"How I Spent My Summer Vacation"

The first thing my boss does is hand me a few stapled sheets of paper with targets on them. A few churches, a few shopping centers, a McDonald's and some major intersections. I have no idea where the fuck these places are, but these are all the locations where LA Care wants me to take pictures of the truck.

Meanwhile the truck is parked in front of the shop waiting for me. The diesel engine still running, right after my boss has checked the engine fluid and the oil.

He hands me a digital camera and for a moment, it seems like he wants me to figure out where these locations are without the use of a map. He says nothing and walks back into the office. I'm wondering if this means I'm supposed to jump in the truck and just drive away now. I haven't even had a chance to park my car in the shop so that no one breaks into it while I'm out and about.

It was for the first few minutes after I had punched in on the GPS system that I actually thought I'd have to figure out where these places in the ghetto were strictly by trial and error.

I step into the office.

He looks at me and asks if I'm familiar with the locations. I just shake my head, so he prints out a Google map with directions on it. My blood pressure returns to normal.

It was the first day of three. Three days that I was not looking forward to at all. The only thing I could think of that made things any better were the three days I had planned out for the following weekend. The Sound and Fury festival was just one week away.

But first...I had to get through this shit.

The thing about driving alone through the ghetto for the first time is wondering whether or not you're driving through an area where you're not welcome, wondering whether or not you'll be noticed...if anyone is actually paying attention to you...

I figured I'd be the only white person around -- and in most parts of South Central LA I really was the only white person around.

It's a strange feeling, but the reality begins to settle in little by little...when you realize that no one there really cares about you...or what you're doing.

I had already been familiarized with a few of the streets in Inglewood, Gardena and Compton -- but not while I was alone. My route progressively toured through parts of South Central LA that I thought I'd never see:

(Information courtesy of www.streetgangs.com)

My last route:

The first several pictures I took were in some of the "safer" locations on my route.

A Shell gas station at the intersection of Western and Redondo Beach in Gardena:

The Memorial Hospital of Gardena:

Slowly, I began to differentiate between what I thought were extremely poor/working class neighborhoods and the neighborhoods that appeared to be potentially dangerous.

Forced to stop on the hour, I pulled over next to this Arturo's Tacos at the intersection of Gage and Avalon:

Perhaps they have good tacos...it's too bad I was on the clock.

Somehow, I eventually started feeling more comfortable...probably because the more familiar I became with each intersection, the more I knew what to expect everywhere I went.

My route covered major streets running through Inglewood, Morningside Park, Westmont and Southeast Los Angeles...all of which have documented gang territories. After a few laps, the perceived ghetto nature of these neighborhoods began to blend in with the Southern California scenery. After a few laps, I might as well have been driving through Orange County...sort of.

Every once in a while I'd see a few shady looking characters, some of whom seemed far too cliche for reality. I definitely had a few favorites though. On a stretch heading west on Manchester, just before passing under the 110 freeway, I'm pretty sure I saw this guy:



Passing time was pretty easy once I lent myself to all the comedic references. Eventually, stopping to get out and take pictures at intersections like Florence and Normandie became pretty casual...

From this:

...to this -- 76 at South East corner of Florence and Normandie (given 17 years of recovery):

Mobil on North East corner of Florence and Crenshaw:

My favorite part about the last photo:

The first day was by far the most difficult. Not knowing what to expect, what I would see, where I was going...it has always been a mental obstacle for me to drive through parts of a city I've never seen before...but this was entirely different. Perhaps it was merely a case of underestimating my own survival instincts...my ability to avoid getting myself into trouble.

I pictured myself missing important turns, driving down the wrong streets, getting myself lost because the map couldn't account for areas that had been closed off due to construction.

By the time I had seen my entire route I was comfortable enough to make stops just about anywhere to take pictures. Well...maybe not anywhere.

The second day of my route was probably the most fun...if I can actually call it that. I had all of my stops planned before I even got in the truck. It was on the second day that I saw the most white people, two of which were gingers...which really threw me off.

Somewhere between all the raging police sirens, the random people being arrested every time I had to cruise down Western, I saw a girl who looked remarkably similar to Michelle Trachtenberg crossing the street on Slauson:

It was after I saw the Michelle Trachtenberg look-alike wandering around in the "ghetto" that I decided I was done worrying about anything shitty happening. It turned into a regular old working-class job that I was obligated to finish doing before I could move on and start working at the Blockbuster in Hollywood.

This never took away from the feeling that I had a close-call situation with having to work in the ghetto at night. It was during those dreaded five days or so before my last route started that I wondered if I might end up being the next Raymond K Hessel.

Granted, if something like that were to happen to me while closing the shop at night, the person with the gun would probably be less concerned about the fact that I went to school for so long only to drive trucks, and I would inevitably end up with a hollow-point in my skull...

The third day is when things started to go wrong.

Sunday morning, I made it to the truck depot around 7:40am. It was still chilly from the night before. Quiet and breezy. None of the businesses on 130th street and Broadway are open on Sundays, so I really was the only person there. It was when I went into the alley behind the truck depot to open the shop that I saw the omen...

What followed after that was the first problem of the day.

Apparently, the night before, one of the other driver's had returned a truck from Vegas and had to park it next to mine. Normally this wouldn't have been a problem, but the shop was practically full at this point. There was no room for me to move my truck. The keys to the other truck had already been dropped in the office, which I had no keys to...so I was forced to call my boss from out of bed to drive to the shop and help me get the truck out.

This put me roughly thirty minutes behind schedule. I had a feeling this might end up being the first incident of three..."The Rule of Threes," my best friend would say...just like when we moved to Vegas.

My boss showed up and we got my truck out of the shop. It was on my last day that I decided to buy my own camera. I couldn't let any of my adventures in South Central go completely undocumented. As soon as I got to Redondo Beach and Western, I made a quick stop at the CVS on the South East corner and bought two disposables.

The first several shots were a series of intersections on Main and San Pedro...mostly crip territory:

Imperial and Main:

Bloody roadkill on Manchester, near Avalon:

Water conduit between 107th and 108th, LA River:

Colden and Main, Main Street Crip Territory:

Things seemed to be running smoothly until I decided to make a stop at a McDonald's near Slauson and Fairfax. When you gotta go, you gotta go...but for this particular piss break, the battery on my truck decided to eat shit...or at least it had me convinced that it was eating shit.

It was an extra thirty minutes or so that I was stuck in the middle of this shopping center, wondering how many more things could go wrong with another three hours left of driving in Inglewood.

My boss showed up after twenty minutes and managed to get the battery working again. Luckily, nothing else went wrong for the rest of the day.

5:30pm and I returned the truck to the shop. 130th street was still a ghost town when I returned from my last route. I could hear someone working in another warehouse on the other side of the street, a hissing buzz saw every few seconds. It was awkward and lonely, but somehow I felt a little safer.

I locked up the shop for the last time and took a few final shots, including the alley behind the warehouse.

Alley facing South:

Alley behind the warehouse facing East:

Like sardines I would always say:

I wasn't mugged during any of my last three days with Street Blimps. No one tried to bust any caps in my ass, I didn't come across any confrontations with the locals...no one broke into my car.

The truth is, Compton, along with many other parts of South Central LA, is much safer today than it was 10/15 years ago. The rivalries between the Bloods, the Crips and all the Mexican gangs in Los Angeles still exist, but the casualties of all the innocent bystanders have dropped significantly over the past couple of decades.

If you take a casual drive through some of the streets in South Central LA, you might see a white person walking their dog from time to time. An old white couple getting a tire replaced on their old camper. A racially diverse group of children playing softball on a neighborhood diamond. These are things you'll see in any other district or incorporated city of Los Angeles.

This does not mean you will not get mugged walking to your car after closing up a store at night. It does not mean someone wont try to break into your car to steal a stereo or a laptop or an iPhone. It is still possible to "fuck up" by driving into the wrong neighborhood, leaving your car by a shady street corner, or interacting with the wrong people.

I can't really see myself having the need to drive through the South Central part of Los Angeles ever again...but if I ever need to do it I wont feel quite as anxious about it as I did when I worked for Street Blimps.

I had a working-class job in the most notoriously dangerous city in all of Los Angeles for a whole month...and no one ever broke into my car.

However, my car was broken into...when I lived in Orange County:

The Entertainment Industry

My sister asked me if I could watch my niece over the weekend once I got back from Needles. It's a small favor to ask, given that they always put her down for bed before going out for the night. I figured it would be a nice break from reality and a chance to do my laundry without having to spend nine quarters.

A couple of weeks before I took the job with Street Blimps, I had applied to several places within 20 miles of the apartment. Best Buy, Radio Shack...Blockbuster. I have applied to work at Blockbuster several times throughout my life...always denied the "opportunity" to restock the shelves, to offer advice to customers on the best movies...to finally learn how to use a fucking cash register. I was one year away from completing my bachelor's degree in physics when Blockbuster denied me a single interview for the last time.

Several years later I have a master's degree in physics and here I am again...dropping my resume on the most recognizable movie rental outlet in the country.

One Sunday afternoon, shortly after I had started working at Street Blimps, I get a call from the store manager of a Blockbuster in Hollywood. I showed up for an interview that same day and apparently I did really well. The manager said she would be contacting me the following Wednesday to let me know if I had gotten the job. She never called, so I assumed it fell through the cracks.

I was still at my sister's watching my niece when the store manager called me again and asked if I could show up the following Thursday afternoon to "fill out paper work."

I had been hired.

Apparently Blockbuster only hires the best of the best of the best. I had to get a master's degree in physics before they'd consider adding me to their CSR team.

That night I went to bed unable to stop giggling about the fact that I drove trucks and that my goal to work a typical, high school summer job after getting my master's degree was finally coming true.

It was about 2 in the morning when the girl from the freeway suddenly called...

The first time I ever saw her I was sitting in the back seat of my friend's car. We were driving along Interstate 10 somewhere between El Paso, TX and Las Cruces, NM. My friends and I had just left Kiki's and I was sitting in the back seat just looking out the window...hoping to see my next crush.

At 90 miles per hour, I thought she looked like Hayley Williams:

The girl was absolutely crazy though. I wrote my phone number on a paper plate with a black sharpie and handed it to her while both cars were still in motion, from one window to the other. It was by far the coolest and most dangerous thing I have ever done...but I never got to meet her in person.

I answered my phone at 2 in the morning because I immediately knew who it was. It had been roughly four months since our encounter on the freeway, but all of a sudden she decided to call me in the middle of the night.

To make a long story short, she and I discussed everything from politics, to money, to religion, to everything we currently hate about the world. At the end of our two-hour conversation I concluded that her personality was remarkably similar to that of Polly Prince:

She will forever be known to me as "Jessica Rabbit" though...not just because her name is Jessica, but because she told me about how she once dressed up as Jessica Rabbit for Halloween:

If you have never heard of/have never seen Jessica Rabbit, then you are definitely failing at life.

I've always had sort of a "quit while I'm still ahead" mentality when it comes to talking to girls. Jessica Rabbit insisted that I call her any time I felt like talking...but I didn't call her the next day. I didn't call her the day after that either. I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to hear her voice...but I didn't call her at all for about two weeks. Perhaps it was knowing that she lives 800 miles away that fucked with everything. Perhaps it was thinking that this girl is far too gorgeous for me and that there is no way she could possibly be interested in such a negative asshole like myself. Perhaps I can just unload about all this bullshit some other time...

Sunday night I went to see Bruno with my roommate and his girlfriend.

Sacha Baron Cohen really puts the audience to the test this time around with the explicitly ultra-homo shenanigans in his new movie, Bruno. While I loved the direction of the movie and the ideas behind it in principle, I felt like it fell short of Borat in more ways than one. Perhaps it was a little behind for its time...or perhaps it came off a little stale in the wake of Borat's comedic success. It wasn't a complete fail, but it didn't live up to my expectations.

I returned to the apartment and began writing music furiously. A third Onlooker full length was suddenly underway. For three days straight I worked on recording seven new songs. Where it comes from, I honestly don't know. How much longer I'll be able to do it without having an actual band...I honestly don't know.

My roommate and I decided to try out a newly discovered burger joint called the Hamburger Habit. This ended up being one of our best discoveries yet, and the Habit ended up having some of the best milk shakes I've ever had. If you're ever in West LA, I highly recommend it.

Thursday afternoon I show up at the Blockbuster in Hollywood and start filling out paperwork. They give me some t-shirts, a name tag and a stack of formal documents. As I'm leaving the store I get a call from my boss at Street Blimps. He wants me to show up the next day so I can post a truck for a route that starts on July 24th. It's not entirely clear where the route is, but all he can tell me is that it's "local."

Friday morning I drive to Compton and begin posting my truck for the grand opening of LA Care, a local family resource center for health and wellness (pictures forthcoming). This is when my boss tells me that my entire route is primarily in Inglewood.

I saw this coming.

It's a three day route from July 24th to July 26th. I try to shrug it off and I ask him if it's an 8 hour route or a 10 hour route. He tells me that it depends. Apparently Street Blimps is often hired for routes 30 to 50 hours at a time. He told me he wouldn't know the exact schedule for my route until the following week but that if it's a three day route, the hours can often be spread out over the three days like a bus schedule. Six hours in the morning. Six hours at night.

Six hours at night. Any hours at night.

The idea that I might have to drive around in Inglewood and parts of South Central for several hours by myself at night put a really sour feeling in my stomach. My job was to drive a truck and draw attention to myself...on purpose. To make stops every hour, on the hour, and to take as many pictures as possible...

Those first few minutes of realizing that I might have to drive that truck through those neighborhoods at night were a little tense. Having accepted employment with Blockbuster, I tell my boss that it'll be my last route and he's totally cool with it.

I needed another break from reality.

My roommate, his girlfriend and I decided to go to the Cheesecake Factory in Brea the weekend before my route.

When I was about ten years old I decided I wanted to be a cheesecake connoisseur when I grew up. I guess I had been screwing the pooch up until now because I had never even been to the Cheesecake Factory until I was 25.

For those of you who have never been to the Cheesecake Factory...their menu is unlike the traditional glossy fold-out. No no...the menu at the cheesecake factory is more like a twenty page spiral notebook...a never-ending tale of seafood, continental, Italian and domestic classics. And then there's the cheesecake menu...with about thirty different choices. For all the lovers of cheesecake, please: if you ever go there and look at the menu, when you're finished shitting yourself, try and remain calm and don't be the piece of shit who orders "the original."

Between the three of us we tried Craig's Crazy Carrot Cake:

the Kahlua Cocoa Coffee:

and the Lemon Raspberry Cream:

Apparently the Carrot Cake was the mistake.

When the cheesecake feast wasn't enough, we ended the night with a trip up to Black Star Canyon.

Rather than go into a detailed explanation of the reputation Black Star Canyon has made for itself over the past 30 years, give or take a few, I'll let Google answer any questions anyone might have.

We trekked Eastward along Santiago Canyon Road until we reached the infamous turn-off for Black Star Canyon and completely missed it, as usual. The road has been cut off to access from all non-residents...but the restriction isn't sanctioned by the state or the county. Apparently the two backwoods Christian-cult bumpkins who own the property placed the restrictions on their own accord and they like to enforce them with shotguns and such. They don't take too kindly to city folk.

We skipped Black Star Canyon Road and continued onward, making up jokes about Deliverance and serial killers, until we accidentally drove as far as Mission Viejo. It was when we turned around and started heading back that we found ourselves in a situation very similar to a cross between this:

and this:

The only differences being that I don't look like either Dennis Weaver or Justin Long and I don't drive a 1970 Plymouth Valiant or a 1960 Chevrolet Impala. I guess the Mitsubishi Eclipse series doesn't make for a decent cliche car chase.

Anyway, the quasi-bro-type, lifted truck Christian asshole who was chasing us rode my ass for about two minutes with his brights on...and anyone who has ever driven in a car with me knows I always like returning favors.

Perhaps I could have gotten us all in trouble but it's always in the worst case scenarios that I can at least rely on the trusty Louisville Slugger in the trunk of my car.

Back to reality.

For the next five days I waited for my last route. They weren't exactly the best fives days ever. Even while trying to look forward to the upcoming Sound and Fury Festival in Oxnard, California, I couldn't stop thinking about the many different things that could happen to me at night during my route. Even just the fact that I would be returning the truck at night by myself was giving me ulcers. Returning the truck alone required going into the alley behind the truck depot...and having seen how sketchy it looks during the day, it bothered me more than enough to feel nervous about going in at night.

The Wednesday before my route started I called my supervisor to find out what my schedule would be. It was a morning to afternoon shift for all three days...eight hours of driving in the ghetto.

At least I could breathe a little and not have to worry about locking up the shop by myself at night.

One of my closest friends whom I grew up with was turning 25 the day before my route. I hadn't heard from him in a long time but he had asked me to give him a call a couple of weeks before. I wanted to wish the guy a happy birthday, so I gave him a call and we talked for a while. I could hear his daughter in the background. It's crazy to talk to someone you're so close to after a long time...someone you grew up with, and to hear their kid in the background over the phone.

We caught up on things. We talked about our parents. We talked about the prospect of meeting up in Las Vegas some time in the next year or so. He told me about what it's like having a kid and he told me about his job working for a bank. I told him about my "career" situation...the fact that I was getting a job in the entertainment industry...or at least a job providing entertainment...sort of...and the fact that I'd be spending the next three days driving around in South Central LA. Oh, it was good to hear him laugh though.

I hadn't heard him laugh in a long time...