Dark California Part 3 : Porn on my block

I’ve been writing about crime on my block for the past two weeks. In this third installment, I want to write about something that’s not criminal, but it’s definitely naughty.  Pornography. For a year, on my block in Studio City in the San Fernando Valley, a neighbor was filming porn in her house across the street.

            Nothing she did was criminal. In fact, pornography is big business in Southern California, especially in the San Fernando Valley. When Hollywood shoots its mainstream movies and TV shows out of town, and when the economy is bad, porn’s money lubricates a lot of businesses around here, so we mostly ignore it. It’s also easy to ignore because it’s always shot somewhere else, somewhere far from your home.

            When actual porn is produced on your block, however, it’s impossible to ignore, and it gave our suburban lives a weird surreal skew. It also gave everyone who lived on the block something to talk about whenever we saw each other.

            Across the street and three houses down is a small bungalow with a brick front facade. The house itself isn’t brick -- it’s insane to build a brick house in earthquake-prone California unless it’s reinforced with steel I-beams, so the body of the house is a wooden frame covered with stucco. And just like the house itself, our neighbor’s exterior appearances did not match their interior lives.

            In other words, they looked just like us. 

            But then again, how else are porn producers supposed to look? 

            It started in 2006, when an undercover police officer lived in the house, a guy I’ll call Chuck. He was the one proud Republican on the block (most others are closeted around here) and he stuck placards for conservative candidates into his front lawn. He could never tell us what he was doing until the case he was working on was over. For a time he grew a long beard and rode motorcycles and never spoke to us -- and it turned out he was infiltrating a motorcycle gang somewhere at the north end of the vast Los Angeles urban sprawl.

            He also had a girlfriend, whom I’ll call Margaret. She was an attractive redhead who never smiled and never made eye contact, but we could often hear them fighting at night, and her shouts were louder than his.

            Chuck was a great neighbor (when he was around); he helped people with their cars and sprinkler systems, and he mowed the lawn for Sybil, the old lady who lived next door to him. Because he was so gregarious, the other guys who lived on the block (myself included) often ended up standing on his front lawn drinking a soda or a bottle of beer on a warm spring night. He told funny stories, and we all felt that some of his legit toughness might rub off on us.

            Sam, the neighbor directly across from him, asked him about the shouting.

            “I’m scared of her, man,” Chuck said. “She is freaking me out.”

            “Why don’t you break up with her?” one of us asked.

            “Because we bought the house together. With prices going up, it seemed like the smart thing to do,” said Chuck.

            We all nodded in sympathy, but I’m sure we had the same thought. He’s one of LAPD’s toughest undercover cops, and he’s scared of his girlfriend Margaret?  How bad is she, if she can scare Chuck?

            And then suddenly, Chuck was gone. He moved out without a word to anyone, and only Margaret lived in the house. She came and went and still never spoke to anyone. But she looked like an average middle class working woman in gray business skirts and blouses on the weekdays, walking to and from her Toyota in the morning and evening, and then in jeans and T-shirts on weekends...just like the rest of us.

            Then her father moved in with her. He was in his 60’s, tan with gray hair, and he dressed in Hawaiian print shirts, drawstring pants and flip-flops. He was all beach, all the time. But that’s typical around here as well. Every fourth guy over 60 looks like a Jimmy Buffet fan or a Trader Joe’s employee.

            Then her father bought a house further down our block. This was before the crash, when everyone was leveraging their money and getting crazy loans for homes, and suddenly Margaret and her Dad owned two, with Dad in one house and Margaret in the other.

            And then movie production began.

            It started at night, and it looked like a regular film production. They had a generator in the street, and a big burly guy in a t-shirt and cargo shorts was yanking cable from the generator into the house, and then they lit up the interior like Dodger Stadium, but kept the blinds drawn.

            They parked a white cube truck with all the lighting and grip gear at the curb. A cube truck is a production vehicle with only four wheels, so it’s more like a moving van than a big movie truck, so it can be in a residential neighbor without special permits. Luxury cars would arrive and park and stay there into the wee hours. Coming home late, you’d notice the extra vehicles, the whirring electrical generator, the bright lights in the house, and the people coming and going from their cars.

            But by the next morning, all the cars would be gone. Margaret and her Dad were following the rules, and as long as you have your permits in order and no car or 4-wheel truck stays in one place longer than 24 hours, you can shoot a student film or a sequel to “Titanic” in the privacy of your home. 

            None of us on the block really cared that much -- we’re used to movie and TV production happening everywhere in Los Angeles, and we were glad to see that people were working.

            Then the shoots started happening twice a week, and then three times a week, and it went on for months. We started to notice and wonder -- what IS Margaret doing in there?

            Neighbors asked her and her father, but neither of them volunteered much. When Sybil, the old lady who lived next door complained about the moaning and grappling she heard from next door seeping into her bedroom at night, Margaret and her Dad told her that they had the right to do whatever they wanted.

            Then, the gossiping began. Instantly, we all knew that middle age Dad had been a porn star in the 1970’s and that Margaret had grown up with her mom and then her dad, but had really raised herself. Dad had connections in Japan, and together he and Margaret were making DVDs and Internet porn for the Asian market. And now the feral red haired child and her Dad were cranking out the porn three nights a week.

            Then, just as quickly, Margaret and Dad switched to daytime shoots. Maybe they had to meet higher demand. Maybe Sybil complained too much about the bumping and grinding disturbing her sleep. Maybe they realized that fewer prying eyes were around in the daytime, there was more parking, they could use mostly daylight for their scenes, and as long as their cast and crew cars were gone before 6 p.m., hardly any neighbors would notice.            

            But I noticed. I was working from home during some of that time, and I witnessed some wild stuff. I remember playing with my then two-year old daughter Lily on our front lawn when a sleek black Mercedes pulled up in front of our house, so new it had no plates yet. Two brunettes were inside, and they cranked their music and were drinking Jack Daniels from the bottle and singing. 

            Then one answered her cell phone, the music went off, and they left their parked car and headed to Margaret’s house. One was dressed as a sexy red devil, with a headband with horns and a little tail coming out of her mini-skirt, and the other was wearing a teeny weeny nurse’s costume. Both teetered as they strutted down the street in their platform shoes, passing their bottle of Jack as they headed past Sybil sitting on her porch and into Margaret’s house. That was very common at 2 in the afternoon.

            “Daddy, is she a nurse?”

            “No Lily, that’s a costume.”

            “They like dress-up?”

            “Yes, sweetheart. They like dress-up.”

            “I like dress-up too!”

            It was hard to explain that it was a different kind of dress-up.

            Later, the Dad grew bolder and bought a big RV and parked it in his driveway, and that became his make-up and costume department, with the house itself being used for props and storage. The performers would show up in their fancy cars but they were now dressed in street clothes, and then they’d knock on the RV door. Dad would swing it open, and they’d climb inside.

            Music, laughter, howling and shouts would spill out of the RV’s windows, and then the door would open and the performers would emerge in a cloud of marijuana smoke, dressed as judges, cops, girl scouts, pool boys and pizza delivery guys. They’d trip over some empty bottles of booze as they came down the stairs and they’d head across the street from Dad’s house to Margaret’s house, to perform their scenes.

            In the middle of the afternoon, actresses with curlers in their hair, wearing stiletto heels and bras and panties covered only by sheer negligees, would cross paths with the neighborhood school children walking home from school in their traditional uniforms.

            The schoolgirls did head turns after the groups intersected, but the actresses did not. They could care less.

            There is an adage that the biggest house on the biggest hill is always owned by the pornographer -- yet Dad and Margaret never upgraded. Although production was increasing, they never seemed to be driving better cars, and Margaret’s sprinkler system still shot a fountain of water straight in the air every second morning at 7 am.

Either the Japanese weren’t paying on time, or Dad and Margaret weren’t making money fast enough.

            Then, the economy crashed.

            The first clue that things weren’t perfect in porn land was their garage sale. They hung a hundred costumes of every variety on massive clothing racks in the driveway. Those who weren’t “in the know,” thought a costume company must have gone out of business or was releasing some excess inventory. The word spread to the other blocks and their garage sale did well. But on our block we knew where those clothes had been…and that they had a story to tell.  We shopped slowly and asked questions.

            “What was this costume used for?”

            “When was the last time this was dry-cleaned?”

            “Do you know how to get these stains out?

            Margaret answered questions with a shrug and “I don’t know.”

            Dad’s house went into foreclosure first. The “Bank Owned” sign went up, and he moved out in a weekend. Margaret hung on a bit longer, then did a short sale with a broker, and she moved out as well.

            No goodbyes, no nods, no waves as their cars drove away.

            That was in 2008. It was a crazy time. New owners are in both homes -- and although that’s a story that could only happen in Los Angeles, homeowners have pulled some wild stunts to keep their homes.

            What’s the craziest story from YOUR BLOCK?

            What have people done to save their homes in your neighborhood?

            Let me know!

Dark California : Easy Access to Crime Part 2 : On my street

              

              Last week I wrote about crime and suspicious activity on my street -- not just my neighborhood, but also my actual suburban Los Angeles block.  I like to build to the good stuff, so this is the second blog post of three that are coming. 

              Last week I mentioned the crimes of commuters speeding during rush hour, failed actors abandoning their cars, and the exchange of stolen property (electronics, luxury cars and weapons), which happens across the street on the corner. This week, let’s discuss home invasion, drug deals, and stabbings, all of which have happened on my block as well!

            

The first type of crime occurs in the middle of the day.  Because I work in TV, I have odd hours, odd jobs, and sometimes no job, which means I am often home between 11 and 2.  Here is what I’ve witnessed:

The Casual Home Invasion

            I am home alone, writing, and I hear someone trying my doorknob.  I go to the front door and I ask “who is it?” and I hear no answer.  I look out the window and see that the person who tried to open my door has already left and is proceeding to my neighbor’s home.  He’s average in every way, but he also is wearing an orange vest, the kind that street workers use, but also the same kind you can buy at the hardware store for twelve dollars.  I step outside to track his actions, but if he’s aware of me comma he’s smart enough not to look in my direction.

            He has a clear strategy.  He walks with authority and confidence up to every door on the block, one after the other, and tries the door to see if it’s open. If it’s not, he just keeps going.  When I call the police they tell me they haven’t caught him yet, but this crime is common and profitable.  1 out of 50 homes is unlocked, he can easily try 50 doors in a little over an hour, and he’s sure to find a home to invade and rob soon. 

The Violent Home Invasion

            The violent home invasion involves the mule kick, and for this crime the perps usually arrive in pairs.  Two guys approach the house, and one rings the doorbell and knocks on the door while the other checks the driveway and the side of the house. If someone comes to the door, they make loud noises and shout, scaring whoever is inside -- the last thing they want is for the homeowner to open the door and see and identify them.  They say things like, “Hey, we got a live one! I don’t like this!  No way!  Wrong house!  This isn’t Jim’s place!” 

            They are loud and scary, but the comments are general and not legally “threatening,” but the homeowner hears them and stays inside. But if no one answers, one will turn his back, brace himself and mule kick the door, which rips the door through both the frame and the locks.  They grab what they can in less than a minute, and they go.  This hasn’t happened to me, but it’s happened on my block.

            

Evening crime:

The Drug Deal

            I live one block off a major boulevard and there is a narrow alley between the boulevard and my block.  The residents of the apartment buildings on the boulevard use the alley to drive into their ground floor parking lots, and on the residential side, the owners store their garbage cans and have access to their own detached garages on the alley.

            At night the alley is dark, with only the light from the gas station on the corner illuminating the narrow strip of asphalt.  If you drive down this alley after 11 p.m., cars will be parked there; lights on, engine running, and the men are doing business.  They will not let you pass and they will motion for you to go around.  If you insist you’d like to drive by, someone comes close and tells you to turn around.

Stabbings

            I should make this singular, because there was only one stabbing, but it was directly in front of my house and on the opposite side of the street.  The crime was simple: A drug buyer approached a drug dealer in the alley, somehow got the drugs in his hand before handing over the money -- and he ran.

            The dealers pursued him down the alley on foot.  He cleared the corner, turned right and tried to go deeper into the neighborhood to elude his pursuers, but made a right again on our block.  This, unfortunately for him, is where the dealers caught up.  There were no gunshots --- they just stabbed him three times, a car roared up, the dealers jumped in and drove away.

            Bleeding badly, the drug buyer banged on doors, but no one opened up for him at 1 in the morning.  Knowing he needed an ambulance, he then ran two blocks to the main boulevard. Where he ran into traffic and risked getting run over -- but someone stopped and called 911 and the ambulances came.  He survived.

            The next morning all the neighbors seemed to instantly know about the stabbing, as if we all learned it through atmospheric osmosis.  We crossed the street and looked at the red stain on the sidewalk where the victim had lost several pints of blood, and it looked like spilled wine.  The sprinklers came on and washed it away.

            We compared the details we heard and we talked about how we need to put lights in the alley. 

            A police cruiser turned the corner and came by, and the two officers on patrol drove by slowly.  We all waved nervously, they waved and nodded back.  They were just keeping tabs on the street where the bad stuff went down the previous night.  They kept rolling.  The crime has come and gone, but we felt better, for some reason.

            

Still, what creates the most stress is knowing how random it all is. Like a tornado that touches down in the Midwest and destroys some homes while ignoring others, crime works the same way in Los Angeles.

I want your feedback!

Is your neighborhood like mine?

Or is Los Angeles unique?

Do you feel that crime is random no matter where it is, or is there a pattern than can be gleaned through observation -- and therefore prevented?

I want to know about crime where you are, what we can learn from its patterns and how we can stop it.

           

Next week -- San Fernando Valley Pornography -- filmed right on my block.  It’s as much as story about a dropping economy as dropping clothes, so please read!

Dark California: Easy Access to Crime - Part 1

I live on a street that’s perfect for random Los Angeles crime. In LA, the flow of traffic determines our decisions.  If we can get somewhere easily, park easily, and leave easily, we choose that route and that destination over others. Whether it’s a job, a store, a restaurant, or a school - if it’s easy for us to get there, that matters as much as cost or quality.  Lost time in traffic is just too frustrating.

The same logic applies to crime as well, and unfortunately for me and my family, we live on a street where the flow of traffic makes random crime easy. I live in a wonderful neighborhood with nice front lawns and white picket fences.  My street is also one residential street away from two major surface streets, and we are the first residential street you find when you exit the freeway and head south. 

Two right hand turns, park the car, do your nefarious business, and you can zoom back down the street and get back on the freeway in less than two minutes. One or two blocks deeper into the neighborhood, and that ease disappears. Like random molecules in space, moving blood vessels, or water in a stream, traffic follows the easiest route, and thus so does all the trafficking in which humans engage.

Crime in Los Angeles only seems random.  Whether it’s road rage or robbery, it flares up suddenly and then disappears, and we all wonder, “why did it happen here?”  Looking closer, I believe that the seeming randomness of the crime can be explained by how traffic made that crime convenient to commit.

In increasing order of magnitude, here are the crimes that occur in front of my home every year:

Aggressive Speeding

I live one block from a major North/South artery, and one block from a major East/West artery, and the flow of traffic backs up on both the morning and evening rush hours.  Drivers sit in their cars in bumper to bumper traffic, watching the traffic lights at that major intersection change again and again, yet they never move forward.

Until their frustration builds and they finally reach our block first.  Why wait another ten minutes to go one block?  They make a turn, zip down our street and make a quick right hand turn and they’re heading where they want to go that much faster.

That’s not a crime.  However, when they reach our street their frustration is released -- and they punch that gas pedal and go from fifteen to fifty miles per hour, gritting their teeth to hold in their road rage.

Crossing the street or backing out of our driveway is tough when you’re up against the Road Warrior.

Abandoned Cars

People get tired of life in Los Angeles, and they need to get away.  Sometimes they need a vacation, sometimes they need to leave the country for a few months, or go home to Tennessee to stay with their parents for awhile.  Sometimes they’ve given up on Tinseltown and they drop everything and go.  Sometimes people steal cars and they just need to leave them somewhere.

I’ve seen all of the above happen, and they all leave their cars for me to monitor.

More than once I have seen people drive up, park their car in front of my home, get out and lock their cars, and another car zips up to pick them up, and they disappear.  And that car stays there for days, weeks, and then months.

Each car has a story, and if the car is there long enough for a spider to weave a cobweb on one of the tires, I start poking around and peering in the windows.

They sometimes have school parking permits hanging from the rear view mirrors,  or out of state license plates, or a pile of actor head shots on the back seat.  Sometimes the back window is shattered, or the trunk has been pried open then tied shut with twine.

Once I called a phone number I saw at the top of head shot, and another time I called the sheriff in a small county in Tennessee -- but no one appreciated my amateur sleuthing. “It’s not illegal to park my car there!”

Actually, it is.  It’s called abandonment, and now I just call the City to tow it away.

The Exchange

“The Exchange” is more dramatic and happens several times a year.  My block is easy to find from the freeway, it’s easy to get back on the freeway yet again, it’s quiet and there’s usually plenty of parking.  This means that it’s a perfect spot for a quick exchange of illegal goods.

I’ve seen two cars turn the corner and roar up -- one is expensive and usually without plates.  Leaving the motors running, men get out of both cars and stand there looking tough while two of them exchange cash. 

I am playing in the front yard with my daughter, dancing on our lawn surrounded by a white picket fence, and I stop playing to look at them.  They see me watching and they stare back at me, and their message is clear -- “What are you looking at?”

If I keep looking they will take a step forward, and if I look away, they will leave...so I look away.  They complete their transaction, the cars are exchanged and roar away.

Other times I see trunks open and the men move items from one trunk to another. Sometimes they move boxes of electronics, and sometimes they move long sturdy objects wrapped in burlap or oil cloth.

The men glance at me again, questioning why I am watching, and again I look away. Cash is exchanged, the transaction is completed, and they leave as well.

I then go back to playing with my daughter and drift back into our version of suburban bliss.

Over the hiss of the sprinklers, however, there is a high-pitched hiss that never goes away -- the sound of the freeway half a mile away, with a noise so continuous that you never notice it unless you someone points it out to you, or you notice its stunning absence on certain holiday mornings when the freeway is empty.  

That’s our urban river, and these random men finish their business and flow back into the stream of cars and disappear.

Next week, we’ll continue with drug deals, stabbings, and home invasions.

Hidden California : The Temple to Guan Gong

On Stockton Street in San Francisco, in the heart of Chinatown, on the third floor of the Kong Chow Benevolent Association building, you will find the temple to Guan Gong. It’s a plain beige stucco office building with a few shops on the bottom floor, and with offices on the upper floors perfect for accountants and dentists to hang their shingles. There’s a narrow black Otis elevator in the back, and tacked to the wall is a faded piece of paper with Chinese writing with a tiny scrawl in English at the top -- Temple, Third Floor.

You ride up three floors, step out into an entranceway filled with shopping bags and suitcases, then step through a beaded curtain and into an sun-filled atrium in which sits a massive statue of a stern and red-faced warrior with a long beard, who carries a long pole with a blade -- General Guan Yu, most often called Guan Gong, or Lord Guan. Surrounded by urns filled with burning incense, smaller statues of minor deities and stacks of fruit offerings and flower bouquets, Lord Guan’s wooden face glowers at you, tolerating your presence, as if asking you to speak quickly and explain why you’ve come.

He is the patron saint to many residents in San Francisco’s Chinatown, and you will spot a shrine to him in the back corner of many shops. He is the patron saint to warriors, to police officers, to criminals, to poets, to artists and to travelers - in other words, people who feel they must live apart from the rest of society, and therefore follow a separate code.  Since many residents of Chinatown still see themselves as travelers to our country, removed by fate or choice to live apart from the great Middle Kingdom, Guan Gong is the deity who watches over them.

I first learned about Guan Gong as a kid when I watched the play F.O.B. (which stands for Fresh Off the Boat), written by David Henry Hwang, in which Guan Gong comes to life in a seedy Chinatown restaurant. I was then introduced to the temple as a teenager, when I was doing documentary photography and I wanted an introduction to Chinatown.  My oldest childhood friend, Kelvin Han Yee is an actor who is well-known in San Francisco, but at the time his father, Kong Yee was even better known in Chinatown, and he was my guide to places I’d never have found otherwise.

Kong Yee was the Clerk of the Court for the City and County of San Francisco for many years, specifically, Night Court.  And in that court, the most pervasive crimes that were addressed night after night for years on end were -- parking tickets. And where is the parking worst in the city of San Francisco?  Chinatown. 

The merchants and delivery trucks working those narrow steep streets gather dozens of parking tickets a month as a normal price of doing business, but if you remain a scofflaw for too long, your car or truck will be towed or its registration denied, and you end up in Night Court.

For years, Cantonese-speaking Clerk of the Court Kong Yee was the liaison between the judges and the scofflaws, and he’d help broker the deals between the two.  The City would get some of its money, and the merchants would get to keep running their businesses in a neighborhood vital to tourism. This meant that when Kong walked through Chinatown, he had juice.  People would come out in the street, shake his hand, press a gift on him, beg him to come in for some food, thank him for fixing a problem or beg him to address a new one.

When I was with Kong, I was a caucasian kid who wasn’t merely tolerated but I was welcomed, and he showed me back kitchens and garment factories and gambling parlors I wouldn’t have seen otherwise -- including the temple to Guan Gong.

Once you enter the temple there is no rush to help you.  An old Chinese granddad wanders up to you, the same kind of guy in the padded coat with a bag of groceries who you see riding the 30 Stockton bus, and it turns out he is the Taoist priest who runs the place. He knows why you’ve come, so there are no questions. He steers you to the wall where newspaper articles show the politicians who have come to pay their respects to Lord Guan in the past -- President Eisenhower, Governor Pete Wilson, and Mayor Willie Brown to name a few.  The priest explains that if you want to win re-election, the politicians know you must visit Guan Gong.

You then pay five bucks, burn incense in ten spots around the temple, get on your knees and bow.  Then, if you want, you can get your fortune told.  You shake a bamboo container full of a hundred thin bamboo sticks with numbers on them, and whichever stick emerges as you gently shake is Lord Guan’s declaration of your future.

I went there recently with two good friends from my youth and from Cal Berkeley -- fellow writers and seekers Kevin Kirkpatrick and Douglas Gorney, who I knew would feel the same kinship that I have with Lord Guan. 

The rituals were exciting, but when it came time to divine our futures, the fortunes we shook free indicated that Lord Guan had some stern and direct advice for us. The sticks warned one of us not to cut corners at work, he warned another that he must find and new place to live, and another was told there was no easy answer to his family health problems.  These were not fortune cookie platitudes, and it didn’t seem like paying more money would have gotten us nicer outcomes.

“Work hard and then come back in December and see what he says then,” the priest told us all. I tried to take a photo, but he said no -- I didn’t have Kong with me to smooth things out this time.

We left the temple feeling energized and a little scared, and headed back to Grant Avenue.  Before meeting my wife and daughter, we vowed to downplay the seriousness of what we’d been told.

If you want to read more about Lord Guan, go to:

wikipedia.org/wiki/Guan_Yu

The Bell

For the month of May 2013, I commuted from Studio City in the San Fernando Valley to West Los Angeles, close to the Santa Monica Border.  It’s a trip of just 16 miles, and it took me an hour.

For the first 40 minutes of my commute, I only go 8 miles, which means I’m traveling at an average of 5 miles an hour, bumper to bumper, west on the 101 freeway and then south on the 405 freeway.

Then everything stops as I try to merge from the 101 West to the 405 South.

And that’s when I see it.  Every morning I pass a solitary bell, rusted brown on a green pole shaped like a shepherd’s staff, cemented in the narrow strip of dirt between the freeway and the on-ramp.

You catch glimpses of these bells along freeways everywhere in California, and they are there to remind you that you are supposedly driving along a route that was once the romantic and historic El Camino Real, the King’s Highway, the same road that the Franciscan Padres and Friars walked as they established the bucolic missions that later became the towns and cities of the picturesque Golden State.

As I pass this bell, inch by inch, I can’t help thinking that it’s for us, the poor saps stuck in traffic, taunting us on our morning commute.

Who else could it be for?  You can’t see this sad, rusted bell if you are driving the speed limit, because it just flashes by.  The only time it actually catches your eye is when you are stuck staring at it, stationary in your car.

In 2013, the bell no longer evokes any romantic notion of California’s past.  Did it ever?

Maybe in 1955, driving along a new stretch of the 101 freeway, someone would look out their car window on their Sunday drive, coasting along and say, “Hey, look, there’s a bell marking El Camino Road!  This new highway follows exactly the same path that the missionaries took when they walked north from mission to mission! This ribbon of asphalt which we coast along, reminds of the loam of the earth beneath it, where brave Californians before me once walked!”

 

click to enlarge

That may be what the original boosters who put in these bells hoped I would think when I see it, but this bell is now an unintended ironic joke on me and every other driver out there who idles past it every morning. The romance is gone.

When you grow up in California and go to public school, in fourth grade you do your “mission project.”  There are 21 missions in California -- Mission Santa Barbara, Mission San Jose, Mission San Rafael, etc.,  - and there were also two pueblos (one is Los Angeles) and four presidios.  Even with overcrowding in California schools, that means each kid in class is still assigned a mission to research and investigate. He or she then writes a paper and builds a paper mache diorama, and maybe even visits the actual mission with his or her parents on a weekend trip. Millions of school kids in California have done this for decades.

“Are we there yet?” a kid might ask on his family driving trip to his mission.

“I don’t know, we are getting close,” a parent might reply.  “Look for the bells, after all, we are on the El Camino Real.”

In between San Jose and San Francisco, and in between many towns, the El Camino Real is an actual boulevard, and you can drive it for miles from town to town, but in Los Angeles the El Camino Real is the freeway.  A blazing hot, noisy freeway with fumes and trash by the side of the road.

click to enlarge

I remember the romantic stories from school of conquistadors like Anza and Portola moving north through this Western paradise and blazing their way farther north, followed later by the Franciscan brothers who would walk the 26 miles between each mission in a day.  They would then rest a day at a mission, and then walk again the next day, and thus a brother could walk the entire length of El Norte California in two months. 

When they walked the El Camino Real they would carry bags of mustard seeds that they tossed by the handful, so that the next year the bright yellow flowers of the mustard plant would mark the way they had traveled the year before. 

Of course, most of this romantic story is bullshit, just like the romantic myth of the Pilgrims and the Native Americans at the first Thanksgiving.  We have evidence that  the settlers at Jamestown, Virginia resorted to cannibalism to survive the first winters there, and there’s plenty of evidence that early California was just as brutal, and the true purpose of the missions was to secure political power. 

I was taught that the missions were idyllic paradises where the natives learned agriculture and the crafts of civilization while the brothers tamed the wilderness.  However, there are no native tribes left to confirm any of this.  It may have been closer to enforced slave labor that became genocide. 

Hey, Mom and Dad! There’s another bell!  We’re almost to the mission!

So the bell celebrates a romantic myth of a past that wasn’t ever real, and I stare at it questioning the truth, but I also know that although it was brutal, the California they are trying to evoke was at least pristine for a time. 

And California becomes less pristine every day, and as I sit staring at the bell as I idle in my car, I think of the climate change my carbon exhaust is exacerbating.  There is:

A little less rainfall every year,

A little less snowfall,

A little less snowpack,

A little less snow melt and runoff,

A little less water in the rivers,

A little less water for plants and animals and crops and people,

A little less water for electricity,

A little higher cost to buy the energy from out of state, but Washington State has the same problems,

Or we have a flood year where we get all our water at once -- but it doesn’t stay long because it melts too fast,

Which means more erosion and mudslides because there are fewer plants to hold the soil against the flash floods.

Which means when it dries out, the fires will come, like they do every year now, burning away even more growth to expose even more soil that can be washed away next year.

So while Oklahoma suffers from killer tornadoes, and the East Coast suffers from hurricanes that rip through cities and neighborhoods, and while the northern states endure brutal winter storms and spring months with record snow fall...

...California slowly heats up. Like me, moving in traffic at five miles an hour, the weather and climate in California changes gradually.  Day by day we are becoming more of a desert, baking in the hot sun, tranquil -- until a brutal fire breaks out and destroys homes and forests and kills firefighters.

That’s what I think about when I’m stuck in traffic and I stare up this misplaced and misguided bell.

Maybe that’s its new purpose -- if it no longer can remind us of a California that never was, perhaps its point is to urge us to take notice of our slow, fiery decline so we can try to do something about it.

My job ends in eight days, and I am staying off the freeway.  I won’t take a job unless it’s closer than fives miles away from home on surface streets. 

For more information on these bells, check out:

cahighways.org/elcamino.html

Fore more on climate change : 

climatechange.ca.gov

newsroom.ucla.edu

I am Walter Mitty

I am Walter Mitty.  I make up stories in my head about former Army Rangers who can keep their cool in a fist fight and who know how to handle a weapon. I have met some of these people and I’ve felt their icy gaze as I peppered them with questions, but I am not one of them. 

            The truth is, I haven’t been in a fist fight since I was thirteen. I also love to read about daring computer experts, hackers from Anonymous who stop evil politicians from rigging electronic voting machines, and CIA whiz kids who can ruin foreign nuclear centrifuges from afar, but I am not one of them either.

            To be honest, I can’t even program my own watering system. I stare at the keypad with Option A and Option B with variable start, stop and run times, and like a suburban Sisyphus I punch in numbers and  try yet again to get all thirteen sprinkler heads to work in tandem. I dream that maybe this time I won’t drown one section of my lawn while starving another, but again, I fail.  My task is never done.

            That’s why I stick to writing and editing.

            However, I do know some secrets.  I have special knowledge that only fellow dads and husbands would appreciate.  Here’s one I can share:

            You’re at a birthday party with your family. There’s a bouncy house so all the kids can fling, trample, collide and crush themselves into exhaustion, thank goodness. You’re exhausted yourself, and you wish you could just kick back and talk to some other dad about sprinkler systems, but now Is not the time. You still must wipe faces, chase kids and grab scissors away from them, and take video when someone thrusts a camera in your hand.  But keep an eye on that bouncy house, solider. Your time is coming.

            As the party dies down, ask the host when the truck is coming to take the house away. Make sure you have at least half an hour.

            Then ask if you can take a nap in it before it is deflated.  They will be amused, but they won’t say no.  Ask your wife to make sure that no harassing kids climb in with you and ruin your experience.  You’ve earned this.

            Then, turn off the fan in the back and quickly climb inside.  If the bouncy house is in the shade and it’s not too hot, you have found the perfect refuge, an undulating pillow where you can slowly fall asleep as the house of air slowly collapses around you.

            Before you close your eyes, look up at the mesh ceiling of the bouncy house and see the leaves and branches flicker in the blue light.  Feel yourself sink deeper into the tuck and roll of plastic, as the tower columns dip down to greet you and then envelop you.  Eventually the house will reach stasis with its internal air, with you, and the surrounding air, and you will float there, suspended, until wonderful sleep overcomes you, labors ceased.  

            Trust me, I’m an expert.

PT Cruiser Weekend

Here is an article I wrote for the LA Times -- in the year 2000! It was part of their “First Person” series, and I wrote it when the PT Cruiser first came out.

To surprise my wife Robin for her birthday I rented a Chrysler PT Cruiser for the weekend -- and in 48 hours we experienced all the thrills and horrors of instant fame. 

            She drives a fragile '87 Jaguar and wants a new car, so when she saw the Cruiser at the LA Auto Show in January she thought she'd found a car with as much style as her English baby.  But when she called dealerships she discovered that no one gives test drives -- because they don't need to. One dealer has 250 cars on order and has delivered only 50 so far -- or so he said over the phone.

            Then I found Advantage Car Rental in Van Nuys, where I rented a red PT Cruiser for 90 dollars a day.  With full insurance, unlimited mileage and a pre-paid tank of gas, the tag came to $239 for two days.  That seemed steep, but it was the same as renting a hot sports car for the weekend -- and right now the PT Cruiser is the cooler car to drive.

            "We classify it as a specialty vehicle," explained Andy Gantner, the Advantage area manager,  "but we'll probably reevaluate that price as time goes on."

            The star of my birthday production drove up front. I was briefly disappointed -- she was smaller in real life than I'd expected from her pictures.  But that feeling quickly passed as our first fan appeared before I'd even driven away. 

            It was the start of a weekend of fan bombardment -- but that's what you get when you hang out in public with a celebrity.  Our admirers fell into three categories: polite fans who pretend they aren't looking but sneak glances at you...loud fans who insist on being your friend...and brazen stalkers who say nothing but follow you too closely.

The first guy, a bearded man in his fifties, turned out to be a stalker.  He slowly circled me as I transferred dry-cleaning, bags and cassette tapes from my car to the Cruiser. He peered over my shoulder as I lowered the seats in back, then examined the side mirrors as I got behind the wheel. He finally stood right in front of the car and wouldn't move -- even after I'd started the engine.  I was afraid to honk.

            When I finally tooted the horn he looked me in the eye and just stared. Thankfully he stepped back on the curb and I made my getaway. My first celebrity lesson: don't upset the stalkers.

            Robin was thrilled with her birthday gift, once I convinced her I hadn't bought it. She grabbed the keys and after months of waiting finally slid behind the wheel. We hit the town in style.  She likes the car because the design reminds her of a London cab or a classic DeSoto. I like it because it reminds me of those same cars souped up into Rat Fink Hot Rods from the 70's.

The interior has the same gray plastic moulding as most standard cars but they've added some flourishes. The speedometer and signals are round and recessed into a retro dashboard coated with red fiberglass that matches the exterior of the car. It's not the metal and wood dashboard of my dreams, but hey, for a mass-produced American car it was good enough.

When you're with a star, errands take longer.  It was midday by now and everybody was slowing down to look at us in our hot red car in the bright July sun.

As we walked out of a coffee shop one woman insisted on taking our picture.  She took one as we posed by the car, another as we pulled out from the parking space, and another waving at her with the windows down.  She walked over.

"You should really meet my son, he loves old cars and would love one of these!" she said, searching through her purse for a pen and paper.  The cars behind us started honking and we thankfully had an excuse to drive away.

You can't talk to everybody no matter how nice they are, so soon we were acting like celebrities ourselves. We donned dark sunglasses, just smiled and nodded, and made no sudden movements.  Parking lots were tough, but the crowd eventually parted if we moved slowly enough. Robin did mention, however, that it'd be nice if the company provided bodyguards along with the car rental.

We needed a break from all the attention, so Sunday we headed north to Santa Barbara to visit friends for the day. A guy in a convertible Mustang pulled alongside and honked, and he and his blonde girlfriend flashed us the "thumbs up."  We waved, all smiles, suddenly accepted by the beautiful people.

But soon it was impossible to change lanes because there was always a car full of rubberneckers alongside checking us out.  If we accelerated, so would they.  If we slowed down, they'd do the same.  Dealing with fans in a parking lot was easy compared to speeding with them down a highway. We missed three exits because we were boxed in by fans cheering us on.

The car was fun to drive, but doesn't have a lot of power -- it gets passed going uphill no matter how cool it looks. It was the most fun at the beach with all the windows down.  The hatchback makes it easy to throw junk in the back, and it's small enough to get in and out of any space.

The weekend was a blast, but after 48 hours we were glad to abandon our celebrity status and slip back into the anonymity of our comfortable used cars. When there are thousands of PT Cruisers on the road and the flush of excitement wears off, Robin will go back and try the relationship again.  She hopes by then it'll come in British racing green.