I Visit Skid Row and Come Away Chastened

Lately I've been thinking of ways to economize on my lodging as my job search continues, so I decided to investigate community resources that might be available to someone in my situation. The answer, as I discovered, is not many. Most of the resources are allocated (as is fitting) for people in very dire circumstances, and I guess the assumption is that middle class people have enough of a safety net in friends and family. I ascertained this for myself by visiting a downtown women's center, where I was told that they serve only the homeless, meaning women who have been living on the streets for a year or longer.

My immediate thought was that in that case a homeless person might be half-dead by the time they got there. I was incredulous, but I realize I shouldn't have been. I applaud the work these people are doing, but of course their resources are limited. Another agency I was directed to had a basement parking structure that was locked but so grim in appearance that I imagined a sign above it in medieval lettering saying, "Abandon all hope ye who enter here." Seriously. I could picture driving into it and never seeing the light of day again, so I was left to consider other alternatives.

This was my first visit to that part of downtown Los Angeles, and although I didn't find anything that would benefit me there, the streets were teeming with life, the good, the bad, and the ugly all side by side and on top of one another. The big flower markets and the homeless camps were within steps of one another: one block was lined with sidewalk tents and the next was clogged with tourists. I navigated a couple of narrow side streets packed with small shops and pedestrians that suddenly reminded me of London. I saw several landmarks--City Hall, the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, and Olvera Street--from different perspectives than I'm used to. And finally, I figured out how to get onto Sunset Boulevard from downtown without the weird little detour through a sketchy neighborhood that I remembered from the past. Have they possibly done some road work in that area?

I was sitting at a traffic light across from Olvera Street when I had one of those past, present, and future deja vu moments I was talking about last week. That is, I looked over and saw the exact spot where years ago I stood--on my first visit to L.A.--and looked with yearning in the direction of Sunset Boulevard, the street sign being all I could really see of it. I had been dropped off at the train station by the Amtrak bus and had a few hours to spare before catching my train back east, and boy, was I itching to see at least a little of the city I'd heard so much about. Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be any way to take a bus tour like I'd done in Chicago, and I'd been warned before I got there about wandering around alone (this was shortly before the city erupted over the Rodney King beating). Thus it was that my first experience of L.A. was limited to Union Station and Olvera Street, which nevertheless left a lasting impression.

As I was sitting at the light yesterday, I thought to myself, "This is one of those watershed moments in your life in which you realize that the present has finally caught up with the past (or perhaps it's the other way around). You'll remember this moment all your life." The truth is, though, that while I knew it was true, it didn't feel like a transcendent moment: I just felt like my everyday self, sitting in traffic, with my usual concerns, worried about splurging for coffee but feeling that, for the money, it was probably a good investment in mental hygiene, a small treat in lieu of bigger ones--and wondering when the light was going to change.

Despite the visit to Skid Row, it was a beautiful day. I was annoyed that my rental deposit from my old apartment has yet to arrive in the mail, but I still went in search of and found the cup of coffee I was looking for. (Well, maybe not exactly that cup. The coffeehouse, while suitably funky, was too full of hipsters, lending further credence to my feeling that I can't possibly be one.) The coffee was good, but the neighborhood didn't please me as much as it had on first impression. I capped it off with a walk in the park anyway (I do like the park) and was once again visited by local wildlife in the form of ducks and turtles as I stood enjoying the view across the water.

I had first taken the precaution of removing my road atlas, which contained a copy of my birth certificate and a job application, from my car and carrying them with me as I walked. That was after I noticed a white truck idling in the street near my car after I had parked it. Thinking that that looked a little peculiar, I decided to err on the side of caution, since my car's been broken into before. The truck pulled away as soon I started walking back to my car, not that it looks anything like a vehicle a typical thief would target. Never a dull moment, right? Actually, I think I would welcome a few dull moments, or at least a few ordinary ones.

Well, on the bright side, I am finding my way around a little better every day. For the second time in a row, I managed to get back on the Glendale Freeway going in the right direction and even remembered to get out of the exit lane in time to avoid a hair-raising last-minute scramble and a trip back to the neighborhood I had just left. I had decided against filling out the job application in the coffeehouse, where I didn't feel at ease enough to concentrate on it (I fell back on my library book, Martin Chuzzlewit, instead), thus necessitating a stop in a second cafe for the purpose of completing that task. I justified it in my mind as a business expense, though it will probably mean skipping coffee altogether for the foreseeable future.

With the job application completed, I headed back to my hotel, still wrestling with the same career and financial difficulties as before but having somehow managed to enjoy the day in spite of it. I'm a realist, but I try not to let that get in the way of a sunny day. The short cut I took on the way back didn't work out, as sometimes happens with my short cuts, which turn into learning experiences instead. I ended up in Long Beach, and it's a mystery to me how that happened, but it let me realize that some of the little trips I'd taken earlier, apparently fruitless, had paid off by allowing me to recognize street names and get myself going the right way while bypassing an area I'd rather avoid.

If there's a moral to this story, I suppose it is this: never drive into an opening that looks like the gates of hell. Nothing good could possibly come of it. Or else it might be: either you're a hipster, or you're not. Visit a hipster joint and find out; you'll soon know. Or possibly: you can learn something from everything, even if it's taking a wrong turn, as long as you figure it out in time. Or maybe it's all three.