weekend blues

First time out for a day trip in months and what happens?

Someone scrapes my parked car.

Also seen:

Poignant or ironic? A symbol of America, or a symbol of individualism to the most extreme? Knowing some of the Venice homeless as I do, it's a bit of both. This is not the result of the pandemic. L.A. has always looked like this, certainly in the decade since I moved here. The fault lies squarely with the state and local leadership. Their corruption and grift at ensuring money that should go to get these people off the streets and/or into treatment instead goes into the wallets of people whose jobs are to "study the issue," and then kick the can down the road until they need more money to study the issue.

It's also a housing issue. Without enough housing, the problem never gets solved. But if you keep the market tight, the prices stay tight, too. But housing is only one part of the problem. Correlation doesn't always equal causation but along with the spiraling homeless crisis, and economic woes thanks to Covid, and mayors and legislators who are decriminalizing criminal behavior wihle cutting the number of police, crime has skyrocketed in Los Angeles.

On the other side of where this photo was taken is a 1700 square foot house built in 1924. Asking price: $2.1 million. It's been on the market for more than 150 days which leads me to believe the Redfin description does not jibe with the reality. The homeless encampments go on for blocks on this street. And the side streetss, And on the boardwalk.  Just a few blocks away from this spot near the skatepark a woman was murdered in front of the police station at 5:30 in the evening.

This is a downer of a post, I realize. It was a particularly hard two months. I wasblessed enough to work three jobs that helped make up for the few months this year where there was no work to be had. It wasn't an ideal situation but it's easier now, and there's now breathing room, which is sayign something in a smog filled city.