LA honours wayward son Charles Bukowski

He may have been a self-described "dirty old man", but the city of Los Angeles has decided to honour Charles Bukowski, the hard-drinking poet and novelist, by declaring his rundown bungalow in east Hollywood an historic landmark, saving it from demolition by developers planning to build condominiums on the site. He wrote his first novel Post Office in the 1920s era building, where he lived from 1963 to 1972.

"Hollywood is famous not because everybody has been a saint or a nun," said LA City Councilman Eric Garcetti. "It's always attracted complicated and important people and Charles Bukowski certainly fits that mold."

The so-called 'Poet Laureate of Skid Row', who died in 1994 at the age of 73, chronicled his down-at-heel life on the gritty streets of LA in novels such as Ham on Rye. Garcetti said the writer deserved to be remembered even though he was "not necessarily a guy you'd want to be friends with". (Continued below)

Mickey Rourke and Matt Dillon have both portrayed Bukowski’s misanthropic alter ego Henry Chinaski - Rourke in 1987’s Barfly and Dillon in Factotum (2005) - while a critically-hailed documentary Bukowski: Born Into This depicts the counterculture icon’s life. Many writers and artists have noted his influence, including Tom Waits and Billy Childish.

In a 1974 interview Bukowski said of LA: "You live in a town all your life, and you get to know every bitch on the street corner and half of them you have already messed around with. You've got the layout of the whole land." Garcetti said Bukowski's bungalow could eventually be included on a walking tour of Hollywood.