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.