Letter from Los Angeles

In this week's New Yorker there is a piece on Skid Row in Los Angles. (I would like to link, but it isn't online, boo. "Letter from Los Angles: The homeless get their Hollywood Closeup." Dana Goodyear. May 5th 2008. The related blog). Dana Goodyear's article talks about how life on Skid Row has changed and improved since Lopez started the articles three years ago.

When I moved to LA three years ago, I found Skid Row to be one of the most disgusting, scary and inhumane places I had ever seen. It was a tent city of up to 5,000 homeless people: overwhelmingly people who suffered from mental illness and drug addiction. It was a mini city run by mini drug dealing war lords. Think the Superdome during Katrina meets the scene in Batman Begins when all the people get let out of the insane asylum. Once, while driving by myself during the day, I got pushed into Skid Row by a series of no left turn, no right turn, bus only, stop lights and one way streets. I was really scared. Being there was like when you are at a stop light and there is a weird crazy looking guy panhandleing, and you lock the door real fast. Only there were like 35 guys who looked like that, walking around, hitting each other, walking toward my car, falling over, drinking and smoking. I watched two really dirty homeless women with huge pupils start to make out and then sort of fall down on each other into a puddle of wet garbage.

That this could exist in a city as rich as Los Angeles in a country as rich as the US was on my top five reasons that I could not live in LA and be happy. Also on that list was the responses when I told people this, ranging from total apathy to outrage that homeless people all moved to LA. Most memorable was a women I did yoga teacher training with. She told me that she was really upset about it; her clients didn't want to buy million dollar condos that overlooked the homeless. Then she said that she wanted to improve the homeless situation in LA and that was why she was becoming a yoga teacher.

Reading the comparisons of Skid Row three years ago and Skid Row today, I am so impressed with what Steve Lopez has done, so impressed with the power of activism. I just hope that in my own life I will successfully channel my outrage and anger into positive change.