Who is this cowboy in black? A man in a mariachi band? Just a local North Hollywood cowboy in his fringed leather jacket? I snapped this photo at the North Hollywood metro station plaza and my first impression was that he was a mariachi musician on his way to a gig. But looking closer, I’m not sure. Most mariachi outfits are a lot flashier–to match the blaring music. Whatever his calling, he certainly stood out from the others hanging around the plaza.
Inside the North Hollywood Red Line Metro station there is, however, a tile portrait of a genuine rhinestone cowboy: Nudie Cohn. He is just one figure in a history of the San Fernando Valley in tiles on the walls of the station.
In fact, Nudie the Tailor (who was born in Kiev in the Ukraine) was the first to put rhinestones on cowboy clothes back in the 1930s. And he kept on doing it until the 1980s, when he passed away. 
In those 50 years he created clothing for cowboy stars like Gene Autry, Tex Ritter, and Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. He may be most famous for the $10,000 gold lame suit he created for Elvis back in the days when Elvis was still young and beautiful. Nudie also counted the ever-flashy Elton John among his clients.
And then there were all his big Caddies with longhorn horns mounted on the hood. Nudie definitely had a flair for self-promotion and is among those immortalized on the Red Line station walls as part of the San Fernando Valley history.
