Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Poor choice of name for a store so close to the heart of skid row?
I think a retail store this close to skid row with this sort of name may be contraindicated? People smoke within a few feet of this store, literally.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
A long day. Then again, most days seem to be long ones.
Two shifts again downtown today and that was after a few hours at the shop with the 65 Amps folks. A long day and long night.
Yesterday I headed downtown in the late morning. I took the red line to Union Station. I wanted to try exploring a different route to the mission area and I thought that walking from Little Tokyo could be a good route.
At Union Station I transferred to the gold line and got off at the first stop on the south leg, Little Tokyo. I grabbed a spicy tuna roll and started to walk. As I was walking I received a text that Andy Bales of Union Rescue Mission was cooking chili for 1000 people. I texted back and asked if he needed any help as I was in the area. I did not really expect a quick text back as Andy Bales is one of those sorts of folks that packs 18 hours of activity into an 8 hour day, that is ... if he even knows what an 8 hour day is in the first place.
Andy Bales is the CEO of Union Rescue Mission as some of you may know from other blog posts. Today Andy was cooking chili for 1000, performing his daily tasks of running the largest mission in Los Angeles, continued his ongoing battle of raising money for the mission to help more people on the street without a place to go than the entire population of Santa Barbara, oversee the cutover to a new website which is in the process of being updated at http://www.urm.org/ and Lord know what else.
Above - Some homeless folks do not sleep on the street as in, on the ground. They sleep in their cars or in places such as this old van. This van was parked directly in front of Union Rescue Mission yesterday 1/4/10.
Above - the rear intake area of Union Rescue Mission.
By the time I arrived at URM they were loading one of their vans out in front of the place with large silver containers of hot food. My guess was the chili was all done. I went inside and found out from the gal at the front desk that Andy had completed his chili. I talked to another staff member on the phone and told her that I was on my way back out "into the field" for the rest of the afternoon. I went to the Central Market to pick up some things so pass out in the evening. When bananas are 2-3 pounds for $1.00 for the general public I now get 5-10 pounds for the same price. I also am able to get the last Chinese food of the day for nothing and pretty good discounts on other things. I already brought down a good supply of breakfast bars and oatmeal bars from Smart & Final in the past and have an friend at an SRO Hotel on Wall Street that lets me store stuff at his place. I was set for the evening.
Above - some of the SRO Hotels less than one block from Union Rescue Mission, The Midnight Mission and the Los Angeles Mission.
Financially things look pretty good. There are a number of folks that are helping and I have mentioned some of them on the right side of this blog. I will just take another moment to say thank you again.
I walked back up Fifth Street to the redline stop at Pershing Square, headed back to NoHo to pull things together for the evening, check email and reply where a more detailed reply may have been nice for folks in response to some of the SMS messages I received during the afternoon. My replies had been short but I did upload cell photos and cell video during the afternoon. I also took better photos and video with the #2 camera when I had the chance. I will upload those when there is a little more time.
In the evening I headed back downtown for my night shift. The weather had turned cooler, jacket weather for sure, even though the day had been warm. I walked by my favorite alley as I always do. There are folks that expect me to be there now and I try to give them something they can count on by showing up. I have had some interesting talks in that alley and have even slept in the alley on an occasion or two. I stopped by "my alley" for a few minutes on my way to the SRO to pick up snacks for the night folks. I met an interesting fellow who calls himself Gilez. I have no idea of the spelling, vocally it sounds like gill (as in a fish gill) and then ez ... or Gillez? He talked to me for over an hour. He insisted that he was 1/4 Aztec Indian. I tried to wrap my head around the generational (is there even such a word) math but it did not work out unless his great grandparents and possibly grandparents lived to be about 250 years old. Well, in any case, he was darn sure he was an Aztec Indian.
I walked my rounds and was able to feed some snacks or provide snack for later in the evening to the felt pad and blanket division who live on the street. I spent an hour talking to Isabelle. Isabelle is somewhere between twenty something and thirty something. She is Hispanic. She is not a legal resident. She has been in the area for a little over a year. She walks the streets in the evening and stays in an SRO hotel with a friend. I asked if the hotel was used in her effort to make money. She said she generally does not bring clients to the hotel for many reasons. More affluent clients will generally opt for a hotel room elsewhere. Some of her clients are the same people one sees cruising the streets at night looking to purchase drugs. I have some photos elsewhere that I have posted of a nice high end car or two that may look out of place to some who do not understand the situation or place.
Isabelle. I don't think I need to paint a picture. She is still intact mentally for the most part and is pretty in the right light. I think with a bit of clothes, hair and makeup work she could be quite pretty. Her attire is what one would find as quite sterotypical for her profession. Commercial pilots wear a uniform, mechanics at a car dealership have a uniform as do people in the medical profession and the list continues.
Perhaps the model agency side of my brain kicks in at times when it really makes no sense to go down that thought path. I have talked to Isabelle for the last two nights and I think I am coming close to being able to have her talk to the folks at URM. I do not know how things like their Hope Garden facility works when it comes to selecting people. I actually need to learn a lot more about Union Rescue Mission in general. I know little about the infrastructure. I need to know more.
I do not understand why some people are afraid of the missions. Some prefer the street. They tell me it is a matter of freedom. I see people come and go at the missions. Seems to me they are free. The number of people that the mission help on a daily basis is staggering. They are overloaded, an understatement of the obvious. The mental image I have in my own mind is that of an overloaded lifeboat on a dark and angry sea. Too many people with too much sadness and dispair in their eyes and in their faces.
When I try to take some people to the missions some refuse. They say there are too many rules. I hear people talk of violence at the missions. Maybe I am totally off base but I have been inside the URM and folks are all pretty darn upbeat and they are smiling a lot more than I smile these days.
The URM staff are kind and open in their conversational ways to everybody. It feels very safe inside. Maybe I am just blind but I generally think of myself as somebody who is pretty darn aware of the environment. In any case I will try to convince Isabelle to try to think about URM as an option.
I am not sure what I will be doing later today but I will be going back downtown. I may drop by URM to see if I can learn any more about the way they do things. They have orientation on Tuesdays and I tried to sign up for the one tomorrow but it was already full. I don't know if their signup is currently working with their new website. Some of the content seems to have been moved and there are still a few bugs. Reminds me of my past where we used to spend many hours regression testing software and still were tripped up by many problems. You train for the problems you expect. You cannot train for the things you know nothing about. I suppose I could offer to help them on their website but there are thousands of web savy folks within a few mile radius of anywhere in any city or town. Computer and comm stuff ... did that for three decades or so already. I worked well in the field in 1968 in the military and am finding comfort in the urban field in the fifty square block area of Los Angeles that is referred to as skid row.
I think last night I made things a little less painful for at least a dozen people. Not a huge amount compared to what the missions do. Not long term as the missions do. But these are folks that have nothing and nobody in many cases at 2am when it is cold, sometimes wet and they wake up when they are not tossing and turning all night and are hungry.
There are countless reasons people are here. My current path in life was chosen by another just as the path of many of these people I try to help may have had their path directed. Sometimes it is the luck of the draw. It can be where you grew up, your parents or lack of parents, economics or people who toss you away when they want a change in their own lives for their own reasons. People who don't want to put out any effort in an attempt to consider changes let alone attempt to make changes. People that see the dark rather than the light. Single mothers who think of their children as a burden and abandon them so they can have what they feel is freedom. People who turn to drugs or alcohol to forget the past, be able to face today and ignore the future ... if there even is a future in their mind. The list goes on and on.
I have been trained by the United States military complex for good or bad. I am educated. I have an artistic mind and I feel I have an open mind. I can sail a boat across an ocean, fly an airplane or helicopter, play a guitar and fix a car. I was also trained in computer science, communications and am a pretty decent medical corpsman. I was a reserve sheriff for two years. More weighty than any of that: I had been trained for over two decades by somebody who saw the dark rather than the light. I used to tell them that they always let the bad outweigh the good and they would argue the point. In the end I was proven right and therefore it seems to me that I am well versed on how some people can just give up on others. It is easy for me to understand how some of these people in the streets have given up on their past family or given up on hope, given up on God.
I will do what I can to help as long as I have the strength to help, even though there are people in my life that work against my spirit. On the other side of the coin so to speak, there are people that support me and give me the hope. They supply strength so I can walk into the middle of the problem for another day and hope that I can do my best.
Please try to overlook all my spelling, grammar and other errors in the above writing. It was a long day and long night yesterday. I got back to NoHo a few hours ago and just pounded this out. I did not proof read this or attempt to correct errors. Perhaps in the future I will attempt that but for now I will just post this.
Thank you to all of you who stood by me yesterday and last night via cellphone, texts, facebook dialogue via SMS messages and mobile support. It can be a bit of comfort knowing that so many people are watching as I walk down a new alley in the late hours of the evening or very early morning.
.
Yesterday I headed downtown in the late morning. I took the red line to Union Station. I wanted to try exploring a different route to the mission area and I thought that walking from Little Tokyo could be a good route.
At Union Station I transferred to the gold line and got off at the first stop on the south leg, Little Tokyo. I grabbed a spicy tuna roll and started to walk. As I was walking I received a text that Andy Bales of Union Rescue Mission was cooking chili for 1000 people. I texted back and asked if he needed any help as I was in the area. I did not really expect a quick text back as Andy Bales is one of those sorts of folks that packs 18 hours of activity into an 8 hour day, that is ... if he even knows what an 8 hour day is in the first place.
Andy Bales is the CEO of Union Rescue Mission as some of you may know from other blog posts. Today Andy was cooking chili for 1000, performing his daily tasks of running the largest mission in Los Angeles, continued his ongoing battle of raising money for the mission to help more people on the street without a place to go than the entire population of Santa Barbara, oversee the cutover to a new website which is in the process of being updated at http://www.urm.org/ and Lord know what else.
Above - Some homeless folks do not sleep on the street as in, on the ground. They sleep in their cars or in places such as this old van. This van was parked directly in front of Union Rescue Mission yesterday 1/4/10.
Above - the rear intake area of Union Rescue Mission.
By the time I arrived at URM they were loading one of their vans out in front of the place with large silver containers of hot food. My guess was the chili was all done. I went inside and found out from the gal at the front desk that Andy had completed his chili. I talked to another staff member on the phone and told her that I was on my way back out "into the field" for the rest of the afternoon. I went to the Central Market to pick up some things so pass out in the evening. When bananas are 2-3 pounds for $1.00 for the general public I now get 5-10 pounds for the same price. I also am able to get the last Chinese food of the day for nothing and pretty good discounts on other things. I already brought down a good supply of breakfast bars and oatmeal bars from Smart & Final in the past and have an friend at an SRO Hotel on Wall Street that lets me store stuff at his place. I was set for the evening.
Above - some of the SRO Hotels less than one block from Union Rescue Mission, The Midnight Mission and the Los Angeles Mission.
Financially things look pretty good. There are a number of folks that are helping and I have mentioned some of them on the right side of this blog. I will just take another moment to say thank you again.
I walked back up Fifth Street to the redline stop at Pershing Square, headed back to NoHo to pull things together for the evening, check email and reply where a more detailed reply may have been nice for folks in response to some of the SMS messages I received during the afternoon. My replies had been short but I did upload cell photos and cell video during the afternoon. I also took better photos and video with the #2 camera when I had the chance. I will upload those when there is a little more time.
In the evening I headed back downtown for my night shift. The weather had turned cooler, jacket weather for sure, even though the day had been warm. I walked by my favorite alley as I always do. There are folks that expect me to be there now and I try to give them something they can count on by showing up. I have had some interesting talks in that alley and have even slept in the alley on an occasion or two. I stopped by "my alley" for a few minutes on my way to the SRO to pick up snacks for the night folks. I met an interesting fellow who calls himself Gilez. I have no idea of the spelling, vocally it sounds like gill (as in a fish gill) and then ez ... or Gillez? He talked to me for over an hour. He insisted that he was 1/4 Aztec Indian. I tried to wrap my head around the generational (is there even such a word) math but it did not work out unless his great grandparents and possibly grandparents lived to be about 250 years old. Well, in any case, he was darn sure he was an Aztec Indian.
I walked my rounds and was able to feed some snacks or provide snack for later in the evening to the felt pad and blanket division who live on the street. I spent an hour talking to Isabelle. Isabelle is somewhere between twenty something and thirty something. She is Hispanic. She is not a legal resident. She has been in the area for a little over a year. She walks the streets in the evening and stays in an SRO hotel with a friend. I asked if the hotel was used in her effort to make money. She said she generally does not bring clients to the hotel for many reasons. More affluent clients will generally opt for a hotel room elsewhere. Some of her clients are the same people one sees cruising the streets at night looking to purchase drugs. I have some photos elsewhere that I have posted of a nice high end car or two that may look out of place to some who do not understand the situation or place.
Isabelle. I don't think I need to paint a picture. She is still intact mentally for the most part and is pretty in the right light. I think with a bit of clothes, hair and makeup work she could be quite pretty. Her attire is what one would find as quite sterotypical for her profession. Commercial pilots wear a uniform, mechanics at a car dealership have a uniform as do people in the medical profession and the list continues.
Perhaps the model agency side of my brain kicks in at times when it really makes no sense to go down that thought path. I have talked to Isabelle for the last two nights and I think I am coming close to being able to have her talk to the folks at URM. I do not know how things like their Hope Garden facility works when it comes to selecting people. I actually need to learn a lot more about Union Rescue Mission in general. I know little about the infrastructure. I need to know more.
I do not understand why some people are afraid of the missions. Some prefer the street. They tell me it is a matter of freedom. I see people come and go at the missions. Seems to me they are free. The number of people that the mission help on a daily basis is staggering. They are overloaded, an understatement of the obvious. The mental image I have in my own mind is that of an overloaded lifeboat on a dark and angry sea. Too many people with too much sadness and dispair in their eyes and in their faces.
When I try to take some people to the missions some refuse. They say there are too many rules. I hear people talk of violence at the missions. Maybe I am totally off base but I have been inside the URM and folks are all pretty darn upbeat and they are smiling a lot more than I smile these days.
The URM staff are kind and open in their conversational ways to everybody. It feels very safe inside. Maybe I am just blind but I generally think of myself as somebody who is pretty darn aware of the environment. In any case I will try to convince Isabelle to try to think about URM as an option.
I am not sure what I will be doing later today but I will be going back downtown. I may drop by URM to see if I can learn any more about the way they do things. They have orientation on Tuesdays and I tried to sign up for the one tomorrow but it was already full. I don't know if their signup is currently working with their new website. Some of the content seems to have been moved and there are still a few bugs. Reminds me of my past where we used to spend many hours regression testing software and still were tripped up by many problems. You train for the problems you expect. You cannot train for the things you know nothing about. I suppose I could offer to help them on their website but there are thousands of web savy folks within a few mile radius of anywhere in any city or town. Computer and comm stuff ... did that for three decades or so already. I worked well in the field in 1968 in the military and am finding comfort in the urban field in the fifty square block area of Los Angeles that is referred to as skid row.
I think last night I made things a little less painful for at least a dozen people. Not a huge amount compared to what the missions do. Not long term as the missions do. But these are folks that have nothing and nobody in many cases at 2am when it is cold, sometimes wet and they wake up when they are not tossing and turning all night and are hungry.
There are countless reasons people are here. My current path in life was chosen by another just as the path of many of these people I try to help may have had their path directed. Sometimes it is the luck of the draw. It can be where you grew up, your parents or lack of parents, economics or people who toss you away when they want a change in their own lives for their own reasons. People who don't want to put out any effort in an attempt to consider changes let alone attempt to make changes. People that see the dark rather than the light. Single mothers who think of their children as a burden and abandon them so they can have what they feel is freedom. People who turn to drugs or alcohol to forget the past, be able to face today and ignore the future ... if there even is a future in their mind. The list goes on and on.
I have been trained by the United States military complex for good or bad. I am educated. I have an artistic mind and I feel I have an open mind. I can sail a boat across an ocean, fly an airplane or helicopter, play a guitar and fix a car. I was also trained in computer science, communications and am a pretty decent medical corpsman. I was a reserve sheriff for two years. More weighty than any of that: I had been trained for over two decades by somebody who saw the dark rather than the light. I used to tell them that they always let the bad outweigh the good and they would argue the point. In the end I was proven right and therefore it seems to me that I am well versed on how some people can just give up on others. It is easy for me to understand how some of these people in the streets have given up on their past family or given up on hope, given up on God.
I will do what I can to help as long as I have the strength to help, even though there are people in my life that work against my spirit. On the other side of the coin so to speak, there are people that support me and give me the hope. They supply strength so I can walk into the middle of the problem for another day and hope that I can do my best.
Please try to overlook all my spelling, grammar and other errors in the above writing. It was a long day and long night yesterday. I got back to NoHo a few hours ago and just pounded this out. I did not proof read this or attempt to correct errors. Perhaps in the future I will attempt that but for now I will just post this.
Thank you to all of you who stood by me yesterday and last night via cellphone, texts, facebook dialogue via SMS messages and mobile support. It can be a bit of comfort knowing that so many people are watching as I walk down a new alley in the late hours of the evening or very early morning.
.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
No photos, no videos, nothing fancy or educational. Just a few of my thoughts.
This post might be full of spelling errors, errors in grammar and have all sorts of issue. If you can overlook those things that would be great. If you cannot overlook them that is unfortunate I suppose but I am not going to do much about it. Try to ignore the lack of flow and mistakes. I am tired and it has been a rough holiday season so say the least. I may go back when I am less tired and edit this a bit. I wanted to get some of these thoughts down while they were still running through my head.
This post is little more than some of the thoughts that have crossed my mind. Some of them I posted on facebook while I was in "the field" and some I just let sit in the back of my mind. Perhaps some of them will come up as I write this.
The questions come magnitudes faster than answers. I generally go downtown two times in a given day, in the late morning and afternoon and then in the late evening.
Spending time in the heart of skid row is more like a military mission than a fact finding mission or a mission to help those in need. There are no choppers to come and get you when things fall apart. I say "when" because it is not a matter of IF, it is a matter of when. Your potential enemy can be more elusive and unknown than any military enemy even those that blend in with the general population. Many of these folks have mental issue and can explode or change face in a split second.
Did I say mental issues? Live on the streets a few weeks and most anybody will develop mental issues. I have already found myself with some changes in my views on some subjects. At times I have to put additional effort into holding back anger toward nicely dressed people in suits that go about their daily lifes blind to the plight of so many others. I am not a religious man but I will say that those folks should heed the phrase that says something about not being in that position only by the grace of God. I have met too many families that had a house and home weeks ago and are now on the streets.
Human beings are social creatures. Sure, there are survival types that live alone in the forest but they are an exception and not the rule. I used to think of myself as a loner, somebody who did not need anybody and could eaily drift in and out of social situations if and when I wanted to do so. Wrong. I have no stable home even though I have an apartment. It is not a home as happiness and contentment are only real when your time is shared with others. These folks on the street are in some ways my family or support group. The vets which are the largest segment of the population are brothers in arms. Most of them have been rejected by people that were once important to them and I also fit into that same file folder which holds the list of events in the cosmos or whatever somewhere.
I have people I know and they have people they know. I try to help and support them perhaps because I am like them in many ways and each day my mindset come closer to an alignment with their way of thinking. It is a way of helping your family or at least your support group.
I have friends and something of a support group from a few good friends who I have either known for years or have not known all that long but know in my heart. One of them is an ex-vet himself that understands the homeless situation very well. One is a great lady who lives almost 3,000 miles away but always seems to be there for me. One is really five if you count a husband, wife, daughter and two doggies. I performed the marriage of the husband and wife a decade ago. There are some folks over at an amplifier company in North Hollywood that are a bit of an extended family. The owner of the company is one of the most intelligent people I know and a straight ahead, honest and kind person. He gave me a space to park my motorhome for a year while I was trying to figure out what path to take in my life and gave me a lot of support. Other people from my past are around for a visit or when I want to drop by and say hello but life has changed and these folks have their own lives.
So, at this point in my life I am doing my best to help others who seem to need some help. A big part of that help seems to be what I said earlier ... we are social beings ... we need somebody to talk to and share things and thoughts with on a regular basis. I listen to them. They ask for my thoughts and then they listen to me. Maybe I am part of their life in some cases now and they are now a part of my life. I love my boys but they are at the age where they have their own activities and interests and really have better things to do than hang around with the old man. Ahhh ... the lyric from Cats in the Cradle comes to mind from Harry Chapin comes to mind. The story that is all so common.
I feel that I am helping others. I feel I am growing as an individual in spite of my age being at a point where many people stop trying to grow or understand things outside of the comfort zone or areas of expertise. I am meeting new people that I can see face to face every day and are people that are happy to see me even if I have nothing to offer other than conversation and an ear. Perhaps that will have to be enough.
Some questions that I have had that have come up in my mind are things such as ....
Where do all the cell phones that homeless people have get their battery charged? The aspect of where to pay the bill is not a question with prepaid cell phones.
With all the women and men working the streets for a buck (sometimes literally), I ask myself if sex without love is best left to animals .... unless it is an emergency? I wore a nice shirt that was a holiday gift from what was my family on Saturday night. Perhaps I looked too affluent. I was approached three times for companionship. One of the girls was even quite pretty.
Drugs? I was approached on the same evening multiple times. Lots of drug sales by locals, residents of the area and gang members. If you want it you will find it here. Mercedes, Lexus, BMW or whatever pull up to 5th and Los Angeles to make their connections. Central Division Police station is a few hundred yards away at the most.
I want to produce a photo calendar. Title? If you have a wall to hang this on count your blessings.
I like to take chances venturing down alleys in the late evening or early morning hours before the sun rises. Like roulette where the odds are against you but the win payoff can be big. You might find somebody who hides in the alleys as they are terrified of people and with time you may be able to talk to and with them and learn some interesting things. I already have one favorite alley.
One of my good friends asked if I knew of anybody doing what I am doing. My reply to him was that I have not met anybody else doing what I am doing. Most people that want to help the homeless in some way stay in the missions where it is safe. They serve meals or help in other ways. When the sun goes down they get out of the area. In the late evening and early morning there is not a lot to eat on the concrete and giving folks a banana or granola bar or rasins goes a long way to making the next hours until the sun rises a little easier. There are not a lot of folks in the field doing this and if there are others let me know about them so we can seek out each other and help each other.
Heavy gang activity as this is where they sell drugs. If you see a nice car late at night it is generally somebody who has money who are looking for drugs or cheap hookers. On my blog there is one video that is good at explaining where I posted the five videos in the series. My video clips? I tend to do things in a less slick way from a different vantage point than these high production videos done during the day when the sun is shining and you have a staff of people and police escort.
I really do not know where to end this post. I could keep writing for hours. I will stop now and perhaps extend this at another time or just write a new post with additional thoughts. I will end with the thought of the moment .... I am starting to feel more in place with the folks downtown than feeling in place and at ease when I am alone in the place I change my clothes, take a shower or do my laundry.
This post is little more than some of the thoughts that have crossed my mind. Some of them I posted on facebook while I was in "the field" and some I just let sit in the back of my mind. Perhaps some of them will come up as I write this.
The questions come magnitudes faster than answers. I generally go downtown two times in a given day, in the late morning and afternoon and then in the late evening.
Spending time in the heart of skid row is more like a military mission than a fact finding mission or a mission to help those in need. There are no choppers to come and get you when things fall apart. I say "when" because it is not a matter of IF, it is a matter of when. Your potential enemy can be more elusive and unknown than any military enemy even those that blend in with the general population. Many of these folks have mental issue and can explode or change face in a split second.
Did I say mental issues? Live on the streets a few weeks and most anybody will develop mental issues. I have already found myself with some changes in my views on some subjects. At times I have to put additional effort into holding back anger toward nicely dressed people in suits that go about their daily lifes blind to the plight of so many others. I am not a religious man but I will say that those folks should heed the phrase that says something about not being in that position only by the grace of God. I have met too many families that had a house and home weeks ago and are now on the streets.
Human beings are social creatures. Sure, there are survival types that live alone in the forest but they are an exception and not the rule. I used to think of myself as a loner, somebody who did not need anybody and could eaily drift in and out of social situations if and when I wanted to do so. Wrong. I have no stable home even though I have an apartment. It is not a home as happiness and contentment are only real when your time is shared with others. These folks on the street are in some ways my family or support group. The vets which are the largest segment of the population are brothers in arms. Most of them have been rejected by people that were once important to them and I also fit into that same file folder which holds the list of events in the cosmos or whatever somewhere.
I have people I know and they have people they know. I try to help and support them perhaps because I am like them in many ways and each day my mindset come closer to an alignment with their way of thinking. It is a way of helping your family or at least your support group.
I have friends and something of a support group from a few good friends who I have either known for years or have not known all that long but know in my heart. One of them is an ex-vet himself that understands the homeless situation very well. One is a great lady who lives almost 3,000 miles away but always seems to be there for me. One is really five if you count a husband, wife, daughter and two doggies. I performed the marriage of the husband and wife a decade ago. There are some folks over at an amplifier company in North Hollywood that are a bit of an extended family. The owner of the company is one of the most intelligent people I know and a straight ahead, honest and kind person. He gave me a space to park my motorhome for a year while I was trying to figure out what path to take in my life and gave me a lot of support. Other people from my past are around for a visit or when I want to drop by and say hello but life has changed and these folks have their own lives.
So, at this point in my life I am doing my best to help others who seem to need some help. A big part of that help seems to be what I said earlier ... we are social beings ... we need somebody to talk to and share things and thoughts with on a regular basis. I listen to them. They ask for my thoughts and then they listen to me. Maybe I am part of their life in some cases now and they are now a part of my life. I love my boys but they are at the age where they have their own activities and interests and really have better things to do than hang around with the old man. Ahhh ... the lyric from Cats in the Cradle comes to mind from Harry Chapin comes to mind. The story that is all so common.
I feel that I am helping others. I feel I am growing as an individual in spite of my age being at a point where many people stop trying to grow or understand things outside of the comfort zone or areas of expertise. I am meeting new people that I can see face to face every day and are people that are happy to see me even if I have nothing to offer other than conversation and an ear. Perhaps that will have to be enough.
Some questions that I have had that have come up in my mind are things such as ....
Where do all the cell phones that homeless people have get their battery charged? The aspect of where to pay the bill is not a question with prepaid cell phones.
With all the women and men working the streets for a buck (sometimes literally), I ask myself if sex without love is best left to animals .... unless it is an emergency? I wore a nice shirt that was a holiday gift from what was my family on Saturday night. Perhaps I looked too affluent. I was approached three times for companionship. One of the girls was even quite pretty.
Drugs? I was approached on the same evening multiple times. Lots of drug sales by locals, residents of the area and gang members. If you want it you will find it here. Mercedes, Lexus, BMW or whatever pull up to 5th and Los Angeles to make their connections. Central Division Police station is a few hundred yards away at the most.
I want to produce a photo calendar. Title? If you have a wall to hang this on count your blessings.
I like to take chances venturing down alleys in the late evening or early morning hours before the sun rises. Like roulette where the odds are against you but the win payoff can be big. You might find somebody who hides in the alleys as they are terrified of people and with time you may be able to talk to and with them and learn some interesting things. I already have one favorite alley.
One of my good friends asked if I knew of anybody doing what I am doing. My reply to him was that I have not met anybody else doing what I am doing. Most people that want to help the homeless in some way stay in the missions where it is safe. They serve meals or help in other ways. When the sun goes down they get out of the area. In the late evening and early morning there is not a lot to eat on the concrete and giving folks a banana or granola bar or rasins goes a long way to making the next hours until the sun rises a little easier. There are not a lot of folks in the field doing this and if there are others let me know about them so we can seek out each other and help each other.
Heavy gang activity as this is where they sell drugs. If you see a nice car late at night it is generally somebody who has money who are looking for drugs or cheap hookers. On my blog there is one video that is good at explaining where I posted the five videos in the series. My video clips? I tend to do things in a less slick way from a different vantage point than these high production videos done during the day when the sun is shining and you have a staff of people and police escort.
I really do not know where to end this post. I could keep writing for hours. I will stop now and perhaps extend this at another time or just write a new post with additional thoughts. I will end with the thought of the moment .... I am starting to feel more in place with the folks downtown than feeling in place and at ease when I am alone in the place I change my clothes, take a shower or do my laundry.
Feel free to follow me on facebook or twitter and a bit on my methods of production
This blog does not really allow for uploading of photos or videos from mobile devices. Many times I will report from the field and do this on twitter and facebook. Facebook also allows for remote uploads of the very small and poor quality videos my cellphone can produce (no fault of facebook, it is my phone). I tend to upload photos and videos often when I am on foot.
I had some text posts here on 1/2/10 but removed them as they are also on facebook and twitter. They were interactive in nature and facebook and twitter allow me to dialogue remotely where it is more of a one way street on this blog.
There are many great videos from others that I have posted on this blog. They are professionally done with high production values. I want to take a different approach. Rather than film or shoot from the safety of daytime, shoot with a staff of folks which is safer or pre-arrange particular scripts I prefer to shoot on foot, in the field, many times at night or in the early morning hours much of the time. I use equipment that is easily replaceable and does not attract a lot of attention. My video segments are generally only a minute or less. Sometimes that is all the time one has that may be safe. In many of the video clips there may be little or no dialogue. A picture is worth 1000 words and ... dialogue or verbal commentary can call attention to me when I am trying to avoid attention. I took a few video clips last night that I will post here after they are uploaded.
If you wish to find me on facebook I am at www.facebook.com/mylesr and on twitter I am at www.twitter.com/myles111us
I had some text posts here on 1/2/10 but removed them as they are also on facebook and twitter. They were interactive in nature and facebook and twitter allow me to dialogue remotely where it is more of a one way street on this blog.
There are many great videos from others that I have posted on this blog. They are professionally done with high production values. I want to take a different approach. Rather than film or shoot from the safety of daytime, shoot with a staff of folks which is safer or pre-arrange particular scripts I prefer to shoot on foot, in the field, many times at night or in the early morning hours much of the time. I use equipment that is easily replaceable and does not attract a lot of attention. My video segments are generally only a minute or less. Sometimes that is all the time one has that may be safe. In many of the video clips there may be little or no dialogue. A picture is worth 1000 words and ... dialogue or verbal commentary can call attention to me when I am trying to avoid attention. I took a few video clips last night that I will post here after they are uploaded.
If you wish to find me on facebook I am at www.facebook.com/mylesr and on twitter I am at www.twitter.com/myles111us
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Some of the best videos I have seen on the homeless subject
Please feel free to re-post and share with others
Friday, January 1, 2010
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1100 fireproof rooms at popular prices! Million dollars? To upgrade 1100 rooms and the building? How much of this building is actually leased in this economy? The price per square foot is a bit lower than one of those porta-sheds one finds at Lowe's or Lumber City.
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I plan to spend a lot of time here in 2010.
There are a number of great missions and shelters in the Los Angeles area. I have looked into a number of them. This particular mission, the Union Rescue Mission strikes me as perhaps the most organized with the most aggressive staff when it comes to my perception regarding the resolve of the staff to help the homeless and hungry.
I intend to continue to spend most of my time in the field working with people one on one. Hopefully I can arrange my time between the street and URM where I can extend the outreach program of URM.
Here is a cool video done by Channel 7 ABC the other day.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
10 Top Homeless Stories of 2009
This is a very good link with a lot of good information on the top 10 homeless stories of 2009. Just click on the title above as it will redirect you.
The number one story was of particular interest to me which can be seen from the above link
The number one story was of particular interest to me which can be seen from the above link
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Christmas night of December 25th 2009
Christmas day is over. The presents have been opened and the excitment is over for many. The evening for those with a roof over their heads may be an evening of hooking up some of their new electronic gifts, big screen TVs, logging onto their new computers or putting away new items or clothing.
Many people in colder parts of the country will build a fire in their fireplace or turn up their heater as they lie back on a comfortable recliner, sit in their favorite chair or couch and watch television. Perhaps they will listen to music or read a good book.
For many others there is no heat (even in Los Angeles it has been in the thirties at night). Their bed is little more than a piece of carpet foundation felt on the cement in a spot that may look safe for the night.
There will be no hot coffee, no hot cocoa, no glass of wine. No shower or bath, no music and no television or DVD movie to bring an aire of excitment to the end of a special day. The excitment these folks have will be the constant concern of being found by others which may be the police or may be others that are out looking to take what they can from others.
A small percentage of people will be given a place in one of the missions or shelters. These are the more fortunate ones but are a very small number compared to those out there with no shelter for the night. This story is repeated every night, 365 days a year. Tonight on the night of Christmas the feeling, mood and situation is even more depressing for most. Many are newly homeless due to job loss and the economy. This is their first Christmas with no roof over their head. The memories of better days, a home and family being together in a safe place is quite vivid for many. Their own situation had only become this dire in the last few months or even weeks.
Below are a few videos I took last night. The low light capability of the camera worked well enough to get the point across. These video clips are all about a minute in length or less.
My wishes to all for a great 2010.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
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In Los Angeles all the missions and shelters are doing whatever they can. Some on a larger scale than others but all helpful.
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