Naked Transportation, a Downtown and Hollywood Journey...Being Supportive

Outside your car and on your feet you get to experience the glamorous bottom floor of Los Angeles. And it has quite a bit of square footage.

I took the 770 Express from 5th and Olive to Cesar E Chavez and Rowan to support Self Help Graphics in their fight to not die from a Catholic Church assisted gentrified death. I guess Roger Mahony and company are tired of just fucking little boys.

I saw Gloria Molina who I feel is amazingly brilliant.

Do I agree with her completely politically, not exactly but I have to honor her bad assedness.

During the Friday press conference at the headquarters of Self Help Graphics in East Los Angeles (which for reference isn’t the city of LA proper) allegations of duplicitous assholeyness were thrown about. Apparently it was not just the boys of the Archdiocese that have been misbehaving, but apparently the girls aka nuns were misbehaving also.

Nuns selling out artists in East Los Angeles, well that effectively killed the image I had of the one group of people I still had an idealized view of, bummer.

Now I can truly go over to the dark side.

On the way back I took the 68 to Olvera Street to have what I thought was going to be very gross Mexican food, but oddly it was quite tasty. Don’t remember the name, just remember they had roses on their napkins.

When you seat me by the pile of dirty dishes and the trash can, what am I supposed to think about your establishment? So your restaurant is classless and over priced, but the food is good.

I guess good food can make up for a lot.

Then I took the Red Line back to Pershing Square and tried to find toilet paper. I didn’t want to go all the way to Ralphs and I didn’t want to walk all the way to Mitsuwa, for godsakes I had plans. I had to steal some from a public toilet. Yes that’s a horrible thing, but I had every intention of buying some, but Famima didn’t have (why don't they have toilet paper, they have everything else) any and a person who worked there gave me the suggestion to borrow some from the building.

“I always do it,” cool employee.

People at Famina are pretty rad. Don’t worry I replaced it on Sunday while I was at the meat packer ice box cold Starbucks (that’s on 6th and Grand.)

I then caught the Red Line to MacArthur Park to go to Mama’s Hot Tamales for a get together of the organizers of the car wash boycott.

I had a talk with some interesting people. I spoke with a union organizer and a community activist. Before going I called my best friend to encourage her to meet me there. I told her to take the train.

“Where is it?” my friend.
“MacArthur Park,” me.
“I don’t want to die,” my friend.
“It’s safe,” me.
“You think the bus is safe,” my friend.

So she didn’t meet me.

She later called again, by the end of the conversation we had decided to see a movie.

My initial desire was to go to that expensive Coffee boutique in Silver Lake, LA MILL because while it is lame in some ways (like the price), I like enthusiastic actor types making weird coffee drinks at my table and they also have a dessert menu.

Pretty yummy!

I could live on desserts and candy.

“That is not on my diet,” my friend.
“Can’t you just vomit or use drugs or take up smoking?” me.
“Those things are not healthy,” my friend.

A sedentary lifestyle isn’t healthful either, but I just said that in my head. I’m a good best friend.

I caught the Red Line to her house and we went to Pasadena (by car owing that I can get her on the train maybe once a week and I had spent my public transportation capital with her earlier this week on a weekday brunch and busses, her answer to that is always, "I'm blonde.") to see Tell No One, a French film, an American story. We are both into French culture. We’re going to learn French fluently and move there one day.

It was a good film, I found the ending too happy, but my friend likes happy endings.

As she drove me home she asked, “Why do you live here? It’s horrifying. Why don’t you come back to Los Feliz?”

I didn’t answer her. I just said I liked her hair and asked her if she thought I should get bangs.

"Only if you get Kit (my hair person) to do it. Only professionals should cut bangs, at least in your case."

This is one of our on-going conversation. We have others “the diet,” “I hate my step parent,” and “is plastic surgery a good idea,” so don’t think we don’t discuss broad topics.

We’re very deep.

I had her drop me off at 5th and Broadway and I walked home.

I walked past the homeless people, past the smell of urine, past post industrial chic lofts, past cyclists and I thought to myself, people who drive have a problem seeing. Being (what you think) is fat can be a bit of a downer, but watching a homeless woman who is 50, but looks 80, lying in her own urine, sprawled out on the sidewalk, screaming for someone to help her, anyone, puts life in perspective….but I guess everything is relative, I guess, I don’t know…maybe the constant smell of urine down here is making me hallucinate.

Browne