So I live in a hood-rat neighborhood…I kinda dig it, it is ecclectic and chalk full of interesting characters looming about. The only problem I have is; whenever I want “normal” (a relative term) folks over…I spend an exhausting amount of time informing them the hood is “cleaned” up and perfectly safe.
So the last three “suburban normal” folks I had over…the hood-winks always decide to be on their worst behavior. I don’t know if they are chronicling my visitors or if they are just trying to drive out the yuppy flavor. It’s hard to say.
I started noticing this phenomena when my dad visited…I inform him it’s safe despite the MS13 or rather MS XVI! (they really don’t know their Roman Numerals very well which is offensive; you’d think they would take extra care to know the exact number they are permanantly tagging onto buildings)…You don’t want to confuse people unless there is indeed a chapter 16 of the MS’…what do I know?
Anyways, So my dad comes relunctantly to the hood and the first person we see upon arrival is the opera singing transsexual…he is pretty cool with that but directly after the uplifting musical number; we run smack dab into a crack-addicted nut yelling and flayling his arms about. Then we see some lesbian prison escapees with tear drop tattoos and then a schizophrenic throws stuff from his window; cigerettes and rotten banana peels…upon our arrival. My dad is trying to be polite and says; everyone is really friendly with their greetings; very interesting way to cordially greet your fellow humans.
I know that he was highly unimpressed though becasue I overheard secret phone conversations to other family members about how scary downtown Los Angeles is and it’s NOT cleaned up at all….and then the grande finale was a homeless man who decided to bestow a golden shower upon my dirty car tire. My dad thought that was rude; I however, was slightly thankful the guy cleaned my tires…it’s a makeshift car wash and it’s free…who doesn’t love free?
So a week goes by; nothing happens of notoriety in the hood…(or I’m just so oblivious I have no idea what normal is)…like the NWA song quote; “When something happens in south Central LA, nothing happens…it’s just another ****** day”…pretty close to life in my hood.
Next victim is my buddy Shirley, she left the hood to move to sunny safe Glendale and she really wants to never troll in this hood again…she now shuns the place. In my charming monologue defending the hood and telling her it’s really cleaned up in six months….she also relunctantly decides to see if that is indeed true…(people have been saying my hood is being “cleaned up” for ten years but it’s not…it’s just feel-good propaganda)
She comes over and the minute she pulls in to park; there is a shoot out…a major shoot out involving oogles of gang members…and she is almost ran off the road and killed by the police…there was 30-40 cops speeding through the hood like crazed lunatics…all of the sudden, ghetto birds looming in the sky…not just one or two like every night…but a lot of them…there was about 200 hundred people gathered about; crime tape strewn about. She immediately leaves and I’ll really have to pull some sort of doozy to ever get her back here again…
I’d have to tell her Oprah is doing an appearance here to get here back…and then of course; I would just feign that one of the trannsexuals is Oprah…then she’d know I was full of malarcky and probably never talk to me again. This is my destination…no friends cuz I reside in the hood. In my defense though; the hood is expensive nowadays…I live alone; all my friends have roomates, husbands, boyfriends…so they split the rent…I have to pay this shit by myself…What’s a nomadic hermit germophobe to do?
That is the excitement for a day already chalk full of excitement but it all got trumped due to the shoot out…otherwise; I would’ve had a blog about some creepy guy on my floor who makes boogie man faces at me whenever I encounter him and then he runs and hides into his apartment. I can’t decide yet how to decipher these boogie man faces…I initially want to laugh hysterically but I think that isn’t the reaction he is looking for so then I think I should just mace him with no questions asked. I’m still kicking this one around…
