Beverly Hills - Bright yellow police lines stretched across the street Friday where Michael Jackson lived, and died, a day earlier.

But the hordes of fans they were meant to keep at bay were nowhere to be found.

Instead, there was a handful of Jackson devotees sitting around on the grass verges of the swanky Beverly Hills neighbourhood where the pop idol lived his final days in a rented mansion. A crushed hat and homemade sequined glove lay next to a lamppost. Journalists hoping for a story outnumbered the Jackson fans hoping to pay him tribute.

Throughout the day however a stream of sightseeing vans bussed curious tourists to see the macabre site of Jackson's demise, much to the chagrin of the millionaire residents of area.

"My friends will be really impressed," bragged Kevin Fritsche, 18, of Cologne, Germany. He was in the western US on a summer holiday with his family. But before they headed off in their rented minivan to see the excesses of America in Las Vegas they decided to "be a part of history," Fritsche said.

"I wasn't a great fan of his. I liked his music but I didn't like him too much. Still, this is something really big," Fritsche told dpa.

Such sentiments seemed typical of many of the people who flocked to the landmarks associated with Jackson. At the UCLA hospital where he was pronounced dead, most of the pilgrims at the ad-hoc Jackson shrine on Friday were hospital patients in their gowns and staff in their overalls, who stopped to see what the commotion was about.

At ground zero of the Jackson memorial site, his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, hundreds of people waited in line to pay their respects. But few of them were from Los Angeles. Most seemed to be tourists who felt lucky to have their visits coincide with the demise of the greatest star in recent history.

In contrast to the scenes in London and Tokyo, where fans gathered in their hundreds to sing Jackson's songs and pay tribute to his life, most of those gathered in Los Angeles were "accidental mourners," as one local Angeleno put it.

"There's no question that in his time Michael Jackson was the world's greatest superstar," said pop culture professor Cherie Paris. "But my sense is that people here became so jaded about his incessant weirdness. They were still fascinated by his personality, but the admiration was largely absent."

Even Jackson impersonator Hector Ruiz, who gave countless interviews to the press at the Hollywood pavement star and displayed a rather lame moonwalk, seemed more pathetic than respectful.

Jackson would likely rather have cancelled a concert thatn to be seen in the cheaply-sewn black costume worn by Ruiz, not to mention the cheap plastic baubles draped all over his jacket or the plaster stuck on his nose that seemed to mock Jackson.

"I never stopped believing in him and I never will," declared Ruiz. But a moment later he contradicted himself, and revealed the distance that many Americans had come to feel from the former king of pop.

"I was thinking of taking the glove off," he said, referring to his plans to stop impersonating Jackson. "People made fun of me." (dpa)