Scribble World Travel Blog

scary homeless guy in Los Angeles, CA

Last Friday,  Chris & I were kicking it in downtown L.A. and trying to find a jazz club.  After leaving one club, we were stopped by a talkative homeless guy wanting us to help him out. I offered him a Starbucks card for a free drink and he acted insulted and said homeless people need money too and it’s tough living on the streets and he’s not out to rob or hurt anyone. He just kept talking and talking-trying to find out our political views, what we were up to, what kind of music we liked…..you know, basically trying to be our buddy.  He told us if we liked jazz we should go to a certain place which turned out to be a bar with a juke box that stunk like a locker room.  The people in there were nice though and one guy bought a round for everyone, so we decided to stick around for a while. After we gave the homeless guy five bucks he left saying he had to go do something but would be back.

He returned after a few minutes and we wound up buying him a drink.  He wanted us to go with him, and looking back I’m not sure why we did. I guess because we’d been drinking and maybe we felt just a tad sorry for him because the lady behind the bar was trying to shoe him out.
Anyway, we were walking along following him even though he wouldn’t say where he was taking us.  He kept saying we were the coolest “white” people he’d ever met. I asked why we couldn’t just be cool people, why’d we have to be cool “white” people?  And he was all fixated on race saying we come from different cultures.
We came to a spot and he asked us to sit down. We were both hesitating…like why here? Of all the places to sit down, why this secluded dirty looking place?  He said he just wanted to talk.  He was very disarming.

We sat down. I was on the end and Chris in the middle-the homeless guy gets up and wants Chris to move down so he can sit by me-what the heck? And he says I’m fine and does that offend Chris and have we ever thought about having a 3-some with a black man? I’m looking at him in shock, but luckily Chris sees a piece of cardboard right behind us moving and realizes there’s someone underneath it…..we both jump up, and the guy hiding under it tries to act real still.  It was great camouflage.  Rob, the homeless guy is still talking trying to convince us to sit down again, but no way, we’re ready to get the heck out of there. We just walk away ignoring all his pleas for us to come back.
Kind of scary looking back-what was the guy under the cardboard going to do? He could have had a knife or something-who knows….but makes me a little less trusting. I want to think that people are basically good. Chris says that all people are bad until they prove themselves good. It bothers me to find out someone has ulterior motives….and since ultimately a homeless guy doesn’t really care what our political views are, what our taste in music is, and certainly not what zodiac signs we are-we shouldn’t feel bad next time we see a homeless person and just walk away….walk away…

Huge Sonoran Desert Toad in Tonopah, AZ

Spending the night at a motel in Tonopah, we were taking a night walk when I saw this enormous Sonoran Desert Toad! It was so big and sitting so still that at first I thought it was a statue.  I looked around and there were others too that were smaller. Toadally made my day