Tourists swooning over movie star handprints at the landmark Chinese Theatre turn and stare. Awaiting glitterati arrivals for a red-carpet event down the block, the crowd gawks. And people in cars and tour buses jamming one of the world's most famous streets are looking on with curious grins.
Out in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard, a handsome, smartly attired man with shoulder-length dreadlocks is running alongside the center stripe, a fashion photographer and video crew capturing every stride.
"Who is that?" asks a woman in the crowd on the teeming Hollywood Walk of Fame.
It's no mystery to at least one passenger riding in an open-air star-tours van.
"Hey Todd!" he yells.
Rams running back Todd Gurley looks around and considers the spectacle, an only-in-Hollywood moment that came about because the Rams left St. Louis and returned to star-studded Southern California.
Their relocation to the nation's second-largest media market is expected to be a boon to the NFL, to the Rams and especially to Gurley, who already has parlayed the move into several major national marketing opportunities.
And with Kobe Bryant now retired, Gurley is primed to become the next Los Angeles superstar.
About an hour before the start of the guerrilla-style photo session for a new line of fashionable NFL menswear, Gurley quietly had stepped out of a black Cadillac sedan. He strode past a Wolverine impersonator, a costumed Optimus Prime Transformer and Mickey and Minnie Mouse.
Gurley spent much of his rookie season around the Rams' former headquarters in Earth City, Mo. This was like another planet.
"It's definitely been crazy," Gurley notes, laughing as he prepares for his closeup. "Just going from St. Louis to L.A.
"It's like a 360."
