The Dirt on DTLA

Downtown Los Angeles is a blight, asphyxiated by freeways and festering with neglect. I'm not exaggerating. Look on a map and you’ll see the freeway tightly circling the neighborhood like a noose. It’s a textbook case of all the horrors described by Jane Jacobs in The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

Yeah, sure, people keep saying there’s a renaissance in the neighborhood but all I see are streets devoid of life, scores of homeless people, and callous pockets of ostentatious wealth. It's a huge culture shock after Japan, where the streets were bustling and immaculate, and I only saw three homeless people in two weeks. Well, okay, DTLA has great tacos. But it still smells like piss and desperation.

My chef friend Chris who is an L.A. native suggested that I check out Grand Central Market. That was the best advice I could’ve gotten. I swear I died and went to taco heaven. It was great to be reminded that underneath all the flashy Americana, Los Angeles is really Latino.

Grand Central Market neon. 

El Torres spices. So much chipotle and beans. 

Window into the Pupusería. It's the El Salvador version of arepas. After much deliberation, I decided to try a pupusa because they don't have these in NYC. And also, it seemed like a meal for just $5. 

Holy shit this was good. 

Across the street from Grand Central Market, I spotted Angel’s Flight and recognized the beautifully ornate archway from that amazing 1961 film The Exiles. (Here's the trailer if you've never seen this gem of a film.)

Standing all by itself surrounded by concrete buildings that look like tombstones, the truncated funicular was a sad reminder of what Downtown L.A. used to be. I flashed to the scenes in the film of Yvonne wandering through the busy streets of L.A., gazing longingly at fancy shop windows, passing by rollicking bars full of people grooving to the brawny sound of an R&B beat. Now the only people on the street are curled up under ugly velour blankets with a shopping cart next to them.

A still from "The Exiles" showing Angel's Flight in 1960. Omigod there was actually street life in L.A. once! 

Angel's Flight today. Bunker Hill was levelled in 1969 and the funicular was disassembled. In 1996, the city set it up again
 a block away from its original location. 

I spent three days in DTLA feeling more and more depressed. What's saddest to me is that a huge percentage of the homeless people are brown. Yes, there are a lot of homeless people who are mentally ill or have substance abuse problems. But a lot of them are just old and poor. I can't help but walk down the street thinking that one or two mistakes and I would be huddled under an ugly velour blanket too.

If you don't believe that the economic divide cuts across race lines, then all you need to do is get on a Los Angeles bus. It takes hours to get anywhere. You wouldn't be on a bus in Los Angeles if you had a freaking choice. You're only on a bus in Los Angeles because you can't afford more than $1.75 for transportation. And everyone on the bus is some shade of brown. Because if you're white, you can afford an Uber or a Lyft.

The only things that help with the bleakness of the city are the good people here, the food, and the natural beauty of the place. I keep stopping in my tracks in amazement at the botany here. The sun shines even in scrubby DTLA.

And to think, two weeks ago, I was in Japan where people have picnics under these trees. 

What even is this? It looks like it should be in the ocean with some yellow fishes hiding inside of it.

There are bushes of this crazy plant everywhere. The red tube-like things are stamen & they unfurl from little buds.

I'm trying to like this city but I hate it. I've got to make some money and get out of here.

For more about The Exiles and Downtown L.A., see this amazing series of blog articles with photographs comparing the locations in the 1960 film with the same places now. 

Manthropology in France

          “You just seem like you’re available,” a male friend of mine told me in France.

This is something that I’ve heard from two possessive ex-boyfriends as well and it always bugs the shit out of me. I have no idea what “available” means and no idea how I’m not suppose to seem “available.” After all, I’m just being me. Am I missing barriers that other people have?  Do other women act more aloof, suspicious, cautious? It’s not like I wear anything that provocative. It’s not like I throw my tits in a stranger’s face while talking. Ah, the burden of being female. Either you’re too “available” or not “available” enough.

And I think there are different behavior expectations in Europe. I remember going barhopping in NYC with a British girl who didn’t know at all that if you accept a drink from a guy, it means you’re going to at least have a conversation with him for the duration of that drink. Which means you don’t accept a drink from someone who is going to bore the hell out of you or offend you. Unless you are curious as to what makes him so moronic. I’ve been known to have drinks with white supremists and Bible thumpers just for anthropology’s sake. It’s like studying a six-legged creature with ten eyes. Really? You exist?

In Paris, I was totally not "available." My heart was still insisting on London for some annoying reason and I had no money to go out anyway. But then I had a Skype conversation with a friend one day, who chastised me for moping. I realized he was right. There are much worse things than being stranded in France. I should just enjoy it. He even lent me $200 just so I would stop worrying and learn to love the bomb.

So I picked my chin off the floor and researched where people go swing dancing in Paris. I learned 1) that swing dancing is called le Rock in France, which is weird since rock is definitely not swing, and 2) there seems to be only one place in Paris to dance le Rock and that’s Le Caveau de la Huchette. Which is even weirder since there is a huge scene in every other major city. A French friend later informed me that swing dancing is something everyone learns in middle school and it’s considered boring and bourgeois. Swing is not an alternative scene in Paris like it is in New York, London and Berlin.

            But I didn’t know this so I got a bit dolled up and went to Le Caveau. There were about a dozen people on the dance floor, most of them grey-haired, also unusual since everywhere else, the average age is around 30. A fantastic London hot jazz band was playing and I would have liked to talk to them but a small French guy who had lived in the Bronx immediately glued himself to my side. The only time I managed to escape him was when a Korean guy cut in and asked me to dance.

The French guy was a bit odd in his dance moves. He seemed to know the basic steps and swing outs, but he kept lifting me up in a way that my only possible response was to straddle his waist. Then, since there were no other physical possibilities, he would turn around and around in place. Awkward is not the word for this. And guys who are territorial totally turn me off. After about three dances with him, I was ready to split.

“Do you want a drink?” he asked.

“Okay, maybe one drink and then I’ll leave,” I said out of politeness.

We went upstairs for the drink and to my surprise, he asked the barman for a coffee. It was about 11pm. The bar didn’t have coffee so he asked if I would get a drink with him at another bar.

            “Okay,” I said, rather regretting that I’d agreed to have a drink with him, “As long as it’s on the way to the metro.”

So we walked along the pedestrian Rue de la Huchette where it seemed every other place was overflowing with packs of booze-infused 20-year olds desperate to find some fun. A few steps and he put his arm around me. It was rather perfunctory, so I wasn’t sure if he was just being friendly or if he had some other intention. Just in case, I very firmly took his arm off my shoulders and looked at him straight in the eyes: sorry buddy, no dice.

            We walked for a moment in silence and then he said, “I live in Arrondissement 10.”

            “That’s nice. I’m in Arrondissement 14 at a friend’s place.”

             We passed by an okay-looking café where two men quietly smoked at small separate tables.

            “Should we sit here?” I asked, wanting to get this drink over with. 

            “I really need woman tonight,” he replied, “We have drink at my place?”

“Sorry,” I said, rather astonished at his frankness, “I’m not interested in going to your place.”

            “No?” he asked.

            “No,” I confirmed.

            “Okay,” he shrugged.

He accompanied me a few more yards to the metro and said goodbye. It was all very cut and dry, yes or no. I’ve had a more stimulating exchange with a vendor at a market stall over a bag of green beans.

I didn't have any more blatant propositions like that in Southern France. But I did have some mystifying encounters. They all took place on the train. Maybe since I wasn't hanging out in bars. But then France doesn't really have the kind of bars or pubs that there are in London or New York. People don't just sit around drinking and do nothing else. Drinking happens at restaurants or cafes or at clubs where something else like dancing or music is going on. So even if I wanted to, it wasn't really possible to just go sit somewhere and have a drink and talk to someone. Instead, guys would approach me on the train.

The first time this happened, it was that Turkish guy who struck up a conversation as we were both waiting for the train to pull up to Nice Ville. At the end of five minutes, he had offered me a couch in his apartment in Cannes. Weird, I thought, but maybe this is how things like this happen in France? I took him up on his offer since I was too broke for a pad in Cannes and he seemed harmless enough. I also immediately offered him a bit of dough so he wouldn’t expect anything else in exchange.  But within a day, I was regretting my decision. There was nothing to say the guy. And his apartment smelled like some feral animal had peed or died in a corner.

So the second time I was on the train to Nice and some Frenchie guy started to talk to me, I was not as surprised when at the end of five minutes he offered me a couch in his apartment in Nice. This time, however, I didn’t take him up on his offer, since I realized that he was just like the Turk and would also bore the hell out of me. He was some provincial French guy who travels through Europe for a company that produces olive oil. I couldn’t discern any common interest in history or art or film or literature or language or even a scrap of curiosity about my film. It was like trying to have a conversation with a Francophone Willie Loman and he didn’t even have a pair of silk stockings to show me.  

The weirdest encounter I had on the train was when I was lugging my two suitcases from Nice to Marseille. A round little African guy came up behind me and grabbed the biggest suitcase, nodding at me a few times. I hurried after him down the platform onto one of those old-fashioned trains with compartments. He made a beeline to a compartment in the middle of the train, stuck my suitcase on a shelf, and there I was, forced to share a private little room with him.  It turned out he was a cook in one of the hotels in Cannes and originally from Senegal. I had a rather tedious conversation with him in pigeon English and French with the help of Google translate. He showed me pictures of food on his iphone and a photo of a celebrity whom I didn't recognize on the red carpet. He was way interested me being a filmmaker. “You. Me. Movie?” he kept repeating excitedly, “You! Me! Movie!!!”

Then just before the train pulled up to Cannes, he suddenly declared, “I take taxi to hotel. You give me €8.”

“Umm,” I replied, utterly mystified, “I don’t have €8 to give you.”

“You give me €8. Taxi, hotel,” he demanded and wrote down “€8” on a napkin just in case I didn’t understand.

“No €8,” I shrugged helplessly, “I don’t have.”

He seemed perplexed and a bit offended. Some cultural thing was totally lost on me. I have no idea if it was an African cultural thing or a French cultural thing.  We both lapsed into silence pondering our vast cultural divide. I was relieved when the train arrived in Cannes and he left with barely a goodbye.