Crazy Central

It's been a fantastic two weeks on the road, seeing Melanie in Denver and driving down endless miles of incredibly gorgeous desert.  I belong on the road, but it's nice to get home and do laundry too.  The first day back is like being in love again, it's everything that makes me smitten with downtown.  The energy, the buildings, the people, the smell of bus fumes, concrete and stale urine.  Home.

I'm back and forth so often between LA and Orange that I don't really have a rhythm here.  All I know is, if I have been here a while, meaning over four days, I start to get antsy.  Some of it is the small living space, and the heat seems to make it worse.  Some of it is the lack of green space and places to just sit outside and watch people.  But that didn't seem to explain the level of suffocation.  I think I figured it out while picking up some contact lens solution at the Rite-Aid on 5th and Broadway.  Or what I call crazy central.

If you want to see the core of DTLA crazy, maybe even the heart of it, go to the aforementioned Rite-Aid.  Downtown is trying really hard to become urban chic, but it's DNA is still the homeless.  People laying on the corner outside, before I had even made it three steps into the store, two people with that glazed look of too much time on the street had leaned in and mumbled something to me.  I can only assume it was asking for money, it usually is.  This ragtag assembly of street people (residents) were floating around the store in a scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and in the back by pharmacy three or more people where yelling.  I can't tell if it was at each other or just out loud for anyone to hear.

It's simultaneously terrifying, intriguing and tremendously sad.  Without launching on a soliloquy on the state of (lack of) mental health care in our country, there are a lot (A LOT) of people here in LA that need serious help. They seem to concentrate downtown.  It's as if four giants picked up the corners of a huge sheet under LA County and all the marbles rolled into the center, which is downtown.  The Rite-Aid is where they all clack into each other.

After being here for four or more days and seeing the amount of people that are alone, both physically and inside their own heads, and seeing the size of the problem, it starts to drag me down.  That may be a horribly selfish thing to say.  I can, and do, escape regularly. There is no escape for them.  They are most likely permanent.  It's painful to watch.

I don't feel threatened by it, I don't really get scared of the guy standing on the corner yelling about god or screaming bible verses.  I've never had anyone be rude when I told them, sorry, I don't have any money to spare. If anything they are a lot nicer than the snarky hipsters behind the coffee counter or the cold blooded businessmen.

As I was paying for my solution, I told the women behind the register.  "It gets pretty crazy in here"  she just smiled that {you have no idea} smile and said "you should see it at one in the morning."  A chill went down my spine.

I Love DTLA. I Hate DTLA.

I love downtown.  It's young and vibrant and full of art and life and people and mess and passion.  I hate downtown.  It's lonely and full of piss and hipsters and young people and purpose and I'm not connected to any of it. I'm from another generation.  I'm beat.  And not in a cool hipster way, the way the original term was conceived.  Beat down, at the bottom of the pile.

I went for a walk through J Town yesterday evening.  It was cool.  The soft light of sunset sweeping 1st street.  Lots of 20 somethings hanging out at cool restaurants.  A group of dancers in kimonos at the Japanese American Cultural Center.  As with everything downtown, I get to see it, but not take part. This is not a town for old men, old dreamers, old souls.

Every time I step outside I feel invigorated.  Life is happening here.  It's full of people who are doing important stuff.  Almost everyday, there is something being filmed.  Parking lots full of trucks and equipment and people with radios on their belts, hurriedly going to and fro, setting up for hours for a shoot that will take place 6 hours from now.  I can't explain the excitement it creates.  It's palpable.  Something's happening.

Everywhere you look there are round pegs, not fitting into square holes.  So many of us just don't fit.  I saw a women today on Spring during rush hour, with no pants on, wiping herself.  LAPD was about 50 feet down the street.  Nothing.  Thank god.  I've seen her around, she's a resident.  They (we) are invisible.

As I walked back from J town last night, it stuck me how comfortable I was the closer I was to Skid Row.  Los Angeles street is the hard edge.  To the left is the Yin of capitalism.  To the right is the Yang.  For reasons I will never comprehend, the closer I am to the black, the more comfortable and interested I am.

I love DTLA.