I touched him, within 30 seconds, it was really hot on his body from all of our energy.”

Gibson was awed by the experience, but didn’t again come into contact with the spiritual practice for another two years.

“Suddenly, every time I turned around, I saw the name or someone mentioned it and I was like ‘all right, I need to check into this.’ I’m a kind of a whimsical, spiritual person,” she said.

Gibson doesn’t have any definite plans just yet, but if she decides to build a healing practice from the ground up, she said she will probably have to continue managing her coffee business in order to stay afloat financially.

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Name: Timothy Rogers, in his 30′s
Found: At Starbucks, 2919 Los Feliz Blvd., in Atwater Village.
L.A. Story: Moved from Denver, Colorado, to pursue an acting career.

It’s a Monday night, and unsurprisingly, the corporate coffee chain inside an Atwater Village shopping plaza isn’t filled with its usual chatty coffee drinkers. This particular crowd has some work to do instead.

A young, designer sweatpants-clad student twirls a strand of hair around her finger as she occasionally turns the pages of her thick anatomy text. Just behind her, the glare from a laptop computer screen reflects blue onto the glasses of the man whose wrinkled forehead suggests he is concentrating deeply.

But pan to the right, and there’s the more stress-free looking Timothy Rogers, the grown man who is reading what looks a lot like a children’s book. It’s not a bizarre kind of pleasure read, though. It’s part of his job.

“It’s called Star Girl, by Jerry Spinelli,” he says, propping up the thin paperback for display. It’s actually a young adult book about non-conformity, he explains, and the plan is to introduce it as a reading assignment for his English students at South Gate Middle School in the coming weeks.

Preparing for the coming semester as English instructor, he’s reading the book now so that he can create a lesson plan and come up with some follow-up reading comprehension questions.

“It was on a list of books that we could choose from,” Rogers said. “I tried to find something that I would like, that way I could transfer my excitement over to the kids. Excitement is a hard thing to fake.”

The new semester is the first time Rogers has ever taught English and he fears he is going to have to artificially create a lot of the enthusiasm he needs to effectively command his classroom. Teaching, especially the subject of English, wasn’t exactly the dream he was chasing when he moved to Los Angeles from Denver, Colorado, 10 years ago.

“Teaching was a back-up plan,” he said. “I came out here for acting and gave myself five years. I decided that if things didn’t work out, I’d get my teaching credentials and start teaching.”

The emphasis on “getting into the industry”, the tough competition and “boring commercial work” all contributed to Rogers deciding to call it quits on professional acting about five years ago. Since then, he has been employed by the Los Angeles Unified School District as a drama teacher. Because acting is what he is most passionate about, he says drama is very easy subject to teach. This new English gig, though, is another story.

“I was not thrilled,” he said. “I did everything in my power to find another theater position and will look for another once this year is over.”

Because he’s used to teaching an elective rather than a required subject, he has always found that most of the kids in the theater classes were excited to be a part of the class, with only a select handful that don’t seem happy to be there. A required class, however, means that there likely going to be fewer passionate students, Rogers said.

To bring some interest, Rogers is planning to implement classroom activities that are “a little more fun.” So far, he’s thinking of employing role-playing activities, journal prompts and free writes, in which students can express themselves without worrying about spelling or grammar. Even though the assignments will all be standard-based, he’s trying to think of topics that young teens would most enjoy writing about.

“I struggled with English when I was in middle school. I didn’t even start to like it until my last couple of years of school,” he said. “I only started to like it when we were given more interesting books and interesting topics to write about — when I was able to relate to these books personally.”

When he’s not teaching, Rogers still likes to be involved with theater. He has played some roles in a few productions at the Mosaic Lizard Theater, 230 West Main St., in Alhambra, most notably “Mouse Trap,” “Odd Couple” and “The Shop Around The Corner.” He likes the general attitude of the theater’s regulars there and said he hopes to get involved in even more productions in the coming year.

“Everyone there is doing it (acting) for the art, not to get discovered,” he said.

While teaching isn’t the work he’d ideally like to be dedicating his life to, Rogers now feels that the opportunity to teach drama was a kind of blessing.

“When I was trying to break into acting, I lost the reason and it became just about getting into the industry. I lost the excitement and the bond of acting,” he explained. “By becoming a teacher, I have rediscovered all of that and I have learned the excitement of giving new experiences to young people.”

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Name: Louis Matieu, 42.
Found: Inside of Starbucks, 700 N. Vermont Ave. in Los Feliz/Hollywood.
L.A. Story: Matieu is a Los Angeles native.

There’s a word in the German language used to describe the kind of person who tries to make order of the world’s inhabitants.

At the moment, Louis Matieu, 42, is suffering from the temporary inability to remember what this word is. He doesn’t insist that it’s on the tip of his tongue and he doesn’t spent any time trying to summon it from somewhere deep within the far-reaching chasms of his brain. Instead, he concludes that this concept is a sort of philosophy that he has come to apply to his own life.

“When I was a kid, I’d ride the bus in L.A. and I’d watch all the people,” he said. “I don’t take the bus anymore, so this is a good place to let the world come to you.”

Matieu is perched at a high-rise table inside of a busy Starbucks in Los Feliz. This particular chair, positioned just a few inches from the door, is one he finds himself sitting in fairly often. It’s one of the better people watching spots inside of the chain coffee shop. From here, he is able to watch the customers float in and out without drawing any attention to himself.

“It’s about convenience,” he said, of being a regular at this particular location. “It’s a vantage point to look at my neighborhood. There are people in here who are studying and doing business; and unusual and freaky looking people that have weird hair or a stranger sense of style.”

As though a naturalist observing zebras in the wild, Matieu sits quietly and appears to go unnoticed by the other patrons. While these people go about their daily routines, he is trying to decode the secrets of their lives.

“I try to build narratives about certain kinds of people and their relationship to each other,” he explained. “It’s more of an internal dialogue of things like: ‘What nationality are they?’ What do they do for a living? What kind of car do they drive?’”

Occasionally, someone will sit down beside Matieu and the two will spark up a conversation, but seldom does he ever approach a person and speak to them out of curiosity. Because that would spoil the magic, he said.

“I think it would be almost like meeting your idols. We make up our own stories about the people around us based on their physical traits, but in all reality, there’s probably not a whole lot there that’s more interesting than the way they look,” Matieu said.

Unprompted, Matieu notes that he is a Capricorn, single and looks “a whole lot better” naked. With a twinkle in his eye, he playfully peppers these tid-bits throughout the conversation. For a moment he casts a serious gaze, looking for a reaction. Not a moment later, he’s laughing heartily and providing reassurance that he is only joking.

Resting beside him is a white motorcycle half-helmet with two cartoon eyes stuck onto it. Called MOONEYES, the decals are made by a classic speed part and accessory supplier known today as MOONEYES USA.

“It was actually a gift,” he said. “I had been looking to get a white helmet. It’s easier to see, or they (people on the road) think, ‘cop’. It’s also an extra pair of eyes on the road.”

A friend recently pointed out that Matieu’s helmet was featured in the 2008 Jim Carrey movie “Yes Man.” Matieu said he takes his word for it, as has not and will probably never see the film.

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Name: Patti Byther, 55.
Found: At Universal Studios Hollywood’s Globe Theater during “Return of the Cylons: The Caprica 1.5 Premiere Fan Event.”
L.A. Story: Traveled 60 miles from Rialto, Calif. to attend the event.

“Frak” is a profanity word used in both the “Battlestar Galactica” and “Caprica” series. It functions as a substitute for the real-life four-letter expletive beginning with the same letter.

Actor James Marsters once portrayed a vampire named Spike on the hit television series “Buffy The Vampire Slayer.”
Originally only intended to be a temporary character, positive fan response kept Spike from being killed off and he stayed on the show until the series ended in 2003.

Patti Byther is such a devout fan of Marsters, she now watches every show that he is featured in.

“I started watching ‘Caprica’ when someone mentioned he was on it,” she said.

Byther was one of several hundred people who attended a recent social networking and screening event to promote the return of the Syfy series “Caprica” at the Globe Theatre inside Universal Studios Hollywood.

“Caprica” is a prequel series to the Syfy channel critically-acclaimed drama “Battlestar Galactica” (BSG). Since the recent decision to bring back the second half of “Caprica’s” first season, the “Return of the Cylons: The Caprica Season 1.5 Premiere Fan Event” was planned to create awareness for the show’s mid-season premiere.

During the event, four screens showcased real-time tweets with the hashtag #Capricaisback. The idea was to get “Caprica” trending on Twitter so that new viewers will tune in and increase the chances that the show would be renewed.

The event also included a screening of the mid-season premiere “Unvanquished” and a pre- and post-show Q&A with series creators and stars, who included actors Esai Morales, Alessandra Torresani and Sasha Roiz, as well as executive producers Ron Moore, Jane Espenson, Kevin Murphy and David Eick. The event was announced on Twitter, Facebook and the show’s website, and was limited to 500 attendees who were asked to RSVP to Universal by email.

Byther arrived earlier in the afternoon to ensure that she would have a seat at the event.

“Caprica is great and involved and there’s a lot of layers. I started watching from the beginning, even though I have never watched BSG,” she said.

Even if Marsters didn’t appear on “Caprica” it’s likely that Byther would have still become engaged with the show. She said she first became interested in the Science Fiction genre about 35 years ago, when a friend told her about “Star Trek.” But even when she was a child, she said she preferred “The Jetsons” over “The Flintstones.”

“I’ve always been into Science Fiction,” she said. “I have a vanity license plate hat says ‘SCYFY<3R.’ I had it before they did,” she said, referring to the recent name change of the Syfy television network from its old name, The Sci-Fi Channel. “I’ve had it for about 10 years and I had a ‘Star Trek’ plate before that.”

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Name: Carlos Sarabia, 66
Found: Near a food truck in the parking lot of Home Depot, 5600 Sunset Blvd., in Hollywood.
L.A. Story: Was born in Mexico, but has spent most of his life in Los Angeles. He lives “on L.A.’s west side, in a Latino neighborhood.”

A sordid stench wafts from a trash can that has deliberately been positioned as far away from a neighboring food truck as possible.

Transformed by the record-high temperatures from solid food scraps into a bubbling stew of soggy fries and buns, nacho cheese and chunks of ground beef, the overflowing bin has begun to attract dozens of bees.

When a customer who was seated at a distant picnic table comes to dispose of his paper plate and plastic silverware, he haphazardly tosses it in the general direction of the bin and walks away without looking back. That’s when a man, carrying a clinking grocery bag of glass bottles, approaches the stinky container.

Neither the smell nor the swarm seem to bother him as he pulls open the swinging door and thrusts his arm to the elbow into the sludge. He moves his arm from one side of the bin to the other, feeling around for something solid. For a moment, he pauses, and uses his shoulder to push his drooping eyeglasses back onto the bridge of his nose. A second later, his face reads that he’s found what he’s looking for — and he pulls out a glass soda bottle with a long neck.

“I’m doing this because it’s better than doing nothing,” he said.

The scavenger, named Carlos Sarabia, used to work as a parking attendant, but he was fired in early July after he scratched a car belonging to one of the business’ clients.

“They let me go after 14 years of service and that was the first time anything like that had happened,” Sarabia said. “I told them I deserve another chance, but they said, ‘No, we have to obey the rules.’”

Sarabia receives a pension from his last job, but it’s not quite enough to pay his rent and other bills. He usually collects between 50 and 100 bottles a day by digging through public trash receptacles, and makes approximately $50 per week.

Since losing his job, Sarabia said he has desperately tried finding another. When he’s not looking for a job, he’s out collecting bottles.

“This is what I do on the side. It helps because I am able to eat and pay my bills. I’ve been all over trying to find a job,” he said.

Sarabia has made several attempts to get in touch with the management at his old job, hoping that he can convince them that he deserves to be given his position back, but they have all failed.

“I cannot be in touch with my manager because he put in a restraining order,” he explained. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s afraid I’ll get mad. I learned my lesson a long time ago. I just want my job back.”

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Name: Lyndee Ferolino, 29
Found: On the Beacon Hill loop trail inside of Griffith Park on a night hike organized through the social networking web site Meetup.com.
L.A. Story: Los Angeles native.

Lyndee Ferolino doesn’t chase butterflies or pick wild flowers as often as she would like.

The 29-year-old Los Angeles native recently decided that she needs to get outside more often, to become closer with nature. During a recent hike up to Beacon Hill in Griffith Park, Ferolino was exposed to fresh air and sunshine and left the park covered in dirt, but she admits that these moments didn’t really factor into why she decided to attend the hike in the first place.

“My friend Laura went on a MeetUp.com hike recently and was like, ‘There are so many hot guys there. You’re coming with me on the next one.’”

The social networking web site MeetUp helps groups of people with shared interests plan meetings and form offline clubs in local communities around the world. One such group, Downtown/Greater LA Hiking, organizes hikes throughout Los Angeles and sends e-mail alerts to site users with times and meeting places.

Sunday’s semi-beginner level, five-mile hike attracted an estimated 50 people of all ages and fitness levels.

“A few of them are OK-looking, but most of the people here aren’t really my type,” Ferolino said of the group, her tone mplying that she was not especially disappointed by this. “Meeting someone here is a possibility. It could happen anyplace. I could meet somebody at the grocery store.”

The idea of a new boyfriend sounds like a good one at first, but truthfully, Ferolino wants to take it slow. She’s still healing from a break-up that happened approximately a year ago, with her former boyfriend of nine years.

“We got together when we were young. He left me for a younger lady,” she starts, before adding with a sigh, “I digress. You can sense my bitterness?”

Ferolino said her relationship was very closed-off from the outside world and social gatherings included only her ex-boyfriend’s close friends. Because she wasn’t exposed to alternative viewpoints during those nine years, Ferolino feels that she never fully evolved into adulthood.

“When you’re young, you don’t think about the future. I think that’s what has made me immature at my age. I felt like I was getting used to being on my own for the first time and I had a lot of catching up that I needed to do.”

Laura, who finds wisdom in positive thinking self-help books like “The Secret” and “The Laws of Attraction,” has been sharing bits of advice that Ferolino finds helpful. One tip in particular she has been incorporating into her life as much as possible: try new things.

During the last couple of months, Ferolino has been trying to have as many new life experiences as possible, all adventures that would normally be out of character for her to engage in.

“Yesterday I went to the U.S. Open of Surfing, when I normally wouldn’t have gone to something like that,” she said. “It’s definitely helping with the healing process.”

This was Ferolino’s first hike.

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Name: Jeffrey Damnit
Found: At Stir Crazy Coffee House, 6903 Melrose Ave. in Hollywood.

LA Story: Moved to Los Angeles from New Orleans 10 years ago.

Jeffrey Damnit has, he estimates, 17 tattoos that include: James Dean’s race car number on the back of his neck; a tribute to Groucho Marx on his right side; one to Tom Waits on his left side and another to Albert Einstein on his back side. (“So I can call myself a smart ass,” he said.)
“I had an audition this morning to be a ‘rocker dude’ in a Smirnoff commercial, which doesn’t really change much of anything from my normal look,” he said.

There’s not necessarily an established significance for every ring that’s worn on your hand.

Some pieces of jewelry have sentimental value, while others take on symbolism depending upon the finger on which they’re worn.

In the case of Jeffrey Damnit, who wears nine silver rings, his ornamented hands carry a single message: he’s not looking for love.

“I’ve worn nine rings since the wife is gone,” he said, showing off the naked fourth digit on his left hand. “Shortly after I drove us here, she took off.”

Not long after his divorce, Damnit again found himself in a committed relationship, his third since his high school graduation, and diagnosed himself a serial monogamist.

In an attempt to break his codependency cycle, he decided to take a year to himself, swearing off even the possibility of an intimate relationship with another human being.

“I wanted to experience everything that I do in a year by myself,” Damnit said. “At times it was really tough. I recently borrowed a friends Vespa and drove to Vegas and I had moments where I was like, ‘There’s supposed to be arms around me right now.’”

It has been almost a full year since he and his ex-girlfriend parted ways, and Damnit will be going on his first date this Sunday. At the closing of his dating sabbatical, he feels refreshed and pleased with his personal accomplishments.

This month alone, the bartender/entertainer has been featured in a car commercial, two music videos and one film. He’s involved in a web series called “Bar Tab Confessions,” works promotions for an energy drink company, and is working on a reality show based on “drunken douchebaggary around town,” he said.

“I’m thinking I need to do a second (year),” he said. “I’ve had a very productive summer. It’s amazing. When I don’t live in a vagina, I get shit done.”

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