I'm not sure if I saw a homeless lady with a nursing baby last week. She's in the camp with the lady that shouts at me sometimes for using a headlight at night. They've been there about a year; the crew that was there got cleaned out sub rosa while all eyes were in Santa Ana. In typical LA fashion, the LAPD went "no one is looking crack skulls" and got rid of a semi-functional community of squatters, some of which had been there since the late '80s. And in typical LA fashion, about a week later their entire population had been replaced by the folx kicked out of Orange County. This didn't make the news, of course. So much doesn't. I'm not sure what effect the powers-that-be thought it would have; clearing out the people who had adapted to the city and replacing them with refugees has had the result of radically increased trash, radically increased fecal coliform in the river, and a radical increase in attitude. The folx that were here mostly kept to themselves (the sane ones anyway) while the folx that replaced them want you to know they resent your presence at their personal nadir. So i don't know what to do about the lady who may or may not have a babe-in-arms. Because I know that as a denizen of the LA river she's one of the apex homeless. Compared to the failwhales who set up shop under an overpass on the freeway with four lanes of 70mph traffic on either side of them they're fuckin' Bear Grylls. And I know that should DSHS get involved things aren't necessarily going to get any better, DSHS in LA being what it is. But I also know Frogtown outdoors in August is a shitty place to be 2 months old. So I will probably continue to do nothing. The area north of them is full of better-adapted folx. The Army Corps of Engineers has had that section closed off for three years now (because they're idiots and assholes - Rick Perry might not remember which three agencies to eliminate but for me it's Army Corps of Engineers, ICE and TSA in that order) so they're doing shit like tapping lampposts and running extension cords out to their camps. The area south of them is temporarily full of better-adapted folx because the Army Corps of Engineers had that section closed off for a year so they could dig a 6x6 hole. But the homeless got sick of their shit so they tore down the fences. So now more people ride through that section than before. Which will probably cause a migration north, which will cause population pressure, which will likely cause the whole river to burn again because they tend to light camp fires and then pass out and then my way is blocked by firetrucks. Here's a picture of Lady Gaga wearing a 128ct Tiffany diamond 3.28 miles away. I bought Frank Meza a votive last week. I was going to light it for him on my way to work but I've spent too much time getting the bike rebuilt and I've been running late. So I was going to light it for him on the way home but it fell out of my bag in the bathroom and shattered all over the floor. I gotta buy groceries today; I think I should buy another.
It's crazy how quickly the internet can ruin people's lives just by being outraged. My aunt worked with a lady who ended up on reddit for yelling at some kids. As my aunt tells it, the lady was a shitty person who was abusive to coworkers and the video was in-line with her usual behavior. She's unemployed now, and (according to my Aunt) still receives death-threats from people. I like seeing shitty people held accountable for their behavior, but I hate the disproportionate response of mob mentality. The internet burns them to their roots. In the situation of Frank Meza, I have to agree with this guy: https://twitter.com/realdumbrunner/status/1148021247806062592 I wish the pitchforks and the torches could stay stowed for shit like this. In any case, some of the homeless in my city have been migrating closer to my workplace, which is in the middle of what we call the "Old Market", an expensive part of town with expensive shops, expensive rent, expensive apartments, expensive restaurants... The crackdown has been frustrating to watch, and it's been done quietly. I've noticed the same guys hanging around under a bridge I park near for the last two weeks. They have sleeping bags, a tent, and a little propane stove they use to make coffee and cook breakfast. When I was parking this morning, they were gone. When I went out to lunch, four city workers were tossing their things into black garbage bags. I'm not a huge fan of them living in the middle of what can qualify as my city's "tourist" destination (lol), but they have a right to exist and I'm not going to begrudge them for their decision to set up camp close to my daily routine. I wish my city did more to help them, and I wish we didn't just throw away what could be their only fucking possessions. My city's homeless population can't hold a candle to LA's, but it was nice to read your thoughts on the camps close to you; helps me frame my own thoughts
I used to run /r/favors. We had a couple designers on there that would do cheap work so they wouldn't be homeless. A guy showed up demanding to be able to post for an entire media campaign for free and I told him no, then he told me I was being unreasonable so I told him to pound sand. I went from being "that guy who turns down commenter of the year every year" to being persona non-grata in the space of two hours. Two hours that, ironically enough, I was busy doing some pro-bono design work at a church in Compton. I wish I could say that it was all worth it but once the work was done I went to a service and despite all the lovely ladies in their lovely hats, it was an hour's worth of fire and brimstone and eternal damnation for the sodomites of the world. It's super-hard not taking it personally. I think the people who get through that sort of shit okay develop an understanding that it isn't about them, it's about the mob's constant need to spew hatred and vitriol at something 24-7 and that it's their time. What pisses me off is that anybody with a soul can tell that any upvote/downvote system, any content curator built around "engagement" is an extremism engine. When you're making it easier for people to share the stuff they feel strongly, you're making hatred much more fluid than mild approval. You're building a system designed to burn out of control at the slightest cinder. Unfortunately the lot of them - from Ohanian to Zuckerberg to Dorsey - are stone cold sociopaths. They give no fucks. It's numbers to them, not people and they don't see tears on their statistics to wipe away. Seattle does tent cities. They move. Churches or cities or green spaces will agree to host a tent city for 8-12 weeks and for those two to three months, there's a community of largely harmless homeless. They're the ones that don't go nuts without their medication, they're the ones that don't steal for a living. The high-functioning ones. They don't stick around long enough for the neighbors to get up-in-arms, and they don't let just anybody hang out; it's an attempt to deal with a lack of shelter in as humanitarian a way as possible. It's the least bad solution I've seen but it's a long way from acceptable. Los Angeles waits for encampments to accrete and then sweeps them away with garbage trucks and armed cops. It's like scraping barnacles off a barge. It's crazy how quickly the internet can ruin people's lives just by being outraged. My aunt worked with a lady who ended up on reddit for yelling at some kids.
It lasted 36 hours before the homeless threw it over the edge. His wife put one there last week, along with some silk flowers. The homeless threw her votive into the street but not before using it to set fire to the silk flowers. The wireframe and ashes were still there until I cleaned 'em up. LA Parks rousted the homeless yesterday. I felt bad because they all shuffle around the bike path looking pensive as the stuff they haven't hauled off in their shopping carts gets swept into dump trucks as volunteers with stacks of biohazard-thick garbage bags hurl their accreted possessions into oblivion. There was a social worker there; she set up in one of the cleaned-out drainage tunnels that wash their shit out to the ocean whenever it rains but no one was talking to her. But there wasn't any garbage once I was past the truck. And when I saw two people hanging out down by the water, I also saw their bicycles and their picnic basket. CITIZENS. And the three bicyclists in a row after that? All smiled and waved, which on the bike path, amongst LA bicyclists, is the equivalent of hurling your arms around someone and kissing them on the lips. Last night, of course, the homeless were on the path, reasserting their possession of the territory. Hassling anyone who rode by. Shouting at me for having a headlight. You see, it's their river we just pass through. From a libertarian standpoint, they're the stakeholders. Except of course this is not an economic argument: the actual stakeholders get merely symbolic involvement. And they aren't all homeless? But I'm developing a deep-seated hatred of the LA river homeless and I don't like it. The difference between parks in LA and parks in Seattle is parks in LA are owned by who knows who, who never talk to each other, who create a balkanized patchwork where no one is really responsible. It's 2019 and they're just now thinking this is a bad idea because it's Los Angeles and without graft and corruption this place has no economy. it was just a candle.